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Canonical Announcing Ubuntu Tablet Tomorrow?
hypnosec writes "Canonical has a countdown on its site that indicates a possible tablet announcement tomorrow. With the Ubuntu Touch developer preview launching this week, the announcement about a tablet or at least an operating system for a tablet from Canonical has, it seems, taken a backseat. From the countdown that reads "Tick, tock, tablet time!" it is evident that Canonical is going to make some announcement about tablets tomorrow."
When they say "Tablet" they mean "Pill".
Since the Ubuntu tablet will not have 'keys' in a physical sense; being a largely featureless slab of glass on the front just like everything else on the market, Canonical is pleased and proud to announce that 'keystrokes' will not be transmitted directly to valued advertising partners!
I have mod points, but dude you are a bonafide coward! Why are they giving Linux a bad name? I use Ubuntu all the time, and if anything they are making Linux usable. If you don't like that, fine, don't like it. Use another distribution. What is wonderful about Linux is that you don't have to like Ubuntu, because there is CHOICE! Think about that! Choice! Do we have choice with OSX? Windows? NO, NO and NO!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
If it runs Unity then run for the hills. Seriously, how many users did they lose with that ugliness?
Not me. It's still Linux and I can still install window managers on top of Unity.
Can it be stripped and installed with Debian Linux?
Unity already supports linux as of version 4.0.
Oh -- you mean that shitty flashy interface thing; not the game engine.
I have mod points, but dude you are a bonafide coward! Why are they giving Linux a bad name? I use Ubuntu all the time, and if anything they are making Linux usable.
Does "usable" have to mean "shady invasive crap"?
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/02/18/1652242/mark-shuttleworth-addresses-ubuntu-privacy-issues
I used to appreciate Ubuntu (well, Kubuntu), but I really just wish another powerhouse distro would come along and take the banner for awhile. Preferably still based on Debian, but not necessary.
ParityNews is just a regurgitation blog, anyway.
I have mod points, but dude you are a bonafide coward! Why are they giving Linux a bad name?
Because they think that including spyware is a good business plan. Now ask how.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Does "usable" have to mean "shady invasive crap"?
Google does pretty much the same thing across almost the entire web thanks to google analytics and nobody cares.
wish another powerhouse distro would come along and take the banner for awhile
You speak of Mint.
I hope they will come up with some reason for the consumer to go out and buy an Ubuntu tablet. As things are, the competition is pretty strong. Android and iOS have all bases covered, with hundreds of thousands of applications, and with several years on the market, and with millions of deployed devices, and with the user base trained.
Sight unseen, I'd say that an Ubuntu tablet may not even win against a Windows 8 tablet. It still may be that Ubuntu people have some bright idea that hasn't occurred to Apple and Google, but that is not very likely. Price-wise, they are competing with a free OS (Android) that Google spends millions on in R&D, and with finished tablets that can be had for under $100.
You're absolutely right. In the case of Ubuntu, I can "choose" to use another distribution, one that doesn't have spyware integrated into its own desktop UI.
Mark Shuttleworth seems to think that we "trust [Canonical] with root..." That may have been the case -before- you decided recording my keystrokes and sending them off to Amazon was a good idea, Mark. As it stands now I wouldn't trust you to take care of my privacy -or- my security.
Five minutes using unity and I was sure that the ONLY way it made any sense was as a tablet interface.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Not nobody. My firefox accepts cookies and run scripts only if they're whitelisted, precisely to defeat google analytics (and a few others). I use gmail (and nothing but gmail) in Chrome, and otherwise stay logged out of google. If I really need to go to a website with a malware-capable browser, I use a guest account.
In fact, contrary to your claim many people care. This is why Ghostery/NoScript/etc exist. Nice deflection though, shill.
And yet when people used it on the Nexus 7 it was horrendous as a touch interface.
I have mod points, but dude you are a bonafide coward! Why are they giving Linux a bad name? I use Ubuntu all the time, and if anything they are making Linux usable. If you don't like that, fine, don't like it. Use another distribution. What is wonderful about Linux is that you don't have to like Ubuntu, because there is CHOICE! Think about that! Choice! Do we have choice with OSX? Windows? NO, NO and NO!
Sure there is choice, I can for example abandon OS X for Windows OR Linux (Hint: That's two choices). There is a world outside Linux-land there is a world outside Wiindows-land and there is a world outside OS X land and you are allowed to travel between them.
Tell me more about these "community-maintained distribution"s.
What ones are best?
They're giving linux a bad name.
And accelerating FOSS adoption in a huge rate.
If you don't want to wait the countdown, there's already a high-res photo of the device available.
To be honest, I'm not much of a fan of Ubuntu anymore and that for many of the standard reasons cited here on Slashdot. That being said, I do not understand the ire which comes out every time anything is posted about Ubuntu. I dislike Shuttleworth as much as the next guy, and I think they deserve criticism for the recent privacy issues, but lately it seems like they receive the sort of comments here that used to include "M$". I keep waiting for someone to start complaining about anonial.* I guess it just doesn't look as cool.
*(Ah. I see. When I clicked preview, I discovered that the cent signs I used for Canonical don't display on Slashdot. Having tried to use other unicode characters, I should have known better. That explains why people who enjoy making a sport of hating Ubuntu haven't used it.)
Yeah, Linux market share has gone from .8% in 2006 to .95% in 2012. OMG!!!!
Which will work up until Mint needs funds to continue its existence.
The Ubuntu flamethrower?
Mint has a pretty decent income, they bring in thousands every month and publish their incomes and amounts on their website. Mint is financially supported and probably wouldn't exist if it were not a commercial distribution.
If you think Unity is horrible on the desktop, just wait until you have to interact with it on a small screen. This is just one more nail in coffin of Ubuntu on anything other than servers, where there is no GUI or sound system for them to screw up.
When that time comes, I would hope they do what Ubuntu started to do and ask for donations. I think it would have worked pretty well for Canonical if they hadn't killed any good will with the Amazon crap. I'd actually be quite interested which approach got them more money. Long term, I would think donations would win out.
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/02/ubuntu-dash-to-add-private-incognito-mode-add-legal-notice-to-installer
... unfortunately many of us had to. The good news is that I finally got around to devoting attention to setting up KDE the way I like it. That's the nice part about KDE; you can make it it perfect.
Travel great distances, you mean. There is no other intraconnected, uniformly expanding 'land' like Linux.
The most exciting thing about an Ubuntu tablet would be if it means open source drivers for all the hardware. A reference tablet that anyone can install OSS onto would be great for tinkerers. (Or is the Nexus 7 already this?)
What keylogger will they be running on this one?
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
I used to appreciate Ubuntu (well, Kubuntu), but I really just wish another powerhouse distro would come along and take the banner for awhile. Preferably still based on Debian, but not necessary.
So how about something like, uhhhh, Debian?
Well you're right in one aspect.
Ubuntu gave me the choice to run fast away to Linux Mint.
In all seriousness. 'having choice' in general is something
that is supposed to be BENEFICIAL to a customer in such
a way as to keep that customer and keep them happy.
Ubuntu is one of the execptions where 'having a choice',
as you so obligingly put it, means a kick in the groin.
Thanks for your time.
Actually, that's pretty funny.
Because when you visit the Ubuntu sites,
you'll be hard pressed to find any mention
of (the word) Linux.
but it's another thing to have an interface that will work on it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't seen a style blueprint for ubuntu phones/tablets interface yet, only that it'll run on QT. Personally, I'd like a full gnu/linux stack on a phone (and I use the N900), but I just don't see how Canonical are going to compress the years of tinkering done by apple, android and maemo to make a consistent touch-friendly interface that works on a small device. I'm ready to be surprised, but I think most of us are going to be disappointed.
I think Jolla looks promising, although they've a lot to prove, and at the moment there is way more hype and vapour than substance.
http://www.htc.com/us/
Even better: based on Slackware, but with a well flushed out package base. The Slackware system is very nicely designed for noob or expert alike -- however, the lack of packages beyond a few hundred (perhaps thousands if you count slackbuilds.org) leaves plenty of people still scared off from Slackware. It's a shame; few systems leave things standard enough to not have to worry about nightmare tarball compilations for those packages you may still have left to compile by hand.
Jesus Christ, check the slashdot front page sometime.
"If it runs Unity then run for the hills. Seriously, how many users did they lose with that ugliness?"
All the users who didn't know how easy it is to have more than one Desktop Environment on Linux
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Now that MSFT may finally be seeing its fall from consumer grace, perhaps we are seeing the rise of distro fanboys. There are enough fanboys. Religion, politics... You become an idiot to the fanboy with an opposing view.
Even Windows 8 has its good points... So does Ubuntu... So does Mint.. etc...
I wish this community would pride itself on objectivity, and tout the good points, as well as the bad.
Personally, now that Steam has gone Linux, I think I'm ready to use it as my main OS. I just hope people won't act like snobs over which future distros I prefer.
Ubuntu put a useless GUI on the main distribution, out-pacing even Microsoft Windows 8 in the race to the bottom, and also invasive crapware adware spyware. They put untested bleeding edge crap into their works.
they already had their desktop crippled into a near-useless tablet by Unity
"If it runs Unity then run for the hills. Seriously, how many users did they lose with that ugliness?"
All the users who didn't know how easy it is to have more than one Desktop Environment on Linux
Yes, I know you can run other Desktop Environments and have used multiple ones. But the point is that the poor decision making and general direction of the project made me look for another distro that better matched what I wanted.
i care. none of my sites use any trackers
Zero in my family, actually. My Mom, son, and I still use Gnome (with Gnome panel), and my wife thinks Unity is great. (Then again she married me, so you already know she has strange preferences.)
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Here I was hoping that it meant they were finally going to take their medication, and cure themselves of the disease that has given us Unity, Shopping Lens and other mistakes of the last couple of years.
those are bullshit numbers
None of my websites use google analytics. None of my computers accept cookies for them, and I block them in my hosts files.
There are people who care.
And fanboys are too dumb to see it.
They are trying to do exactly what Windows 8 is trying to do (poorly) by unifying desktop an Mobile under the same crappy Window manager and bloated kernel.
You speak of Mint.
This is where I get my panties in a knot. If you can't tolerate an option that can be disabled easily because of some assumed ethical concerns, then WHY THE BLOODY HELL would you then choose a distro based on that, in your mind, abomination in the first place?
Ubuntu is getting waaay too much hate on here for privacy reasons that are moot and dwarfed the moment you open up a web-browser.
Remember back when we had to worry about real concerns like Novell being in bed with Microsoft? This, by comparison, is nitpicking, and more likely a result of nerdish fanboyism exhuming their hidden disgust with the mainstream not choosing their favorite distro.
Just turn the effin' thing off, how frickin' hard is it?!
Exactly what in Debian is non-standard?
Or Debian... Even though more than 80% of all packages are coming from it.
Whatever Shuttleworth does now, however shitty Unity is right now, I'll always remember my amazement in winter 2005 when I first tried Hoary Live CD.
That was the first Linux i tried where sound/network worked out of the box.
This guy invested millions in this cool project, and I had a blast using Ubuntu Desktop/Server/JeOS during many years.
Linux Mint wouldn't be exist without Ubuntu.
So thank you Mark!
I totally agree, and I loved my customized KDE 3.5.
But right now, with a job and a kid, I'm just not going to invest countless hours (days?) trying to make sense of every menu entry in KDE 4.x.
CrunchBang and it will run several times faster. #!
You have to realise that this is all about moral purity, which is why Richard Stallman is treated like royalty and entrepreneurs like dirt.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Annnnnd that is the reason you don't get any traffic.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
This is completely true. Ubuntu should not be a vanity project and Mark Shuttleworth should not have to pay out of his own pocket to keep it relevant. Ubuntu needs to find ways to make consistent cashflow while remaining free-to-use.
All of this snidery is coming from people who don't understand that not everyone want to hand compile their own OS and don't think Richard Stallman is the Second Coming.
And the mentioning of Slackware just goes to show that Ubuntu is being treated like a pariah. Slackware is out-of-date shit and if Ubuntu and Mint and quite a few other distributions had not taken up the challenge of a FOSS desktop to compete with Windows and OSX we would have never seen Libreoffice or OpenOffice or Steam for Linux or quite a few other things. Slackware is a bastard to virtualize in an age of cloud computing - but perhaps being the perpetual outsider is the whole pose of Slackware purists.
Bring on the Ubuntu tablet just so long as it doesn't suck, Because with a Linux tablet we might just see mainstream FOSS apps being used by people who would never have touched a friggin' command line nor needed to.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Dear submitter,
Had you bothered to go actually look at the countdown timer, you would have seen the words "Tick, tock, tablet time!" in large print right there in front of your face, and you would have known to end the title of your summary with a period instead of a question mark, and avoided the whole "let me go make myself look like an ass on Slashdot" thing.
Thank you for your time.
I am starting to have hopes about Ubuntu. They are pissing the neckbeards off, they must be doing something right. But I will wait till wayland before I dual boot it. Ok, flag me as trollbait now.
We get lots of traffic, but thanks for playing.
So, is this going to lead to Half-Life on a tablet? Was this part of Valve's decision to release for Linux (read: Ubuntu)?
I don't understand why people get all bent out of shape that Ubuntu is successful -- makes me think of hipster bitching. There are many, many distros out there. Quite a few of them are actively supported and most of those use one of the common distribution architectures (deb/rpm). You can quite literally take your pick and not be that far behind the curve w/r/t support. If you are a linux user, there is seriously no reason to complain about "Ubuntu" as an OS. If it makes you butthurt to call it a Linux distro, then just leave off the "Linux" surname, just like Android does. Or MacOS.
Sorry Linuxnauts, I live Linux, I still advocate it as a desktop platform for computer professionals (AKA not Windows 8s target auidience and people who hate Macs), but Real Linux users need to got to the mint factory or even put on a red fedora. I've been doing this "war" since I bought a external 56k modem due to the lack of Winmodem drivers for my old Packard Bell (European Version) Pentium III desktop system, and I'm not going to stop now. Now eat a rasberri pi with this moderation.
The site is busy cannot load. This shows that a lot of interest is in this offering.
Not sure I get what the problem with that is. The distro I use will likely never be able to hire a full-time developer, and yet it is a strong following. Not making money isn't a bug.
Sure, it would be nice to have the manpower to just go it alone and build whatever you want, but often this tends to make distros turn out like, well, Ubuntu.
That being said, I do not understand the ire which comes out every time anything is posted about Ubuntu.
I think the fear (one which I share) is over the mainstreaming of Linux.
Right now if you want to make your software available on Linux you need to either support many platforms, or more ideally just offer a source tarball. You get your applications from your distro.
If one Linux distro really takes off then you might find more and more applications that are binary-only linked against the libraries that particular distro uses. Suddenly you end up with less choice, because many parties would rather do it that way than publish their sources. The same thing would likely happen if Linux had a stable module ABI - suddenly people can still buy your server hardware if you don't publish your sources, and thus less source gets published. Selling a server without kernel support is a kiss of death for sales, since Linux has real market share in that domain.
if Ubuntu and Mint and quite a few other distributions had not taken up the challenge of a FOSS desktop to compete with Windows and OSX we would have never seen Libreoffice or OpenOffice or Steam for Linux or quite a few other things.
OpenOffice has its roots as a proprietary, closed-source, commercial product. Try to keep up.
Despite the obvious faults (Unity, default Amazon searches), Ubuntu still remains an enormous force of good in the FOSS world. I will buy one of their tablet/smartphone product because it'll probably be straightforward to switch to Gnome_Shell/KDE. But also, because it'll put Linux (proper, not Android) "on the map".
I'm writing this on an Asus Transformer TF700 to which Ubuntu has been ported fairly successfully. Slick machine by the way (downside is the proprietary cable}!
Basically, all those neckbeards have spend untold manhours promoting Ubuntu in forums and real life (often with gross exaggerations and by not explaining to the unsuspecting users what this 'Ubuntu' or 'Linux' thing is), but now that Ubuntu is not one of "their" OSes anymore, they feel cheated. But the really funny thing would be if Ubuntu wins (aka acheives something like 10% marketshare). The wrong Linux horse will have won the race (well, the wrong Linux horse has already won the race, it's called Android, but not on the desktop). If this happens, you will actually see neckbeards badmouthing a Linux. Priceless.
All of this snidery is coming from people who don't understand that not everyone want to hand compile their own OS and don't think Richard Stallman is the Second Coming.
It isn't that they don't understand - it is that they don't care. They also don't care if Linux ever gains market share or becomes self-funding. They care that it works for them, and for others like them.
The challenge will be if Ubuntu actually makes it more practical to make binary-only software/drivers/etc for Linux that it may become harder to run pure open-source, as many companies that release driver source now might stop doing so. That could lead to a lot of forking and re-inventing the wheel, and you'll end up with two camps - those who are paid to work on Linux, and those who aren't.
I think that if that were going to happen, it would have by now. Debian would have taken over, or Ubuntu, or Red Hat. But, instead, the success of each has had a ripple effect, as each works to imitate and/or provide alternatives to whatever bells and whistles are working for one of them this week. In other words, the GPL has provided a level playing field for competition, and there's no reason to think it won't continue to do so. The success of any given distro can't be entirely de-linked from the success of "Linux" generally, any more than the success of a particular microbrew can be de-linked from the success of microbrews generally, or a particular e-book from e-books generally, and so on.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
There's a lot of Unity hate going on, and I admit, when it first launched it was an utter failure. You couldn't resize the icon bar, it was missing a lot of useful keyboard shortcuts, searching for a program didn't allow you to directly launch with the keyboard and it was otherwise just generally unusable. I decided to give it another shot recently, however, and it's come a long way, even matured into a fully usable and efficient UI. I can auto-hide the iconbar, resize it, and the search box is fantastic! If you press the "Windows" key, it opens up the search interface. You don't even have to type the name of the app you want, just start typing what you want to do! For instance, if I type in "gam" brings up Steam, Minecraft and ScummVM. If I hit enter, the first item in the search results will launch. Then I discovered the new keyboard shortcuts. Hold down the Windows key and a keyboard shortcut cheatsheet will appear, and they are incredibly useful. I am now a fan of Unity.
I'm not an expert, but I play one on slashdot.
I think that if that were going to happen, it would have by now. Debian would have taken over, or Ubuntu, or Red Hat. But, instead, the success of each has had a ripple effect, as each works to imitate and/or provide alternatives to whatever bells and whistles are working for one of them this week.
Yup. My concern was more with the whole "don't abandon Ubuntu - at least they're popularizing linux" bit. I'm not sure I want to see any one distro get a huge majority of the install base. In my mind a distro being popular is the best reason not to use it - it keeps the ecosystem healthy.