Hacker News Reader

Comment by jbmorgado | Hacker News Reader

Other than the "hacking" part (which is very cool and a good show of how far Linux went in terms of compatibility IMO) is there any interest in this?

I mean, in installing a base system that is just not optimised both in processing power and in interface in a tablet?

I've installed Ubuntu in my parents laptop (some Core 2 Duo with 3GB RAM) and it runs really slowly. I guess in the tablet it will be even a bit slower, so I can't see anyone actually using this other than a gimmick.

View on HN

There is a big shift in Ubuntu towards a GNU/Linux distribution that uses snap installation packages instead of the traditional .deb packages. The video shows an early preview of that future distribution and I think it is the first such video.

These snaps are a big thing (see https://snapcraft.io/). Universal packages, with confinement, offering transactional updates.

For your case of this Core 2 Duo laptop, you can disable some of the fancy graphics effects in order to gain some extra speed. See how to do this at http://sourcedigit.com/21432-2-ways-enable-unity-low-graphic...

There is supposed to be such an option in the Ubuntu Settings but I did not find it yet. See https://ufuntu.wordpress.com/2017/01/11/enable-the-new-faste...

edit: I wonder why the downvotes...

this is not Ubuntu with Unity7/X11 this is running Unity8/Mir and the UI was design for touch first Phones and Tablets and later on for Desktop. you can see here how it looks on the phone/tablet/desktop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK06gUMuK-Q

So why is it so laggy in the video?

I actually would really like a linux system suitable for a tablet that you could connect a screen and keyboard to for proper work, but I'd like it to run a bit smoother than this.

This is work in progress, like pre-alpha. I suppose that as soon as it works reliably (no library crashes, etc), then it would be time for optimizations.

That's what they promised for the phones and the old version. The old version worked much better on the Aquaris M10 already. What is visible in this video is a huge step backwards.

I think it is too early to have such a verdict.

This is probably the very first video showing off Ubuntu Personal on the Aquaris M10 and the interest is to see how it will progress in the following weeks.

Without addressing the implied question of market validation and user research, there are lots of reasons why power users of such hardware would want something more powerful than an Android platform that is really only usable for installing things from an app store.

I think the point is more "why not install a more optimized distro than Ubuntu". Something like Mint or Puppy would be less resource intensive but still be a Linux system.

Core Duo/3Gb RAM seems enough for Ubuntu. What kind of graphics does the laptop have?

It is certainly enough. It should be fine with, say, xubuntu. Unity, etc. might be slow, however.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com