JingOS: Linux Distro Inspired by the iPad
jingos.com
jingos.com
iPad is a device, not OS.
Even Apple calls it iPadOS: https://www.apple.com/ipados/ipados-14/
Their title seems accurate.
iPad != iPadOS != iOS which was your original modification to the title.
My point is, it’s iPad specific. So iPad/iPadOS is fine here, and not iOS.
/s
JingOS seems heavily inspired as in a massive lack of any original concept. Even the browser shown in the demo looks so much like safari. The notifications on the corner. The swipe up gestures etc.
Even the design story of icons is heavily inspired.
Honest question, how do you add more features + abilities to an OS without adding more menus in more places?
It's all well and good trying to hide the complexity, but not if you can't find the features unless you've already got someone who knows the product talking you through it.
Let us never forget that we are holding it wrong.
No, because it's offers one of the most consistent UX. It's far from perfect, but Apple manages to make this happen on both iOS/OSX.
Of course gaining traction as a closed source Chinese OS would be very difficult and unless we can see some code ourselves and run it locally, its all just speculation.
It would be totally justified to call new/innovative tablet/OS a Pad
The word may be too generic, but the intent seems specifically to confuse.
Very different from iPad.
What?? Hell NO!
Most Android "tablet" apps are upscaled phone apps, if even that. The last time I checked, apps specifically developed for Android tablets were far fewer (and worse) than apps specifically made for iPads.
Well, we don't discuss a lot of politics in international teams, that's a taboo topic especially when working with Chinese colleagues. And for Trump we have only one word, that I don't want to repeat here.
I think I heard the word "jingoism" for the first time ever around 5 years ago. It is not a word one hears very often, and it certainly didn't come to mind from "JingOS".
If you often read high-brow political publications you may come across "jingoism" on the daily, but that is obviously not a huge cross-section of the public.
TBH, kind of bizarre how strongly this jingoism thing is being pushed in this thread.
Does Ngram scan social media, TV or (to a lesser extent) newspapers? If not I’m dubious about the utility here.
I agree that is still used, but arguably in very specialized contexts, and has many better and less idiomatic alternatives that make it a poor choice in many publication, helping it become rarer.
I expect a lot of concept names not directly bound to the concept itself to slowly disappear, the same way calling dinnerware "china" won't stand for a lot more generations I think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingo_(novel)
It's not a word you'd hear every day but it's a word I'd bet on the majority of genuinely literate people to understand.
https://www.adlibris.com/se/bok/romeo-and-juliet-97804862755...
You're turning my statement around and perceive it as if I was suggesting Swedish people are not literate. That's not what I'm saying yet you're defending the Swedes.
Not that I’d want to put Pratchett in the literary canon, just making a point about Bokus.
The comment you're referring to didn't say that, or suggest it. So this is one red flag for your "genuine" literacy :)
In hindsight probably a good idea, not a self-fulfilling prophecy you'd want.
It's not that obscure if a nonnative speaker's first reaction is to think "why would anyone want to call a distro by that name"?
It doesn't matter that there is a perfectly reasonable alternative motivation for it ... It's just, you'll never find me wanting to be heard saying "I think you should use jingos!"[1]
Interestingly, it turns out, someone else thought it would be a good brand name too.[2] So you are not alone.
[1]: https://www.bennetyee.org/http_webster.cgi?isindex=jingo&met... [2]: https://buyjingos.com/
My initial allergy does fade over time. That's advertising/normalisation for you.
Patio Cola.
(鲮, romanised as Ling, is another water animal known as "mud carp".)
It's appearing in traditional Chinese medicine and seems to be a fairly important concept there.
It also seems to be used as a name.
So Jing is a fairly wide spread well known mandarin word but a Jing + OS + wrong pronoun-cation sounds similar to a not that widely known english word which seems to have gone out of fashion quite a while ago...
It's clearly <Jing><Os>, and Jing sounds like something which is likely a Mandarin (or other Asian language) word. And Os is a widely accepted name suffix for operating system.
And it turns out it is (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jing_(Chinese_medicine)) and it's a widely used/known word, too.
Additionally Jingoism, isn't really that commonly used. Most non-native speaker which are not reading certain political news outlets likely have never heard about this word before (like me). It's definitely not part of the vocabulary thought in (non native) english school courses.
Lastly, where would we end up if we have negative sentiment, every time a wrongly pronounced word happened to sound similar to a word in another language which has negative sentiment attached with it. At that point we probably would need to remove a non small part of names and the english language because wrongly pronouncing it makes it sound like a bad word in some other language...
It's just that there is:
- Jing = 鲸
- Jing as simpl. of jīng = 精
- Jing as simpl. of jīng = 經
- ...?
I wouldn't be surprised if they did consider this similar words when creating JingOs as JingOs is the essence (精) which becomes the structure they wave their ecosystem and as such success around (like Warp~經 is for weaving fabrics).
Or this is just a nice coincidence ;=)
But either way interpreting <Jing><Os> as a call out to <jingo><-ism> is very far fetched.
I mean there are all kinds of protections of visual thinks like e.g. design patents.
I would be highly surprised if this doesn't violate at least one or two apple hold still valid design patents or other protection mechanisms.
Because lets be honest design/visual wise it's less iPad/iOs inspired but a bland clone of the iOs design on iPad with some/many minor but in the grater picture irrelevant changes.
from their 'about' page
(I’m not a lawyer so have no idea if this JingOS legally OK or not, but there is a difference between familiar and clone).
But you can have a design patent for the "looks and feel" of your headsup display to some degree. You can't make it cover what is one the display or that important parts are highlighted. But you can potentially cover the color pallet and how exactly you arrange information of the same not high importance level.
I.e. in context of JingOs the way they cluster settings especially combined with the used color schema and similar aspects are very likely covered by design patents.
Similar that notifications are a list of swipe-able settings in a box can't be covered by design patents, but that it has that graish color with that level of transparence, rounded corners, and similar might very well be covered.
I personally don't like design patents but they are a thing which exists.
Lastly the copy is so close that it might not just cause conflicts with design patents but also with copyright on the visual parts (not the underlying code!) of iOs.
Would it be allowed for a vendor to add a button which makes the interface looks like a competitor's interface?
>The court ruled that, "Apple cannot get patent-like protection for the idea of a graphical user interface, or the idea of a desktop metaphor [under copyright law].
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Micros....
In this case it's not about the idea about a GUI but the very specific way the GUI was made wrt. non-functional aspects of the GUI.
And even if there is no enforceable design patent there is still copyright and trademark protection. E.g. look at the settings icon which is basically screams "lets change the settings icons just enough to not be a copyright infringement". That icon is trademarked by Apple and the JingOs variant has still quite many of the points which define the Apple trademark, enough to open potential for a case. (They have 3 connection from the gear ring to the center at the exact same position, a "dot" at the center, a inner ring (but just one color instead of an gear) and the gear background color doesn't stretch to the sides of the icon (I have no idea why they didn't change that, it would be more different and look better), they also replaced light silver with white. Anyway I would guess a trademark case for this detail has a good chance, especially given that this icon looks different enough to the other icons to not fit in, making it super clear that they somewhat forcefully wanted to make it look as much like Apple as possible. Instead of just using similar visual clues).
In a way, the USA brought this upon themselves. Global intellectual property rights are prerequisite for international trade in services. But they also require international concorde on what they are.
America has shot itself in the foot by diverging from international standards of copyright and intellectual property. And it's really myopic: for example, Disney will marginally increase the value of their IP holdings by lobbying for a perpetual license to Mickey Mouse; but it will also preclude Disney from ever trading their IP on equal terms with China.
- making it illegal to import any product having it installed
- making it illegal to host a copy in the US/EU/UK and probably other places, too
But practically you could just download it from idk. a server not in the US/EU/UK, or a server in the US/EU/UK which doesn't know (or care) about the problem. Or from a torrent or similar.
Furthermore (assuming Apples sues and wins a case) I don't think they will bother trying preventing a (for them) small amount of private people from using it. Through if it becomes more successful it's likely another matter.
What they care about is that you can't buy a tablet of which the UI looks, feels and behaves like iOs.
I just fear this might be abused by Apple or other entities as an argument why devices should be looked down and users must not be allowed to install their own Os as this would lead to all kind of fraud and lost revenue. (Just to be clear I'm fully aware that for a tech aware person this argument makes no sense, but propose it to an old politician who doesn't really understand anything IT related and they might believe you, and at least in Germany we have way to many tech incompetent politicians...)
EDIT: Also in the parent post I probably should have used the term distribute inside of the EU/US/... Anyway I'm not a lawyer so the exact terminology might not be quite right.
Only I wish they would divert more from MacOS X / iPad OS in terms of colours and loose the reference to iPad in the marketing copy.
I’m a grumpy graybeard who likes Arch on my laptop and Debian on my server...but cosmetics and familiar visual vocab and adopting industry ux practices—these are undeniable obstacles that must be overcome before “the year of the Linux desktop “ :)
I read the parent to mean that indicates the present mobile is experience a step forward in that context.
- Steve Jobs
I obviously can't say what Picasso thought that meant, but I have a theory on what it actually means:
"Copying" vs "Stealing" refers to how well you break it down and use the underlying components of a design. "Copying" is more or less just mimicking the feature with a few tweaks, whereas "stealing" is redesigning it from first principles based on what the best ideas in it seem to be, and making it your own.
For example (not necessarily a good one, I don't claim to be a "great artist"), take regenerating health in COD: the idea appears to be removing persistence between engagements, by resetting health back to full after you've stopped being shot.
Okay then, why not have regenerating ammo or regenerating grenades?
Well, it looks like it's a stealth nerf against really good players - after a few fights without being killed, you have to fight without grenades, VS freshly respawned players (who statistically are the players who die more often) who do get grenades. Unless the player was conserving grenades through early fights, which is also a disadvantage (if self-imposed).
Okay, what can we do with this?
Well, if you're playing a highly competitive game then perhaps add "regenerating grenades", else add some sort of bonus score for getting killstreaks.
If you're making a more casual game, then you can amp the regeneration effect up by giving more low/single-use items that are essentially a quiet buff for newbies who'll die before they get a kill anyway.
Maybe you could add a pool of none regenerating health to limit the effectiveness of it on pro players, without removing it entirely? Like armour that you spawn with, that blocks e.g. 10% of damage but slowly breaks as you take more and more damage?
Point is, this all started with regenerating health, yet now it's informing grenade stuff. If you'd just directly copy/pasted "perFrame: health++" with minimal changes then you'd miss out on a ton of useful tools here.
EDIT: also, you could take the mechanic in a different direction entirely - what would happen if everyone lost health outside of battle instead of gaining health? Maybe combine that with gaining some health after every kill, so people are forced to get into battles to stay alive?
Or, what if health was always regenerating, instead of only regenerating when you're not being shot at?
Copying Apple's style of e.g. the settings icon is just that, copying. Nothing to be proud of, and just tells me the developer has their priorities wrong if they think this style is part of what needs stealing to give the user a good experience.
To do that, one needs to get the essence, the principle, and the deep underlying logic of another work, rather than simply copying something at the surface level.
Install an ssh app (they exist for iOS. I’ve used them. They’re ok! They’d be better w a paired Bluetooth keyboard, easy to come by) Log into your server of choice—even just your personal machine on your LAN Hack away in emacs
This has the added benefit of not requiring local access to files on your mobile device, or setting up yet another custom dev environment on a new system
Now that I mention it, I _do_ want to try this!
But to truly catch up with iPadOS one needs to recreate not just the UX but also powerful features that it comes with
* can the Photo app recognize faces? or landscapes ?
* can the Notes app do OCR on pictures and PDF’s?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25805137
* is there an iCloud like function that synchronizes in the background?
It is not just the UX that makes 70+ year olds be able to work with an iPad, it’s the whole package.
> Because it actually is...
It most certainly isn't. Based on personal use, Nokia's Download![1] comes to mind.
Looking at an archived page[2]:
>* Browse, preview, buy and download direct to your phone
>* Read descriptions of offers from popular brands and local providers
>* Test free trials of some content and applications before you buy
>* Choose from the latest selection with regular updates
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Download! [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20061209073944/http://www.nokia....
So there were app stores.
But Sinosfky and his supporters had to push their anti-NET agenda, followed by clever decisions like killing C++/CX as well, and here we are.
Plus its by China. Once this device goes mainstream among people as a laptop replacement, expect Linux to come up with a huge number of Chinese apps.
Everything you mention would be possible if those were given :-(
- A tablet OS that looks approximately as nice as iPadOS and works approximately as well. With a Springboard-ish homescreen/app paradigm.
- The ability to run a terminal
- The ability to run apps in full screen and swipe between them
- Access to the most popular handful of apps (Chrome, VS Code, Slack, Discord, Zoom, etc.)
This already looks a lot nicer than a lot of “pretty” Linux distros I’ve seen, I’ll be curious to read the reviews next month.
If a tablet could get close iPad in usability and hardware and yet open it up to have a full terminal and ability to install local Linux apps. That’d be a great productivity tool, and an excellent mobility device.
Also since it is just getting started, you would be better off not using iPad, Apple kind of words. Instead use neutral terms like Linux OS optimized for Tablets, before it is too late.
Also heavy influence of Apple Marketing on your preview video, it would serve you well if you have the actual working copy of the OS on a tablet shown as demo as well. Hope you are making that video as well.
Android is already a Linux tablet OS. It's like they ignored the elephant in the room. Ubuntu also runs on tablets. (edit: this is based in Ubuntu!)
Besides that point, Apple is pretty much the opposite of free computing. It's a gross comparison.
Edit: Looking at their Reddit timeline, it appears as though they've made a lot of progress in a few short months, so I applaud that. I just wish people would stop trying to copy Apple at everything. It's a turn off.
Isn't that what they said? They stated that one of the reasons to create a new OS is that Apple is a closed platform. You can't blame them to go further than that in a marketing video, it's not like they're posting anonymous comments on an internet forum.
Speaking as a hacker or a consumer?
“Apple's domination of the global tablet market continued in the third quarter of 2020, according to market research firm Canalys, with iPad shipments seeing an estimated 47% year-over-year growth rate thanks to coronavirus trends.”
The market is speaking, and consumers don’t care about what the OS is. They never have, and never will.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/11/12/apple-extends-mas...
Just not pure GNU/Linux or BSDs (other than those packaged by Apple and Sony).
I can’t stand them, but those that have them seem to love them.
Android keeps having problems because Google is unable to drive the ecosystem to actually care, what a surprise.
There are plenty of countries where iPads are out of reach for regular consumer, and Android Tablets are in practice phones with bigger screens, given how little the ecosystem cares about them, so that leaves Windows devices as only choice for consumers.
How do iPads differ?
I could read my shitter news on any device with a screen, as well as control my smart home.
When coupled with keyboard, office like workflows, coupled with the pen to do the drawings instead of trying to use the mouse as pencil since many users have done during the last couple of decades.
Programming on the go with environments like Playgrounds, Pythonista, Continuous, Shaderific.
This isn't an A vs B thing to me, it's just that comparing to an ipad says something to a lot of users, and quickly. If this project succeeds, it will give some alternatives to closed-ecosystem things, to new/other people (with a cheaper cost to them). So the reservations about Apple are actually reasons to support this project, in that way. Thoughts?
> iPadOS-like UI and UX
And WRT your other comments, you're probably not the target for this. I run dozens of Linux machines for work stuff but everything in my personal ecosystem is Apple because I don't find config fun. Different horses for different courses.
I am longing for a Linux alternative, but any Android tablets of similarly high quality are just so much more expensive, and actual Linux is still far away in terms of usability.
What I want is an iPad, but with Linux. I'm sure I'm not the only one, and Jingling knows that.
The iPad chips just run away from even the top end android tablets. Maybe I wouldn’t care as much but my experience on android tablets is they are just laggy. Slow to open things, little stutters throughout the OS, etc.
My iPad pro is fast enough to do my dev work but I cannot run the tools to do dev.
Your comment is a bit weird as you know very well what people here mean: iPad is generally seen as something you cannot produce things on. I do not agree with that: unlike others here, I type as fast on the keyboard of the pro (not the new one: not tried that) as on my MacBook and Lenovo. But it just misses the applications as they are forbidden. My wife is a writer and she needs nothing else. The only thing I am saying is that for me the walled gardens and particular not compiling restrictions make it a bitter sweet device: I love it but I cannot do my work on it.
https://icplishi.com/%E4%BA%ACICP%E5%A4%8716065045%E5%8F%B7/
Encouraging competition and using software from smaller companies, Chinese or not, is our only chance to level this.
Unfortunately most Chinese suppliers don't take their GPLv2 obligations very serious when it comes to Linux kernel drivers for example. If these new(?) players do, I can only applaud it.
This is the only thing I found with some limited googling:
> Our team is very experienced in making gadgets. They are experts from Xiaomi/OPPO/Google/Ubuntu and other Consumer Electronic Companies. So what we are talking about here is not a low-end tablet for geeks and Linux users. It will be designed just like a tablet for consumers with the best quality we can achieve.
From: https://www.facebook.com/JingOSfb/posts/the-idea-of-making-a...
Interestingly, JingOS's About page [1] uses similar words but different companies:
> Our team is very experienced. They are experts from Lenovo, Alibaba, Sumsung, Canonical/Ubuntu, Trolltech and other famous IT Companies.
Any competitions to existing duopoly are good.
Trolltech, the creator of the Qt framework, became part of Nokia in 2008 and doesn't exist any more as a company since. So it's a rather strange reference.
So, is this going to be a paid for product? I am looking at what looks like is their GitHub page, and it's basically empty? https://github.com/JingOS-team
With the current geopolitical landscape, projects from Russia, China and increasingly the United States must be open-source to become widely used and trusted.
If China-based JingOS aren't developing their work publicly, for most developers it may as well not exist.
> JingOS is based on Ubuntu 20.04, KDE v5.75, Plasma Mobile 5.20. We will replace the framework from Plasma Mobile to JDE(Jing Desktop Environment) later this year.
> The project will open-source step by step on GitHub: JingOS-team
[1]: https://forum.jingos.com/t/jingos-roadmap-v1-0-published-on-...
Seems weird to me.
Practically speaking, I agree completely. Apple could just file some bullshit motion for shits and giggles and the only practical thing to do would be to take it down or get bankrupted by a baseless lawsuit.
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I love using my iPad to consume content, but damn do I sometimes wish I could just use a real desktop on it. With some caveats, of course:
- Without needing an internet connection/AP - At least some kind touch support* (clicking, scrolling, gestures, etc.) - Consistent, dependable graphical fidelity/performance - Easily portable - Quick to instantiate - Clean-yet-functional UI*
I've tried some wireless AP/bridge setups on a Pi4 and VNCing into it via my iPad, but they've been not-so-satisfactory for a few of the reasons listed above. Haven't given up on it -still researching/fiddling around - but definitely the biggest hurdle is going to be the UI. Gotta find that balance between functionality, simplicity, and aesthetic - preferably out of the box. Not something Linux is particularly known for.
*i.e. simplified desktop/application UI so that I can do most everything using the touchscreen (in addition to the keyboard/mouse), but can still access the advanced functions, even if those specifically are only optimized for mouse/keyboard. Ideally I'd be able to show/hide functions arbitrarily in the simple mode based on if I do/don't use them. Tiled WM or similar for single-app or split-pane view mode.
Obviously not that simple in practice but what certainly _doesnt_ work is sexy hardware running the turd that is windows.
Software keyboard is always just terrible to use, making anything other than scrolling social media or reading articles/books a painful experience.
It explains why for ex. Xiaomi themes it's mobile OS (MIUI) to appear more iOS-ish.
Or do most pad users have a physical keyboard for text entry?
I would be interested in the touchscreen keyboard detail here.
I have Gboard on Android, has this space matured?
When I listened to productivity podcasts the consensus seemed to be yes, people who tend to do a lot of typing on tablets hook them up to keyboards.
FreeOffice from SoftMaker is my choice now.
But if you have a group with the design chops capable of producing this; then surely you can make so it doesn't look like a deliberate Apple copy?
Just look at the comments here in this thread; half of the reaction is about this is a rip off of Apple and legal this and that, ignoring what a massive contribution a well-designed tablet UI is.
As awesome as this is, this is no contribution to the Linux Desktop.
Personally I think there is little benefit to having one single Linux desktop that is equivalent to Windows or macOS, just with a different theme and a different kernel. Desktop Linux is about choice (TM).
Sure, for different hardware (RPi, Tablets, PC, Mobile etc) different distros/DEs make sense. But for a single similar hardware, (PC for example) I never understood why distros like Manjaro and KDE neon are separate. Wish those teams were together and built a kick-ass serious competitor.
But in the Linux world, if I like a minimalistic appearance and the Gnome shell model, I use Gnome. If I want a powerful desktop that I can configure a lot, I choose KDE/Plasma. If I want something lightweight, there are plenty of choices.
And why are there different distros like Manjaro, KDE Neon, Ubuntu, Fedora? This is somewhat orthognal, but they all have important differences.
I don't think one "Desktop Linux" could give me the breadth of choices that multiple desktop environments can. If they were to merge and make one big enviroment, that would have to be really good because it is competing with Windows and macOS.
I used to use Gnome, but since Linux is moving in the direction you describe and homogenizing under the hood (see systemd for example), I found that current desktop Linux is no longer the radical different OS - it is just an inferior alternative Windows (for me personally, at this point in time!).
That's why we started https://github.com/pixelc-linux
> JingOS is based on Ubuntu 20.04, KDE v5.75, Plasma Mobile 5.20. We will replace the framework from Plasma Mobile to JDE(Jing Desktop Environment) later this year.
> The project will open-source step by step on GitHub: JingOS-team[1]
So later this year, hopefully, you'll be able to install JDE on any tablet running Linux, though I suspect it won't be 100% smooth from the get-go.
Why on Ubuntu not Debian? If you forking something fork from more legit upstream distro. What are they including in Ubuntu that Debian doesn't have concerns me due to Ubuntu's track record.