Ubuntu Tablets: Less Jarring Than Windows 8? 179
Following up on yesterday's news that Ubuntu for Tablets has been announced, Mark Shuttleworth answered questions about the purpose of the new version of Canonical's OS and what its intended strengths will be. He made special note of how Canonical wants the transition between desktop-Ubuntu and mobile-Ubuntu to be smooth. "When you transition from the tablet to the desktop, things don't move around. Your indicators, things like network status and time, they don't jump around on screen, they stay in the same place. That's what's really different certainly between our approach to convergence and for example Windows 8, where when you're in the desktop mode, which looks like Windows 7, and suddenly you get the new tile-based interface, it's a stark transition that can be jarring for users. In our case, you can almost think of those as gentle phase changes. When you go from phone to tablet you're stretching the device in very obvious ways. People who've used iOS on both phones and tablets would expect that. What's nice about Ubuntu is the phase change to the PC experience up from the tablet really just introduces window management, and it also introduces things like menus and dialog boxes. You aren't moving things around in dramatic ways." He added that they expect the user experiences to converge in Ubuntu 14.04. Shuttleworth also addressed the fragmentation problem faced by Android. He says manufacturers and carriers don't want to fall into that trap again, and that they've been receptive to the idea of leaving the core of Ubuntu alone while tweaking their individual services instead.
Keep the code, separate the UIs (Score:5, Interesting)
Now I finally see what Shuttleworth's been meaning when he says the same applications run on all form factors - as a developer, you separate the logic from the UI, and write three UIs: one for phone, one for tablet, and one for desktop. Until now I thought "nice in concept, but what's the point?". But if your device itself suddenly switches from a phone or tablet to a desktop, then your app can keep running and switch UIs on the fly.
What I really find neat is how tablet apps can become phone apps when docked on the side, for multitasking. This finally looks like a tablet that's not purely for consuming content.
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What I really find neat is how tablet apps can become phone apps when docked on the side, for multitasking.
Hmm, that _is_ a cunning piece of design. A bit like Metro's app docking but actually useful and less sucky.
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When Microsoft announced Windows 8, I thought that was the entire point of the snap view. Every "Metro" app would be able to run as a tablet app or a Windows Phone 8 app, and snap view would run the phone mode on the tablet.
Then I was disappointed.
Microsoft keeps hinting that a near future version of Windows Phone will have apps that can be cross-compiled as tablet apps, but I'll believe it when I see it. For now, Ubuntu has taken the lead in this regard.
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Yes it's a cunning design. But don't fall for all of Shuttleworth's marketing hype, even if he does phrase it very eloquently. He is not only a cunning designer, but a cunning linguist too.
Re:Keep the code, separate the UIs (Score:5, Informative)
Separating UI from logic is a design paradigm that is well over 10 years old. It's generally a good idea, not just for different form factors like this, but for cross platform apps where you may not have a good UI library across all target platforms.
Re:Keep the code, separate the UIs (Score:5, Interesting)
Separating UI from logic is a design paradigm that is well over 10 years old.
Yeah, but in practice has anyone ever been able to get it to work across radically different platforms? I mean, you're talking about moving on the fly from the ARM architecture with low memory, weak video drivers, etc. of a tablet to a full-on desktop system--just by changing the UI? Sounds like a great idea, but implementing it would be a fucking nightmare. It's hard enough as it is just trying to support all the possible desktop configurations.
Re:Keep the code, separate the UIs (Score:4, Interesting)
An entire segment has done it, in practice: all the network programmers.
Question: What kind of machine does the client have? What OS does it run?
Answer: I don't know. I can't ever know. Therefore, as a rigid matter of policy, I don't care.
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In a way...
From what I know, which may not be enough, the network programmers succeed at this because they use virtual machines that have a standardized "machine." What I am also pretty sure of (though not positive) is that - other than Windows Terminal Servers and Citrix-type servers - most of those applications running on servers are, well, server applications. They have no user interface. The user interface part of the application runs on another machine or in a browser somewhere else. In many ways, it i
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Have you looked at phones and tablets lately? Quad core processors, gigabytes of RAM, fast flash memory storage and high resolution screens backed by powerful GPUs are the norm.
Re: Keep the code, separate the UIs (Score:2)
Try well over 30 years old. MVC came out in the 70s.
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well over 30 years old is a subset of well over 10 years old...
I only started working on this stuff 15 years ago. The post I was responding to was acting as if it was something new, which it is not.
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certainly it is a beginning, if the graphical tool kits can be expanded so they can present the interface in a manner which reflects the mode of the tablet. Even the user interface could be changed easily enough as it is many of us have at least a couple of options for desktop environments that are only a login away.
I like the idea of an ubuntu tablet since it almost certainly means it can be more. It almost certainly will be capable of running android maybe similar to running virtualbox in seamless mode. I
Re:Keep the code, separate the UIs (Score:5, Interesting)
Now I finally see what Shuttleworth's been meaning when he says the same applications run on all form factors - as a developer, you separate the logic from the UI, and write three UIs: one for phone, one for tablet, and one for desktop. Until now I thought "nice in concept, but what's the point?". But if your device itself suddenly switches from a phone or tablet to a desktop, then your app can keep running and switch UIs on the fly.
What I really find neat is how tablet apps can become phone apps when docked on the side, for multitasking. This finally looks like a tablet that's not purely for consuming content.
The thing is, I'm not convinced you actually want to have a separate UI... The Microsoft strategy of shoving a phone/tablet UI on a desktop or a desktop UI on a phone/tablet is clearly moronic, but I think there is some middle-ground where you can design a UI that works well for all the hardware.
For one thing, there doesn't seem to be a clear distinction between phone/tablet/laptop/desktop - if we look at the hardware, all of these devices have varying screen sizes and they can all have varying combinations of input technologies - my phone has a keyboard, some laptops have touch screens, you can connect a keyboard and mouse to a tablet. What we have is more like a continuum:
- phones tend to have small touch screens with no keyboard (but some phones are practically big enough to be verging on "small tablet" size, some phones have keyboards and trackballs, pretty much any android phone can have a bluetooth/usb mouse and keyboard attached to it). Many phones can also be plugged into external monitors.
- tablets tend to be a bit bigger than phones (but there isn't a lot of difference between a small tablet and a large phone). They have touch screens, but again, you can connect keyboards and mice to them, plug them into external screens, etc.
- laptops are often, again, a bit bigger than tablets. But again, there's a cross over here - a small laptop may have the same screen size as a large tablet. They have keyboards and trackpads and you can connect external keyboards, mice, screens to them. But many laptops also have touch screens - what's the difference between a touch screen laptop and a tablet with a keyboard and mouse?
- desktops are usually treated the same as laptops. Again, often bigger screens (but not always), they have keyboards and mice but nothing stopping you having a touch screen.
So where do you draw the line - at what point do you say "we're now on a tablet" and switch to the tablet interface? What's the justification for switching the *entire* UI to a tablet interface? Is it down to the input devices available? If I unplug the keyboard and mouse then am I suddenly incapable of using multple windows at once? Similarly, if I connect a keyboard and mouse to a tablet, do I suddenly expect to lose all the touch screen controls?
As for screen sizes - certainly as the screen gets smaller I'm more likely to want applications full-screen; and conversely for large screens I'm more likely to want applications in windows. But this isn't necessarilly the case for all applications. For example, even on a tablet, I may want an instant messaging conversation to be displayed at the same time as surfing the web, so enforcing full-screen-everything seems like the wrong approach.
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Damn, I think that coffee was caffiene free.
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I'm not convinced you actually want to have a separate UI... ... I think there is some middle-ground where you can design a UI that works well for all the hardware.
Sure, for some types of apps you would want to go this route. Though Android discovered the hard way that people with tablets often don't just want that tablet to be cluttered with enlarged phone apps (ie: scaled up). MVC allows you to have separate UI's so that you can take advantage of larger screen spaces and the extra UI features they enable, while only having one set of program logic. This is how iOS Universal Apps work. You have one set of UI's for iPad and another for iPhone/iPod-Touch. The iPad has
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A well made Android app is able to adapt it's UI for different size / density screens too, or have completely different UI layouts for different devices. The more popular apps do this very well and it's not hard to design for. Unfortunately a lot of Android developers still design primarily for phones and leave tablet owners with the same layout. It's getting better though.
I'm mainly an Android user and developer but love the way Ubuntu for tablets manages this side by side app stuff. Same with Surface - it
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I am not trained yet (Score:2)
I have got a tablet and am REALLY in the market for one that has TRUE multi-tasking and DOES keep state and not have to constantly swap out apps to save memory.
Mind you, I am NOT that hopeful any of the tablet makers in business can supply. Take something as simple as storage space. micr-sd cards are tiny AND at the expense of the customer. A slot makes your device more capable at the cost of a few dollars at most. Yet how many devices have say a dual slot capacity? Why not a quad slot? Why not an optional
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Apple ripped open the MP3 player market and did what Blizzard did with WoW to the market. It showed that ALL the tiny players could have been tech giants, no THE biggest company in the WORLD for a long time... if only they had dared to simply sell to people devices that could hold a bit of music.
But Apple weren't the first, they didn't have the most storage and they didn't have the most features...they dared to strip away the commonplace features and focus on design and user experience.
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It's not that hard to do. Current Android / iOS apps adapt on the fly to different screen orientations and can adjust their layout for different size / density devices. It just takes a slightly different approach from the outset, a bit like responsive web design - you change the way you think about the UI constraints and end up with a UI that adapts to practically any size, orientation or pixel density.
finally, a tablet that will be welcome here (Score:3, Interesting)
provided that it isn't locked down, so we can disable all the snooping and logging canonical is doing these days...
and provided that it can be used without a mandatory online account. you should be able to use one anonymously, and pay for apps with an anonymous prepaid card (like a gaming card, etc).
and if open source (so we can see what they're doing. there's a lot of nosey apps out there) apps take off.
Re:finally, a tablet that will be welcome here (Score:5, Informative)
Thankfully the snooping is going to remain optional (although still opt-out rather than opt-in). I've still got it turned off on my desktop, but reading documents like this [ubuntu.com] (specifically the Data and metrics passed to the Smart Scopes service section) are a little reassuring, in that you can see that the developers are thinking about how to take only the data they need and are trying to protect it. I particularly like their (far-off) plans for sending location information: they won't send your exact co-ordinates like Google or Apple does - they'll round them off to maybe a 10km square because that level of location accuracy is probably not needed for the search. There's also a friendlier summary of the spec [omgubuntu.co.uk] available.
That said, while this kind of fuck up [launchpad.net] is still happening, I'm going to keep online search off, despite being tempted by functionality like its iView (Aussie Hulu) support.
I too hope that you don't need an Ubuntu One account to use the tablet...
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This is no longer feasible. Since they did it once, by default, and without graceful means to turn it off or putting clear labels on it, there is *nothing* that will stop them from doing it again or doing similar acts. And it's clear from his own statements about the problem that Mark Shuttleworth, as the leader of Ubuntu, does not understand what the problem is, so it's clear that security is an afterthought for him, not a critical part of what Ubuntu does.
It's like catching your wife in bed with a chicken
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You are obviously speaking from experience here!
I always suspected Unity caused sexual deviance - now we know it is true!
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Yes, but I'm referring to the use of geese as guard animals at US military bases. They're less expensive than dogs, and quite effective, and they *can* break your arms with their wings.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,961483,00.html [time.com]
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You forgot about Ubuntu surveillance code that tracks searches unless you mean to use the guest account of your own tablet permanently.
Which part of "so we can disable all the snooping and logging canonical is doing these days" in the post you replied to didn't make sense?
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That's one plugin, for which there is a clear legal notice displayed, which also explains how to switch it off.
I just uninstalled the thing. If I want Amazon seeing my searches, I'll go browse their website.
Unity hate in 1, 2, 3... (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok people. Please but any Unity hate posts in this thread. Thank you.
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I hated Unity at first. It was a buggy and foreign experience that made my desktop much less usable than I was used to on previous Linux experiences. Then many of the the most glaring bugs got worked out and I found out why alt+tab was so broken for multiple instances of the same app -- for same-app window switching, use alt+` instead.
There's still bugs, but they're slowly ironing it out. And about that foreign experience -- I have some older versions on another machine I rarely use. Recently, I fired that
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The alt-` thing is better than the standard Windows alt-tab behaviour... the alt-tab behaviour is alas, different to Windows, which is why it "feels wrong" to those of us who have laboured there a long time.
But yes, the main reason people hate on it, as far as I can make out, is that it's different.
They moaned soooo much about it when the close / minimize buttons were moved to the top left. But you think about it - it's the most efficient placement. What's the first thing you want to do when you close an ap
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Yes, the top-right window control feels clumsy and inefficient when I do have to use Windows for work purposes.
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Mute the sound that application is making - that's actually a really good idea. Applications do have individual volume controls on both Windows and Linux (PulseAudio) now, so not having to enter the detailed sound mixer as you do now would seem useful.
Flash video understands you would like to mute often and provides a button.
Always-on-top is in the context menu for Unity, along with Always on Visible Workspace.
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I'm really surprised, this story has by far the smallest ratio of irrational Ubuntu hate posts of any Ubuntu story in the past year. This must mean that Shuttleworth is onto something - and in fact I do find it difficult to find major flaws with the stuff he said in TFA. I found the whole idea appealing from the start, and if this plan works out, I'll be the first in line to get an Ubuntu TV, phone, tablet, laptop, and/or whatever I have to buy to finally get seamless free software-based unification for my
we need a tablet emulator (Score:2)
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extending desktop to mobile devices has been done quite a few times now already.
I only see Ubuntu Duplo (Score:3)
Reading the Ubuntu site, I only see phone and tablet apps, no desktop programs. While a video player often looks "special" on a desktop (and I hate that, video players already eat enough resources when playing videos), a word processor must not. Or a CAD program. Or a spreadsheet. My e-mail client on my phone looks totally different than on my desktop and I want to keep it that way. I much rather configure my phone, tablet and desktop separately than having one config to overrule them all and in infeasibility bind them.
This is the opposite of Ubuntu for Android, where you get a desktop if you plug desktop hardware (through a docking device) into your phone. If that desktop is a real destop (XFCE, LXDE or whatever, not Unity), that would by far more practical.
Tiling (Score:3)
I'd love a good modern tiling WM for desktop/mobile/phone - with configurable numbers of panes/arrangements on different devices (i.e. a single one on a phone, plug in an external monitor and get a split horizontal with sub-panes on the right.)
Unfortunately Unity (and Ubuntu) ain't it.
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I've been thinking about this. In my mind's eye, Awesome might be well configured for something like that, simply because it's written in Lua and pretty adaptable for things like eg. widgets. But I don't know the language or the wm well enough to know the answer to whether it would be adaptable for a touchscreen device without much of a headache: I'm guessing not.
Personally, things like this new Ubuntu framework only have limited applicability unless I can get my choice of window manager/DE once we switch o
Tablet size vs. phone size (Score:2)
You don't want to tile anything on a small mobile device screen.
Could you elaborate? A 7" tablet's screen is big enough to contain two windows the size of a phone's screen, and a 10" tablet's screen is as big as that of the laptops they were selling from 2009-2012. I have one of those laptops, and I have no problem putting two 80-column text editor windows side by side. The only thing missing from Android is a manifest flag for flexible screen size that would allow this sort of window management. Currently, applications are allowed to assume windo
160 columns on 10" display (Score:2)
Two 80-column text editor windows side by side on a 10" screen? That would mean an extremely small font.
On a 1024x600 pixel netbook display, it'd mean a 6 pixel wide font. Currently, Terminal is using Droid Sans Mono 9, IDLE and gedit are configured with Liberation Mono 8, and Leafpad uses Droid Sans Mono 8.
Sounds just painful.
In practice, 6 pixel wide monospace fonts haven't been painful to me, especially with subpixel antialiasing and the fact that a laptop display sits closer than the arm's length of a desktop PC's external monitor.
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The point would be it would be configurable. I think there is more mileage in allowing default desktop tiling arrangements (even on a per-virtual-desktop basis). A lot of time you're either using the window fullscreen or rearranging things on the desktop. The recent ability to drag windows to an edge to split the screen is an acknowledgement of that.
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Says someone who doesn't have a Galaxy Note.
I meant (but didn't write clearly) that on a small screen you'd be using a single 'tile'.
Hardware Partner (Score:5, Interesting)
Shuttleworth also addressed the fragmentation problem faced by Android. He says manufacturers and carriers don't want to fall into that trap again, and that they've been receptive to the idea of leaving the core of Ubuntu alone while tweaking their individual services instead.
And this shows how much Mr. Shuttleworth doesn't get the phone and tablets manufacturers and carriers and why there is no hardware partner and in my opinion they will not have one soon, like Ubuntu TV still doesn't have one. The reason Android took off is because Google was very careful to rebuild a lot of common Linux distribution modules by Apache licensed ones, for example the libc library. Manufactures and carriers want full control, they tolerate the GPL in the Linux kernel because they have no other viable option, but they don't like it (I am talking about them, I am not saying that I hate the GPL before people start implying that). Do you think Samsung will be happy to be forced to share their Android modifications that allow multiple applications (some vetted ones) on the same screen with all other OEMs?
These words of Mr. Shuttleworth only gives me hints that they have no secret hardware partner
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and by the way if some OEMs don't want to "fall again" on the Android "fragmentation trap" it is more easy for them to stop modifying base Android that switch to Ubuntu, so this sounds like a marketing lie to me
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This means they could license their code to Samsung so that Samsung can make all the changes it wants without sharing them back to the world. Probably Canonical will ask some money for the privilege.
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And Unity is only a module of an Ubuntu installation, there are many dependencies that aren't copyrighted by Canonical
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But only for the libraries ; not for things that depend on the libraries.
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...they tolerate the GPL in the Linux kernel because they have no other viable option...
Just curious (really curious, not trolling) -- why is something like FreeBSD not considered a viable option?
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Nobody has given them a platform of the size of Android using a BSD kernel, no that the FreeBSD kernel is unable to do that, but Google is a Linux shop. If four years ago someone did that, it should have worked, today after the success of Android, OEMs need more than a simple switch to a BSD kernel. Ubuntu is offering them less "freedom" (notice the quote, freedom to the OEMs) to do what they want with the code without sharing than Android
Easy target (Score:2)
This time Mark is picking on the operating system with the most jarring experience ever found in operating systems. Well, maybe not, the Windows 3.x days are long behind me, but I do remember how bad that could get....
All maximized all the time (Score:2)
Good news: This is no longer the case (Score:3)
UI design (Score:2, Interesting)
The OS certainly looks nice, but how is it any different than mobile or tablet OS? I'm seeing a bit of sensationalism due to the mere fact that this OS didn't come from one of the big three. I was expecting a lot more to this claim than a mere jab at Windows 8's desktop mode. I agree, that was a massively botched example of UI design and an indication of compromise. But it's jarring for the first half an hour of use; it's not some sort of profound UI issue.
The issue facing mobile and tablet UI is more one o
It comes down to this (Score:2)
Sounds cool on the surface (Score:2)
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Promising (Score:2)
I mentally and emotionally left ubuntu behind when this 'train wreck' started, and have been churning along with Mint and Debian (for servers) getting most of my love.
This clarifies what the intent is for Ubuntu. More importantly to me, it resonates in a way that win8 and 'just like tablets and the new windows' never did -- this hints at a unix / X11 / 'network is the computer' mindset, where the UI and the data/computation are decoupled in ways that add flexibility, rather than straitjacketing power users
Can't wait... (Score:2)
...to get one and replace Unity with KDE :)
Approach (Score:2)
That's what's really different certainly between our approach to convergence and for example Windows 8, where when you're in the desktop mode, which looks like Windows 7, and suddenly you get the new tile-based interface, it's a stark transition that can be jarring for users.
Um. That's because you made the Ubuntu Desktop look like a tablet interface, so of course there's less difference - duh.
Enough Canonical (Score:2)
For three days, there's been flacking for Canonical's attempt, yet again, to commercialize Linux on end user devices. Canonical previously claimed their product was going to ship on the EeePC (it never reached retail channels), and on Dell (where it was more expensive than Windows). Worse, Canonical ships a Linux preloaded with ad-supported crapware.
Linux tablets are available from China [alibaba.com]. Some are good, some are awful, most are cheap.
in my opinion, the jarring was already there (Score:2)
Ultimately it doe
In other ringing endorsements.... (Score:2)
HP Touchpad (Score:2)
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Re:Hey, Shuttleworth, Listen up (Score:5, Informative)
When I sit down at my PC, I want an interface that is designed for use on a PC, using a mouse and keyboard, and a large display.
When I pick up my phone or tablet, I want an interface that is designed for use on a phone or tablet, using finger swipes, taps, and gestures, and a small display.
THESE ARE TWO COMPLETELY FUCKING DIFFERENT THINGS.
Stop trying to make them the same.
Read page two, doofus:
"Developers will be able to ship a single application binary which itself can respond to the different form factors," Shuttleworth said. "You will be able to write a single application binary that can run on a phone, or a tablet, a PC, or a TV, and it will declare to the system which of those form factors it can support and we will present the appropriate interface for that application on each of those form factors."
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The reason people are skeptical about that, is that Ubuntu's default packaging suggests that
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The reason people are skeptical about that, is that Ubuntu's default packaging suggests that Canonical thinks Unity might be "an appropriate interface" for the desktop.
Perhaps a good test of Canonical's brand new magic tech, will be to see if they can ship a certain application which does what they describe. The application I have in mind is .. oh .. let's say .. application launcher. Can a version of, or an alternative to, Unity be made, which uses this new toolkit?
And not suck? :-)
Shuttleworth, please don't say that one kind of application is a special case, somehow outside the scope of your toolkit. We're just talking about an interface where users somehow pick something out of a potentially long list of things. Lots of apps are variations of that theme, not just program launchers.
What does that have to do with applications?
If I design a tool to, say, track what you eat and how much exercise you do and give you information, and I'm able to design a user interface for my application that is appropriate for desktop, tablet and phone, and the right one shows up at the right time, the issue of how appropriate Unity is as a desktop application launcher is totally irrelevant.
Don't get me wrong... I miss Gnome2, but these are two different issues.
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Huh. I guess there are two ways to take what he said.
If the way the toolkit works, is that developers are required to design three UIs for each app, then your
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How much do you want to bet that Steam will be one of the first adopters of this new Ubuntu?
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> But if you plug your tablet to a keyboard / mouse, the
> apps switch to desktop mode. That seems really nice.
You're assuming that Unity is a functional "desktop mode". A lot of people disagree with you.
Re:Why care about the transition? (Score:5, Interesting)
You weren't paying attention. He isn't pushing Linux, he's pushing Ubuntu. The entirety of the system here is what he is selling.
The point of the transition is that the tablet physically becomes the desktop when you simply add a keyboard and mouse, probably via Bluetooth. You don't drop your tablet when getting home or to the office, you just dock it. There is just one device. Well, two as you'll also have a phone.
What this seems to hope to achieve is a seamless computing experience with no "put this down, boot the PC, do work, shut PC down, grab tablet and go".
Sort of a "one device to rule them all". After watching the video, I was far more intrigued than I expected to be. I fully expect my reaction to be "what a stupid fucking idea", but instead found myself saying "damn, that actually looks nice. I want one."
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When you combine this concept with the asus padfone concept, you get a "one device to rule them all", almost entirely. I wouldn't give it more than 3-5 years for a full convergence of devices in this fashion.
Re:Why care about the transition? (Score:4, Insightful)
E-mails, Facebook and all that other social media stuff is done thru a web browser. Windows has nothing to do with it, as the familiarity is in the browser and not the OS.
Witness Google's success with Chromebooks. For many people, the browser is the only interface they see.
My wife's laptop is Win7 and my desktop is Kubuntu. She is equally at home with both. The process on both is 100% identical. "Click the Firefox icon. Do whatever else -- Gmail, Hulu Plus, Amazon/Amazon Prime, Ebay, general browsing." Bookmarks are synced, both print to the same printer. The OS is rapidly becoming irrelevant.
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Re:Why care about the transition? (Score:4, Interesting)
I am not a Linux fan, however if Ubuntu was to make a phone that had the apps I want (Just because you have an app that 'does the same thing' doesn't mean I want to use it) to use, and was just a phone normally that when I got to work I could just plugin the monitor and power, bluetooth keyboard and mouse and it instantly switches the display to desktop mode and I continue working just as if I'd brought my laptop ...
I'd considering use Linux for that. I'd prefer that they make OSX an ARM platform as well, so people made fat x86/ARM binaries and I could just use iOS on the phone display and OSX when in desktop mode, with apps just switching UIs between them just like the UI changes when the screen rotates.
I want a laptop phone. I want my laptop inside my phone. I DO NOT want my phone to behave like a desktop. I DO NOT WANT my desktop to behave like a phone/tablet. I want one device that switches between the two so that as long as I have my phone, I always have my laptop.
I would give up a fully decked Retina MacBook Pro in exchange for said device in a heartbeat, even if it ran on a slow ass ARM processor (compared to my i7 laptop) for the privilege of having only one device.
You may not realize it yet, but a single converged device that does both IS the mass market. Thats where its going to go eventually. Its just a question of when we get to the point of having enough CPU power for low enough energy and size usage requirements that we get the performance we demand in our phones.
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Shuttleworth should poor some money into XFCE95 - that is where the majority of users want to go!
Re:Why care about the transition? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unity is not that bad, let's not exaggarate. Newer versions are getting speedier and more customizable so I expect most of the Ubuntu-using Linuxers will accept it.
That said, I also installed Linux Mint on my primary machine but I have Ubuntu/Unity on others. Unity works fairly well on my ARM Chromebook even without hw accelerated X.
Speedier? Male cow excrement! On my hexacore desktop with SSD, Unity Dash takes a good half second to open. Similar features that are instant on Windows 8, OS X, Gnome 3 or KDE. If by any chance I have a maximized window open, it can take a good 2 seconds. I like the idea of Unity, I like the concept of Unity, but it's a slow piece of shit.
Disclaimer: I use Ubuntu both at home and work.
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On my hexacore desktop with SSD, Unity Dash takes a good half second to open.
Yeah, alas it seems to rely pretty heavily on 3D acceleration. If you don't have 3D acceleration then it tries some sort of software rendering that is S-L-O-W (10 seconds sometimes to open the dash!) even on fast computers. And if the dash has been swapped out of RAM then again it's slow to activate. On my computers with supported 3D acceleration it's usually a very pleasant experience. On my new netbook... I grudgingly use 12.04 and the 2D version.
Re:Why care about the transition? (Score:5, Funny)
I am sure his Hexacore with SSD is using a $19.00 Intel non 3d video card and only 512 meg of ram...
People that build big machines always forget to install ram or video cards.
Re:Why care about the transition? (Score:4, Insightful)
If they can't get good linux drivers for their graphics card, then it's very possible they're stuck with no 3D acceleration. Depends whether the rig was intentionally built for linux or not.
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If they can't get good linux drivers for their graphics card, then it's very possible they're stuck with no 3D acceleration. Depends whether the rig was intentionally built for linux or not.
Work:
Intel HD3000. Slow dash.
Home:
Intel HD4000. Slow dash.
NVidia 8400 GS or GTX 550 Ti with nouveau or proprietary drivers: slow dash, slow/choppy desktop preview.
ATI 5450 or 4200 (chipset VGA) with galeon or proprietary drivers: slow dash.
Again, no issues with other desktop environments. 12 Gb+ RAM too.
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I hate unity, but the question arises (after trying the latest on an ancient Eee901 netbook): WTF are you doing wrong? This lowly tablet doesn't even take that long to pull out the dash.
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Maybe 5 years ago, but this has been fairly steadily improving lately. So I'd fail to find that an excuse for anything, as dc29A fails to explain as he uses cards that are so old I'm surprised they can even handle dash. It isn't a serious rig.
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Back in the day, I used to do lots of system/shell scripting using JScript, and it never slowed anything down. You're telling me that Windows 2000 on contemporary hardware could handle this better than a modern Linux on modern kit?
Think about what you're saying, son.
Re:Why care about the transition? (Score:4, Insightful)
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The slowness in the Dash opening is, as far as I can tell, due to overuse of Zeitgeist (which is overengineered for what it does). So making the window manager faster isn't going to help there, and in general, it seems difficult to fix without a rethink of how that part of the desktop is implemented.
(FWIW, I use Unity as my primary desktop/window manager; I really like what it's trying to be, and it's quite a bit of the way there already, but there are a huge number of rough edges and it's still pretty slow
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I find the same. Using Maemo on a Nokia N810 and playing with Meego on my Eee PC showed the good sense of a UI that is intelligently designed to work well with wide screens, especially with GPU accelerated compositing. Unity has a few rough edges but conceptually it works, and the execution is catching up with the concept with each release. But it is dog slow, to the point of being much too annoying to use, with lags, latencies and lock ups. I've only tried it with modest hardware such as Intel Atom wit
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Unity as a UI IS bad when used in a traditional computer. Same as how Windows 8 utterly sucks to those of us that do work on our computers. I have 3 24" monitors with at least 6 windows open at once and I need them all active at once. the Desktop UI had not get in my way. Under windows 8 it does. Under Unity it does.
Separating out the Desktop UI to be different between professionals and home users is a HUGE mistake when it comes to productivity. There are a LOT of really stupid changes in Unity.
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On the other hand, most people don't think twice about using a search engine (regardless of whether you log in or not, they can and do track your preferences), email (a plaintext postcard that any SMTP server on the transfer path can read), or even just the normal web (cross-site advertising cookies, etc).
You can turn it off. The desktop environment makes a point of telling you about it, and explains how to turn it off. You can even uninstall the components that do it, without breaking anything (except of c