
Ubuntu Core On The Nexus 7  - vectorbunny
http://www.jonobacon.org/2012/10/26/ubuntu-core-on-the-nexus-7/
======
listic
Is Nexus 7 the first hardware of choice for Ubuntu developers?

I would love for them to start with Microsoft Surface (with keyboard as
standard in some models it would kinda be the logical choice) but I understand
that Nexus is a) earlier b) cheaper c) you have to start with something.

Right?

~~~
zanny
The transformer tablets also suit this, and also suits your responders desire
for an unlocked bootloader.

The reason for the Nexus 7 focus is simple. It is, by far, the most popular
while being very powerful tablet with market penetration.

I still think Canonical has this misguided idea that average Joe will go
through the process of unlocking their Nexus 7 to install Ubuntu, but it has a
reasoning behind it.

I would _much_ rather see Ubuntu on my Transformer Infinity, since it has hdmi
out and a keyboard dock. I could easily plug it into a monitor and have a
desktop like experience that way.

~~~
josteink
> I would much rather see Ubuntu on my Transformer Infinity

I've loaded up Ubuntu on my original Transformer.

Granted, it has a Tegra 2 CPU, which to put it mildly is not very powerful,
but Nvidia has put out the required source and modules to put up a Linux
distro which takes advantage of it.

Maybe Ubuntu just has gotten "bloated" over the years and everyone has failed
to notice because all PCs are overpowered these days, but when I booted it up
on the Transformer, a machine which runs Android flawlessly, smoothly and
responsive, I was severely disappointed.

Everything. Was. Dead. Dead. Slow. Prepare to wait multiple, multiple seconds
to open that terminal. And please don't talk aobut browser-performance. Ouch.

Maybe it will run better on the newer models, but trying it out in real life
was a little off-putting. On the other side: If Canonical is putting in effort
to get it running well on the Nexus 7, it should translate to an overall
performance-improvement across the line.

And that would be welcomed very much.

~~~
zanny
> Maybe Ubuntu just has gotten "bloated" over the years and everyone has
> failed to notice because all PCs are overpowered these days

When my terminal after starting unity is pid 12000, you can guess bloat has
occured. Even on my arch boot my terminal after auto login through the x
virtual console is pid ~500 still.

Also, Unity uses at least 300Mb of memory, and composting. Compostinggggg.

Most of the inefficiencies in a modern Arch distro, for example, are build
around plug and play mostly I think. Udev, systemd, dhcp, etc are all designed
to gently allow arbitrary hardware arrangements without interrupting the
experience, but cost performance to determine what is available and constantly
babysit the environment.

~~~
baggers
The bright side of this push to get things running well on the nexus 7 is that
these inefficiencies will have to be dealt with. I'm running this build the
Nexus7 now and, yeah its slow, but as the goal for 13.04 is getting the
performance and battery life acceptable, these developments 'should' leak back
and help the whole Ubuntu experience. It might just be the itch required to
get development focused on performance again.

------
achiang
Oops, I posted this in a different thread elsewhere on HN
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4707925>), but figured it would be
relevant to this conversation too.

\---

Hi,

I led the team that shipped this image, and I'm pretty proud of what we did. A
few thoughts about our goals for this release.

The entire point of Ubuntu core on the Nexus 7 is to highlight our desktop's
performance and resource issues. We know we're way too fat in terms of memory
consumption, CPU usage, disk footprint, etc. and now we have a convenient
developer platform that folks can use to help us optimize our core in
preparation for a future world where mobile dominates. (nb, I've been calling
it Ubuntu Pilates)

The great thing about Ubuntu on the Nexus 7 is that it finally provides a
convenient, cheap, ARM platform where all the standard Linux tools work.
Believe me, I've hacked on pandas, rpis, etc. and for what we're trying to do
here, the Nexus 7 is so much easier to develop on.

And if I may insert some editorial, I often see the HN crowd complain about
Apple's developer policies, working around strange bugs in their black box
APIs, etc. This is your chance to help build out an open platform. I'm not
saying our APIs are better (in fact, they tend to be less well thought out
than Apple's), but at least you have a chance to help improve things in the
platform, rather than accepting whatever the platform gives you.

In any case, the summary here is that for now, we've got a tight focus on
improving our core OS footprint so don't expect that our current UI experience
is great (it's not) or that it's a usable replacement for Android (it's not,
unless you hook up a USB keyboard/mouse in which case it's just a super cheap,
silent terminal).

Every bit that we improve the core OS on the Nexus 7 flows back into the rest
of our platform so our desktop and our server gets leaner and faster. To make
it painfully obvious, this will help all your Amazon EC2 instances. :)

We'd love to have any help. And stay tuned for more to come. thanks, /ac

------
dpearson
I'm a little surprised that their solution for installation is to replace
Android. I would think dual-booting would be easier to get developers to
commit their own devices for testing.

Is dual-booting not possible/really difficult on the Nexus 7?

~~~
ajross
There's no real boot framework on mobile devices the way there is for PCs.
Android boxes have traditionally had the ability to boot into one of two
kernel+initrd environments: "recovery" and "system", and that's it. The
hardware OEMs make this framework work via whatever tricks they want to play,
and then ship.

Obviously a second stage bootloader could be written, but it's going to be
highly hardware-specific -- one for the OMAP4-based Galaxy Nexus wouldn't work
with the Tegra3-based Nexus 7, etc...

~~~
drivebyacct2
Could you at least write a rebooter that would rewrite /boot and then have two
"partitions"? You could go into Ubuntu and choose "reboot into Android" and it
would rewrite /boot and then restart the device?

I wonder how the bootloader for the Touchpad works. It had the functionality I
describe though I have no idea how it was implemented.

~~~
ajross
Yes, you could do that. On all the devices I've played with the kernel+initrd
image is a standard format and exposed as a single partition. You'd just dd
your new one over it and reboot. But this would be fragile, to say the least.

------
richbradshaw
Being an Ubuntu user, and a Nexus 7 owner, I really can't see this particular
implementation being of much use – the strengths of the Nexus 7 are things
like Google Now, location based stuff, it's speed and ease of use etc etc.

Ubuntu is great for doing computery things, like coding, or setting up servers
etc. On a tablet, I'm not coding (too fiddly to type $[]@% etc), and not using
it as a server, but I am using it as a map, as a book, as an email machine
etc.

To be honest, I'd rather run Android on a laptop, rather than Ubuntu on a
tablet.

~~~
jiggy2011
Weirdly enough I'm the other way around. I have an android 2.3 device and find
the UI frustrating. A mobile version of Unity with different lenses and
searches would be far better, though I would want access to android apps.

I would find this useful assuming I could connect a keyboard and mouse to it.
Assuming Android and Ubuntu could be dual booted quickly enough and I had a
decent stand for tablet I could forgo a laptop entirely.

------
6ren
This is the path to desktop disruption but Note: Nexus 7 lacks HDMI out

How does performance compare - what's an equivalent netbook/laptop/desktop?
BTW: Nexus 10 is looking good, cortex A-15
[http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/2012/10/26/impressive-
google-n...](http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/2012/10/26/impressive-google-
nexus-10-specs-leaked-and-android-4-2/)

------
kwijibob
I would love for this to be a success. I'm a long term Linux and ubuntu user.
However I do use Gnome 3.x and not Unity.

My doubts are that not even the Ubuntu team will be able to reach the level of
desktop polish that Google have achieved with Jelly Bean.

I would prefer Ubuntu to be better as it is a more open stack.

------
Create
It would be very nice to see Ubuntu Core running on the Asus Transformer Pad
series with the keyboard/battery dock.

The Nexus 7 and the TF700 seem to have very similar hardware around the
Tegra3.

------
mtgx
I think their efforts would be better spend on the upcoming Nexus 10. Larger
screen to fit Ubuntu and much better CPU and GPU, too.

~~~
zanny
If the Nexus 10 is sticking with Tegra apus, the Wayne series won't be out
until next year, so if they target an xmas release on the Nexus 10 then they
are still stuck on the same Tegra 3 (probably overclocked).

~~~
mladenkovacevic
The Nexus 10 will run on the new A15 Exynos chip (5250?) with a Mali T-604 GPU
- same as the new Chromebook

------
soapdog
Ubuntu runs on the HP TouchPad.

------
somesaba
this is my dream come true!

