Damn. Just been forced to switch to Mate at work and find it like living in the past. Lots of defaults seem ugly or unusable (hunting through menus for programs etc.).
Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence
41–50 of 470 posts
Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence
#42Excellent news! I personally think unity is terrible - and it's objectively lacking in several areas, multi-monitor support particularly.
The Ubuntu phone thing was a nice idea, but obviously never going to fly, so it's nice to see canonical putting their efforts where their actual users are.
Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence
#43Now if they could just abandon systemd.
From where I am sitting, going from upstart to systemd just seemed like an exercise in inconvenience.
As a web dev/devops guy, most of my interaction with both is to set up service files. Switching was relatively easy and I found systemd servics files to be sensible and easy to write. And now I don't have to maintain separate Debian/Ubuntu variants.
So from my purely practical non-sysadmin perspective - a positive change.
Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence
#44I 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…
I'd suggest the best remaining option for a FOSS-driven phone (now that Canonical have dropped the ball) is Tizen. It's got the backing of a large phone manufacturer (Samsung) and the Linux Foundation, and seems to be actively developed. It'll probably end up being used on low-end devices at first, but is likely to be more open than the two leading platforms, so hopefully they get some traction amongst tech community.
It's also worth pointing out that Samsung has been investing in Servo, and that Tizen has good support for HTML5 apps, so hopefully we can see mobile web apps increase in popularity to get us away from the walled garden approach.
Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence
#45But atleast they made one product from ubuntu mobile: snap (ubunto core)
Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence
#46But atleast they made one product from ubuntu mobile: snap (ubunto core)
Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence
#47> We will shift our default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Legitimately never thought I'd ever see this. Possibly the best thing that could happen for desktop Linux in this age. Edit: and of course this would mean Ubuntu/Canonical and Fedora/RedHat basing their desktop OS's on the same platform, which can only mean easier development of desktop software and services.
I'm a bit torn. I like the design of Unity more than I do that of Gnome, but I think that less fragmentation is extremely desirable.
Ultimately, I think it's a good, necessary move. Linux on the desktop will only happen when the environment is at least as uniform as that of Windows—from the perspective of application developers, at least.
Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is my worry. The technical challenge of maintaining a usable mobile OS seems too high for companies like Canonical and Mozilla to have a chance, since getting hardware produced, marketed and into people's hands is a gargantuan task, and supporting Android handset installs is fighting a losing battle. Having said that, I am not sure why? Ubuntu Phone seems largely functional on a few devices, but installing it an…
Jep, I don't understand it. It is completely understandable to drop a product that is not working on the market. It is less understandable to drop a product that never really was on the market, after the big initial investment is already done. Same for FF, same for WebOS: How can you draw the conclusion that something is not working on the market if you never tried making it available to customers, on regular hardwar…
> you never tried making it available to customers, on regular hardware?
I'm pretty sure they tried very hard indeed. They just didn't succeed.
I say this as a long-time user of Ubuntu Touch. I don't love it, it is not without its flaws. It's just the best mobile OS I've found, primarily because it doesn't nag you with privacy-invasion at every turn. I'll miss it when it's gone.
Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, Canonical was heavily involved with Mir because of Unity, right? So, with this change, I guess we can expect a Wayland related news in the following weeks/months. BTW, I would go even further: will they still invest in the Snap package or they will do the same and go to a community oriented package system?
Snap is explicitly mentioned as one of the things they want to focus more on.
But they can change their minds, as they show in this post
Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence
#50Does 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 :)
yep. Or you could get it with an extension, if you wish. :)