Ubuntu Developing Its Own Calculator, Calendar, Etc

[rvalles]

like Android

They're distancing more and more from being a normal Linux distribution.

Like Android, they're becoming a special case.

And it's a good thing. Perhaps then it'll stop being referred to as a "popular Linux distribution" and it'll become a "system that uses Linux underneath" instead.

[Akka]

How many times do you need to be told to stop talking about things you do not understand? Or at least do some research first.
While the software centre is written with Python it uses mostly C libraries to do any of the real work. For example GTK+ is used for the GUI and Xapian for search capabilities.

If you look at the bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...er/+bug/845579
You will see that Xapian calls are responsible for around 25% of load time (possibly more as this is just for loading the top rated content) Xapian is a highly optimised C library with nothing to do with Python. My theory is that Xapian is possibly being used in an inefficient way but I’m not going to learn how to it works just to fix this for Canonical as once again this project is covered by the CLA.

Most libraries that need speed in Python are actually written in C and just provide a way for Python to hook in. That said I don’t used Python and don’t even like it all that much, it just gets to me when people assume things then spread FUD that other people then take as fact. Do your research first then join the conversation.

Not that I have any big experience with python, I thought their type system and object model was not to my liking initially so I only did some early exercises with the language. But I really thought it was a big turn off with the long start up times I got with my small simple test desktop applications

[TheBlackCat]

I have it on good authority that the search engine is written in C++. Nothing interpreted there. They also have a sort of love for Java.

Did you not even read the third sentence in the quote?

"While the software centre is written with Python it uses mostly C libraries to do any of the real work. For example GTK+ is used for the GUI and Xapian for search capabilities."

So in other words they are doing exactly the same thing Google is doing.

To claim that somebody uses Python when things clearly call for C or C++ is just delusional. Python can never be as fast as C++.

Now you are just lying, nobody here has claimed either of those things and you know it.

Could it be that there is some serious overhead when calling C from Python? I know that in Java there is through the JNI. Loading all that interpreter with all libraries takes an awful amount of time and takes a lot of space in memory. That is python's fault.

So in other words you don't actually have a clue how python performs in this situation, but you guess there is a chance it might perform badly based on your experience with a totally different language with a totally different architecture, therefore Python is shit. Got it.

So basically Python is a slow interpreted language that encourages use by yoyos who can't code shit.

Like Google.

[shruti001]

so these thing will work on ubantu only or supported by other os also ?????

[mendieta]

so these thing will work on ubantu only or supported by other os also ?????

Yes, in any Linux install that provides the proper libraries. If Slackware wants this, they would provide the unity libs and any unity app would work there. This is how a KDE app works, or a GNOME one does, etc. Nothing different.

If you are running a fresh GNOME install and try to install a KDE app, say Amarok, the package installer will pull some KDE/Qt libraries. If you wanted Unity apps, it would do similarly. But hey, saying this makes me a "fanboy" and "having an agenda" and all sorts of things. Sigh!

[DanLamb]

Desktop Linux and Ubuntu are amazing as a server OS and a workstation OS for programmers and tech users. Can someone explain why they are trying to make it a phone/tablet OS too? Does anyone want that or think it will succeed or even come close to Android or iOS? The strengths of Ubuntu are it's command line interface with tools like grep/find/sed/awk/etc and it's free/open/community nature. The command line stuff doesn't seem to translate into the phone/tablet world. Android already has the free/open/community nature.

Does /anyone/ even use calculator and weather apps any more? For simple calculation, just type into a search bar.

I was hoping that Ubuntu and company would clean up their game development SDKs so that normal PC game developers could natively support Linux with a modest porting effort and not a huge rewrite porting effort.

[oleid]

If you are running a fresh GNOME install and try to install a KDE app, say Amarok, the package installer will pull some KDE/Qt libraries. If you wanted Unity apps, it would do similarly. But hey, saying this makes me a "fanboy" and "having an agenda" and all sorts of things. Sigh!

True.... unless there is some hard dependency on Mir. One would either need to remove this dependency from the SDK, or run Mir on that very distribution.

[DanLamb]

Look at the Android library and it's flawed design that they now try to improve.... Java isn't as fast as C++. To claim that Python is is just delusional.

I've written tons of headless data processing benchmarks and the speed difference between Java and C++ is very small. Java, and the Java development tools, are an order of magnitude better than the C++ world. Scala is a far nicer language than Java that runs on the JVM. Scala apps often benchmark slightly faster than Java apps (which is odd because they use the same runtime).

It's like arguing that applications written in Swing Java look and are just as responsive as those written in C++. They aren't.

You sound like you have your mind made up already, but I would say exactly that: Java Swing desktop apps are extremely close to C++ apps in terms of responsiveness and runtime performance. The /look/ is less native, but for some tasks that is fine. I would also say that very few apps I am interested in use that type of desktop widget SDK. The main exceptions are things like IDEs (IntelliJ) and ocassional graphical tools (GePhi)

[mendieta]

True.... unless there is some hard dependency on Mir. One would either need to remove this dependency from the SDK, or run Mir on that very distribution.

Yes, quite right. This is why, like some others in this thread, I am more than OK with this decision, but not OK with MIR.

Life is not black or white. It's not like Ubuntu is either right or wrong in everything they do. Overall, I like them and highly respect them, like I do respect most people in the FOSS world. But they make mistakes like anybody else. MIR seems to be one. Spending lots of energy on a tool that should be VERY generic and desktop/distribution agnostic.

[Hamish Wilson]

Why are you bashing Canonical and not Oracle here? They re-brand Red Hat Linux as Oracle Linux and ship it with proprietary products that the community cannot use for free.

We do. A lot.

Exactly. This kind of thing makes sense. Mir does not.

I never said it made sense. Just that I had no reason to care.