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

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

#221

Post by justicezyx »

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…

No!

Convergence and ramification are the cycling nature of any system's evolution path. Not just convergence.

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

#222

Post by karussell »

Elhana wrote: post #215
karussell wrote: post #186

Honest question: how is Canonical making money in the cloud with ubuntu? Everytime someone installs an image with 'Ubuntu' in the name the cloud provider has to pay Canonical? Or what else could be the main revenue stream 'in the cloud'?

Short answer: Enterprise bosses like support contracts, because it covers their asses. You can basically ask the same question about redhat.

I can imagine this now, but how did they get to this point? I mean RedHat was a small unknown company then probably no one would have bought a support contract from them or at least the prices of these contracts were tiny.

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

#223

Post by johnny22 »

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...

i had though it relied on MPRIS :(

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

#224

Post by nik736 »

I am simply hoping Apple is working on parts of Shuttleworths' vision where your iPhone becomes your daily driver. Just plug it in to your Display and have a fully fledged iOS/macOS hybrid version to work with.

Xiaomi is releasing the Mi6 in some weeks with 8 GB of RAM, so it's only a matter of time until we get comparable specs like we have in MacBooks or even Desktops in the smartphone form factor (which will be incredible in itself).

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

#225

Post by daveguy »

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…

data convergence is the future, not interface convergence. I think they made a serious mistake conflating the two.

You should be able to shift your view of a document from a desktop to a laptop, but that doesn't mean the fundamental interface from one should be shoe-horned into the other.

That could mean a phone that is docked, but when you have 10x the screen real estate, a keyboard and a mouse the interface should be different when docked vs when not docked.

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

#226

Post by tannhaeuser »

javajosh wrote: post #212
AtticusTheGreat wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who applauds this pivot, I never saw much value in the whole convergence idea. Why would I want my laptop and phone to be the same device? This seems to follow the misguided idea in software that if two ideas are similar, just make a single generic idea that solves both problems. But then you get into leaky abstractions and have to make lots of sacrifices to get it working well for both use cases.

Application convergence already happens via the browser; this takes much wind out of the sails of OS convergence. However, it also means that browser focused OSes, ChromeBook and FireFoxOS, will probably be the ones to win, in the end.

I thought they cancelled FFOS, didn't they?

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

#227

Post by ZenoArrow »

andrewshadura wrote: post #205
ZenoArrow wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>"Tizen is not free software"

It's developed with the support of the Linux Foundation, with the code released under open source licences. There are some parts of the design that are licenced by Samsung (e.g the SDK), but overall it looks pretty open to me.

>"it's not a real platform"

It has shipped in multiple devices, including every TV Samsung have sold since 2015:

https://wiki.tizen.org/wiki/Devices

>"It's a toy Samsung uses to threaten Google with."

It's a little more than that. At the moment it's not got much traction on phones, but I still maintain it's the best option for an open-source mobile OS that we've got left now that Ubuntu are out of the picture. If you can think of a better alternative that currently exists, by all means feel free to share it.

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

#228

Post by badloginagain »

AtticusTheGreat wrote: post #156
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…

As someone who applauds this pivot, I never saw much value in the whole convergence idea. Why would I want my laptop and phone to be the same device? This seems to follow the misguided idea in software that if two ideas are similar, just make a single generic idea that solves both problems. But then you get into leaky abstractions and have to make lots of sacrifices to get it working well for both use cases.

I was always under the impression that convergence for the end user meant having the same 'computer' spread across many devices. That your phone has access to the same files as your laptop as your tablet. That identity and rights management was shared and unified across all devices. That your devices natively formed a network, a sandboxed cloud.

I never understood it all looking the same, having a shared UI. The screen real-estate and input are too different to make a unified presentation. My biggest complaint about Windows 10 is that the power user on a laptop suffers for the imagined mobile user.

The funny part is, focusing on shared data and identity brings you closer to convergence than an elegant UI does.

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

#229

Post by onli »

systems wrote: post #202
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 belie…

I don't really see why there are comments like this in this thread. Obviously they need to have a different UI, but Ubuntu Touch already offered a different UI depending on what it was running on. Or at least that was the idea. See the animation on https://www.ubuntu.com/mobile.

No one was trying to make a one-size-fits-all UI.

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

#230

Post by sametmax »

franciscop wrote: post #31

Wow this is impressive just after the Ask HN they did few days back. It's been few years users complaining and opposing Mir so it seems it just took that last feedback cry. It's great that they listen to their users and also that there's going some love given back to the desktop+server (+IoT). Disclaimer: I am really happy using Ubuntu everyday.

I really wonder if they events are related though. I can't imagine Shuttlework saying "ok, those guys in HN called it", but on the other hand, the timing given motives match so perfectly.
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