Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...

[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).

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)