Ubuntu Tablet OS To Take On Android, iOS 237
snydeq writes "Canonical CEO Jane Silber discusses the Ubuntu maker's ambitions in the mobile market, saying there is plenty of room for a new player in tablets, TVs, and maybe even smartphones. 'There is a real demand for an alternative platform. We believe Ubuntu has all the characteristics that are needed to become that platform,' Silber says, adding that she expects to see Ubuntu on tablets later this year. 'And we think we can do that effectively because of characteristics of Ubuntu as a platform, industry dynamics, and an increased wariness around the walled gardens of Apple and to some extent Google and even Amazon, as they are increasingly in this game as well.' Silber cites openness, open governance, collaboration, and a strong developer ecosystem as key for Ubuntu as a tablet platform, when compared with Android and iOS."
Not really surprised. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not really surprised. (Score:3, Insightful)
Real Alternative? (Score:2, Insightful)
How about nobody cares about that. Unless you have a multi-billion dollar marketing budget to match Android or iOS and a market place that can run all of the apps that Android does Ubuntu has no chance of being a serious player. I'm not against more players in the game but lets be real with ourselves, Ubuntu is used by power users who care to work with Linux. I'm going to take the plunge this summer when I can safely back up all my data and take a few days to play with it but I realize I'm part of a tiny minority. While the minority may be wealthy enough to make this venture possible it is highly unlikely they'll ever unseat one of the big two or even be a serious third. Android won't win awards from the open source community but they aren't a walled garden and that is in particular unless Ubuntu can seriously cut the cost of Android products will have a hard time competing in the marketplace for mOS's
Re:Fragmentation (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you ever written an app for Android?
I have, that platform utterly SUCKS to program for.
"or you could write your own" is the same as, "or you can build your own car from scratch"...
Re:Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
While you are right that Unity (and GNOME3 for that matter) probably make sense on tablets, don't expect to buy one anytime soon. Did ya hear any OEM deals being announced? Hint, if they weren't at CES hyping hardware deals you shouldn't expect any to ship in the next six months to a year. And that is the problem, nobody will ship Ubuntu on a tablet because nobody wants it. Nobody wants it because nobody has ever seen it on a tablet, nobody even knows it exists. And with signed boot being the new hotness there won't even be much aftermarket loading except onto the skeeviest Chinese imports.
But aftermarket loads don't matter anyway, look at Linux. Twenty years on and we are still an asterisk. End users don't load operating systems, they use whatever the factory preloads. And Google and Microsoft will be competing to offer OEMs bennies to pick their offering, what is Canonical planning on offering? It's Free? And so is Android and for all intents and purposes so will Windows 8 be free after the CoOp marketing kickbacks and such, or at least close enough to free that the ability to price the final product higher will make up for it.
Re:Fragmentation (Score:2, Insightful)
It is not wise to say that Ubuntu could really work on tablets just basing that to Unity.
As UBUNTU is not Unity. It is GNOME 2.x series. And GNOME would not work with tablets. As it is not designed for tablets and you can not so on modify it to work with tablets.
Why did Tablet PC's fail on tablet markets until Apple brought iPad?
Because Microsoft tried to push a WIMP interface with Windows applications to tablet.
A WIMP stands for Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointer (if you didn't know). And GNOME (at least 2.x) needs pointer and is about Windows and drop-down menus.
That Ubuntu now comes by default a Unity, does not make Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointer go away. Unity is just a launcher and a shell.
KDE SC would work on tablets, as it is designed to be customizable and it is possible to make so user does not see windows, drop-down menus and does not need a pointer. (Icons, menus, toolbars... everything is possible to hide or make so big that they come usable with fingers).
And KDE has done great job with the Plasma. As they have different shell for different devices.
Plasma-desktop
Plasma-netbook
Plasma-mobile
Plasma-active
Plasma-Mediacenter
And thats it.... All KDE applications allows customization well to be possible fit on those device classes.
Canonical has not done anything than Unity and it does not fit to anywhere well.
Apple understood the problem, they have XNU operating system (Open Source btw) and lots of closed source sub-systems like Core animations and so on. And then they made a totally new shell for smartphone and tablet with totally new application design rules. They went and throw away the WIMP and toke just IM. Icons and menus (not drop-down).
And now Microsoft is trying to do the same, but totally wrong way. As they get second glass idea for GUI (Metro) and what was designed for smartphone (does not work so well when starting to add more functions and applications... the Zune interface does not work and Metro start screen is hard to understand) and they slaps it to desktop computers and tablets....
Desktop computers can not support Metro either. And tablets.... It is as well second glass GUI for it.
And Microsoft has pushed the "Ribbon" interface for its applications, what it copied from Lotus document writer...
And it does not work well on tablets either.... Apple and Open Handset Alliance has understanded this and made new GUI's for tablets what fits for them.
Everyone else than Microsoft and Canonical knows what to do. That every GUI needs to be designed per device class and you can not push single GUI to all of them.
And it is funny, that Canonical what is the Linux communitys Microsoft, does same thing as MS does.... Are they collaborating someway?
Re:Fragmentation (Score:4, Insightful)
Linux has gained traction in any market not dominated by a single vendor that had a greater than 90% share of the entire market even before Linux got started.
You mention MacOS in passing.
Apple couldn't unseat MS-DOS with a product that implements just about every "well meaning" suggestion ever hurled at Linux.
Re:Unity (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't say that.
Has Canonical burned an epic amount of karma with Unity? Absolutely. But now we see the strategy of Canonical and why the (at the time) weird decisions were being made - for moving into the mobile & embedded market.
1) The nasty split with the Gnome community over Gnome3. Due to the Gnome community designing for the desktop and ignoring Canonical's input for the most part. Canonical decides to develop Unity so it can control the development path.
2) Wayland - X has way too much overhead and features for low-power mobile devices. Wayland keeps it nice and light.
3) Close/minimize/maximize debacle - pure usabilty idea. It was thrown out there to play with the code and how far people will accept change.
4) Ubuntu One - iTunes/Amazon fighter.
Being as they are one of (if not the) largest GPL distros on the planet, they know they have a massive built in base they can use for beta testing ideas, Q&A and bug fixing (since the code is all out in the open). That's huge. Add in the rock solid dependability of Linux and they have a winner.
Re:Fragmentation (Score:2, Insightful)
It has, yeah, but that's also why Linux is just a rounding error in desktop OS use. Outside of a handful of geeks, nobody wants to have to figure out which distro to use, what the hell it even means to pick KDE or Gnome or XFCE or Enlightenment or which one they should want, what's the difference between yum and apt, and so on. People want this: plug it in, and it works. That's all. They don't want to pick between 57 different distros, 7 different package managers, and so on.
Unfortunately, geeks appear totally blind to how the real world works.
Re:Fragmentation (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, Ubuntu screws around quite a bit with configuration files. I find this particularly annoying, it seems that nothing is where it used to be, or works as it used to work.
Very annoying.
Re:Unity (Score:5, Insightful)
X has way too much overhead and features for low-power mobile devices.
I always find this argument funny, considering I first used X on a 32MHz CPU with 32MB of RAM.
I would agree that it's not ideal for a tablet that's mostly used for full-screen apps and media consumption, but 'overhead and features' are not the reason.
Re:Fragmentation (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps more to the point: with Linux, fragmentation is a feature. Not always a very useful one, but a feature nonetheless.
Re:Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
"don't expect to buy one anytime soon."
You mean dont expect to buy a PRE MADE READY TO GO one anytime soon.
I built my 5th one last week and have another on the way.
starter Cost to build? $99.00 shipped for a used Stylistic ST5011d off of ebay with better specs than the ipad 1. Ubuntu installs nicely with small tweaks. Make it screaming fast by dropping in a 32 or 64 gig SSD drive instead of a spinning drive.
Total cost with new SSD, upgrade ram to 2 gig, and a new battery? $329.95 Oh and it kicks the crud out of any android tablet... Except most linux apps are NOT written for tablet use. so there are almost ZERO apps that have a smooth operation.
But it's a Ubuntu tablet, in my hands right now. and you can have one too!
You can have one now if you have the education to spend 3 hours putting one together.
Wait, it kicks the crud out of any Android tablet except there isn't a single app with smooth operation? So, find a used one on eBay, wait for it to arrive, then spend some time sticking in new ram, a new battery and a new hard drive, then install Ubuntu, and then notice that there are no optimized apps, and all existing apps run poorly? And that's just from your comments, and you seem to like the things!
Re:Fragmentation (Score:5, Insightful)
> Offering Linux costs OEMs money because MS gives the OEMs cash incentives for preloading Windows.
No. Go look at Microsoft's balance sheet. The only divisions making significant coin are the OS and Office lines and almost nobody buys those products at retail. So logic dictates the lion's share of their revenue is being extracted in OEM contracts. Which it is. The way it works is they charge such insane prices for WIndows that an OEM is totally uncompetitive. Then IF and only IF that OEM plays ball they will refund enough in co-op marketing credits for them to survive. But it has been true for some years that the Windows license is often the most expensive component in a lower end PC and is is now moving up to the midrange. It is so bad that for netbooks they have to offer Starter Edition to prevent the netbook makers from going back to Linux[1]. At those price points the normal Microsoft Tax just isn't an option.
And Intel plays exactly the same game btw. You should hear the Intel splash at the end of PC adverts as "We are being paid not to do business with AMD." The difference is that Windows is so pervasive they don't even bother insisting on a sound or logo because they prefer to maintain the image that there aren't even any competitors.
Now it is true that OEMs collect money for the crapware that gets loaded atop Windows and that does offset some of the license fees to Microsoft and that revenue isn't yet available on a Linux preload. But I really doubt the trialware/crapware truly equals the cost of a Windows license.
[1] They initially went with Linux because Vista wouldn't run on the first netbooks and XP wasn't being offered anymore except as an option with a Vista Business Edition license. Microsoft quickly realized the problem and made XP available at a special cut rate to netbook makers; at which time Linux instantly vanished and has not been seen since in the netbook space. Plus the original netbook was a small, inexpensive and netcentric device. Which customers loved but OEMs hated because of the small margins. Moving to larger, more expensive small WIndows laptops and calling them netbooks was far more profitable, even with the license fees. Observe how the 9" netbook went extinct at about the same time as the shift to Windows.