Gestures With Multitouch In Ubuntu 10.10

jitendraharlalka writes "Mark Shuttleworth recently announced on his blog that the first cut of Canonical's UTouch framework is ready and will be available in Ubuntu Maverick. He goes on to talk about the development of 'touch language' by the design team. The 'touch language' will allow the chaining of basic gestures to create complex gestures. The approach is quite different from the single magic gestures implemented elsewhere. In Maverick, a few Gtk applications will support gesture-based scrolling."

Comments

Hardware support is still weak

[vlueboy]

Other than specialty devices, hardware support is not even on the map.
I believe W7 already supports multitouch, joining the mac bandwagon. So, how long until non-laptops, non-cellphones start shipping with that, so that we can see an explosion in programmer response and API's?

Oh, and while we wait, it'd be good to find where I can buy a USB pad currently to add multi-touch support for a Windows desktop. Thanks

Re:Hardware support is still weak

[hairyfeet]

You know, I probably shouldn't feed the coward, but what the fuck, I'm bored. Show me ANY Linux where I can take a mix of totally random hardware thrown together and hand my 67 year old clueless dad the disc and have him install it PERFECTLY, without a SINGLE fuckup or hardware issue, and then we'll talk. Because dad didn't want to wait until the weekend and installed Windows 7 HP without a SINGLE issue. It installed ALL the drivers automatically and even told him at first boot he didn't have an AV and pointed him to several free ones.

As for TFA, the problem with Ubuntu, at least the last time I used it (gave up on Ubuntu and Linux at 9.04) is NOT all the bling bling, it is the drivers. With Windows if there isn't a driver you can have it go to windows update and download it and install it, ALL GUI all the way. Action Center will even point out the problem so you don't have to even open up Control Panel anymore.

With Linux at the slightest hint of trouble it runs back to CLI like a child running to its mommy, and in this day and age average folks just ain't gonna deal with that CLI bullshit. Hell most folks walking into the shop won't even open control panel because they think its scary, you honestly think they'll go for "open up bash and type" BS? Especially considering it often has to be "tweaked" because it was designed for "hardware A rev b" and you have (which the average user will NEVER know) "Hardware D Rev G" so you have to "fix" a bunch of crap?

I really hoped that Canonical would do for Linux what Apple did for NeXT, but it is pretty obvious now that just ain't gonna be the case. Considering Shuttleworth has made it clear he wants Canonical self sustaining I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Ubuntu ends up being dumped on the community and Canonical goes strictly servers. It is pretty clear, at least to me, that the amount of R&D and bug fixing required to bring Ubuntu up to OSX and Windows 7 levels of polish is simply astronomical, and you ain't gonna get a bunch of volunteers to do the dirty suck jobs like bug fixing.

After setting up 4 Ubuntu boxes in my shop and running them from 6-9.04 in the hopes that like Apple and early OSX it would keep jumping up in quality, and instead finding a "three steps forward, 2 steps back" situation where one thing would get fixed while killing two others, not to mention tons of show stoppers like hardware that worked in 8 dying hard in 9, I have to admit I gave up. If it would take me, a guy that has dealt with PCs since the days of the 4MHz Intel CPUs, so much pain and headaches, how would my customers ever deal? I'm certainly not gonna give away lifetime support because Canonical can't keep from breaking drivers from one rev to the next (check out the Dell Ubuntu boxes. Notice they DISABLE the Canonical repos? That is because Canonical can't even be counted on not to break their OEM MACHINES. Great Q&A there guys) and if it takes more than a couple of hours to deal with it costs me more than a copy of Windows 7 Home.

Until someone does to a Linux distro what Jobs did with NeXT I'm gonna have to say I stand by my beliefs...Linux is GREAT on servers and SUCKS on desktops. Maybe if you are a geek or have a CS degree and don't mind playing "hunt the fix" when the latest updates break your wireless and sound it would be okay, but how many average folks are gonna fit that profile?

Re:Hardware support is still weak

[turbidostato]

"Show me ANY Linux where I can take a mix of totally random hardware thrown together and hand my 67 year old clueless dad the disc and have him install it PERFECTLY, without a SINGLE fuckup or hardware issue, and then we'll talk."

Show me FIRST the Windows where I can take a mix of totally random hardware thrown together and hand my 67 year old clueless dad the disc and have him install it PERFECTLY, without a SINGLE fuckup or hardware issue.

Re:Hardware support is still weak

[jedidiah]

Vendor specific nonsense that ignores the standard interfaces across all operating systems (MacOS included) does squat to encourage adoption of Linux. If anything, lack of this sort of nonsense for Linux is actually a considerable net gain. Incidentally, Linux has been using the "MacOS printing system" since before Apple was.

If it were up to HP, I wouldn't be able to use my all-in-one as a network printer under Linux either.

Re:Hardware support is still weak

[gagol]

Ever tried to install Ubuntu with only Wifi access? Yep, impossible, that is why one of my friend is still on Windows as his only connection available is a community wireless in his building. You need the net to download the wireless network drivers first. That because of political preference of Cannonical. This is the biggest flaw so far.

It's just a toy

[KiloByte]

Having tried multitouch, it's useless in the long term. It is a nice gimmick to show in an advertisement, but for using it for longer than 15 minutes at a time, it's not a good idea -- you'll hand will get sore in no time.

Even for mobile devices, there is simply no better thing than the good old keyboard. If you try the on-screen touch thingy on an iPad or most Androids, it may be enough for typing a single line of text. On an N900 with a proper physical keyboard, you're in good shape after several hours of typing. And since you can't have that many distinct gestures, traditional keyboard shortcuts are so much better.

Re:It's just a toy

[shmlco]

Your hand will get sore? You're kidding,right?

There was probably some guy like you shaking his head thirty years ago. "Mice? Sorry, I tried one and it's totally useless. You always have to take your hand off the keyboard to do anything at all."

"Not to mention how sore your hand will get mashing buttons and dragging it around your desktop."

Re:It's just a toy

[h4rr4r]

Yeah, lots of people still avoid it. Vimperator exists for firefox for a reason.

Mice suck, gestures suck more.

Re:It's just a toy

[dlevitan]

Multi-touch on my Macbook is great. Two finger scrolling, three finger flipping from page to page makes life significantly easier. Yes, I can do everything with a mouse, but usually don't have mine out if I just have my laptop. And of course I can always use the keyboard, but why when I can do the same thing 10 times faster with a few finger movements.

Re:It's just a toy

[JanneM]

Swype is very overrated. Works fine for 90% of what you write (if you're using a well supported language), and makes the remaining 10% a pain to use. If you use more than one language, or want to use uncommon or non-standard vocabulary that 90% drops to something like 60% or worse.

Besides, swype doesn't need multitouch. I agree with the OP; it's a nice gimmick but not particularly useful.

Re:It's just a toy

[Filip22012005]

Swype is very overrated. Works fine for 90% of what you write (if you're using a well supported language), and makes the remaining 10% a pain to use.

Never used Swype but... please, look up XXX in a dictionary. If it works 9 XXX out of 10 thats the opposite of overrated. OK? Quite XXX now a days anything that works half of the time is a fucking XXX.

This is what happens if around 10% of your words fail. 100% of your paragraphs fail.

Good job Mark, you've overcomplicated it ...

[BitZtream]

So ... as a hint ... if you want to copy Apple ... good for you, no problem with that I'm all for it ... but maybe you might want to consider WHY they do so well.

You’ll need 4-finger touch or better to get the most out of it

... 4 fingers to get the most out of it, I'm not jerking off here, I'm using a touch screen ... what kind of gestures am I making with 4 fingers? Does it learn when I flip off the screen or something?

Rather than single, magic gestures, we’re making it possible for basic gestures to be chained, or composed, into more sophisticated “sentences”

... because the reason multitouch is working so well elsewhere is because it can be made really complicated and hard to troubleshoot and debug. I mean, what developers doesn't want to add another 'language' to their stable to understand.

And ... GPLv3 so I have to wait for something with license I can use safely in anything because I'm not going to be bothered to learn another SDK and framework that I can only use in apps that I give away. I know I can't give away the only other real alternative out there but I don't care because I can sell those apps and make a fortune.

If you want people to use things like this then maybe you want to look at why people like the existing ones and why so many apps exist for the existing frameworks ... People don't use the iPhone and love its multitouch because of its 'tech specs', developers nor users.

Re:Good job Mark, you've overcomplicated it ...

[h4rr4r]

Redhat makes half its money from RHEL.

You can even sell GPL software that uses closed art, for example.

I have bought GPLed software on my phone, perhaps the dev won't get rich, but so what. We don't need more rich folks, we need more people doing what they love making a decent income.

Re:Put more effort on the everyday stuff

[jedidiah]

> There are still a boat load of everyday things that should be addressed
> before they start to put too much effort in bleeding edge technologies
> that may never actually come to market.

Got a personal favorite you would like to actually cite or would you prefer to just continue the lame trolling?

There are already Linux based appliance tablet devices. So it's not like this is just pie in the sky stuff. This is new hardware that needs to be supported like anything else including whatever happens to be your pet "obscure" peripheral.