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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

#321
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should use Cinnamon, or just absorb Mint, that's the most popular distro right now anyway, and it is ubuntu-based.

Is mint really the most popular distro? According to distrowatch, yes. But my suspicion is that mint users just like to tell everyone they are mint users. The majority of Ubuntu users probably just install it and go on with their lives.

I think a big factor is that if you google for "Linux Mint" the distrowatch page is one of the top results, while if you google for "Ubuntu Linux" you get other results instead.

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

#322

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…

I agree. I want my phone to have a phone interface and my computer to have a computer interface. I also want to switch seamlessly between the two.

Who cares if you have the same interface on your phone and PC. I mean seriously, there is absolutely no point and you end up wasting time designing some sort of interface that doesn't suck on either platform.

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

#323
post #308
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then each application is essentially 2 applications in one.

It's the same application, but with 2 different interfaces. Of course, a UI toolkit that can do "write once, interact in any way" would be helpful for the implementation.

Which is essentially two applications as I said. The only difference is that they may share some state, but there are other ways to handle that too.

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

#324
post #319
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then each application is essentially 2 applications in one.

Just like any responsive website is.

So it's easy with what is essentially a document viewer, it's much harder when it comes to real apps, the desktop interface is dumbed down for the limitations of a phone.

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

#325

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.

My phone is a computer. My chromebook is a screen attached to a computer. My desktop is a monitor attached to a computer. My work laptop is a screen attached to a computer. My tablet is a screen attached to a computer. Why do I need so many separate computers when I have my phone on me at all times?

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

#326

Disclaimer: I don't use Gnome or Unity, I'm an i3 guy. I understand that choice in the Linux world is very important, but I also think that choice (taken to extremes) can be crippling. My opinion is that we have too many desktop environments, and too many distros. If we imagine a hypothetical scenario where in June 2010 Ubuntu committed to Gnome as the DE, imagine how much progress would have been made with Gnome in…

I kind of agree, sorta.

On one hand, freedom is freedom. You can't say "here have some freedom" then when people do what they want say, "oh I didn't mean that much freedom!"

That said , I think Canonical has a responsibility to do things smarter since they (like it or not) are the face of Linux for a lot of people.

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

#327
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do I live in an alternate universe? Do people really think this looks good? http://toastytech.com/guis/ubuntu114defaultunity.jpg

Yes it does. It looks much better now anyway, something like this: http://i.imgur.com/DdY4b5O.png

I really don't see much difference.

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

#328
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a realy old screenshot. GNOME 3 doesn't look like that anymore[1]. [1] https://people.gnome.org/~engagement/screenshots/gnome-3-24-...

Random nit: is it just me or is the font rendering pretty terrible in the "web" screenshot?

Font rendering is entirely up to how you configure it. Install GNOME Tweak Tool and go to Fonts. Keep in mind that different settings will look better on different monitors. But try setting Hinting to Slight and Antialiasing to RGBA. After a reboot the settings will take effect.

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

#329

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…

Does anybody besides platform developers want a unified phone, tablet, and desktop experience? I certainly don't; it sounds like a very bad idea.

Engineers overengineering things when they have no new ideas. That's the entire convergence story

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

#330

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 for device convergence, a small phone as powerful as a current pro laptop. We're still not there and the battery would be a problem too. The interfaces for the phone mode and the laptop mode could be very different, no problem with that. With that in mind I welcome this move from Canonical. Converging on the same stack as everybody else is going to be good for the Linux desktop. I'm not worried anymore about comp…

I agree. I think once (if/when) we ever get next gen battery tech, we may start seeing more things changing.
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