Re: Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Robert Ancell wrote on 15/04/14 23:25: On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 10:47 PM, Sebastien Bacher ... Le 15/04/2014 04:32, Robert Ancell a écrit : ... Put PolicyKit handling into the shell. We use policykit-gnome for the dialogs but GNOME uses the shell for this. We should be doing the same. A nice to have would be to implement this in both Unity 7 and Unity 8 but as long as it is there by convergence then we're good to go. Having them in the shell would probably make sense. Did we have a design for those? IIRC, at the different of GNOME, we wanted them more like normal dialogs (e.g not doing the dim the screen/grab focus/be in the middle locking everything else). If that's the case we might want to keep the -gnome version for unity7 (since the shell is not using an app toolkit). It needs toolkit-quality controls regardless of its window mode: for example, a combo box for listing user accounts, and an expander control for revealing and hiding policy details. No idea about designs, needs following up. Ready and waiting. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AccountPrivileges ... Make Ubuntu System Settings [1] desktop capable That item is similar to the previous one. We also need desktop designs for ubuntu-system-settings. Some of the panels already have PC designs, though most aren't complete yet. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SystemSettings Yes, but this one we can only switch as default once all the functionality is complete. At least with u-s-d we can do it in parts. That is a huge amount of work. Just the Network panel alone would be several person-months. So, I think in summary: Lots of leaning on mpt/design :) - -- mpt -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlNXc7cACgkQ6PUxNfU6eco8YgCfe9eCmQ8u/Ax7BdBm0ZvQ8kbO C44AmwTlcxMZYCDGKuYTj1S0VHbaJ2T2 =gH6A -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...
On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 7:44 PM, Jo-Erlend Schinstad joerlend.schins...@gmail.com wrote: I want to remind everyone that Microsoft _had to_ switch quickly. It was apparent that ARM was here to stay and they had no defence. With all the third-party apps, created around the proprietary ideals, they could never have competed on ARM as a traditional WIMP system. They had to create something very different just to explain why people could no longer run their apps. Ubuntu is in a very different situation. We have mostly all our apps on ARM and x86. Ubuntu can be fantastic on the phone with an impressive desktop addon without competing with the PC desktop. We can have both. I would like to add that, on x86, we can also run the Microsoft apps with increasing reliability. Wine is only getting better. It also won't be long before ARM + QEMU is fast enough to run a very significant and important number of Windows applications. I really believe that, with a bit of usability work, by next LTS we will have a migration story that no longer requires users to replace every single possible app. -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...
hi, Am Donnerstag, den 17.04.2014, 02:50 +0200 schrieb Jo-Erlend Schinstad: On 16 April 2014 07:47, Martin Pitt martin.p...@ubuntu.com wrote: [snip] It's a much bigger and urgent problem to be able to provide a phone/desktop image which can work with click apps and image based upgrades but at the same time allows you to install classic Ubuntu packages. That problem is never going to go away, so solving that seems much more urgent to me. That sounds like a dangerous idea to me. To my mind, Ubuntu needs to have two different desktops for quite some time. so you mean you don't like system upgrades to be done in less than 10 min (including download over a moderatly fast internet connection) or being able to use the (potential) whatsapp client from the core apps on your desktop etc ? ciao oli signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...
Il giorno gio, 17/04/2014 alle 06.42 +0200, Jo-Erlend Schinstad ha scritto: On 17 April 2014 05:01, Robert Park robert.p...@canonical.com wrote: Nobody is going to force you to use a phone interface if you don't want to. If someone tells you that they're deeply passionate about an Ubuntu project, then you don't go telling them if they have different ideas, then they should go use something else. This is not how we do things. I don't think things should be seen in that way. I believe that we'll move to different apps as soon as they don't regress from what we have, but moving towards a world that is much coherent with the Ubuntu design idea. It's also true that at some point we have to deliver that, and put it in production in a point release, in order to get things to work in the real world. So, the point is: if an user prefer to keep the status-quo until the converged experience is not completed, then we suggest to stick on the LTS, which will stay in shape for a lng period. -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...
On 17 April 2014 16:22, Marco Trevisan marco.trevi...@canonical.com wrote: It's also true that at some point we have to deliver that, and put it in production in a point release, in order to get things to work in the real world. So, the point is: if an user prefer to keep the status-quo until the converged experience is not completed, then we suggest to stick on the LTS, which will stay in shape for a lng period. Sure; as long as you're absolutely certain that there will be no problems with LTS-to-LTS upgrades, then do in-place development. Of course, when the development model is based upon removing things people care about and use every day, then the next two years are going to be an everlasting torrent of negativity. We know this from experience, don't we? Has there ever been an example of replacing a default app that hasn't resulted in FUD, panic and anger in the Ubuntu community? On the other hand, look at elementaryOS. People are enthusiastic, optimistic and impressed. The only negative responses I've read, is that some people think it looks too much like MacOS. They've started with an empty desktop and then add new components that are designed for eOS. If you want to use that system for everyday purposes, then you'll have to install non-eOS apps for that, but that's ok. And you can install eOS-apps in Ubuntu. That's cool too. No reason to be angry, but plenty of reasons to be curious and enthusiastic. I think Ubuntu is in a very comparable situation. We want a new desktop and on top of that, we want new system services and apps that are designed for Ubuntu, for as many things as possible. It'll be a plain desktop with only a few default apps. After all, it makes perfect sense that a system designed to handle both phones and desktops doesn't come preloaded with lots of desktop-only apps. If you want to use it for you everyday life, you'll have to install stuff. I think people are ok with that and that a lot of people would want to choose to live in the exciting world of the New Ubuntu Desktop. But LTS users, like an enterprise, might wish the next LTS upgrade to not be such a radical step. After all, two years is not an enormous amount of time and time is necessary when you want to build confidence. Allowing the current desktop to stay alive in maintenance mode into the next LTS will allow people to choose between excitement and confidence and I think that can be of some importance. I really do think that developing the new desktop in-place rather than in parallel is a huge gamble. Because let's be honest. Nobody knows what 16.04 is going to look like. Right? Well, that's a decision. Well, that's my views anyway. Thanks for reading. -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...
Robert Ancell [2014-04-16 9:52 +1200]: I agree this is an enormous change but the reality of what convergence means. We want the same apps to run on the phone as the desktop so when you dock your phone the apps work in both form factors. I'm not so sure about that. To me, convergence primarily means that I can use my phone as a proper phone, and get a proper desktop when I plug it in, and all my documents/music/videos/etc. are continuing to work. Also, being able to install both click and classic Ubuntu packages. So it's primarily a matter of data compatibility (both user and system level). It doesn't matter that much if in desktop mode we use a different music player or image viewer, as long as they both show the same files (yay XDG dirs). I don't think it's a big win to drop all our existing desktop applications all of a sudden and throw huge amounts of work in essentially reimplementing them. It's a much bigger and urgent problem to be able to provide a phone/desktop image which can work with click apps and image based upgrades but at the same time allows you to install classic Ubuntu packages. That problem is never going to go away, so solving that seems much more urgent to me. Thanks, Martin -- Martin Pitt| http://www.piware.de Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com) | Debian Developer (www.debian.org) -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...
Le 16/04/2014 07:47, Martin Pitt a écrit : It doesn't matter that much if in desktop mode we use a different music player or image viewer, as long as they both show the same files (yay XDG dirs). Well, one point where it matters (at least a bit) is that if you dock your phone you ideally want your music to keep playing. If the phone and desktop modes have different players it becomes trickier to have a smooth transition and not loose part of the context you had (we need to make sure that e.g playing continues, the play queue stays the same, etc) Cheers, Sebastien Bacher -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...
Sebastien Bacher [2014-04-16 10:09 +0200]: Well, one point where it matters (at least a bit) is that if you dock your phone you ideally want your music to keep playing. If the phone and desktop modes have different players it becomes trickier to have a smooth transition and not loose part of the context you had (we need to make sure that e.g playing continues, the play queue stays the same, etc) Yes, for sure. I wasn't saying that it doesn't matter to make our phone apps desktop-compatible, just that I think that we have more fundamental problems to solve first for an actual convergence story. Thanks, Martin -- Martin Pitt| http://www.piware.de Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com) | Debian Developer (www.debian.org) -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...
Le 16/04/2014 10:13, Martin Pitt a écrit : Yes, for sure. I wasn't saying that it doesn't matter to make our phone apps desktop-compatible, just that I think that we have more fundamental problems to solve first for an actual convergence story. Right. As Robert wrote, most of the work on apps is going to be done by the teams wrote those applications anyway, I don't think desktop plans to spend much resources on that. Our side of the work is going to test/integrate them, making sure they work correctly on the desktop (same as we do for e.g GNOME apps today) Cheers, Sebastien Bacher -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...
hi, Am Mittwoch, den 16.04.2014, 07:47 +0200 schrieb Martin Pitt: Robert Ancell [2014-04-16 9:52 +1200]: I agree this is an enormous change but the reality of what convergence means. We want the same apps to run on the phone as the desktop so when you dock your phone the apps work in both form factors. I'm not so sure about that. To me, convergence primarily means that I can use my phone as a proper phone, and get a proper desktop when I plug it in, and all my documents/music/videos/etc. are continuing to work. Also, being able to install both click and classic Ubuntu packages. So it's primarily a matter of data compatibility (both user and system level). i thionk our plans go far far beyond that like having image based upgrades (which will require a readonly system image that can still handle debs for example) convergence isnt just a UI thing ... ciao oli signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...
On 16 April 2014 07:47, Martin Pitt martin.p...@ubuntu.com wrote: [snip] It's a much bigger and urgent problem to be able to provide a phone/desktop image which can work with click apps and image based upgrades but at the same time allows you to install classic Ubuntu packages. That problem is never going to go away, so solving that seems much more urgent to me. That sounds like a dangerous idea to me. To my mind, Ubuntu needs to have two different desktops for quite some time. One is the Desktop install, which is primarily for PCs. The other is the desktop that you can use when you dock your phone. The PC-desktop (for lack of anything better) should contain the apps we're used to; Nautilus, Rhythmbox, Transmission, etc. On the phone, we should have apps that does the job beautifully when running as a phone, but also not too shabby when running as a desktop. In other words; the PC Desktop needs to be the best PC desktop there is. The Phone desktop does not. The Phone needs to be compatible with the desktop, but the desktop doesn't have to be identical with the phone. Because the phone will act as a desktop, but the desktop will never act as a phone. That's something I hope everyone remembers. Let the phone be the future of Ubuntu Desktops, but don't merge them too soon. That would most likely have some seriously nasty side effects. If the phone desktop can start to compete with the PC desktop by April 2016, I will be impressed, but I think that's a good goal. I think 16.10 is the proper time to unite the images. -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...
On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 5:50 PM, Jo-Erlend Schinstad joerlend.schins...@gmail.com wrote: In other words; the PC Desktop needs to be the best PC desktop there is. The Phone desktop does not. But the whole point of Convergence is that the PC Desktop *is* the Phone desktop. Therefore the Phone desktop needs to be the best PC desktop that there is, because there is not going to be a distinction. -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...
On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 6:03 PM, Robert Park robert.p...@canonical.comwrote: On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 5:50 PM, Jo-Erlend Schinstad joerlend.schins...@gmail.com wrote: In other words; the PC Desktop needs to be the best PC desktop there is. The Phone desktop does not. But the whole point of Convergence is that the PC Desktop *is* the Phone desktop. Therefore the Phone desktop needs to be the best PC desktop that there is, because there is not going to be a distinction. When I read Jo-Erlend's email, this stuck out at me: but don't merge them too soon We are going to be certain to merge when ready and not before. When is ready, is obviously going to be a subjective and lively debate when the time comes. More to the point, I'm *very* sensitive to this and it is at the top of my list of things I care about during the convergence migration story. -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...
On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 6:11 PM, Jason Warner jason.war...@canonical.com wrote: When I read Jo-Erlend's email, this stuck out at me: but don't merge them too soon We are going to be certain to merge when ready and not before. Yes, sorry I wasn't clear, I'm not trying to suggest that we merge them immediately or prematurely. Just stating the end-goal, that they must be the same. Making a distinction between PC and Phone desktops is precisely what we don't want to be doing for longer than necessary. -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...
On 17 April 2014 04:00, Robert Park robert.p...@canonical.com wrote: On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 6:11 PM, Jason Warner jason.war...@canonical.com wrote: When I read Jo-Erlend's email, this stuck out at me: but don't merge them too soon We are going to be certain to merge when ready and not before. Yes, sorry I wasn't clear, I'm not trying to suggest that we merge them immediately or prematurely. Just stating the end-goal, that they must be the same. Making a distinction between PC and Phone desktops is precisely what we don't want to be doing for longer than necessary. Nobody on the planet wants that more than I do. I ditched my desktop for six months for an IGEPv2 (OMAP3) running as a thin-client against a KVM guest. That was in 2009. I knew right there and then that Ubuntu Desktop was going mobile. That was completely evident from my experience. I knew something like Calxeda was coming too, and the whole MaaS-thing. It was simply a way too powerful experience that nobody would pick up on it. I'm not a mobile geek. I'm pretty much the most novice smart phone user on the planet. I can't really contribute anything to that. But I was raised as an IBM-compatible-kid. I was born in 1980, built my first PC in '86 and I remember the time when Windows was not the preferred GUI for MS-DOS, but GEM was. This is to say that desktop is a real passion for me. It's not just just an app; it's a way of life. I might replace the mouse, because I didn't have one when I started using computers, but I will never replace my keyboard with a touch screen and I won't do my office work in a couch or a bean bag. There is nothing I want more than to move my large box into the basement and replace my desktop with a phone. I want to contribute to that, from the desktop side of things. I just don't want people to confuse app convergence with device convergence. My desktop will never be a phone, even if my phone can be my desktop. I want the New Desktop to be developed concurrently with the existing one. Sure, we'll get a replacement for gcalctool that's suitable for both, and that's fine – replace those things ad libitum. At some point in time, we'll get a marvellous new file manager that can handle both scenarios as well, but I don't want to replace Nautilus before the replacement is _better_ than Nautilus. That's the Redmond Mistake. If you try to replace Evolution with a fanatastic PhonePIM that is promising on the desktop, then the desktop loses and the phone loses as a consequence of that. I want to remind everyone that Microsoft _had to_ switch quickly. It was apparent that ARM was here to stay and they had no defence. With all the third-party apps, created around the proprietary ideals, they could never have competed on ARM as a traditional WIMP system. They had to create something very different just to explain why people could no longer run their apps. Ubuntu is in a very different situation. We have mostly all our apps on ARM and x86. Ubuntu can be fantastic on the phone with an impressive desktop addon without competing with the PC desktop. We can have both. I was very happy to read the main from Jason Warner, by the way. I'm just not entirely sure what he means. I hope it means giving us desktop users a period of calm, like the Gnome desktop used to be for ten years before the whole Unity thing started. I love Unity, but the transition has been complely exhausting. If they can move it off main stage for a couple of years, I'll be happy as a kite. -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...
On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 7:44 PM, Jo-Erlend Schinstad joerlend.schins...@gmail.com wrote: I was very happy to read the main from Jason Warner, by the way. I'm just not entirely sure what he means. I hope it means giving us desktop users a period of calm, like the Gnome desktop used to be for ten years before the whole Unity thing started. I love Unity, but the transition has been complely exhausting. If they can move it off main stage for a couple of years, I'll be happy as a kite. I'm not sure what you mean by main stage, but Ubuntu Trusty is our latest LTS, it will be supported for 5 years, and has the standard desktop Unity experience. Nobody is going to force you to use a phone interface if you don't want to. -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...
On 17 April 2014 05:01, Robert Park robert.p...@canonical.com wrote: On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 7:44 PM, Jo-Erlend Schinstad joerlend.schins...@gmail.com wrote: I was very happy to read the main from Jason Warner, by the way. I'm just not entirely sure what he means. I hope it means giving us desktop users a period of calm, like the Gnome desktop used to be for ten years before the whole Unity thing started. I love Unity, but the transition has been complely exhausting. If they can move it off main stage for a couple of years, I'll be happy as a kite. I'm not sure what you mean by main stage, but Ubuntu Trusty is our latest LTS, it will be supported for 5 years, and has the standard desktop Unity experience. Nobody is going to force you to use a phone interface if you don't want to. You're very correct about that. After spending about 17 years in the GNU+Linux community and about eight of them in the Ubuntu community, I pretty much understand the basics of how it all fits together. But do you think that this is an intelligent and respectful reply to my proposal that the development of a new desktop is kept seperately from the continuation of the past? To be honest with you, if an experienced user had made such a comment to a new participant in any Ubuntu project I've been part of, I would've told him or her that this was inappropriate and unacceptable. If someone tells you that they're deeply passionate about an Ubuntu project, then you don't go telling them if they have different ideas, then they should go use something else. This is not how we do things. -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...
Le 15/04/2014 04:32, Robert Ancell a écrit : With 14.04 wrapping up it's time to start thinking about what we can do with the desktop post LTS. I think there's one big theme we need to focus on - Convergence. All the Unity 8 goodness that is going into the phone / tablet builds is coming our way and we need to be prepared for that migration. Hey Robert, thanks for sending that email Deprecate gnome-session Right, the first step there is probably to get systemd user session in the picture (we don't want to do work based on something that is moving/going to be replaced). The foundation team has been discussion the migration plan during the previous vUDS, we should check with them what they envision for the user sessions. Put screensaver management into the shell. We currently use gnome-screensaver but upstream has deprecated it. We replaced the first part of this in 14.04 by using the shell to render the lock screen. We should be able to get rid of all of gnome-screensaver now. That happened for trusty no? https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/7.2.0+14.04.20140410-0ubuntu1 In normal sessions g-s is not running anymore (I'm unsure about a11y, there were discussions on whether the screen reader was working good enough in unity-lock of if we should still fallback to g-s for those cases) Put PolicyKit handling into the shell. We use policykit-gnome for the dialogs but GNOME uses the shell for this. We should be doing the same. A nice to have would be to implement this in both Unity 7 and Unity 8 but as long as it is there by convergence then we're good to go. Having them in the shell would probably make sense. Did we have a design for those? IIRC, at the different of GNOME, we wanted them more like normal dialogs (e.g not doing the dim the screen/grab focus/be in the middle locking everything else). If that's the case we might want to keep the -gnome version for unity7 (since the shell is not using an app toolkit). Gut unity-settings-daemon We forked gnome-settings-daemon so we could stick with the version we have currently. Now we should start pulling out the plugins and migrating to the new services (e.g. power). Any remaining services need to be rehomed / made into standalone services. By convergence there should not be u-s-d anymore. Right, a lot of that is going to require the MIR/new services to work/be used on desktop though. Make Ubuntu System Settings [1] desktop capable ubuntu-system-settings doesn't cover a lot of the use cases that unity-control-center does. So we should add functionality to ubuntu-system-settings so that it first a capable alternative to u-c-c then eventually can completely replace it. That item is similar to the previous one. We also need desktop designs for ubuntu-system-settings. Help get core apps in a state so that they can replace our current defaults. Candidates are things like calculator, file manager. The file manager is probably not going to be that easy. Having calculator/notes/camera would be nice though. Not sure how much we need to work on the look/visual consistency there. Are there any other good opportunities for us to start tackling? Your list seems a pretty good one. I don't see any obvious candidate at the moment but I'm going to take some time to think about the topic and follow up later, if I find some. Cheers, Sebastien Bacher -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...
On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 1:37 AM, Adam Dingle a...@medovina.org wrote: Robert, thanks for your message. Obviously all of these are significant projects, but the task Replace core apps at the end of your list would seem to be larger than everything else, depending of course by what you mean by core. Different Robert here, I don't speak for Mr. Ancell but my interpretation of his statement was that we need to take the Ubuntu Core Apps (phone apps) and make them desirable to use on the desktop: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-phone-coreapps These apps *already exist*, so it's not like Robert was suggesting writing all new apps from scratch. Just get them at feature parity with the GNOME apps they'd be replacing. -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...
On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 7:32 PM, Robert Ancell robert.anc...@canonical.com wrote: Are there any other good opportunities for us to start tackling? How about the release process itself? Ubuntu Desktop has freeze periods for it's 6-monthly releases while Ubuntu Touch just steamrolls* right through. This causes some impedance mismatch for packages which are both part of the phone and the desktop, such as webbrowser-app, and this is only going to get worse as more and more packages converge. What is the solution? Will we make the desktop roll? Will we subject the phone to freezes? I don't know which approach is superior but the only thing that's certain is that the current situation has the worst of both: desktop freeze slows down phone development, and phone development destabilizes the desktop freezes. * Rolling release, get it? ;-) -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...
On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 1:12 PM, Robert Park robert.p...@canonical.comwrote: On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 7:32 PM, Robert Ancell robert.anc...@canonical.com wrote: Are there any other good opportunities for us to start tackling? How about the release process itself? Ubuntu Desktop has freeze periods for it's 6-monthly releases while Ubuntu Touch just steamrolls* right through. This causes some impedance mismatch for packages which are both part of the phone and the desktop, such as webbrowser-app, and this is only going to get worse as more and more packages converge. What is the solution? Will we make the desktop roll? Will we subject the phone to freezes? I don't know which approach is superior but the only thing that's certain is that the current situation has the worst of both: desktop freeze slows down phone development, and phone development destabilizes the desktop freezes. I'm fairly certain Robert A didn't mean process changes here. That's a different topic and suggest we keep it as such. * Rolling release, get it? ;-) -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...
On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 8:37 PM, Adam Dingle a...@medovina.org wrote: If you replace all these apps with something else, I think that will be the largest change in Ubuntu's history - most of these apps have been around since the dawn of time and are very familiar to Ubuntu users. I'd go so far as to say that the new desktop would be pretty much unrecognizable to existing users, for better or for worse. I agree this is an enormous change but the reality of what convergence means. We want the same apps to run on the phone as the desktop so when you dock your phone the apps work in both form factors. What's crucially important is that we start working on getting them desktop capable so we're not changing everything at the point of convergence. We need to follow something like: 1. Getting the app to run on the desktop 2. Getting the app to have appropriate functionality for a desktop use case 3. Promoting the app as an alternative 4. Making the app a default The majority of this work will probably be done by each app development team, not necessarily the desktop team. We do want to make sure this is progressing however. If we can chip away at these the migration will not be so sudden, though LTS-LTS upgraders will probably see huge changes. I'm not proposing any specific apps to change, just the ones that become viable alternatives. The existing apps still remain in the repository of course. I imagine by convergence not all apps will be changed unless someone is motivated to make a (better) Ubuntu SDK alternative. Also, if solutions appear that make apps suitable in their current form they may not need to be replaced at all. --Robert -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...
With 14.04 wrapping up it's time to start thinking about what we can do with the desktop post LTS. I think there's one big theme we need to focus on - Convergence. All the Unity 8 goodness that is going into the phone / tablet builds is coming our way and we need to be prepared for that migration. These are some tasks I think we could achieve between now and convergence: Task: Deprecate gnome-session gnome-session used to be the root process for a session. Now we have upstart/systemd that should be the root process. So no need for gnome-session. Task: Put screensaver management into the shell. We currently use gnome-screensaver but upstream has deprecated it. We replaced the first part of this in 14.04 by using the shell to render the lock screen. We should be able to get rid of all of gnome-screensaver now. Task: Put PolicyKit handling into the shell. We use policykit-gnome for the dialogs but GNOME uses the shell for this. We should be doing the same. A nice to have would be to implement this in both Unity 7 and Unity 8 but as long as it is there by convergence then we're good to go. Task: Gut unity-settings-daemon We forked gnome-settings-daemon so we could stick with the version we have currently. Now we should start pulling out the plugins and migrating to the new services (e.g. power). Any remaining services need to be rehomed / made into standalone services. By convergence there should not be u-s-d anymore. Task: Make Ubuntu System Settings [1] desktop capable ubuntu-system-settings doesn't cover a lot of the use cases that unity-control-center does. So we should add functionality to ubuntu-system-settings so that it first a capable alternative to u-c-c then eventually can completely replace it. Task: Replace core apps Help get core apps in a state so that they can replace our current defaults. Candidates are things like calculator, file manager. Are there any other good opportunities for us to start tackling? --Robert [1] https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-system-settings -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
