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Ubuntu 10.10 Multitouch Support Demo

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the isn't-that-pretty dept.

Timothy found a news report and a little video demonstrating the multi-touch capabilities of Ubuntu. It's attached below if you're curious what the new Unity Netbook UI is looking like these days.

4 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. That's great but... by imgod2u · · Score: 3, Insightful

    One of the important UI changes about a touch-only interface is that things such as managing the filesystem, arranging folders and icons, etc. are too cumbersome to do in the traditional navigator window type of interface.

    iOS just gets rid of it altogether whereas Android limits you to handling files via applications. Unless they've managed to come up with a proper auto-categorization and file organizer -- such that I don't need to go through folders to get to a media file I want to play -- this will still be a cumbersome desktop OS with a touch UI "layer" on top.

    1. Re:That's great but... by Nadaka · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A meta data tagging system combined with search should work wonders for organization, if only people would actually tag their files so they can find them later.

      Auto categorization has sever limits, it can distinguish between file type, do keyword search on known text files and possibly use face recognition to distinguish between scenes and portraits or gps meta data to filter photos by location, but anything more than that is going to be impossible. It is impossible because it not only requires strong AI, but because it requires strong AI that knows how you would categorize things.

  2. Re:But Linux on the desktop is dead. by DrgnDancer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Portables != Desktop. The article you're referring to also makes a point of pointing out how *well* Linux is doing on portables. This device is more closely related to an iPad than a desktop. That said I have several questions the video doesn't answer. Does this device have a physical keyboard or a virtual one. If it's got a physical KB then they did a fantastic job of hiding the thing while it wasn't being used. If it's got a virtual keyboard I'd really like to see it up as part of the video. Just to get an idea for how much screen real estate it uses and such.

    I've been considering an iPad. Honestly this looks nicer (at any rate more open, which is more important to me on a tablet than a phone), but I'd want to see a lot more than a couple muti-touch gestures to be sold. He really only demonstrates two gestures, mostly he spends the whole video using a single finger to simulate a left-click on static objects. Hardly revolutionary. Can it do pinch zoom? Two finger scrolling or one finger? Will two fingers simulate a right-click? (It's a mostly desktop OS, so unlike in iOS right clicking is probably pretty useful). I'm sure I could find out the answers, but if you're going to make a promo video for "multi-touch" show me some "multi-touching".

    --
    I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
  3. Re:Touchscreen keyboard? by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That video had an awful lot of editing ... and some 'instant response' from the device ... almost like the commercials for iDevices & Droids on TV. It would have been nice to see a longer video with the actual response times for everything. I'm just sayin'