Lambdacurry

Why Ubuntu should use Android Surfaceflinger instead of investing in Mir and pulling a "Bada" move


The Ubuntu foundation recently released a new spec for a new display server called Mir. This comes on the heels of a similar discovery by Phoronix that Ubuntu touch was using SurfaceFlinger under the covers as well as an announcement that Unity will be switching to Qt/QML for its next version.

I think investing in Mir is a poor move and Ubuntu seems to be all over the place. Most top end device SoC manufacturers will only release Android compatible binary drivers for a long time to come. Even if they go Linux, they will most likely stick to xorg compatible drivers (because the big enterprise Linux gorilla - Redhat - is still invested in Xorg).

If one has already made significant investment in porting Ubuntu userspace to Android+Surfaceflinger (on touch) why would you NOT use that work and port it over to the desktop. There is significant opportunity for innovation on the Android stack and though Google would need a little pushing to allow Ubuntu as a special tech member, it can still be done.

And here’s the most important reason of all - yesterday, I had to attend an important GoToMeeting. I used my Ubuntu desktop and clicked the link only to be faced with a “unsupported platform message”. I dont know why, but I decided to try it on my Android mobile device. I installed the GoToMeeting app - clicked on the email and in less than 2 minutes from the time I got the Linux-unsupported message, I was connected to my meeting.

Android already has a huge, huge, HUGE ecosystem that works frikking well - why would you not want to leverage that ? Ubuntu is trying to pull an Opera Browser or a Bada here with its Mir announcement - and we all know how that panned out.


Lambdacurry

Why Ubuntu should use Android Surfaceflinger instead of investing in Mir and pulling a "Bada" move

Published

March 05, 2013

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