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

#201

Post by mhall119 » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 9:08 PM UTC

ThatGeoGuy wrote: post #128

jstanley wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> I'm pretty sure they tried very hard indeed. They just didn't succeed. I don't know about this. The last phone they released was the Meizu Pro 5, which had an Android variant (sold in stores) and an Ubuntu variant (sold online only, and you had to dig for it if you didn't get redirected from ubuntu.com). The hardware itself for the phone wasn't awful by any means, but buying one was hard enough because the manufact…

Canonical made no handsets, we worked with the companies that wanted to ship Ubuntu phones, but we didn't get to dictate when, where or how many.

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

#202

Post by systems » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 9:09 PM UTC

gshulegaard wrote: post #57

I may be a minority, but I am very saddened by this. Not because I have any particular love for Unity, but rather I share Mark's conviction that convergence is the future. Love or hate it but Unity was IMO the best shot we had at getting an open source unified phone, tablet and desktop experience...and now this is effectively Canonical not only shutting down Unity, but refocusing efforts away from convergence and tow…

the requirements for a good desktop interface is different from the requirements for a good phone interface and arguably different from the requirements for a good tablet interface

size matters

yes like you i believe one OS across all devices is a good idea, but the interface need to adapt to screen size, and provide a different and suitable experience for certain categories of screen sizes and different mode

I believe a good option would have been to have a touch-mode and a desk-mode (desk mode being a more traditional task bar desktop UI)

anyway, it is really weird they didnt see this, with all the talent they have and the resources they had, but, they failed, so they were wrong

Someone else will try and will succeed, because yes, one OS experience across all devices is still a very good idea .. we just need someone to execute it better

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

#203

Post by gremlinsinc » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 9:10 PM UTC

pythonaut_16 wrote: post #101

awinter-py wrote: post #92

All I need graphics for is the web. Build a terminal-only window manager with firefox built in.

Does a tiling window manager like i3 not fit that use case?

i LOVE i3. Just gotta say best thing ever for my workflow.

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

#204

Post by avodonosov » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 9:12 PM UTC

driverdan wrote: post #190

gshulegaard wrote: post #57

I may be a minority, but I am very saddened by this. Not because I have any particular love for Unity, but rather I share Mark's conviction that convergence is the future. Love or hate it but Unity was IMO the best shot we had at getting an open source unified phone, tablet and desktop experience...and now this is effectively Canonical not only shutting down Unity, but refocusing efforts away from convergence and tow…

While I agree it'd be nice to have Linux running on all the things I don't see the point of trying to make the interfaces the same. Each device is used differently and should have an interface that reflects the way it's used.

While interfaces should not be the same across devices, being able to dock you phone and continue using its applications on normal monitor of your desktop, with keyboard and mouse would be convenient.

I mean when you walk it's a phone, when you at the desk, the same device is connected to monitor, keyboard and mouse.

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

#205

Post by andrewshadura » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 9:13 PM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #44

ThatGeoGuy wrote: post #18

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…

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…

Tizen is not free software, and it's not a real platform. It's a toy Samsung uses to threaten Google with.

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

#206

Post by mhall119 » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 9:15 PM UTC

steveklabnik wrote: post #151

groks wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk-mir.html

TIL, thank you!

Gtk has a Mir backend, GNOME Shell does not.

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

#207

Post by chrisper » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 9:15 PM UTC

What about snap? Are they going to switch to flatpak as well?

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

#208

Post by avodonosov » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 9:15 PM UTC

I'm not a fan of Unity as a desktop environment, but it's sad to hear about phone - I hoped to have a phone with normal, familiar OS.

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

#209

Post by oldgun » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 9:16 PM UTC

Not really a Unity fan or a 'Convergence' fan, but just saddened by the fact so many developers and community enthusiasts get to know that their efforts were in vain.

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

#210

Post by pjmlp » Wed, Apr 05, 2017, 9:16 PM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #44

ThatGeoGuy wrote: post #18

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…

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…

Tizen is a joke, they already rebooted the SDK multiple times.

1 - GTK+ based

2 - Took Bada OS C++ SDK with its Symbian C++ like flavour

3 - Rewrote the C++ API into something more appealing

4 - Thrown everything away and replaced with EFL, plain C API with C++ will come soon

5 - Now they are adopting .NET Core with Xamarin Forms

How can anyone invest time developing for them?