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Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

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Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#391

Post by jholman »

gshulegaard wrote: post #57

I may be a minority, but I am very saddened by this. Not because I have any particular love for Unity, but rather I share Mark's conviction that convergence is the future. Love or hate it but Unity was IMO the best shot we had at getting an open source unified phone, tablet and desktop experience...and now this is effectively Canonical not only shutting down Unity, but refocusing efforts away from convergence and tow…

I agree about the intuition about convergence, and I'm not at all persuaded about the comments that "we want data convergence but not device convergence". I think that without device convergence, we'll see the desktop continue to become marginalized.

And I agree about Ubuntu, and thus Unity, looking like the best shot for a free software unified OS.

But none of that was gonna make me use Unity on my Linux desktops. shrug

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#392

Post by mikescandy »

This looks like the same shift that has been happening in Microsoft for the past few years. They tried phone convergence (continuum, the one core across devices), but the real focus is now cloud and services. Also, the fact that Microsoft ships Ubuntu as the Linux on Windows subsystem definitely shows an alignment on the companies' plans.

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#393

Post by petecox »

int_19h wrote: post #305
butz wrote: post #94

Ditching Unity for Gnome - good news. Dropping Ubuntu Phone - not. First Firefox OS, now Ubuntu Phone. I suppose it shouldn't be that hard to create a fully open source mobile OS, with possible "convergence" functionality (running desktop apps when device is connected to big screen)? Especially now, when all apps are going to web a. k. a. Progressive Web Apps.

It might not be that hard to create the OS. But it is pretty hard to find operators willing to preinstall it on phones, which is what you need to have any sort of marketshare for it.

Monetization was Canonical and Mozilla's first mistake. A grass-roots movement would stand a better chance through embracing the custom ROM community.

The way forward would be to fork lineage os as a base, make it dead trivial to port any device that has a pre-existing 14.1 nightly build, then set up build slaves for the community to test with.

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#394

Post by afandian »

As someone who bought an Ubuntu Tablet in good faith, and received OK hardware but an OS that was profoundly un-production-ready, I wonder where this leaves me. There's no explicit mention of what's going to happen to people running Ubuntu Tablet who paid for a device.

Maybe I'll get what I always wanted, which is a traditional desktop OS tweaked for tablet usability. Maybe I'll just get nothing.

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#395

Post by btschaegg »

8ytecoder wrote: post #303
daveguy wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

data convergence is the future, not interface convergence . I think they made a serious mistake conflating the two. You should be able to shift your view of a document from a desktop to a laptop, but that doesn't mean the fundamental interface from one should be shoe-horned into the other. That could mean a phone that is docked, but when you have 10x the screen real estate, a keyboard and a mouse the interface should…

Agreed. I used to bevery enthusiastic about continuum in Windows. But now, I've come to realize that the interface better be separate for different usecases - plus, no one want to plugin their phone and use it for work. What I want is seamless takeover from one device to another - something like Apple's continuity but way better. In today world this is all scattered into different components*, the first company that…

I have to say that I find the concepts of "convergence" presented so far by various companies a bit much though.

As you said, unified interfaces aren't that important. I'd be perfectly happy with a phone that runs a Linux desktop while docked and gives me an Android GUI/Stack while in "portable mode". The only thing really needed then would be the possibility to open the Android part in a window in the "Desktop mode", so one could still do messaging etc. while docked.

Personally, I think that would already get us 80% there. The much bigger hurdle (and afaik the one Canonical had trouble with) is then establishing a market position.

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#396

Post by mrmondo »

gshulegaard wrote: post #57

I may be a minority, but I am very saddened by this. Not because I have any particular love for Unity, but rather I share Mark's conviction that convergence is the future. Love or hate it but Unity was IMO the best shot we had at getting an open source unified phone, tablet and desktop experience...and now this is effectively Canonical not only shutting down Unity, but refocusing efforts away from convergence and tow…

You're not, I don't like Ubuntu as a distro as I believe they've put testing and security in a back seat, but the one thing I really was excited about was the convergence of mobile and desktop, it seems like the future to me and it's something I've wanted since my first smart phone.

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#397

Post by ornitorrincos »

WD-42 wrote: post #16
mtgx wrote: post #7

Does that mean they're going to make it easy not to have the taskbar on the side - or god forbid, even put it at the bottom by default ? I remember that "convergence" with mobile was the primary reason why the Ubuntu UI was designed the way it was and why the taskbar was put on the side. Yes, I realize a lot of Ubuntu users have already gotten used to it, and some may even prefer it, but I'm sure the majority of new…

Have you ever used Gnome? There is no taskbar :)

didn't gnome2 use to have one?

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#398

Post by simonh »

Scarblac wrote: post #359
methodin wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My phone is a computer. My chromebook is a screen attached to a computer. My desktop is a monitor attached to a computer. My work laptop is a screen attached to a computer. My tablet is a screen attached to a computer. Why do I need so many separate computers when I have my phone on me at all times?

Because my work computer is owned by work, my phonr by me, and the desktop by my family. They don't want an unused monitor and docking station when my phone isn't there.

Don't they all have their own phones?

I don't really like the one device to rule them all philosophy, a single device would be too compromised for the different use cases I have for computers, but I don't think this is a valid objection in this vision of the future.

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#399

Post by mangecoeur »

gshulegaard wrote: post #57

I may be a minority, but I am very saddened by this. Not because I have any particular love for Unity, but rather I share Mark's conviction that convergence is the future. Love or hate it but Unity was IMO the best shot we had at getting an open source unified phone, tablet and desktop experience...and now this is effectively Canonical not only shutting down Unity, but refocusing efforts away from convergence and tow…

I personally really liked Unity, and I was following Unity8 development for a long time so I'm genuinely disappointed to see it go - partly because I really thought it could shape up to something really cool and partly because as you say, the convergence dream is basically dead, as is any realistic future of Ubuntu on touch devices.

I know Gnome has for ages built features with some theoretical touch device in mind, but only Canonical/Ubuntu has ever shipped remotely viable touch based hardware.

Re: Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence

#400

Post by yAnonymous »

Unity has its issues (mainly bugs that need fixing), but it offers great usability without the need to configure anything.

GNOME on the other hand is a usability train wreck, ran by fucking tools who almost bankrupted the project by funding social justice projects (https://archive.is/jCGA2).

There's no Linux alternative to Unity right now that offers a slick, minimalistic UI with a search interface for programs and files and with good out of the box keyboard shortcuts. Please, by all means, try to prove me wrong here, because right now I feel like going back to Windows after ten years of Linux.

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