Ubuntu 14.10 onwards: Convergence is coming...

[Jo-Erlend Schinstad]

On 17 April 2014 04:00, Robert Park <robert.park at canonical.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 6:11 PM, Jason Warner
> <jason.warner at canonical.com> wrote:
> > When I read Jo-Erlend's email, this stuck out at me:
> >
> > "but don't merge them too soon"
> >
> > We are going to be certain to merge when ready and not before.
>
> Yes, sorry I wasn't clear, I'm not trying to suggest that we merge
> them immediately or prematurely. Just stating the end-goal, that they
> must be the same. Making a distinction between PC and Phone desktops
> is precisely what we don't want to be doing for longer than necessary.
>

Nobody on the planet wants that more than I do. I ditched my desktop for
six months for an IGEPv2 (OMAP3) running as a thin-client against a KVM
guest. That was in 2009. I knew right there and then that Ubuntu Desktop
was going mobile. That was completely evident from my experience. I knew
something like Calxeda was coming too, and the whole MaaS-thing. It was
simply a way too powerful experience that nobody would pick up on it.

I'm not a mobile geek. I'm pretty much the most novice smart phone user on
the planet. I can't really contribute anything to that. But I was raised as
an IBM-compatible-kid. I was born in 1980, built my first PC in '86 and I
remember the time when Windows was not the preferred GUI for MS-DOS, but
GEM was. This is to say that desktop is a real passion for me. It's not
just just an app; it's a way of life. I might replace the mouse, because I
didn't have one when I started using computers, but I will never replace my
keyboard with a touch screen and I won't do my office work in a couch or a
bean bag.

There is nothing I want more than to move my large box into the basement
and replace my desktop with a phone. I want to contribute to that, from the
desktop side of things. I just don't want people to confuse app convergence
with device convergence. My desktop will never be a phone, even if my phone
can be my desktop. I want the New Desktop to be developed concurrently with
the existing one. Sure, we'll get a replacement for gcalctool that's
suitable for both, and that's fine – replace those things ad libitum.  At
some point in time, we'll get a marvellous new file manager that can handle
both scenarios as well, but I don't want to replace Nautilus before the
replacement is _better_ than Nautilus. That's the Redmond Mistake. If you
try to replace Evolution with a fanatastic PhonePIM that is "promising on
the desktop", then the desktop loses and the phone loses as a consequence
of that.

I want to remind everyone that Microsoft _had to_ switch quickly. It was
apparent that ARM was here to stay and they had no defence. With all the
third-party apps, created around the proprietary ideals, they could never
have competed on ARM as a traditional WIMP system. They had to create
something very different just to explain why people could no longer run
their apps. Ubuntu is in a very different situation. We have mostly all our
apps on ARM and x86. Ubuntu can be fantastic on the phone with an
impressive desktop addon without competing with the PC desktop. We can have
both.

I was very happy to read the main from Jason Warner, by the way. I'm just
not entirely sure what he means. I hope it means giving us desktop users a
period of calm, like the Gnome desktop used to be for ten years before the
whole Unity thing started. I love Unity, but the transition has been
complely exhausting. If they can move it off main stage for a couple of
years, I'll be happy as a kite.
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