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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

#271

Post by lathiat »

xtracto wrote: post #252
unethical_ban wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a 6 year old screenshot. They've made incremental improvements since... but yes, I've grown to appreciate it. The most annoying part of unity7's interface is its alt-tab function: It toggles between apps, not windows, and that's annoying.

That's the same behaviour as OSX. At first I also hated this behaviour, coming form the Linux/Window environment. But after using it in conjunction with ALT+` (to cycle through app's Windows) I actually find it better than the standard Windows behaviour.

Yeah once you learnt to use alt-backtick to switch window apps this is a much better experience IMO. Doesn't work without that though.

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

#272

Post by angry-hacker »

nthcolumn wrote: post #240
rlpb wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you. I'd like a fully free software stack across my personal devices, and I also thought that Ubuntu had the best chance of achieving this. I think the issue is in a business model that would work for Canonical. OTOH, most of the hard work is done. My Ubuntu Phone mostly works. The stack is complete. I'd love to see interested people taking that code and keeping it going. I'd spend spare time on contributing…

A number of canonical employees here I note - OP included. So what's the mood like 'a zillion lines of code and four years later' internally? Does juju look like any better bet? Go on - we won't tell... ;)

And Wayland.. Wasn't it all because of phones and tablets?

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

#273

Post by notatoad »

DCKing wrote: post #122
Paul-ish wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand is Shuttleworth basically said "the market has spoken, and does not want an Ubuntu phone." But I checked their website a few times a year to see if I could buy an Ubuntu phone and always saw a message about "Coming soon" or "sold out". How was the market supposed to get their hands on Ubuntu phone?

I think he means that they were not able to sell the idea to device vendors sufficiently. The 'market' he refers to are the device vendors, not the end users. If you make a mobile operating system but you don't make devices, you need to be able to convince device vendors to sell the product for you to end users. They didn't succeed in that.

>I think he means that they were not able to sell the idea to device vendors sufficiently.

And the implication from that is that if vendors aren't looking to make a ubuntu phone, it's because their customers aren't asking for a ubuntu phone. Regardless of how many layers there are between Canonical and the end user, there weren't a lot of end-users asking for a Ubuntu phone.

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

#274

Post by angry-hacker »

rlpb wrote: post #180
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…

I'm with you. I'd like a fully free software stack across my personal devices, and I also thought that Ubuntu had the best chance of achieving this. I think the issue is in a business model that would work for Canonical. OTOH, most of the hard work is done. My Ubuntu Phone mostly works. The stack is complete. I'd love to see interested people taking that code and keeping it going. I'd spend spare time on contributing…

But how can I get a phone that can actually run the code first?

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

#275

Post by empath75 »

onli wrote: post #40
bananaoomarang wrote: post #36

Earlier 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…

The customers were device manufacturers, and they didn't want it.

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

#276

Post by DCKing »

Twirrim wrote: post #267
DCKing wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dislike that people speak in such absolutes on this. You're expressing a personal opinion. In my opinion, Gnome 3 is amongst the best desktop shells I've ever used. It's focus on simplicity in the base, while including extensibility using, well, extensions is unparalleled. I like that I can choose my own complexity and features without resorting to editing config files or hacky black magic. It's only marred by a su…

For the most part I've become comfortable with the UI in Gnome 3, but I mostly avoid it. They've done a lot to fix the initial problems that the interface had, and I think they've got to a good place for the most part. Try and switch to Gnome 2 / MATE for a little bit and see the drastic improvements in responsiveness, though. That's what kills gnome 3 for me. Even on a nice high spec machine I still end up conscious…

I agree, that's why I use the Impatience extension [1]!

I don't use anything GTK2 based any more as the lack of smooth scrolling support is really jarring for me, despite the fact that I still like Gnome2's basic design.

[1]: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/277/impatience/

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

#277

Post by Twirrim »

DCKing wrote: post #276
Twirrim wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the most part I've become comfortable with the UI in Gnome 3, but I mostly avoid it. They've done a lot to fix the initial problems that the interface had, and I think they've got to a good place for the most part. Try and switch to Gnome 2 / MATE for a little bit and see the drastic improvements in responsiveness, though. That's what kills gnome 3 for me. Even on a nice high spec machine I still end up conscious…

I agree, that's why I use the Impatience extension [1]! I don't use anything GTK2 based any more as the lack of smooth scrolling support is really jarring for me, despite the fact that I still like Gnome2's basic design. [1]: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/277/impatience/

Nice. I'll give that a shot.

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

#279

Post by nthcolumn »

slitaz wrote: post #253
nthcolumn wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A number of canonical employees here I note - OP included. So what's the mood like 'a zillion lines of code and four years later' internally? Does juju look like any better bet? Go on - we won't tell... ;)

It looks like you also have a charisma at telling dad jokes.

personally always preferred fvwm to unity...

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

#280

Post by ajross »

jhasse wrote: post #54
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…

LineageOS + F-Droid

Exactly. There absolutely is an open source Android experience (at the level of the applications and API -- drivers are a different story) for those who want it. It really doesn't suck, and it's a clean migration from the commercial environments (which is to say, you don't really need F-Droid as almost all this stuff is in the Play Store already).

Open source on Android is in pretty good shape on the whole, which is one of the big reasons why Unity never really caught on except among the tiny fraction of developers who were genuinely into Linux desktop application development specifically.

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