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Ubuntu for Android

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Re: Ubuntu for Android

#71

Post by freehunter »

orbitingpluto wrote: post #41

Reminds me of doing the Debian chroot on the Nokia N8x0. That's been around for quite awhile. It's nice to be able to apt-get whatever you need. It's prohibitively slow to use on a device from 2007 though and overclocking is a bit risky and drains the battery quickly. (Maybe I'm a dinosaur, but I still use one of these things rather than the brand new 1.2 GHz dual core Android phone sitting next to it in my bag.) I d…

I use a chroot on my Touchpad to run Ubuntu with LXDE. It's... workable, but no where near "desktop" quality. The lack of a mouse kills it, and LXDE isn't really touch optimized. It's really nice to have around when there are apps you need to use that are run better (or easier) from a GUI, and the dual core 1.5Ghz processor with 1GB of RAM is sufficient to keep it running without hiccup (until I load Eclipse).

With some low-end (or ARM) optimization, Ubuntu would rock the mobile productivity world.

Re: Ubuntu for Android

#72

Post by keithpeter »

cgranade wrote: post #19
morsch wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the dock has a few USB ports? Otherwise, I'm not sure what exactly the dock does. You don't need a dock to connect a display to a phone with HDMI-out, which are the only phones supported.

I think the idea is so that you can just drop in a dock to connect USB, HDMI and power, rather than plugging and unplugging three different cables each time. That is, the dock wouldn't offer new kinds of ports, so much as collect them together for the user.

So instead of my company phone and company locked down desktop PC, I get one device which I can then plug into any dock in the building. IT Support only have to worry about one device instead of two.

Re: Ubuntu for Android

#73

Post by bryanlarsen »

nextparadigms wrote: post #5
dave1010uk wrote: post #2

Not 100% sure but I think this is a chroot. From the features page [0]: Ubuntu and Android share the same kernel. When docked, the Ubuntu OS boots and runs concurrently with Android. This allows both mobile and desktop functionality to co-exist in different runtimes. [0] http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android/features-and-specs

It looks great, but I still think Google needs to make it so when docked like this, what you see on the PC screen is the "tablet UI" of Android. It makes more sense, and you don't even have to waste resources running 2 OS's on a mobile processor.

The whole point of the announcement is that it isn't 2 OS's: Android and Ubuntu are running on the same kernel.

Re: Ubuntu for Android

#74

Post by glhaynes »

scotu wrote: post #68
glhaynes wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why this would be the future. I'm going to want to carry a "phone" for sure. Most people who've ever had a smartphone expect to have one the rest of their life. I'm also going to want (at least) a machine with a keyboard and bigger display than my phone. Why in the future would I want to tie one to the other? I wouldn't want that today — my computer works just fine without having to do some weird sync/plu…

So you are willing to commit to cloud-only, controlled by a random corp and subject to network availability but you are not going to trust the hardware you can carry in your pocket? Notice that no one is saying that a secondary cloud-tier is excluded from this vision...

If I didn't want to do cloud sync, I'd be more excited about a local sync. One doesn't tend to generate gigabytes of data on a phone so even a Bluetooth sync would be sufficient for most people.

Re: Ubuntu for Android

#75

Post by papalalu »

cbr wrote: post #49
yread wrote: post #32

So what do you do when the phone rings and you're doing something uninterruptible on the PC?

Ideally: pick the phone out of the dock and answer it. Your desktop session will pause until you return the phone to this (or another) dock. If what you're doing on the desktop is so important you can't pause it, don't take the call.

that doesn't seem ideal if the phonecall is about what you're doing on the desktop.

Re: Ubuntu for Android

#76

Post by morsch »

mrb wrote: post #43

You could push the ease-of-use even further with wireless HDMI, A2DP, and Bluetooth HIDs. Imagine: sit at a desk, without your phone even leaving your pocket. The wireless HDMI monitor, Bluetooth keyboard, and Bluetooth A2DP speakers automatically pair up with your phone. You just start using the device, eg. show a video to your friends, or start working. Stand up and leave. The phone unpairs itself from the monitor/…

To me, that seems like a lot of trouble to share a relatively trivial amount of hardware. Hardware which is optimised for different, fairly specific circumstances, incidently.

Re: Ubuntu for Android

#77

Post by sskates »

cpeterso wrote: post #47
bguthrie wrote: post #17

This, or something like it, is the future: the computing device is portable, and adapts itself to the forms of input available. There's no reason why your display should have to be permanently attached to the device that drives it, and increasingly, it won't be. I don't know what the implications are for Ubuntu or Android. But genuine support for a first-class computing experience is one of the few things that would…

Desktop PCs will always outperform portable devices. I think future docking stations will include both a big display and a big processor. When you dock your phone, your phone's apps will be running on the dock's fast processor while accessing your personal data off the phone. When you undock your phone, your running apps will seamlessly migrate to the phone's processor(s). This will be extremely asymmetric multiproce…

"Desktop PCs will always outperform portable devices"

That doesn't mean portable devices won't replace them. Laptops began to replace desktops a few years ago, the same way PCs replaced mainframes.

Re: Ubuntu for Android

#78

Post by rickmb »

bambax wrote: post #42
bguthrie wrote: post #17

This, or something like it, is the future: the computing device is portable, and adapts itself to the forms of input available. There's no reason why your display should have to be permanently attached to the device that drives it, and increasingly, it won't be. I don't know what the implications are for Ubuntu or Android. But genuine support for a first-class computing experience is one of the few things that would…

> This, or something like it, is the future: the computing device is portable, and adapts itself to the forms of input available Maybe it is, but it's not the future I'd like best. I would like to have a desktop in the cloud, and data in the cloud, and nothing in my pocket; nothing to lose or break or have to make sure it still has juice. When I get somewhere to work (a client's, a café, a friend's, etc.), I log in t…

If you think your data "in the cloud" (which is just a way of saying "on other people's physical systems") is safe from theft, breakage or some foreign government agency pulling the plug, you haven't been paying much attention to reality lately.

And by "lately" I mean the past decade.

Don't get me wrong, I like the convenience of "the cloud". It's especially helpful in synchronizing all the data that I have on cheap and abundant storage on various devices.

We can have both. Why advocate giving up the one option that makes you independent from third party interference (or simply a lack of connectivity)?

Re: Ubuntu for Android

#80

Post by rhizome »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #37
rhizome wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's better as a thin client. Already I can (and have) used ConnectBot on Android to connect to my shell and fix webserver (and content) problems from my phone, in the field (3G).

A full Ubuntu installation is a superset of a thin client.

Or in other words, a thicker client.
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