It's also is a heck of a lot faster to start up Armory the first time once Core is sync'd, since we're not building a 30+ GB database anymore. It's called "headless fullnode" because it's the same as previous "fullnode" version of Armory, but without maintaining it's own copy of the blockchain (of course, if you run supernode it will maintain your 2x-3x sized DB, but that's not the default Armory mode).
Will it ever be possible to run Armory without requiring filesystem-level access to the block files?
Seems like a change such as this makes such an operating mode more difficult.
I run bitcoind and Armory in separate virtual machines, and finding a way to share those files in a way that gets all the permissions right and satisfies LevelDB's locking requirements is non-trivial.
It would be great to have an option for Armory to maintain its own database using blocks it obtains via its peer connection to the node, rather than via direct filesystem access, without requiring a supernode.