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Ubuntu on tablets

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221–230 of 266 posts

Re: Ubuntu on tablets

#221
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not miniscule, it is 0% right now ;) But again, the question is of putting all the eggs in one basket or not. Ubuntu and other non-windows mobile OSes each have different approaches, hard to say which will succeed. It's foolish to bet on just one if you are as big as Nokia.

What I don't understand is why these late-comers continue to try and build their own self-contained ecosystem of apps. Microsoft with all its money still barely has a decent ecosystem and even that has a lot of holes. There's 0 chance that any other is going to be given the time of day. Blackberry hinging on Gingerbread apps is just silly. Instead they should be betting on the web, completely. Ubuntu, being a traditi…

actually there have been talk about one common api for all .nix that is tizen, sailfish, meego, ubuntu, plasma

Re: Ubuntu on tablets

#222

As a developer, having read through all of their site I can't tell if this thing actually supports native development. If it did, that would be great, my main issue with Android is the way so much of the OS is tied to Java with the NDK and such as barely supported afterthoughts. Google doesn't seem to have any particularly good plan (at least not in public) for dealing with the Java anchor, even after the Oracle laws…

App developers will be able to use C++ if they like. /ac, speaking on behalf of self, not employer

That's great! You might want to press whoever is in charge of the developer-related pages to make this more clear.

Re: Ubuntu on tablets

#223
Apple dug themselves into a hole with such fixation on static screen size/resolution. They can't do these multitasking innovations because of that.

It seems that Ubuntu has outdone even Windows 8 in that front.

Curious to see this running on some real hardware, because for now it's just a design and software.

Re: Ubuntu on tablets

#224
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that Unity feels sluggish and inelegant, performance wise. There is always a slight delay when I open the dash, and I generally dislike it's behavior. However, I stay with it because I dislike the alternatives, so no point switching for me. I think this is good news for Unity on the desktop because it means they will be tweaking the hell out of it for performance. I read that it's already better in 13.04, and…

I really hope Canonical doesn't intend to release a quad core Cortex A15 Ubuntu tablet with even the slightest lag or stuttering. I'd rather they delay it for months until they fix that, instead of releasing it like that. People are not going to take that for tablets anymore, and not with today's hardware. From what I read somewhere, Ubuntu for phones was pretty CPU intensive, which could mean it didn't have hardware…

It does have hardware acceleration, it is using android hardware drivers

Re: Ubuntu on tablets

#225
> Ubuntu’s unique side stage places a phone and a tablet app on the same screen at the same time for amazing tablet productivity. True multitasking comes to the tablet.

Actually, that is not unique. Several Android tablets by Samsung have multiwindow functionality and so do Windows 8 (Surface) and RT.

> Use all four edges of the screen to navigate between apps, settings and controls.

Also Windows.

> And with voice control, it’s as if you had an extra set of hands – a truly personal assistant.

Also in Windows.

So, pretty much, they took Windows 8's interface and copied as many features as they could into free software which they cannibalized, then slapped in some magic that makes it so that their Amazon sponsored links come up every time you search for an application and setting.

Et voila, instant revenue.

Re: Ubuntu on tablets

#226

Ironically, it might be the walled-garden ecosystem of tablets that ultimately leads to mass end-user adoption of Linux. The desktop introduces too many complications -- there is a much larger set of use cases, and thus a larger set of situations where a Windows-convert can get confused, discouraged, or frustrated. Tablets, on the other hand, with their relatively fewer ubiquitous uses, can be fine-tuned in way that…

What about iOS and Android? One is a Unix, the other a Linux. If you mean in the "truly open-source" fashion, then it's entirely up to the UI when it comes to the masses. I've personally never liked Unity due to very inconsistent buggy UI, and enjoyed Gnome 3 much more. The more competition the merrier, though.

> One is a Unix, the other a Linux.

That's a little like saying an omelette is an egg. :) Both make heavy use of *nix and OSS components, but they also add their own proprietary ingredients. I don't see anything wrong with that, but I'd prefer that full-stack open-source wasn't limited just to technorati. You're right that the masses define their experience by the UI: both what's delivered directly to users, and indirectly via the UI tools/ecosystem/culture available to developers.

Re: Ubuntu on tablets

#227
post #176

Heres why this is awesome: - The name Unity finally makes perfect sense - Phone can expand into a tablet can expand into a desktop - larger form factor can run smaller form factor apps - app switcher is slick - Canonical finally learned how to use all the bull shit motivational words that apple uses to inspire people - OS level tie ins to social services - Still open source I'm excited to use it, and I'm excited to h…

Yes, it's great for all the reasons you said and more. But I wouldn't say it's a big win for user rights yet . It might end up even more locked down by carriers and OEM's because it's open source (and of course because Canonical will allow that to happen to gain some market share): http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/19/4005514/ubuntu-phones-2014... Plus, don't forget all the deep Amazon integration, and who knows what el…

Usually I would agree. But as long as it's open source and you can install it yourself on any nexus device. Then you can solve that yourself.

Re: Ubuntu on tablets

#228
post #12

Can you dual boot it to an Ipad?

Since porting Android to iOS is pretty much dead since the iphone 3g[1], I would assume not. [1] http://0xdeadfa11.net/blog/2012/07/11/the-idroid-project-whe...

That's too bad. I love the Ipad hardware, but I'm just not a fan of the Apple interface. Being locked out of my own computer drives me nuts--especially whenever I try to watch something in Flash.

Re: Ubuntu on tablets

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Linux is completely inappropriate for the desktop, unless you are so inept you only use a browser (get an ipad instead), or you are sufficiently skilled you think nothing of switching window managers I see how frustrating your experience with Unity was, and it certainly echoes my own, but does it warrant such a conclusion about Linux in general? For one thing, there are alternatives to Ubuntu on the desktop. For new…

I already disabled the overlay scrollbar, it's trivial to fix with a Google search. None of this is hard for me, just enormously time consuming for all the broken things I need to fix or work around. I'm no neophyte; I've been using Linux since 1996, a copy of Red Hat 3.0.3 ("picasso", Wikipedia tells me) from a magazine cover CD. The point is that Linux UIs are perpetually half-baked. I'm happiest interacting with L…

>> The point is that Linux UIs are perpetually half-baked.

Even though I'm not a fan of Unity it's because I miss small thinks like being able to right click on a panel and add stuff or all the cool desktop themes which are missing in Unity.

Having said that, calling modern Linux desktops half-backed is either a clueless (and you make your case that you're not clueless) or possibly having an ulterior motives for drawing such a flawed conclusion. Modern Linux desktops are no more flawed than Windows.

Want to see a frustrating Windows UI bug? Put your start/task bar or whatever it's called at the top of the desktop. Then run Cygwin XWin and open a new X window. It will come up under the start bar/task bar. Several other programs do to. That bug has existed for like a decade from my recollection going back to at lest XP if not 2000.

Microsoft has like thousands of engineers, how hard would it be to fix that?

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