Growing Ubuntu for Cloud and IoT, Rather Than Phone and Convergence • Hacker News Board

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

#421

Post by m_mueller » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 1:28 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #365

profoundwhale wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft made a mobile OS that didn't offer a compelling enough alternative to either iOS or Android. iOS = Locked in ecosystem Windows Phone = Locked in ecosystem Android = Alternative to iOS Windows = Alternative to iOS On a technical level, Windows Phone devices performed around the same as iOS devices (fantastic), but lacked mainstream apps (the same problem as Blackberry) but without the backwards compatibility…

Actually by 8.1 people that don't have the bugdet to buy iPhones and disliked Android where buying Windows Phones, up to the point they almost managed 10% world wide. But then came the Windows Phone 10 reboot, with the promise that all 8.1 devices would get an WP 10 update, promise that they eventually broke by allowing only premium devices to get it. So no, WP wasn't doomed if Microsoft managed to keep the roadmap s…

Not just that but they did it multiple times - 6.5, 7, 8, 10 - all pretty much incompatible from both a handset and even a developer's perspective. Imagine Apple doing that and having their first four iOS iterations all going in different directions every time, they'd also br in Microsoft's position now. They seem to have learned now and I could still see them turn around.

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

#422

Post by stinkytaco » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 1:55 PM UTC

sampo wrote: post #334

stinkytaco wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The UI/UX experts at Gnome/systemd say "linux is NOT about choice", but that's why I chose linux over a decade ago, for choice. If some part sucks for me, I can replace just that part. I don't recall them saying this at all. In fact, I would argue that Gnome's pursuit of a novel interface is very much about choice. It's not like they firebombed the xfce and KDE projects and ran away with the fortune. They said, "th…

> I would argue that Gnome's pursuit of a novel interface is very much about choice. As long as you don't try to choose e.g. vertical panels instead of the forced top panel.

Arguing a piece of software doesn't do what you want it to do has nothing to do with choice in the Linux world. I could just as easily complain that vim doesn't include a lisp scripting environment, ergo vim is not about choice.

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

#423

Post by vbezhenar » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 1:59 PM UTC

Last Ubuntu I enjoyed was 10.04. They switched to Unity and I didn't use Ubuntu since, I liked old Gnome and switched mostly to CentOS. For me it was like Windows 8 — may be it's good, but it looks completely different so I don't want to deal with it. Now Microsoft returned good old windows with Windows 10, Ubuntu returning to Gnome and Apple's not abandoning macOS. Good times.

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

#424

Post by stinkytaco » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 2:01 PM UTC

ploxiln wrote: post #350

stinkytaco wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are taking that out of context. He's rejecting the strawman set up in the previous email. The camera breaking due to a new module has nothing to do with "choice", it had to do with a bug. You can perhaps argue that the module was pushed too soon (as he says in the last paragraph), but throw "choice" out there every time something changes is not productive. In this case, you can't have it both ways. You ca…

I've never used Fedora. As an aside, I find ArchLinux to be a much more stable bleeding-edge distro, and Ubuntu LTS to be a better stable distro. I just found some of the most obvious examples online of "linux is not about choice". But that's also the response to systemd becoming a hard dependency in most distros, because Gnome components have dependencies on systemd components. And it's the response when systemd mad…

I think we do agree about the gist, but the quibble is about semantics. My point is that there is no "philosophical opposition". Choice means users have a right to fork. It does not mean that every project must bend to a user's will or risk being accused of not caring about choice.

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

#425

Post by firman » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 2:02 PM UTC

flukus wrote: post #300

satysin wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making GNOME look like Unity is simple. Getting it to work like Unity is a bit different. The main difference being the global menu bar.

Gnome has a global menu bar by default now, I think I had to use the tweak tool to turn it off.

Can you give reference about global menu in gnome shell? I can only find old reference to some attemp to implement it[0].

I have tried gnome shell in the past, but I still prever unity because of the global menu.

[0] https://github.com/GNOME/gnome-globalmenu

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

#426

Post by looserof7 » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 2:13 PM UTC

I'm really happy about this decision. Nevertheless it would be better if they design and build software by keeping modularity in mind so that other DE like KDE ,... can use them without changing much of the code-base and reinventing the wheel.

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

#427

Post by bitL » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 2:38 PM UTC

My translation: Ubuntu is running out of money, maybe already feeling the heat from the decision to provide Linux subsystem in W10, disincentivizing developers from switching to stand-alone Ubuntu, therefore they need to cut things not projecting bringing profit soon.

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

#428

Post by bandrami » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 2:38 PM UTC

topranks wrote: post #387

bandrami wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anybody besides platform developers want a unified phone, tablet, and desktop experience? I certainly don't; it sounds like a very bad idea.

Phones are already damn powerful, and will get more so. Why should we all have to buy another completely separate computer if we want to use a mouse/keyboard/monitor, when we already have phones?

You have that backwards: why should your phone present the same UI when it's plugged into a keyboard and mouse and when it's not docked?

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

#429

Post by ajross » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 2:57 PM UTC

jhasse wrote: post #377

ajross wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. There absolutely is an open source Android experience (at the level of the applications and API -- drivers are a different story) for those who want it. It really doesn't suck, and it's a clean migration from the commercial environments (which is to say, you don't really need F-Droid as almost all this stuff is in the Play Store already). Open source on Android is in pretty good shape on the whole, which is…

The Play Store is closed source though.

I know. The point was that if you are an Android user and want to try out "open source app X", there's no need to install an open ROM or F-Droid. Just grab the app from the existing app store. The path between "normal users" and "pure free software" ones is smooth and easy. It's not like the desktop where you need to convince people to install Ubunto or Arch instead of Windows or macOS.

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

#430

Post by nickpsecurity » Thu, Apr 06, 2017, 3:06 PM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #373

nickpsecurity wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What he said. On top of it, maybe next failed attempt can try building on one of these for a stronger foundation: https://github.com/ExpressOS/expressos http://genode.org/

Tizen is an alternative, whether you like it or not is another matter.

Oh, you make it sound so simple. A platform is an alternative to dominating ecosystems if it exists at all. It having apps, locking you into Microsfot, or even existing 5+ years down the road doesn't matter? If that's true, there should be all kinds of people on all kinds of smartphone platforms right now instead of most of them on two.

Meanwhile, Tizen is available for people wanting whatever their changing offering is. I guess just budget regular rewrites in a new language/platform you had to learn into your FOSS app on Tizen with either few contributors or the more common zero. That's some great ROI.