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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

#381

Post by teekert »

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 agree, I was really looking forward to it. Imho the mistake was to partner with Meizu and BQ whereas distribiting images (at least to start with) for the Pixel/Nexus line phones would have been more effective. That way people could have put their toe in the Ubuntu Phone water before committing. I donated to the dev that was working on the OnePlus 3 port, I was really looking forward to it, it could have been my next laptop (if only the OP3 would have supported HDMI via the USB3 port or MiraCast.)

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

#382

Post by jhasse »

CaptSpify wrote: post #167
jhasse wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mostly being able to find OOTB tools that I want. I use f-droid on my android and I usually end up just going back to the play store to find anything worthwhile. Okay but to be fair: If you had the Play Store on Ubuntu Phone you would probably also go there a lot more often. Especially for OOTB experiences ;) > The Ubuntu phone gives me a real OS that I can just "apt-get install" something, then make a shell-script…

> If you had the Play Store on Ubuntu Phone you would probably also go there a lot more often. Actually, I would probably not, though I can't deny I would be intrigued to have it as an option. I am able to set up most of the things that I would want via something like apt, or shell scripts or similar

How would you hack a navigation app with shell scripts?

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

#384

Post by fuck_google »

SXX wrote: post #121
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…

> what does this mean for users who want a completely FOSS stack for their phone (let's ignore the baseband for now)? And also ignore locked bootloaders, DRM code in ARM TrustZone, never updated BSP that make most devices use old kernels, userspace blobs for graphics and video playback, lack of proper hardware documentation and fact that most of out-of-tree drivers that are open source are simply horrible. Google nev…

I wonder what would have happened, if everyone that wanted a FOSS phone would have poured their money and effort into a real FOSS project instead of giving it to Google/Android along with their privacy.

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

#385

Post by topranks »

int_19h wrote: post #294
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 th…

Spot on, these were the major challenges that always faced the idea.

Interesting to see the latest Samsung phones doing the same thing, but running Android and having Samsung behind it that attempt is much more likely to bear fruit.

Fair play to Cannonical & Shuttleworth for giving it a try, but widespread adoption was always a pipe dream I think.

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

#386

Post by topranks »

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…

It did have a touch mode and desk mode ffs!

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

#387

Post by topranks »

bandrami wrote: post #284
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…

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

Phones are already damn powerful, and will get more so.

Why should we all have to buy another completely separate computer if we want to use a mouse/keyboard/monitor, when we already have phones?

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

#388

Post by Baeocystin »

methodin wrote: post #325
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.

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?

Computers aren't special, rarified objects. Computers are dirt cheap, and it's simply more convenient to have lots of different computers lying around than to have to move one around.

No one has to worry if the compute core of the family room computer is available, for example- they just use the family room computer, which is its own separate device, and already affordable for nearly everyone.

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

#389

Post by jhasse »

azdle wrote: post #281
avian wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Convergence already means that GNOME on my (quite un-rotatable) desktop PC has a rotate-lock button and that I have to do an awkward slide-to-unlock gesture with a mouse to get to the login screen. No thanks.

Just FYI, if you hit enter or just start typing your password the lock screen slides away. Or at least it does on Fedora, but I can't imagine that's anything customized.

Also works in Ubuntu.

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

#390

Post by jhasse »

unethical_ban wrote: post #231
Touche wrote: 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

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.

On GNOME 3 you can toggle between Windows using Alt + Esc.
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