Canonical is always trying to make itself more relevant by chasing the new hotness. First it was copying Windows. Then it was copying the Mac. Then tablets. Now smartphones. Unfortunately, the open source nature of their efforts means that they can never supply a meaningful value-add, even if they had as much money as their competitors.
Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones
151–160 of 221 posts
Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a data point my newest phone (Nexus 4) is a 1.5 GHz quad-core with 2 GB of RAM and a GPU good for OpenGL ES 3.0 and OpenCL 1.2. Except for hard drive size and bandwidth, it's the same or better than the dual core laptop I had 5 years ago.
Those specs don't speak to performance. Your 5 year old computer could easily run Windows 8 without a problem and the Nexus 4 can't.
Those specs edge out the Microsoft Surface RT, which does run Windows 8.
Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
>What does it bring new to developers that isn't there in Android? Firefox OS's USP is web apps with native bindings Connect a display and you have full ubuntu. With today's smartphones already computationally competitive with your standard netbook, that alone is a massive value proposition to me. Add something like motorola's lapdock and there is 95% of all my computing needs met, all with a single, central data sto…
> Hopefully porting from linux will be fairly straightforward too.. just a new UI support?, giving apps that work from desktop to mobile. Not to mention that is has most of the FFOS advantage too. I wouldn't trivialise the effort required to create a touch-friendly UI, especially from an existing desktop application (with the expectations that go with it).
I got some basic n900 apps up and running pretty easily with vala and the maemo touch widgets. porting an existing ui might be hard, but building one around a set of touch widgets is relatively straightforward.
Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
They had a working prototype that would run Android and Ubuntu side by side. Would work as a standard Android phone. But when you dock it to the desktop, it's a 100% capable Ubuntu computer, sharing resources with Android. That was perfect. It's the best of both worlds, I'm sure it would be a huge hit. Leverage both the Android mobile ecosystem + Linux desktop at once? That was genius. But instead they chose the gree…
Yeah, I loved that, but it wasn't a mobile OS, it was just Ubuntu running as an Android app. It didn't even have a UI om the phone, IIRC.
No it isn't an app. It is actually the full Ubuntu OS running on your android device. The point wasn't for it to be a touch screen, the point was that you could dock your device and suddenly be using a full desktop OS with all your desktop grade applications.
Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones
#155proud to say I worked on this :)
Nice! Contributor or employee?
Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those specs don't speak to performance. Your 5 year old computer could easily run Windows 8 without a problem and the Nexus 4 can't.
Serious question: What is the use of "running Windows 8" per se? Traditionally, computing platforms are for applications and operating systems are a means to that end. What class of applications (from 5 years ago) would have inherent performance issues with Nexus4-class hardware (assuming a real external display and hard drive were added)? Also, it occurs to me that Surface RT is largely Windows 8 and Office running…
What is the use of "running Windows 8" per se? ... operating systems are a means to [an] end
That's the use. If it runs Windows 8 without complaint, you can generally do the things that running Windows 8 allows you to do.
Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones
#157am i the only one who think the interface is too complicated?
Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones
#158[deleted]
Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones
#159Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones
#160Does it come with Amazon spying?
Yes. Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpWHJDLsqTU&feature=play... after a few minutes/seconds the search interface is demoed, that searches for films, music and books, presumably from Amazon, though that's not specified.
It's a full Ubuntu Desktop. Dock your phone and run "sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping". Or, alternatively, just open the Software Centre and remove it from there.