It says big things that no mobile operators or traditional hardware manufacturers are onboard.
Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones
61–70 of 221 posts
Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones
#62Here's their developer site: http://developer.ubuntu.com/get-started/gomobile/ From what it looks like, I'd need to redesign my apps from ground up using QML. They could have leveraged Android apps ecossystem, like Amazon, OUYA and even BB10 are doing. But chose not to. Out of nothing other than greed. And for that one reason, I predict dead on arrival. Edit: Just had an Ubuntu community manager answer my question on…
Another mobile framework, but not a new thing by any means. There are already plenty of Qt apps and libs (desktop + Symbian apps written with Qt4.8 + QML) out there.
But yes, porting from Android/Windows/iOS might be painfull.
Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones
#63This is a good thing, but having known Canonical and Ubuntu since the start (2004), I would really love to see them succeed in the desktop market first. This initiative will de-focus their efforts. I admire them, and wish them good luck anyway.
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 "desktop Linux" offering has yet completely ditched the legacy junk. You'd need that (and good OEM relationships) to succeed.
What' s the architecture of this Ubuntu phone gui? Is it gtk and X.org? or something new?
Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bullshit, people still need to make things. Make emails, edit videos, edit photos, write documents. These aren't business class activities, but touch screens are insufficient for that function. I don't see people lugging around a laptop anymore, but I easily see people plugging their phone into a display, throwing a bluetooth or usb keyboard + mouse on, and expecting a productivity environment from that device. The h…
> If I were to do that with an Ubuntu phone, though, I'd have access to much more mature productivity software built for the desktop. Sure you COULD, but serious productivity software is written to make maximal use of input devices. Keyboard shortcut usage is often not optional. That isn't going to translate to a touchscreen, or even a slide-out microkeyboards.
I think you missed the "throwing a bluetooth or usb keyboard + mouse on" part.
Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones
#65This is a good thing, but having known Canonical and Ubuntu since the start (2004), I would really love to see them succeed in the desktop market first. This initiative will de-focus their efforts. I admire them, and wish them good luck anyway.
The desktop market is more or less disappearing. On the business end of things, business has no issue paying the paltry sum of what windows + office costs. I'm not sure what else they can do in the desktop space. IMHO, Unity sucks pretty hard on the desktop and both MS and Ubuntu have taken major missteps. I also imagine Win8 SP1 will bring back some kind of classic mode. Not sure if Unity will ever be desktop-ified…
> 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.
Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones
#66I feel like, Canonical = Apple with openness in mind.
Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones
#67My first reaction to this was "we don't need another phone platform". But you know what? I think their corporate focus is really smart - particularly at a time when both RIM and Microsoft are leaving craters in that market. I really hope they succeed.
Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones
#68This announcement baffles me a little bit. An Ubuntu Phone? Why did they choose to announce a phone OS and not a tablet? Phones are light communication devices for sending brief messages, checking social statuses or updating them. Ubuntu is a full featured OS used in creating and consuming long-form content. If they are hoping to engage with existing OEMs I think they would've had a much better time of it with companies like Acer, Asus and other similar desktop makers who are trying to get their foot into the tablet market. Not to mention the added difficulties of dealing with carriers.
Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones
#69Swiping from the edges is exactly what I was hoping Google would do with Android, instead of wasting screen space with buttons. I think all Android's buttons could be repurposed into "edge actions", although they'd have to make them intuitive enough for people to get it quickly.
Swiping from the left and right edges on phones is prone to get confused with the swiping inside apps, that's the reason that none of the big mobile OSes have it. I am curious to see whether that's taken care of here.
Given that the Nexus 4 screen is designed to support edge swipes I wouldn't be surprised to see Android move in that direction.
Re: Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones
#70So how does this affect getting Open webOS -- which is usually placed on top of Ubuntu on desktops -- onto smartphones? Does it make it easier or is this irrelevant to that?