ubuntu-tablet team mailing list archive

["Mitchell Reese" <mitchell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks Alan, look forward to seeing which direction things go. M

Curious Mail - Sent via Linux

Alan Pope <alan.pope@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Hi Mitchell,
>
>On 30/01/12 00:29, Mitchell Reese wrote:
>> Wow. So that means then, that after Mark Shuttleworth's announcement
>> that Ubuntu is coming to tablets, the 'officially' recommended way at
>> the moment to join in with development is to buy a tablet that doesn't
>> support, and quite possibly will never reliably support, hardware
>> accelerated graphics? I find that disappointing, to say the least.
>>
>
>My recommendation was based on the fact that I know it's possible to run 
>Ubuntu on one of these devices. At the moment the Ubuntu Tablet is 
>something Canonical are exploring, we don't have a lot of things nailed 
>down, including final hardware. The Transformer is good enough right now 
>to run Ubuntu, although not perfectly, it's good enough for a 
>development target during our explorations.
>
>> What this means is that:
>> a. People will be unable to try anything with 12.04 until it's ported to
>> this tablet
>
>I don't understand this. People have successfully installed 11.10 on 
>Transformers, and had some success with hardware acceleration.
>
>http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/How_to_install_Ubuntu_on_an_Asus_EEEPad_Transformer
>
>It's far from perfect but people in the community are working on the 
>niggling issues by the look of it.
>
>> b. We are then 'stuck' with using the Unity 2D interface. There are
>> potentially some great things about this, but personally, I'm a fan of
>> the regular version currently shipping that requires graphics acceleration.
>
>Unity 2D uses GL acceleration too you know :) Just less of it. I too 
>like Unity, but in Ubuntu both Unity and Unity 2D are first class citizens.
>
>> c. We will most likely be developing using the modified kernel required
>> for the transformer tablet. Admittedly I don't know much about kernel
>> development, but this doesn't seem to bode well for the future of this
>> project. Needing to have a modified kernel to get something to run
>> generally points to it not being officially supported by the main
>> project...
>>
>
>Modified kernels will almost certainly be required for _any_ ARM based 
>device right now. That's a fact of life.
>
>> I would really like to see Canonical, and Ubuntu, succeed in the tablet
>> market. For this to happen though, I would expect there to be some form
>> of reasonable development device available in the near future. Alan, are
>> you able to drop us any hints as to whether this will happen or not? At
>> the very least, a roadmap from Canonical about tablet development would
>> be appreciated. Thanks.
>>
>
>We don't have a roadmap I can show you. We're just in the early stages 
>of exploring the tablet market and devices and have a very small team 
>looking at this. As Mark outlined in his blog post we have aspirations 
>to be on tablets, but it's very early days for us.
>
>Cheers,
>Al.
>
>-- 
>Alan Pope
>Engineering Manager
>
>Canonical - Product Strategy
>alan.pope@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>http://ubuntu.com/
>
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