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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

#291

Post by remir »

tradesmanhelix wrote: post #165
smartt wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the same boat. I backed the original Ubuntu Edge indiegogo campaign, but it never happened. And I would check the site periodically to see if there was a phone that shipped/worked in the States (and there never was) or if it was running on anything newer than a Nexus 5. FirefoxOS phones were pretty much the same story. Limited hardware that wasn't available in the US market. With both, it may not have been a l…

The shotgun approach that both FirefoxOS and Ubuntu Phone took saddens me - I think they could have done very well had they focused on acquiring power/niche users instead of trying to be a mass-market consumer product from the get-go. When the iPhone first launched, it wasn't adopted by everyone. I remember when, in ~2009, I and a few friends were the only ones I knew who had an iPhone. It wasn't until around 2011 th…

Building something lasting takes resources. Canonical simply had no chance. Even Microsoft, despite their aquisition of Nokia, their marketing budget, their massive dev resources, is failing on mobile. They even have their own convergence feature and it's not enough to attrack customers.

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

#292

Post by zanny »

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.

This is probably why they tried the Edge campaign 4 years ago. They weren't getting anywhere with vendors then, and weren't now, so they eventually had to give up.

It should be a bit concerning how uncompetitive the market is that you really cannot even try to launch a mobile OS of your own as a product, since you are beholden to telecom operators and handset manufacturers on both ends, all of whom have government granted monopolies or protection in their own industries to prevent competition.

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

#293

Post by flukus »

avodonosov wrote: post #204
driverdan wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But then each application is essentially 2 applications in one.

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

#294

Post by int_19h »

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…

It's not that convergence is useless per se - indeed, the fact that both Windows and Android keep trying indicates that it's desirable.

But I think that any hope that this could come from the desktop Linux world, and be successful, was misguided, for the same reason why "Linux on the desktop" never happened at large scale (to all the people who are about to respond "it happened for me": sure, and I'm well aware of that - but that's not what the phrase actually ever meant, and we all know that). This is an even bigger problem with phones, because with the PC ecosystem, at least you can go around shopping for an alternative OS relatively easily, and common hardware is relatively open spec-wise. So something that has 1% market share on the desktop, will probably have an order of magnitude less on mobile.

On top of that, it's not enough to implement the base system. You also have to maintain it long-term, to port existing apps to it or write new ones, and to maintain those. Within the OSS model, maintainers are generally users. So the maintenance burden is high enough for desktop Linux as it is (because of relatively fewer devs/users, compared to OS X and Windows) - and then you throw mobile into the mix, which is an even smaller group. I just don't think it can work at that small of a scale.

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

#296

Post by clvx »

jhasse wrote: post #112
ZenoArrow wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but from what I've seen Snaps are better (from the perspective of flexibility and simplicity) than Flatpak, isn't this a case where it'd be better for GNOME to adapt rather than vice versa?

We'll see, atm Flatpak has already been adapted pretty well: https://kamikazow.wordpress.com/2017/02/09/adoption-of-flatp... Try the Firefox Nightly for example: https://firefox-flatpak.mojefedora.cz/

In distros yes, but in market snappy has been well received https://partners.ubuntu.com/programmes/iot . For me the next move of which package manager will be adopted is gonna be based on companies which are gonna develop on it and get support. Only when Red Hat enters the game, you'll see a big adoption of snaps. For now, Canonical is ahead in this game.

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

#297

Post by int_19h »

petecox wrote: post #245
systems wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Windows? Microsoft are pushing ahead with development of UWP and Continuum, with the creator's update due in 3 weeks - despite no new Lumias. At least one third party is still keeping the dream alive with a crowd-funded WP10 phone announced this past week: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cerulean-moment-smartphon...

It's an interesting device, but I think it's going to be a dead-end because of ARM.

The moment someone makes a phone that runs one of those Intel mobile chipsets, which can actually run x64 version of Windows, and all the existing apps, is the moment when I'll buy into that "it's a smartphone! it's a desktop! it's both!" line. But not before.

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

#298

Post by flukus »

petecox wrote: post #245
systems wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Windows? Microsoft are pushing ahead with development of UWP and Continuum, with the creator's update due in 3 weeks - despite no new Lumias. At least one third party is still keeping the dream alive with a crowd-funded WP10 phone announced this past week: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cerulean-moment-smartphon...

I'd consider windows 10 evidence that proves convergence is a bad idea. It does an absolutely terrible job of being a tablet and a desktop OS. At times it feels like two OS's in one and at other times it feels like you're stuck in the wrong mode (and after a reboot you are).

Half the apps (explorer and vlc are the two I used the most) work horribly in touch mode and the other half work horribly in desktop mode, like the way the pdf reader default to full screen.

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

#299

Post by int_19h »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #227
andrewshadura wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 S…

Wait, the SDK is not open source??

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

#300

Post by flukus »

satysin wrote: post #98
Afforess wrote: post #11

Damn. From the horses mouth: https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/04/05/growing-ubuntu-for-cl... I might be a small minority, but I _like_ Unity 7. I have never used Unity 8, and I thought the Ubuntu phone was misspent effort, but wow. Now I have to figure out if there is a way to style Gnome to look like Unity 7. I wonder what this means for Mir vs Wayland as well.

Making GNOME look like Unity is simple. Getting it to work like Unity is a bit different. The main difference being the global menu bar.

Gnome has a global menu bar by default now, I think I had to use the tweak tool to turn it off.
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