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

#131

Post by kleiba » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 7:22 PM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #37

GNOME has been doing some really cool stuff as of late ( http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/03/top-features-in-gnome-3-2... ). I'm still using Cinnamon, because I still like the look a bit more, but it's getting harder to ignore all of the excellent features GNOME provides, including: - Drive support for file manager - Gmail/Outlook support for GNOME accounts and built-in calendars - Working Wayland implementation I'm h…

GNOME has been doing some really cool stuff as of late (http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/03/top-features-in-gnome-3-2...).

Do you really think that? To me, this is just a collection of really old stuff and features that should be a matter of course.

Case in point: "the headline feature" (adjusting the color temperature of your display depending on the time of day) is something that has been around for years one way or the other on all operating systems.

Or take: "Bookmarking webpages in Web now takes a single click." Hasn't that been the case since, like, always? Even if I'm wrong, I would hardly file such a feature under "really cool stuff".

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

#132

Post by jhasse » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 7:24 PM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #126

jhasse wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/55/media-player-indic...

It looks like it needs to be hard-coded for compatibility with every app, which makes it not so friendly. Wouldn't work with the unofficial Google Music Desktop Player ( https://www.googleplaymusicdesktopplayer.com/ ), for instance, which I use heavily. EDIT: Nevermind, this ticket looks like it might: https://github.com/MarshallOfSound/Google-Play-Music-Desktop...

Ah that's pity. I'm using it for Rhythmbox and Spotify where it works fine.

> It looks like it needs to be hard-coded for compatibility with every app

By using a white-list? I thought it worked with every app which uses the MPRIS DBus interface.

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

#133

Post by unethical_ban » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 7:25 PM UTC

sandGorgon wrote: post #56

> We will shift our default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS This is huge and was my #1 request for the previous post for Ubuntu 17.10. Gnome on Fedora is amazing and I have had people walk up to me and ask me - what OS am I running ? It is so much better for Ubuntu and Redhat to have joint stewardship of Gnome going forward rather than split energy on wasted competition. My next biggest request is f…

Heck, I'm not an old fuddy-duddy per se, but I rejected Fedora after 10 minutes with GNOME 3. Went back to Unity. Guess I need to have some more patience.

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

#134

Post by shmerl » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 7:25 PM UTC

Dropping Unity means dropping Mir, which is a good thing. Now developers can avoid redundant efforts, and can focus on Wayland. And it's still a huge pile of work for many complex applications like Firefox, Wine and many others, including graphics drivers, GUI toolkits, libraries like SDL and etc.

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

#135

Post by AndyKelley » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 7:26 PM UTC

pkd wrote: post #17

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 regardl…

> easy to use, not-too-resource-hungry interface.

what? unity? has it changed so much in the last 2 years that its defining features have changed from being difficult to use, resource-hungry, to the opposite of that?

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

#136

Post by frik » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 7:26 PM UTC

hd4 wrote: post #125

I'm one of the people who asked for less NIH in Ubuntu in the recent thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821 but I didn't think they would take it this far. Jokes aside, it's sad that Unity won't be developed further. I'm one of the ones who loves Unity 7, it's always been faster and less memory hungry than GNOME or KDE for me. I will just have to cling onto the LTS for as long as possible. In the long-t…

Gnome 2 and KDE 3 were pretty good. Then both shells lost their way. Why do they try to be a bad clone of macOS rather than keep being a Win98 on steriods (KDE 3) or a more simple shell for normal users (Gnome 2).

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

#137

Post by CaptSpify » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 7:26 PM UTC

jhasse wrote: post #120

CaptSpify wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried using that? Android without Google play is still an exercise in frustration. And Google is purposely designing it that way more and more as time goes on. I don't think the Ubuntu phone is a great phone, but if I have problems, I can usually fix them myself. Good luck doing that with any android that I've tried on.

> Have you tried using that? Yes, works fine and there are a lot of awesome apps, e. g. https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=osm&fdid=net... or https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=youtube&fdid... > Android without Google play is still an exercise in frustration. What are your pain points? Because not being able to install most of the apps in the Play Store also applies to Ubuntu Phone.

> What are your pain points? Because not being able to install most of the apps in the Play Store also applies to Ubuntu Phone.

Mostly being able to find OOTB tools that I want. I use f-droid on my android and I usually end up just going back to the play store to find anything worthwhile.

The Ubuntu phone gives me a real OS that I can just "apt-get install" something, then make a shell-script or something similar to fix my problem. Android's shell-system is a joke, which makes sense as they don't really want it to be usable. Ubuntu's shell system is much better, which means I can fix the problems that I come across myself.

EDIT: I can even use my existing scripts and tools that I have for my desktop on my ubuntu phone. It may be more accurate to say that I want a "Linux" phone, than a "FOSS" phone, but, I'd like it to be both.

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

#138

Post by CaptSpify » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 7:27 PM UTC

frik wrote: post #119

CaptSpify wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried using that? Android without Google play is still an exercise in frustration. And Google is purposely designing it that way more and more as time goes on. I don't think the Ubuntu phone is a great phone, but if I have problems, I can usually fix them myself. Good luck doing that with any android that I've tried on.

Android is huge. Android works great without GooglePlay, and just raw Android. You just need another AppStore or just install apps manually. Ask one of your Chinese friends, they have a driving eco system over there.

I've used raw android, and quickly gave up. I've used f-droid, and it is OK. Far from "great" though.

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

#139

Post by jononor » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 7:30 PM UTC

geodel wrote: post #109

sandGorgon wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know - however these things are seldom demarcated on merit and more on ideology. I wish the next generation of linux has a single package manager :(

I think in case of Snap, it is part of money making server business. So it is less likely Canonical is going to give up on that.

But then you're competing with Docker images. Not that Docker is that amazing, but I just don't see why anyone would want to use Snap instead of Docker?

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

#140

Post by gurkendoktor » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 7:30 PM UTC

shanemhansen wrote: post #6

I can't tell you how happy I am to see convergence dying. My desktop is not just a big phone and people put out some atrocious user interfaces in the name of "convergence". WRT to unity, at least it's improved. Ubuntu w/ unity currently has the best multi-monitor multi-dpi user experience I've seen on linux. I have a retina laptop with 2 external displays and ubuntu unity is the only thing that just works out of the…

> My desktop is not just a big phone and people put out some atrocious user interfaces in the name of "convergence".

I agree. Sadly, GNOME's huge controls also seem to be optimised for touch screens. There are several semi-maintained hacks to reduce the padding throughout the DE:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_1QSDkzYY2vc/TbVt04mk52I/A...

It's a mess. I wish GNOME just automatically looked like the bottom screenshot when there's no touch screen connected.