Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence • Hacker News Board

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#11

Post by Afforess » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 5:42 PM UTC

Damn. From the horses mouth: https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/04/05/growing-ubuntu-for-cl...

I might be a small minority, but I _like_ Unity 7. I have never used Unity 8, and I thought the Ubuntu phone was misspent effort, but wow. Now I have to figure out if there is a way to style Gnome to look like Unity 7.

I wonder what this means for Mir vs Wayland as well.

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#12

Post by clircle » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 5:43 PM UTC

I am so happy

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#13

Post by astrodust » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 5:43 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #10

Now if they could just abandon systemd.

Now if people could only get used to it.

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#14

Post by i80and » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 5:43 PM UTC

Page isn't loading, but that's a pity if true :(

I ended up dropping desktop Linux entirely last year, but Unity was the only thing that I thought wasn't matched by any other desktop operating system.

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#15

Post by LeoPanthera » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 5:44 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #10

Now if they could just abandon systemd.

Gnome 3 and systemd are closely intertwined. Running Gnome without it would be a lot of work.

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#16

Post by WD-42 » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 5:44 PM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #7

Does that mean they're going to make it easy not to have the taskbar on the side - or god forbid, even put it at the bottom by default ? I remember that "convergence" with mobile was the primary reason why the Ubuntu UI was designed the way it was and why the taskbar was put on the side. Yes, I realize a lot of Ubuntu users have already gotten used to it, and some may even prefer it, but I'm sure the majority of new…

Have you ever used Gnome? There is no taskbar :)

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#17

Post by pkd » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 5:45 PM UTC

Let me say that the only thing I am sad about is Unity 8. I genuinely liked Unity and it's easy to use, not-too-resource-hungry interface. I definitely do not like GNOME as much. It lacks the cohesion that Unity has (I understand why, but that doesn't negate the point).

I will be happy to see if the best parts of Unity make it back to GNOME - GNOME just feels clunky right now. But I will continue using Ubuntu regardless.

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#18

Post by ThatGeoGuy » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 5:45 PM UTC

I get that they're moving away from convergence, but what does this ultimately mean for Ubuntu as a mobile OS? In the grand scheme of things, what does this mean for users who want a completely FOSS stack for their phone (let's ignore the baseband for now)?

As far as I can tell, this just means that your only options are Android or iOS. It's not easy to get a Jolla/SailfishOS phone that will work on most Canadian or USA networks, and with this announcement it seems that Ubuntu phones won't be around for much longer. This coupled with the death of Firefox OS means that there's really not much of a choice. Certainly you can run AOSP with no Google Apps, but not having Google Play Services tends to cause more and more problems, or at the very least means your phone is less and less capable as time goes on.

I guess in general we can all celebrate that Ubuntu is moving to GNOME / Wayland and is ditching convergence, but I think the fact that there's no healthy alternative to iOS / Android is quite sad. If Canonical is exiting the mobile space to work on other things, what other alternatives do users have?

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#19

Post by CaptSpify » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 5:46 PM UTC

I just got the Ubuntu phone. It's the first smart-phone that I don't hate. I do agree that Ubuntu needs to stop with their NIH syndrome when it comes to desktop, but the phone market is just flat out terrible.

I would be willing to spend a lot of money for a decent FOSS phone, but there just isn't anything out there. Ubuntu was my only hope |:(

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#20

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 5:47 PM UTC

mhall119 wrote: post #4

uam wrote: post #2

Does this mean that Ubuntu is moving away from Mir, to Wayland?

Ubuntu will use what upstream GNOME uses, which means Wayland for the compositor.

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