Improving Ubuntu's application upload process

Posted Sep 6, 2012 10:11 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

You are mixing up established software and desktop approaches to software with specific processor chips.

No. I'm talking about platforms. Linux desktop is not relevant for the fate of the war: it's too small. And Windows is pretty tied up to x86. Windows itself can be ported to ARM (Windows RT is just that even if they intentionally crippled it), and all the programs can be ported too, but why would anyone except Microsoft do that? Most users prefer Android and iOS today.

touchscreen software is horrid to use on a big screen with a keyboard and mouse. it's not just a small change, it's a completely different paradigm.

Sure. ASUS Transformer is much less useful because of that. But you can change and fix the programs. You can not easily change the underlying platform.

There _is_ a very straightforward path for desktop software to work on docked mobile devices.

Absolutely! In some different universe where docked mobile devices will be based on Windows or X Window system. In our reality these devices will be based on Android or iOS. This excludes the existing software. Sure, some libraries and other important pieces will be reused, but the desktop as we know it? Forget out it.

The best case scenario: it'll survave as some kind of very niche player (similarly to how today it's very niche player). Sure, you can use Linux to build an ATM or kiosk, but why should you do that when there are another familiar platform (Android)? Heck, even today such devices are often using Windows (even if you need to spend money to buy it), because it's more familier to the developers.

Existential thread for the "traditional Linux desktop" today is not Windows or MacOS, but Android and iOS. I'm not touching iOS with ten-feet pole (you need to sell your soul before you can ever do anything with it), but I find it hard to justify fight against Android: what will it accomplish? Android is already free, after all…