Canonical Wants Ubuntu Touch Apps On The Desktop

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Canonical Wants Ubuntu Touch Apps On The Desktop

Discussed this morning during the virtual Ubuntu Developer Summit was figuring out the steps needed for bringing Ubuntu Touch mobile applications to the Ubuntu Linux desktop...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTUyMTk

[e8hffff]

The problem is most of the Ubuntu-Touch Apps are too basic for people to want to use on their desktop.

If there was a means to trigger a KDE Plasma Widget style mode, turning the Apps transparent and contained nicely then people may use some as widgets on Unity/Ubuntu Desktop. Example you could have the Weather App as a Weather Widget rather then it sitting in a conventional window container looking unattractive and plain.

[arashbm]

Example you could have the Weather App as a Weather Widget rather then it sitting in a conventional window container looking unattractive and plain.

or you could just type "weather" in dash, and it will show you weather based on your location city. (13.10)

[Figueiredo]

This is a much need action. Core apps must integrate really well into the OS, they cannot be simply synched with the upstream, there will never be consistency in many dimentions. Just see the constant switching between default media players, browsers (not really switched, but time is wasted discussing which will be the default browser every cycle) and so on...

IMHO, this whole convergence thing will actually end up being good, because there is no upstream for mobile, so cannonical must actually make a move to come up with these apps either by writting themselves or by desining them and asking the community to write. When they scale back to the for the desktop, they should provide a much more stable and consistent OS overall then the current clusterfuck that is firefox + nemo + mplayer + whatever...

[Luke]

I like my existing applications

This is a much need action. Core apps must integrate really well into the OS, they cannot be simply synched with the upstream, there will never be consistency in many dimentions. Just see the constant switching between default media players, browsers (not really switched, but time is wasted discussing which will be the default browser every cycle) and so on...

IMHO, this whole convergence thing will actually end up being good, because there is no upstream for mobile, so cannonical must actually make a move to come up with these apps either by writting themselves or by desining them and asking the community to write. When they scale back to the for the desktop, they should provide a much more stable and consistent OS overall then the current clusterfuck that is firefox + nemo + mplayer + whatever...

I like the strict separation of online and offline I have with my current setup. I like firefox+nemo+mplayer over Cinnamon and wil be keeping them all. As someone who has never owned a smartphone for trust reason, I have no reason to put smartphone type apps on my desktop and won't be installing them. That said, for folks who only prior experience is smartphones Unty+apps might be more useful than the traditional environment I prefer.

"Convergence" is a security issue for what I do. Since raw camera clips are secret until and unless published, that means my camera cannot be a phone or have any kind of online connectivity. Since phone companies are untrusted, that means my file system and applications must not share a device with any software or firmware provided by a phone company. Since Hollywood is an adversary, cable TV companies and others in the sack with the MPAA and RIAA cannot be allowed to run software or provide firmware for any device also containing my file system. I can ignore TV entirely, but for me, camera, phone, modem/router, and laptop/desktop must all by physicall separate devices. That given, Cinnamon would be unusable as a DE for a video camera with a 1 1/2 inch screen and a touch OS used across two 1080P monitors will both grind your workflow to a crawl and destroy your elbow in the process.

EVERY Desktop environment out there has it's place, or they would not survive. No offense to Unity/Ubuntu devs here, I just have a different purpose for my hardware.

[Bathroom Humor]

As long as they take the right steps to ensure the interface can scale and form fit effeciently to the desktop, I won't have an issue with it. But that will be a tough puzzle to solve. There aren't many programs i would want being so simplistic, but a few single purpose things wouldn't be so bad going from mobile to desktop, given they actually look like desktop applications.

[Akka]

Krita have both tuchscreen and desktop gui. On a metro pro tablet/laptop http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiSGuCzRZFk Should be as usable with canonicals tablet as with windows 8. At least if MIR has color calibration support.