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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

#401

Post by smilliken »

sandGorgon wrote: post #364
smilliken wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish the next generation of linux has a single package manager :( Package management used to be my biggest frustration with computers. A couple years ago, I switched to nix [1][2] and now use it across all my unix-like systems (not sure how well it works on Windows, I haven't tried). Most under-rated piece of software I use, I'm surprised it hasn't blown up yet. [1] http://nixos.org/nix/ [2] https://news.ycombina…

i have the greatest of respect for nix and 0install - however its an inexorable fact that I would like a mainstream, fully supported OS on my desktop - which is either Fedora or Ubuntu. Let me flip this question - what does nix have that snap or flatpak does not ? From what I have read, they are pretty much the same.

I run Ubuntu primarily, and forgo apt-get in favor of nix. I've never run NixOS before (some day..).

I haven't used flatpak or snap before, but the comment I linked outlines a lot of the benefits I see with nix. Conceptually it's more like Make + a package manager, if Make were a (well designed) pure functional language and wasn't afflicted with grotesque generated code.

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

#402

Post by skierpage »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #220
pjmlp wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tizen is a joke, they already rebooted the SDK multiple times. 1 - GTK+ based 2 - Took Bada OS C++ SDK with its Symbian C++ like flavour 3 - Rewrote the C++ API into something more appealing 4 - Thrown everything away and replaced with EFL, plain C API with C++ will come soon 5 - Now they are adopting .NET Core with Xamarin Forms How can anyone invest time developing for them?

>"How can anyone invest time developing for them?" What alternative do you suggest? I suggested they were the best remaining option for an open-source mobile OS now that Ubuntu were dropping out of the race. What other options are there? Sailfish? Anything else?

KDE's Plasma Mobile? Like Ubuntu Phone/Unity 8 it's also using Qt QML to build flexible layout apps that support touch and keyboard+mouse.

https://plasma-mobile.org/

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

#403

Post by pawadu »

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.

I am with unethical_ban on this. Most of the time I am switching between multiple instances of the same app and this drives me crazy.

Just because OSX does it (I don't think windows 10 does this) it doesn't mean it is a good idea.

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

#404

Post by raverbashing »

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.

Correct

It makes no sense from an usability point of view

It's like insisting on a steering wheel for a plane.

Different means of interaction and limitations and use cases require different interfaces.

Also the "Ubuntu on the phone thing", it seems they were doing it because of the wrong reasons (mainly "We like Linux") rather than focusing on the user and the ecosystem

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

#405

Post by pawadu »

notatoad wrote: post #269
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

It looks acceptable, but more important than how it looks is how it works . Ubuntu has by far the most usable desktop, in the default configuration, of any linux variant. UI isn't just about the shade of purple you choose.

Furthermore, from the default configuration you can turn it to the the most usable desktop of any OS by doing this:

    Settings -> Appearances -> Behavior -> Enable workspaces

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

#406

Post by pawadu »

felipelemos wrote: post #327
andrewshadura wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think either screenshot looks particularly nice. However, this is mostly due the ugly default background and color scheme (its an ubuntu insider joke and its the first thing people change).

I personally care only about function but even if you are form-above-function guy Unity gives you many tools to make it look good:

http://imgur.com/gallery/sQFw7

(courtesy of r/unixporn )

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

#407

Post by skierpage »

int_19h wrote: post #304
signa11 wrote: post #295

any specific reason why desktop linux seems to be converging on gtk instead of qt ?

I think it's a combination of largely unrelated historical trends (dating to way back, when Qt was GPL-only, and even before that, when it had its own incompatible license). That said, it's interesting that most commercial desktop software for Linux these days seems to be written in Qt, not Gtk. Also, while this is anecdotal, most new projects (as in, started recently, as opposed to old software having new releases)…

KDE's Plasma shell uses Qt QML to make flexible layout apps that work with touch and keyboard+mouse, just like Ubuntu Phone/Unity 8. Plasma Mobile is KDE's attempt to leverage that into an open source phone OS. Canonical didn't seem interested in working with KDE despite the common tech base. I wonder if Canonical will continue development of any of its Ubuntu Phone/Unity 8 apps, the whole point of convergence was they would work on desktop as well.

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

#408

Post by scribu »

zanny wrote: post #292
DCKing wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gr…

I agree that it sucks there is so little competition in the mobile OS space, but I don't think government involvement is enough to explain this situation.

Take Microsoft - it became a handset manufacturer and is still struggling to make Windows Phone a winner.

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

#409

Post by skierpage »

GraemeLion wrote: post #171
0xFFC wrote: post #58

I knew this was happening. They invested on Unity8 in quite reverse way. They had opportunity to make unity8 excellent desktop environment (they had money and workforce) and after becoming most popular de in linux environment they could continue that to mobile space(they are most popular linux distro already). Putting money on phone portion instead of desktop portion of the unity8 was biggest mistake i cna imagine. I…

The only thing I can guess is they thought that to succeed in convergence, they would have to win the phone market, and that was the harder market to design for and react to. So, they built for that and tried to win the hardware developers/companies. I suspect they thought if they got that, they could converge things back on the desktop

That's exactly what Unity 8 in Ubuntu release N.NN was going to do. The converged apps, the latest version of Unity, the new Mir display server, all running on the desktop as well as the Ubuntu Phone builds. The problem was, N.NN kept shifting from 14.04 to 16.04 to 17.04, and now never.00

With each Ubuntu release Canonical made fewer changes to Unity 7 on the desktop (the one I remember is moving from a global menu to a menu in a program's title bar), because the new awesome was around the corner...

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

#410

Post by skierpage »

hackuser wrote: post #286

Could it be forked? Is there a community that would continue to develop Unity?

Sure, this stalwart who works on putting Ubuntu Phone on other devices wants to keep Unity 8 alive: https://plus.google.com/110699558853693437587/posts/7RHujp9u...
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