Canonical may not have the resources or funds of Apple or Microsoft but they are innovating better than both at the moment. Unity is daring to be different on the desktop, and Ubuntu on Android is a simple idea that could really change the way people think about the PC. The ideas might not all work out in the long term but for sheer creative thinking you have got to applaud what they are doing.
Ubuntu for Android
21–30 of 183 posts
Re: Ubuntu for Android
#22I strongly believe, this would be just the beginning. Mobile phones give you three things - (recently, Horsepower), Mobility and Identity. And there are a plethora of things that could be powered with a combination of the three.
Weirdly, wrote about something like this, back in 2008. http://www.vijayanand.name/2008/10/the-future-of-living-how-...
... in a nokia centric world, be it.
Re: Ubuntu for Android
#23Earlier 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.
If that's the case, I'd assume I can use this without a dock, ie. just by connecting HDMI; all other connections being more-or-less optional. But I get the feeling that's not true.
Re: Ubuntu for Android
#24Does anyone have any real-world experience with this? It looks amazing, but I'd like to hear from someone who's lived with it (if you're out there)...
The motorola Atrix had demos of this concept. There was no ubuntu- it just was moto's skinning of android & a $200 docking station for your phone/keyboard/monitor.
It wasn't particularly successful.
Re: Ubuntu for Android
#25One desktop to take wherever you go is the future. You can kind of do it remote desktop, but that is not nearly as cool as one device to rule them all.
Re: Ubuntu for Android
#26This, 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…
Exactly. It would be great to be able to use an Optimus Prime or something as a mobile development machine. My dream for android development is definitely to be able to build and deploy on a single device.
Of course there's a way to go for that. The range of devices that support mobile docks is very small; I would prefer support for tablets with attached keyboards/mice. If they managed to get this working on tablets, I would definitely consider something like the transformer prime to replace my netbook.
Re: Ubuntu for Android
#27I always find it odd that people call the hardware and OS by the same name.
My first impression was a virtualized Ubuntu on top of Android (the OS).
Re: Ubuntu for Android
#28I know it's immature of me to note this, but what's up with the logo to the left of "Ready to talk?". Is it just me, or is it faintly reminiscent of... well, something else?
Ha. Maybe we're both immature, but you're not alone. I'm surprised none of the techies at Ubuntu picked up on it. Or maybe they did...
> Or maybe they did...
... which would explain why the "Get In Touch" button is in close proximity.
Re: Ubuntu for Android
#29It's the official debut of PC Plus Era. This will be huge if Canonical and Google works together. Outstanding!
i don't see canonical and google working too closely together on this, as google has a competing OS that they're trying to push: chrome. and now with the introduction of chrome for android, there's no reason why your cell phone couldn't turn into a chromebox when it gets plugged into a similar dock.
Re: Ubuntu for Android
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's where the whole world is headed. As a general consumer, why have a desktop when you can dock your phone/tablet and playback or stream videos, edit content and browse the web?
Well, because it's annoying to constantly have to dock your phone in order to use the desktop, for one thing. What are the upsides here? Synchronised calendar, user accounts, data, everything? You can do that without sharing the hardware. (Much harder to do it without relying on the internet, admittedly.) Less maintenance because you don't have to worry about two devices? Cost efficiency because you don't have to pay…
Hmm. 12 to 15 years ago most laptop owners also had a desktop machine. Since then most of those users have gone laptop-only despite the fact that many (most?) of them face a similar annoyance to the one you give: they either dock their laptop when at their desk or they plug in an external monitor.
You can point out (correctly, IMO) that there were no truly satisfactory ways to sync laptop and desktop back when laptop-desktop owners went laptop-only, and I suppose you would claim that sync will work better this time because vendors and users "get the cloud" now. Hmm. Any laptop users who also run a desktop care to chime in on how annoying it is in the age of Dropbox to keep data on the two devices in sync?