Ubuntu Core On The Nexus 7
jonobacon.org
jonobacon.org
I would love for them to start with Microsoft Surface (with keyboard as standard in some models it would kinda be the logical choice) but I understand that Nexus is a) earlier b) cheaper c) you have to start with something.
Right?
The reason for the Nexus 7 focus is simple. It is, by far, the most popular while being very powerful tablet with market penetration.
I still think Canonical has this misguided idea that average Joe will go through the process of unlocking their Nexus 7 to install Ubuntu, but it has a reasoning behind it.
I would much rather see Ubuntu on my Transformer Infinity, since it has hdmi out and a keyboard dock. I could easily plug it into a monitor and have a desktop like experience that way.
I've loaded up Ubuntu on my original Transformer.
Granted, it has a Tegra 2 CPU, which to put it mildly is not very powerful, but Nvidia has put out the required source and modules to put up a Linux distro which takes advantage of it.
Maybe Ubuntu just has gotten "bloated" over the years and everyone has failed to notice because all PCs are overpowered these days, but when I booted it up on the Transformer, a machine which runs Android flawlessly, smoothly and responsive, I was severely disappointed.
Everything. Was. Dead. Dead. Slow. Prepare to wait multiple, multiple seconds to open that terminal. And please don't talk aobut browser-performance. Ouch.
Maybe it will run better on the newer models, but trying it out in real life was a little off-putting. On the other side: If Canonical is putting in effort to get it running well on the Nexus 7, it should translate to an overall performance-improvement across the line.
And that would be welcomed very much.
When my terminal after starting unity is pid 12000, you can guess bloat has occured. Even on my arch boot my terminal after auto login through the x virtual console is pid ~500 still.
Also, Unity uses at least 300Mb of memory, and composting. Compostinggggg.
Most of the inefficiencies in a modern Arch distro, for example, are build around plug and play mostly I think. Udev, systemd, dhcp, etc are all designed to gently allow arbitrary hardware arrangements without interrupting the experience, but cost performance to determine what is available and constantly babysit the environment.
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Hi,
I led the team that shipped this image, and I'm pretty proud of what we did. A few thoughts about our goals for this release.
The entire point of Ubuntu core on the Nexus 7 is to highlight our desktop's performance and resource issues. We know we're way too fat in terms of memory consumption, CPU usage, disk footprint, etc. and now we have a convenient developer platform that folks can use to help us optimize our core in preparation for a future world where mobile dominates. (nb, I've been calling it Ubuntu Pilates)
The great thing about Ubuntu on the Nexus 7 is that it finally provides a convenient, cheap, ARM platform where all the standard Linux tools work. Believe me, I've hacked on pandas, rpis, etc. and for what we're trying to do here, the Nexus 7 is so much easier to develop on.
And if I may insert some editorial, I often see the HN crowd complain about Apple's developer policies, working around strange bugs in their black box APIs, etc. This is your chance to help build out an open platform. I'm not saying our APIs are better (in fact, they tend to be less well thought out than Apple's), but at least you have a chance to help improve things in the platform, rather than accepting whatever the platform gives you.
In any case, the summary here is that for now, we've got a tight focus on improving our core OS footprint so don't expect that our current UI experience is great (it's not) or that it's a usable replacement for Android (it's not, unless you hook up a USB keyboard/mouse in which case it's just a super cheap, silent terminal).
Every bit that we improve the core OS on the Nexus 7 flows back into the rest of our platform so our desktop and our server gets leaner and faster. To make it painfully obvious, this will help all your Amazon EC2 instances. :)
We'd love to have any help. And stay tuned for more to come. thanks, /ac
Is dual-booting not possible/really difficult on the Nexus 7?
Obviously a second stage bootloader could be written, but it's going to be highly hardware-specific -- one for the OMAP4-based Galaxy Nexus wouldn't work with the Tegra3-based Nexus 7, etc...
I wonder how the bootloader for the Touchpad works. It had the functionality I describe though I have no idea how it was implemented.
The other advantage is that it could help people fully commit rather than switching backwards and forwards.
Ubuntu is great for doing computery things, like coding, or setting up servers etc. On a tablet, I'm not coding (too fiddly to type $[]@% etc), and not using it as a server, but I am using it as a map, as a book, as an email machine etc.
To be honest, I'd rather run Android on a laptop, rather than Ubuntu on a tablet.
I would find this useful assuming I could connect a keyboard and mouse to it. Assuming Android and Ubuntu could be dual booted quickly enough and I had a decent stand for tablet I could forgo a laptop entirely.
How does performance compare - what's an equivalent netbook/laptop/desktop? BTW: Nexus 10 is looking good, cortex A-15 http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/2012/10/26/impressive-google-n...
My doubts are that not even the Ubuntu team will be able to reach the level of desktop polish that Google have achieved with Jelly Bean.
I would prefer Ubuntu to be better as it is a more open stack.
The Nexus 7 and the TF700 seem to have very similar hardware around the Tegra3.
Or, as the post puts it: "To be clear, this is not going to be a tablet Unity interface ... we can ensure pieces such as the kernel, power management and other related areas are working effectively on a tablet device."