Ubuntu 14.10 Convergence To Focus On Replacing Core Apps

[rikkinho]

tizen?

Seems like you're talking about Tizen...

tizen is made for cars by to evil companies

[dee.]

tizen is made for cars by to evil companies

Ubuntu is made for refridgerators by spanish leprechauns

(this made about as much sense as your post)

[mendieta]

Still not convinced there will be 14.10 desktop release. Anyways, now is the time to stick to 14.04 LTS for a while, as the Ubuntu desktop will completely replace pretty much everything within the next 12 months. It's going to be rough

I'm actually excited to see Unity next once they get something usable. Given the fact that it needs to run on phones, it will probably be a lot more efficient than KDE (which I use now), but also, a lot more of a finished, professional product.

After all, I only need a good file manager, and easy access to the few applications I use (Chrome, pitivi, and the occasional console or sopcast-player). The other thing is solid management of printers, etc., and there again, I'm sure they will probably provide an integrated system settings experience (like what I enjoy in KDE today).

All in all, I think they are moving mostly in the right direction, with little mistakes here and there. We all mess up now and then, I certainly do

[mendieta]

And here is what I'm talking about. They are achieving a high level of polish in their UI (and no, it wouldn't bother using it on a desktop)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9mnUl9v1wI

Cheers!

[ihatemichael]

Why not adapt GTK and QT to let apps work on other platforms?

Good luck rewriting it all though!

Qt.

Get it right.

[johnc]

"...replaced with Canonical's new software applications designed around a converged experience"

uh oh

can't wait to see what this new file manager is going to look like

[cynical]

Seems like you're talking about Tizen...

Yeah Tizen is impressive. They took the best thing about Gnome Shell (it's beautiful interface) and made it look terrible. The underlying tech is great (it's Linux afterall) but unless they hire some UI designers it won't be a threat to anything.

I am not actually clear of this. Does 14.10 will have mir + unity 8 enabled? Or it is replacing just the core Qt apps in Unity 7?

Yeah Michael made it confusing because of the title. Replacing core apps is one of the tasks required for convergence, but convergence itself is a massive undertaking that will likely span several releases. There is no way to know if Ubuntu 14.10 will have Mir + Unity 8 but my guess is they will probably stick with Unity 7 and have Unity 8 as a preview. Unity 7 is a really polished experience now and I don't see them replicating it in six months. I think it would be too jarring to subject users to a rough experience after this LTS; Just look at what happened with KDE 4.0 and Gnome 3.0. I'm curious if they will handle it better though, or maybe I should say that I'm... cautiously optimistic?

And here is what I'm talking about. They are achieving a high level of polish in their UI (and no, it wouldn't bother using it on a desktop)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9mnUl9v1wI

Cheers!

That's old. The latest dev release looks much better and it's performance has improved substantially. I have a hard time giving up the number and quality of apps on Android but it's really usable as a phone if your needs are basic. (even better than Android in some cases, for example it comes with a decent file manager by default) I wasn't a huge fan of Android until around 4.2 TBH, now that the UI is finally in a good place I quite like the experience. Hopefully it won't take Ubuntu as long to bring features/apps to the platform.

[liam]

Yeah Tizen is impressive. They took the best thing about Gnome Shell (it's beautiful interface) and made it look terrible. The underlying tech is great (it's Linux afterall) but unless they hire some UI designers it won't be a threat to anything.

I could say the same about gnome.
Also, I don't think the best feature of gs is it's looks (at a minimum it is uninspired, at worst it is inaccessible--there's a great little bug talking about this that was closed, against the reporter's wishes, who felt that developer didn't really understand his accessibility problem) but it's architecture.
So, that's one for looks and one for arch.

[danielnez1]

This is a new wheel that can roll on desktops, tablets and phones, with the appropriate UX in each environment. There is nothing like this is in the free software world yet, so indeed Ubuntu has to invent it.

This is a necessary development on the path to convergence. And because these apps are based on commonly used frameworks and libraries, it would be very easy for other free software projects to make use of these apps. Want to make your own convergence DE based on Wayland or whatever? Ubuntu is doing a lot of the basic work for you.

As Ubuntu and other converging OSes becomes more common on non-desktop platforms, I hope that application developers will join the effort and make sure their applications work well in these varying environments.

Exciting times, for sure. Thank you, Ubuntu!

Sounds a lot like Plasma Active.

[zanny]

ol, I remember when friends used to discuss about canonical always trying to destroy kubuntu... and now they are using Qt.

In some ways they are still trying to destroy KDE, since they are basically reinventing all the wheels the Plasma guys have made from Plasma Active and Plasma Widgets in the last 5 years.

it will probably be a lot more efficient than KDE (which I use now)

How is KDE inefficient? The real last monstrosity to deal with was Nepomuk getting replaced with Baloo. Yeah, if you run a lot of QML scenes on the desktop with a lot of widgets you get memory usage, but they are effectively each their own application window. A fresh Kubuntu 14.04 desktop only uses 450MB of ram, for example. And on the processor side of things you get the ability to disable a lot - graphical effects, you can choose 3d or xrender for the window manager backend, you can even turn off compositing. Turn all that off and you have within the ballpark of Openbox CPU overhead (not counting plasma-desktop on top of that).

I'm sure they will probably provide an integrated system settings experience (like what I enjoy in KDE today).

The current KCM architecture and System Settings UIs have become obtuse messes to navigate. They are actually getting a huge overhaul to fix that in Plasma Next.