Ubuntu Linux coming to tablets… starting with the Google Nexus 7

@dcf5c7ecc388feb00249528d2f81c762:disqus “@fewt: I am sorry that you are an idiot. whenever somebody says “infinitely more usable” it means they know nothing about usability. It’s like saying “infinitely more beautiful” or “infinitely more artistic” . It’s really just a badge of moronic laziness about the concept being referenced.” Hey, thanks for calling me an idiot. For your information, I know plenty about usability as I am the leader of a very successful Linux distribution and one of my areas of focus is on usability improvement. “Why do people like @fewt always, and I mean always post to denigrate initiatives they don’t understand? I can’t be sure, but I have to guess that insecurity plays a role. After all, if they really thought these initiatives were useless, they would ignore them, right?” I have to turn the “moronic laziness” and “initiatives they don’t understand” statements around and point them at you, what… Read more »

Ubuntu had its place and that wasn’t on…

Wow. Wowowow. Your bias is INCREDIBLE.

Why are you hating on developers that are actually doing something worthwhile?

Does a Fedora-fork with a OSX GUI slapped over top of it entitle you to badmouth Canonical?

You also have ZERO rebuttal. No substance, nothing quantifiable. You criticize someone about personal attacks and then launch into them yourself.

Your whole argument is: someone else already did it.

It’s absurd.

Sure I am a little biased. So are you. What makes you think it is worthwhile when they can’t even pay their bills without resorting to adware?

Read my first comment, I didn’t say anything bad about them. So I replied in kind to a personal attack, deal with it.

I see the Ubuntu apologists are out in force today.

My argument is that it is pointless, and that argument stands.

@Fewt: Your initial comment was unnecessarily troll-like, so it’s not surprise that someone rose to the bait, after which you responded in kind (and practically confirmed that your first comment was a troll).

Oh you guys are so full of it. /facepalm

You reap what you sow.
Either suck it up or learn from your mistakes

Ok so I post my opinion and then get attacked by a bunch of mental midgets who are so dense that they actually think I am getting schooled. Classic.

It is sad but people defend what they want to believe and often over react and do the proverbial, “shoot the messenger” routine. Though eventually there is likely to be a OS that will blur the lines between desktop and tablet. It’s just for now it’s more Jekyll and Hyde solutions as it’s no simple matter to just change how a OS is optimized to be used or how the apps that run on the OS are also optimized. Though, they do need to start somewhere and a low cost tablet is not a terrible place to start… even if not optimal, but people should keep expectations low as this won’t happen overnight and we may still be years from a proper desktop Linux distro making it in the tablet market. Especially, if they insist on using existing distros instead of starting fresh and build something actually designed for both… Read more »

Eventually we’ll just stop posting our opinions and while they will have “won” everyone else will lose because they will have chased off all of the people with the knowledge and experience that they simply don’t have. It does seem much like a Jekyll and Hyde solution. One of the benefits that Android and also iOS bring over Ubuntu or any other desktop platform is that they were designed from day 1 for touch. We’ve seen all sorts of tablet / phone / pda desktop os ports over the years especially over in the Windows world with the XP tablets from the early 2000s, all the way back to GRID tablets running Windows 3. None of them were a success because the operating system wasn’t designed from the ground up for a tablet. Things like task management, control panel interfaces, and other things become very difficult to use as they… Read more »

“I think we’ll see Windows 8 fail here also because it makes the same mistake – it is a desktop OS with a touch menu, but under the hood it’s still a desktop OS.” It’s definitely a gamble, but it’s more complicated with Windows 8. Since the Modern UI is also different under the hood and is more literally a Jekyll & Hyde setup. The modern UI is designed differently from the NT Kernel on up from traditional Windows. While also not really intended just for tablets, it is very well optimized for tablet usage. It’s just the the Traditional desktop is still there for legacy support and to deal with usages that the Modern UI isn’t yet optimized to handle as well. Since MS traditional user base won’t be giving up their old desktops any time soon. Something like having Ubuntu work as the desktop mode for Android would… Read more »

I’m sorry but I have to agree with Mister Arkadin (although I don’t think calling you an idiot is in place) – there is simply no reason to disqualify Ubuntu as a tablet OS exactly like there is no reason to disqualify Android as a desktop OS. I have no reason to believe they can’t make the migration.

Just to prove this point – I’m writing this comment from a Playbook which runs a QNX OS – the same OS runs on routers, missiles, car entertainment systems and desktops.

I think your opinion comes from your assumption that tablets and desktops/laptops are two totally different systems. My assumption is that the border between tablets and desktops/laptops will get blurred as the time will pass.

Link or GTFO.

Go to Google!
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=184564
http://www.muktware.com/3744/nvidia-employee-asks-how-they-can-improve-linux-support#.UI4Ls8Uxruo
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTE5MTc

Sorry but desktop apps do need to be optimized for tablet usage if you want a proper porting. You may get away with some things but desktop apps are optimized for desktop usage. They don’t scale well, they’re mainly optimized to be interacted with a keyboard and mouse, and they’re not made to be processor and energy efficient like mobile apps. The two main things that have kept desktop OS from being successful on mobile devices is first required too much resources, only recently has the average mobile device gotten powerful enough to properly be able to run desktop software, and second is how they are optimized doesn’t work well with small screens and touch only UI, Now I’ve used a Playbook too, along with other tablets, and despite your opinion it doesn’t change any of the above. The Playbook OS is like other mobile OS optimized for mobile tablet… Read more »

“They don’t scale well, they’re mainly optimized to be interacted with a keyboard and mouse, and they’re not made to be processor and energy efficient like mobile apps.”

I’m with you on your second point in that sentence: desktop apps are usually optimized for keyboard and mouse input, *because this is what has defined the desktop environment since 1984*. I’m not entirely sold on the other two points, because those are tied to different design decisions, not simply the fact that an application is running on a desktop.

There’s a few reasons why the other points are valid… Desktop OS and apps were designed for systems that aren’t configured in the same way as tablets. For most desktops, higher resolution means larger screens but for tablets they usually mean just higher PPI. Most desktop OS and apps have many presets and not all of them are easily user adjustable. So things like scaling can significantly effect usability. Use of image for icons, skins, etc. don’t allow for a dynamic range of uses because images can’t be auto scaled like vector graphics and desktops are harder to update than mobile OS, especially for apps no longer actively maintained. For performance, mind that most of these tablets are only starting to reach the performance range of what most would consider netbook performance range. One of the many reasons why desktop Linux hasn’t been used widely on mobile devices is because… Read more »

What I was objecting to (and not terribly strenuously either, if you re-read my original reply) was your characterization that these are fundamental characteristics of desktop *apps*. In your reply, you mix app and OS in order to justify those points. My point is that design for keyboard and mouse is definitely baked into most apps — that is, the *application code* assumes these inputs (or their equivalents). The other two things are far more controlled by the UI toolkit and the OS. If Canonical (or anyone else) provided binary-compatible versions of popular UI toolkits that properly handled scaling, as well as underlying OS pieces that better handle P-states and scheduling for a tablet environment, many desktop apps would be fine on a tablet except for the question of expecting keyboard and mouse input. As for scaling in particular, I think it’s necessary to mention the iOS strategy before calling… Read more »

“The other two things are far more controlled by the UI toolkit and the OS.” No, you’re not getting the point. Sure, most of the power consumption is handled by the OS/System. However, the OS can only control so much but unless the apps work with it then it will always be handicapped! Desktop apps aren’t designed to be aware of power consumption like mobile apps. Take a photo app with geo tagging for example, when power gets low it will either offer or automatically switch off the GPS to conserve power. For desktop apps there’s usually no direct APIs available to give that functionality. Features like always connected standby are generally not what desktop apps are designed to work with for example. So you either save power and have little to nothing running or keep the system working and consuming power. This is why apps power optimization is also… Read more »

1. A stylus pen will solve you any mouse problem. 2. Virtual keyboard can easily replace a hardware keyboard. Of course it is much easier to use a regular mouse/keyboard when you need a long session will of work. But then again nothing prevents you from using a keyboard/mouse with your tablet. As for optimizing applications for tablets then: 1. Almost no tablet application use any kind of measure to reduce power consumption. Most applications are interactive which means you have to respond immediately to requests but most of the time you are idle (and don’t consume much resources anyway – even not on a desktop). 2. Setting a process into an idle state when it’s not in focus is currently an unneeded feature of ios and android. It is simply not a big issue if processes keep on running even if they are out of focus – how do… Read more »

“1. A stylus pen will solve you any mouse problem.” No, it will definitely help but not everything is just as good with a pen as with a mouse and vice versa. It’s a different tool and has it’s own strength and weaknesses. Besides, neither a pen or mouse changes the other issues that compound the potential problems. Such as a tiny menu is still tiny and even a mouse or pen have limits to accuracy. Never mind how careful the user has to be to hit the right spot! “2. Virtual keyboard can easily replace a hardware keyboard.” More like an exaggeration… Virtual keyboards don’t provide tactile feedback, and make it harder to use the tablet anyway, since a virtual keyboard needs screen space that reduces the space to view what you are typing and where! Many times you would end up typing something and have what you’re typing… Read more »

“1. Almost no tablet application use any kind of measure to reduce power consumption. Most applications are interactive which means you have to respond immediately to requests but most of the time you are idle (and don’t consume much resources anyway – even not on a desktop).” This is completely untrue. Only bad applications written by amateur developers behave this way. Most applications are designed to idle on wait so they aren’t absorbing more processing resources than absolutely necessary. They also perform garbage collection to ensure they aren’t using more memory than required during execution. “2. Setting a process into an idle state when it’s not in focus is currently an unneeded feature of ios and android. It is simply not a big issue if processes keep on running even if they are out of focus – how do I know that? I’m running my Playbook using settings which keep… Read more »

“Most [tablet (implied)] applications are designed to idle on wait so they aren’t absorbing more processing resources than absolutely necessary. They also perform garbage collection to ensure they aren’t using more memory than required during execution.” Most applications everywhere on all OSes idle on wait unless they have background tasks sitting on worker threads, so I’m not really sure what you mean, unless you’re referring to Android’s Activity Lifecycle. The difference between desktop and mobile in that case is that Android lets you know when you’ve been disconnected from the windowmanager, so you can pause your graphics loop, if you have one. Also, Android applications are supposed to be written so they can be killed and resumed at any time. The application doesn’t control that “idle” behavior though; the OS does. As for garbage collection, I’m only aware of two specific instances on Android in which application developers are encouraged… Read more »

“Most applications everywhere on all OSes idle on wait unless they have background tasks sitting on worker threads, so I’m not really sure what you mean, unless you’re referring to Android’s Activity Lifecycle. The difference between desktop and mobile in that case is that Android lets you know when you’ve been disconnected from the windowmanager, so you can pause your graphics loop, if you have one. Also, Android applications are supposed to be written so they can be killed and resumed at any time. The application doesn’t control that “idle” behavior though; the OS does.” That was my point. Apps aren’t in a race condition when in the background, which seemed like the implication. The application can control idle behavior within the scope of the applications functions. “As for garbage collection, I’m only aware of two specific instances on Android in which application developers are encouraged to manually call garbage… Read more »