ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Jo-Erlend Schinstad <joerlend.schinstad@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 1 January 2017 at 14:39, mark <j.m.holmes@xxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi Jo-Erlend,
>
> Am I right in thinking that the Unity8 session for the Desktop is
> basically the promised Core and Snap of the upcoming Ubuntu Personal?
>
Mir, Unity 8 and the snap system is the same in phones and desktop. In
16.10, however, Mir and Unity 8 is provided as traditional debs rather than
snaps. It would be very nice if they could provide them as snaps for the
desktop in time for 17.04 and that we have the option to keep it rolling
from that point. But I don't know anything about their specific plans.

> And is Canonical's attention focused on the Desktop - presumably Unity8 -
> at the moment in preparation for 17.04?
>
That's probably a big part of it, but it also makes sense to do little with
the system that's being replaced and rather focus on the future system. Or
rather; focusing the user-visible stuff on the user-visible system while
focus on the new phone system is focused on the lower-level stuff such as
porting hardware support and snapping software.

> What's still needed to mesh Unity8 Desktop OS with Ubuntuphone? It really
> must be nearly there...?
>

These are two different questions. For phones, we need to get at least the
core apps ported to snap. Other apps should be ported too, or you would
lose functionality in your phone. And the phones hardware support must be
upgraded to a new kernel. Desktops have more requirements, such as good
support for legacy software, which isn't very relevant on phones. Desktop
might also require more features from the snap system.

I don't know all the details, but from my limited understanding, we should
be nearly there. Nearly is a relative term though. :)