
Ubuntu: One OS, one interface, all devices - tanglesome
http://www.zdnet.com/ubuntu-one-os-one-interface-all-devices-7000018613/
======
Gormo
What is this obsession with trying to stick the same UI on lots of completely
different things?

Every time I hear someone advocating this kind of "convergence", I imagine the
dashboard of a Toyota Corolla installed in the cockpit of a 747, or the
control panel from a blender transplanted onto an air conditioner.

Why do devices that do different things in different ways need to be
interacted with in the same manner?

~~~
pilgrim689
Have you seen the Ubuntu mobile/edge/phone videos? It's not the same UI. They
have the same "feel", but the UI is definitely different when you dock the
phone compared to when you're using your phone directly. I think they're
aiming for a convergent piece of hardware (phone that is also your desktop),
but only a pseudo-convergent UI (ie. same look & feel, but reasonable
compromises to adapt to the different form factors.)

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rodolphoarruda
I hate the 1-single device idea. I will resist to the last day to adopt it.

I live in a city where cell phones are stolen at the same rate as bananas are
picked by monkeys in Congo. No matter if you are poor or rich, owns a cutting
edge smartphone or a $15 one you bought at a newsstand, someday you will get
it stolen. My legal manager got so many phones stolen in the past years that
she lost count them. Her wild guess is they were more than 20. All cheap ones,
because after you loose the first couple of good ones you are forced to adapt.

As the storage capacity of those phone increase, I think we will be motivated
to keep more things in it. In case you have it stolen, damage is done.

Yes, you can still sync it to some other backup desktop PC, to your media
center in your living room, or even to the "cloud". But imagine effort
involved to restore those GBs of data every time you lose your phone. It is
not only material damage, but time/effort damage as well.

I currently use Prey on my Android, so at least I could block the phone and
force the other guy to hard reset it. I'm protecting my privacy but not
relieving the time/effort issue, nor the material one.

What I REALLY would like to see on a new "built-from-bottom-to-top" device is
a "brick token", a string of characters I could dictate to the carrier agent
on the phone 1 minute after my phone was stolen and that alone would turn the
device into a brick for good. Something at the lowest architectural level...
like spilling acid on top of the main board. That would really change robbers
crime lives, and bring tranquility to us consumers. Until something like this
is in place, I'll be glad to have my PC and phone being two different things.

~~~
northwest
Again, Ubuntu does _not_ force you to have a 1-single device.

It is only an _additional_ option, which, I guess, is supposed to be the thing
that creates revenues for them, by giving you an incentive to use their cloud
service.

(Personally, I will certainly refrain from using _any_ type of cloud, after
Snowden's revelations, but that's another story.)

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harrytuttle
Seriously, Microsoft have already fucked this one up.

One of the things I've learned is to learn from other peoples mistakes

(for reference to make sure I'm not written off as a Linux shill, I was MCSD
cert for the best part of a decade, own an Xbox 360 and a Lumia. Metro just
doesn't work on the desktop for me).

~~~
foolrush
It isn't solely Microsoft.

The idea of convergence is a seductive ideological fabrication of Eurowestern
making.

While seductive, there is a tremendous body of history to examine to reveal
the fallacy of the position.

Automobiles, cellular phones, portable cameras, pencils and pens, floor
coverings, building designs, gardens, aircraft, etc. Every single example
grows in diversity and complexity away from their base initial forms.

Design appears to begin at a singular starting point and grow in diversity as
needs evolve[1].

Only a superficial study of design history would struggle against firm
historical evidence of divergence.

“…these examples reinforces my thesis that in order to design a tool, we must
make our best efforts to understand the larger social and physical context
within which it is intended to function.” - Bill Buxton

[1] Apologies for the apparent forcing of Eurowestern metanarrative arcs onto
phenomena where no such arc may exist.

~~~
minor_nitwit
Interesting that many of those things have converged in the form of portable
computing already.

Would you have said that a phone should not have a camera? Or a phone should
not try to do scheduling? Be an alarm clock? etc.

~~~
foolrush
I would hope that we can agree that at some point a qualitative and privileged
"good enough" metric applies here?

Is it reasonable that a photographer would prefer a cellular phone camera over
a focused device? Or a medical imager? Or a security system designer? Or an
astronomer? Or an extreme sports enthusiast? The point stands that the
technology diverges to meet contextual needs.

Following this reasoning, we can wager on two futures. One where we use less
devices and less things. Or one where we use more specific devices that meet
contextual needs more acutely.

I comfortably accept the latter. Design exists in a multi-dimensional realm
where some design decisions may inherently pull away from others.

Unless someone wants to believe in a car that seats six, goes from zero to
sixty in four seconds, has a child carrier area, ravages off-road snow
conditions, and offers an upgrade to carry six sheets of plywood.

Bill Buxton's analysis of wooden Inuit coastal maps is fabulous, and I would
encourage reading his piece if you can find it.

------
slacka
First of all, the UI is not the same when in phone mode and desktop mode. In
desktop mode it runs traditional Unity and in mobile mode it runs Ubuntu
Touch, a gesture based UI that only looks similar to Unity. I spent some time
on a BlackBerry 10, and I loved it. Gesture based UIs are the future for
smartphones.

I'm willing to cut Ubuntu some slack on Unity and Mir. Despite all the haters,
the latest Unity is actually turning out to be a decent UI. For those of us on
16:9 monitors, a vertical taskbar was the right choice. Vertical taskbars were
broken for over 10 years GNOME[1], so I can understand Shuttleworths
frustration. I also love the search bar lense UI.

The mistake they made was shipping Unity half-baked. Yes, it can get
unresponsive on low-end hardware. But much of this comes from poor 3D driver
support under Linux, and bloated, slow, and outdated X[2] and compiz. The
sooner those two die, the sooner we can have a responsive modern 3D
accelerated compositing window managers under Linux.

[1][https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=86382](https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=86382)

[2][http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44)

------
keithpeter
Yes, Unity is fine if you use it for a few weeks on the desktop/laptop. I
really enjoyed Ubuntu 12.04 with huge repositories of applications and an
interface that used the 'extra' width of a cheap 1080p monitor.

I have not yet had the opportunity to explore other form factors, although fat
fingering most GTK3+ apps would not be fun I imagine.

I am currently 'on the bench' regarding Unity after 12.04 until bug 739184 [1]
is addressed. This makes keyboard oriented use of LibreOffice impossible,
ironic given the keyboard orientation of Unity.

I hope 14.04 addresses this issue and also supports nvidia proprietary drivers
(or runs nouveau at a reasonable speed) [2].

[1]
[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libreoffice/+bug/7...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libreoffice/+bug/739184)

[2] [http://fridge.ubuntu.com/2013/06/27/mir-plans-
in-13-10/](http://fridge.ubuntu.com/2013/06/27/mir-plans-in-13-10/)

~~~
minor_nitwit
What are you thoughts on gnome shell?

~~~
keithpeter
I'm using it on the desktop PC (13.04 Ubuntu from netinstall with gnome
packages and GDM). Seems to work fine, and of course does not have any menu
accelerator key issues as the menu presentation is standard.

I actually prefer the Unity launcher and its permanent visibility, but, as I
spend a small proportion of my time _using_ the desktop features and most in a
Web browser and Office package, I'm 'on the bench' until the menus get sorted
in LO.

I have not tried either Shell or Unity on a tablet device, and I have
reservations about the extent to which one UI can handle the 'dynamic range'
of displays from pocket sized to wall sized.

------
daker
This is what we call Unity Next, the One & responsive UI
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4gXaf08GTI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4gXaf08GTI)

------
charlesray
Unity is passably good. It is usable. It is a step forward from where Linux
interfaces were years ago. But it is awful compared to just about anything
other than TouchWiz.

------
bch
On one hand (one _X_ to rule them all): Have we learned nothing from the
mistakes of the past yet?

On the other: As a huge fan of NetBSD (which is portable across nearly 60
architectures), if Ubuntu can learn lessons (and share them) from this work
and apply to it whatever they think their core competency is, more power to
them.

------
hardwaresofton
I wonder if Microsoft will ever get any credit for being the (relative) first
company to serious push this form of design.

Probably not

------
tjdetwiler
What is the value add of using 1 device everywhere vs multiple devices with
all my data synchronized? Aside from needing a cloud solution to sync the data
I don't see the upside to putting everything into a single device.

~~~
minor_nitwit
Synchronization is a solution to the problem of needing multiple devices, but
a single device is still preferable.

~~~
lttlrck
Multiple device synchronization gives redundancy and backup. Plus the ability
to use multiple devices simultaneously.

~~~
minor_nitwit
I don't see why data rendundacy and backup would require device rendundancy -
especially for the common person.

After all, I don't have two lights in every room in my house just in case a
light bulb blows, I just buy a pack of lightbulbs.

In the case of a drive failure, there should be a way to recover data loss,
but this shouldn't be ever present and visible.

As far as simulataneous device usage - I'm not sure I understand what you're
saying. Most brains can be thought of as single threaded working with multi-
threaded multi-core parallel executing devices. The limit in doing multiple
things at once has always been biological in my case. For things running in
the background - this can be done with current technology.

------
northwest
> The ultimate question, of course, is will you buy into this?

I definitely will:

This is probably the best _open_ mobile OS alternative, right after FirefoxOS.

~~~
nilved
Those are literally the two open mobile OSes, so being second place isn't a
great feat.

~~~
northwest
FirefoxOS is "more open" in the sense that everything is HTML5, nothing is
"native".

But we'll have to see if this approach already fits the bill or not.
(Encryption is just 1 use case that comes to mind where you'll still have to
rely on native applications, to get the best possible security.)

~~~
hollerith
Explain, please. In what sense is it "more open" for everything to be HTML5 as
opposed to "native" open-source code?

~~~
northwest
Yeah, there may be a misunderstanding - I meant "more open" only in the sense
that a HTML/CSS/JS-based platform is almost certainly going to be an easier
target for more developers (which will add the "meat" to the "skeleton").

EDIT: I just read that Ubuntu actually supports _both_ approaches: HTML5 apps
AND native apps. Therefor, it should actually be able to attract more
developers.

------
srinivasanv
Way too many applications I use (including Sublime Text) just aren't compiled
for ARM, so it's not really a "one OS" solution for me.

~~~
Shorel
And what makes you think they never will?

If Ubuntu Edge succeeds, I can't see why application developers will not jump
ship towards ARM.

~~~
srinivasanv
Certainly, but only for applications in active development. Many are closed-
source and not being worked on anymore.

------
codex
Mac OS X/iOS: One OS, one interface, all devices

ChromeOS/Android: One OS, one interface, all devices

Windows: One OS, one interface, all devices

All three of the above companies have been moving in this direction for quite
some time. Everybody wants to do it. Canonical is always two to five years
late with any trend.

~~~
mtgx
I don't think any of those fits the bill.

Mac OSX and iOS are not the same OS, nor do they have the same interface.
Using the same core/kernel doesn't count. By that logic Android is the same as
Ubuntu. It obviously isn't.

Chrome OS and Android are not the same OS, nor do they have the same
interface.

Windows 8 has mostly the same start screen - quite different UI everywhere
else. They are also not one OS, just use the same core, as iOS and Mac OS X
do.

Ubuntu could get the closest to this vision, because they have the phone OS
integrated with the desktop OS. And I guess Android could, too, if Google
commits to Android on desktops eventually (I think they normally would, but I
have no idea if they will and when, because of Chrome OS).

~~~
codex
I'm not saying that they are there yet, but that's the goal of all of these
companies. For various reasons, it's harder to merge UI paradigms on platforms
with a large base of legacy apps and users--so while all of these companies
started before Canonical did, they may well complete after Ubuntu.

~~~
Shorel
Honestly, OSX / iOS is the counterexample for convergence. Apple has two
different OS, two different application ecosystems, period.

They simply saw Apple success, and adapted. The goal of every company now is
to be the portable leader, and abandon the PC ship. It worked for Apple
because they have never been competitors in PC space. The same for Google. MS
is taking a long gamble, but they are the PC leader and have the most to lose.

Going back to convergence: Google wants just a browser as the desktop OS, and
that's not convergence at all, unless you think Responsive Web Design is
convergence. Microsoft is the one doing something a little similar to Ubuntu,
but their OS can't do desktop and portable/touch well at the same time. Or
actually, their OS can do both, but it is designed in a way that no
application can do both, and that hurts developers.

------
pasbesoin
I want to know how far down the turtles go, and when/where/how I run into a
proprietary and/or black box. Speaking generally as well as specifically, can
I really trust the device -- at least to not be originally subverted.

\----

P.S. I mean this as a real question, not just or particularly to sound snarky.
With other Canonical-hosting devices, I recall reading about Android kernels
and the like. I don't know enough, myself, to determine the answer to my
question.

~~~
microcolonel
Of course you can't trust the device, you can't do the same with intel PCs
either.

You need to spend a lot of money to offer a better deal than government
surveillance budgets have given hardware manufacturers.

------
nilved
Because it worked so well for Microsoft, yeah? At least it's pretty easy to
switch to Arch Linux.

~~~
wtetzner
Or Mint.

~~~
binderbizingdos
Or DSL.

