Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...

[Robert Ancell]

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 8:37 PM, Adam Dingle <adam at 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