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Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones

engadget.com

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Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones

#171

Post by RyanMcGreal »

graue wrote: post #117
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMHO, Unity sucks pretty hard on the desktop I used to agree with this but it has gotten incrementally a lot better in the last couple of releases. I've watched non-geeks figure out how to use it without trouble, and after all the biggest potential market for a Linux desktop OS is the population of non-geeks.

> it has gotten incrementally a lot better I keep hearing people say this, I keep trying it again and I keep being disappointed and going back to Xfce. I mean, every time you press Alt, the menu bar at the top of the screen flashes. That's a horrible, distracting misfeature encountered in the first 30 seconds of using the thing. Not likely to try desktop Unity a fourth time, no matter how many people say “it's gettin…

> Do you use Unity?

After much messing around with xfce, gnome-session-fallback and cinnamon, I finally stopped worrying and learned to love the Unity just before upgrading to version 12.10.

Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones

#172

Post by da_n »

olgeni wrote: post #103
paramsingh wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most probably not. Apple doesn't like people hacking into Apple devices.

That's too bad for them...

Although their bank balance begs to differ... Ultimately though I would agree with you and hope smartphones will just be thought of as small computers in the future, you buy the hardware and have choices about what OS you want to run. I would love to be able to install different distros like with PC's, Mint Mobile running Cinnamon Touch would be good.

Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones

#173

Post by muyuu »

Thrymr wrote: post #108
slurry wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come to conclude (as a home-and-office Linux user for nigh on 15 years now) that the standard Unix gui environment of X + widget toolkits + desktop environment is just too multilayered and complex to work for non-boffins. Too many moving parts that can go subtly wrong. You can succeed as an end-user Unix, but you have to burn down the gui architecture and start over. Apple ditched X. Android ditched X. But no "d…

It's too bad that X11 is still the only GUI that really works remotely (for an individual application, not a full desktop).

Web is another GUI that works remotely for an individual application. Sure it's not perfect but neither is X.

Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones

#174

Post by elithrar »

primitur wrote: post #164
elithrar wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

Do you know how easy it is to port touch-friendly UI frameworks/SDK's such as MOAI ( http://getmoai.com/ ) to Ubuntu? Damn easy. In fact, its already done: and right now, MOAI - and similar tools, just like it (Love2D, Cocos2D, &etc.) - are already out there, running on the existing OS's, and providing multi-touch interfaces that definitely compete with existing Frameworks/SDK's. There is little that Cocoa does, for…

> Do you know how easy it is to port touch-friendly UI frameworks/SDK's such as MOAI (http://getmoai.com/) to Ubuntu? Damn easy.

Starting from an existing touch framework/application is not the problem.

"Porting" a desktop application to a touch application is not "just" (to quote polshaw) adding a new UI. There's a world of difference between a desktop GUI--esp. in the Linux world, where many apps are remarkably different due to the ecosystem--and a touch GUI. Touch target sizing, what information to get rid of (if any?), what to add, speed (arguably more important on a mobile device), hardware acceleration (read: being gentle on battery life & improving touch responsiveness)... it goes on.

The OS might have Ubuntu/Linux roots, but it doesn't automatically mean it gets a free ride to a great touch-friendly mobile app library.

Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones

#175

Post by xentronium »

graue wrote: post #117
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMHO, Unity sucks pretty hard on the desktop I used to agree with this but it has gotten incrementally a lot better in the last couple of releases. I've watched non-geeks figure out how to use it without trouble, and after all the biggest potential market for a Linux desktop OS is the population of non-geeks.

> it has gotten incrementally a lot better I keep hearing people say this, I keep trying it again and I keep being disappointed and going back to Xfce. I mean, every time you press Alt, the menu bar at the top of the screen flashes. That's a horrible, distracting misfeature encountered in the first 30 seconds of using the thing. Not likely to try desktop Unity a fourth time, no matter how many people say “it's gettin…

> I mean, every time you press Alt, the menu bar at the top of the screen flashes. That's a horrible, distracting misfeature encountered in the first 30 seconds of using the thing.

It's configurable.

Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones

#176

Post by sliverstorm »

marshray wrote: post #169
sliverstorm wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One could open and close Notepad and Calc all day long and even do some light websurfing with IE with no problem, just to find the system bogs down trying to work with a real productivity app like an IDE, a video editor, or even a spreadsheet. I think we've all seen a slow desktop before. Windows generally has minimum requirements well below that which you would want to have for serious productivity work. An OS has t…

This is why when someone says "It runs XYZ!" I presume they mean it runs it well enough that it doesn't get in the way under general usage.

People sometimes take liberties with claims about what runs on what, but generally do follow that guideline.

Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones

#177

Post by lotyrin »

lttlrck wrote: post #165
r3m6 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mark S. mentions it in the Engadget interview: "If I dock this, I can get the full Ubuntu desktop".

So is it going to have two WMs and two versions of every desktop app? One touch optimized and one for the desktop? It doesn't sound all that wonderful. Desktop/mobile crossover might be better served with cloud-sync.

> cloud-sync

Except if I'm in a developing nation where I'm not guaranteed connectivity. (Don't scoff yet, because I'd say the US is in this category.)

Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones

#178

Post by shard »

rdtsc wrote: post #93
TylerE wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. So now how are you putting the screen at a readable distance and angle? At the point you're carrying around a keyboard anyway, why not just have a Macbook Air?

> At the point you're carrying around a keyboard anyway, why not just have a Macbook Air? Because you _don't have to_ carry around a keyboard and a display if you don't plan on producing content and just want to make phone calls read ebooks. Can I tear off the screen and keyboard off a Macbook Air and use it as a phone? No? Well then I want a Ubuntu Phone then. Well at least in theory ... Another way to look at it, I…

I thought it would be great to have one device as well, but then I realized that sometimes I want to use my phone while watching TV or using the laptop, so they can't really be one device, unless I wear a wireless headset, which I don't really want to carry around along with my phone (another thing to charge, another thing to lose).

Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones

#179

Post by zanny »

forgottenpaswrd wrote: post #113
zanny wrote: post #39

I really want to give a "fuck yeah" for using qt as the app backend. I think qt5 is amazing and hope it can really take off. Especially with Necessitas you can port Ubuntu native apps to Android easily, and then porting to the desktop is trivial. I don't think they talked enough about how you can easily write a qt5 app that can run on everything but ios (and even that is seeing some traction). I wonder how this is go…

"I wonder how this is going to conflate with their ongoing focus on the desktop towards python + gtk apps." Are they?. IMHO they are making Unity and everything else use Qt. Python could use Qt too. I had a lot of apps that used gtk, it was ok in the past when the license of Qt was not LGPL, but now I'm porting everything to native and Qt.(luckily I abstracted the UI). Gtk just has not serious support for OpenGL, mac…

> Python could use Qt too.

Can. Pyside is very mature for GUI building now. My concern is that the Ubuntu phone OS might not be beefy enough to run a bunch of python interpreters for apps, or that it might not come with one stock.

Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones

#180

Post by rdtsc »

shard wrote: post #178
rdtsc wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the point you're carrying around a keyboard anyway, why not just have a Macbook Air? Because you _don't have to_ carry around a keyboard and a display if you don't plan on producing content and just want to make phone calls read ebooks. Can I tear off the screen and keyboard off a Macbook Air and use it as a phone? No? Well then I want a Ubuntu Phone then. Well at least in theory ... Another way to look at it, I…

I thought it would be great to have one device as well, but then I realized that sometimes I want to use my phone while watching TV or using the laptop, so they can't really be one device, unless I wear a wireless headset, which I don't really want to carry around along with my phone (another thing to charge, another thing to lose).

A multi tasking OS with a powerful CPU and wireless video streaming should provide those at least in theory. There is actually Miracast http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracast so in theory the bits and pieces are here already they just have to work as a package.
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