By now you’ve probably heard Canonical’s big announcement out of CES 2012: Ubuntu is coming to your TV (or so Canonical hopes). But what’s received less attention amid all the fanfare is the role of Unity, the Linux desktop environment on which the new TV interface is based. Since Ubuntu TV could have important, if surprising, ramifications for Unity, here are some observations to keep in mind.
For the sake of civility, I won’t get back into the debate on Unity’s merits relative to GNOME Shell, KDE or any other Linux desktop environment. Suffice it to say, though, that — as we’ve seen in abundant clarity here on this site — Canonical’s decision to replace GNOME with Unity was more than a little contentious for many users.
Suffice it to say, too, that I was a little confused why Canonical jumped off the GNOME ship in the first place. Sure, the retirement of GNOME 2 meant that a big change was in store for users either way. And building their own desktop environment gave Ubuntu developers more control over their operating system without having to rely on channel partners who sometimes had a different philosophy about things. But creating a whole new interface from scratch — particularly one that, at least at first, appeared to be largely a redundancy of GNOME Shell — seemed like a risky expenditure of resources for little concrete gain.
But with the news that the interface for Ubuntu TV will be based on Unity — or actually is Unity, as Michael Hall noted recently — things make a bit more sense. Or do they?
On one level, we might conclude that Canonical’s plan all along was to build a desktop environment that could work not only on desktop and laptop PCs, but also on TVs, among other things. And that may indeed have been the company’s strategy. But I’m not certain users will necessarily decide in the end that it was the right one.
I agree that it makes sense, as Hall also pointed out, to integrate one interface and unified set of APIs into Ubuntu that will work across all devices running the operating system, in order to encourage developers to target the platform. There’s no disputing that developers like consistency and standardization.
But will open source users, in the end, be persuaded to terminate the revolt against Unity that some have undertaken — I’m thinking of the MATE fork of GNOME 2, for instance, and Linux Mint’s new Cinnamon interface — simply because Unity will work on their TV as well as their PC? No matter how excited developers may be about Unity and the opportunities it makes possible across different kinds of devices, I’m not convinced users will be equally happy.
In other words, we need to distinguish developers from users. It’s important to cater to the former, but the latter need some love as well. And rightly or wrongly, Canonical’s image among users has become colder over the last year or so, I would argue, because of Unity.
This isn’t to say Unity is destined to fail. In fact, particularly now that Ubuntu developers are working on fixing its bugs and enhancing its usability, there’s a very good chance that the harsh feelings it engendered early on will be forgotten as users realize that it can work just as well as the desktop environments they’ve known and loved in the past.
But if everyone does end up loving Unity, the fact that it can run on their TVs probably won’t be the reason. It will be because it works, period. And by adding a new line of devices to the hardware on which Unity needs to work well, Ubuntu developers have only set a higher bar for themselves when it comes to ensuring a positive Unity experience.
Let’s hope that, as Canonical pursues the exciting future that Unity and Ubuntu TV make possible, it also keeps in mind that when all’s said and done, it’s about the users — not the developers or toolkits or cool hardware. If it doesn’t work for most of the users, at least most of the time, on whatever hardware they run, it doesn’t work.
Read More About This Topic
Share This Post
Tags: Canonical | Cinnamon | Desktop Environments | Gnome | GNOME 3 | GNOME Shell | Linux | Linux Mint | MATE | Ubuntu | Ubuntu TV | Unity
Interact: Add a Comment | Trackback Link | Permalink
Subscribe: RSS Feed
Don't miss Charlene O'Hanlon's weekly columns...
To answer your headline question: no it won’t.
The reasons for trying to force-fit your COMPUTER-based offerings into the TV marketplace are just as invalid as when when Bumbling Bill tried it many, many years ago. He was sent packing by the very TV bigwigs he invited to his “Microsoft-On-Your-TV” pitch. The nail in his coffin was when one high-level TV industry type stood up and said something to the effect of, “Hell, Gates, I can’t keep one of your computers running for more than a day. You’re a real bonehead to ask us to put Windows in our products.”
And you’re talking about the Lord-High-Benevolent-Bonehead-For-Life, who comes out with one of his Ubuntu Killer Application with the same frequency as most people change underwear.
Corporate-level stupidity aside, most people have learned that the most reliable systems are those which keep basic, BASIC functions totally separate. Problems are fixed much easier that way. You can pick and choose your options that way. The world simply works better that way.
Question: why are not TVs with built-in DVD players the norm?
Now you’re getting smarter, but I doubt ‘The ASTRONAUT’ ever will.
Abby,
TVs are already shipping with Linux on them, and they have been for years. In that respect, we’ve already gotten further than Windows.
@Abby Word
Don’t be such a pessimist!!
Just because Monopoli$t failed at it doesn’t mean all other companies will.
The astronaut is very smart, TVs are getting smarter & so will you if you accept facts & understand this!
I have to say. The Ubuntu TV promo video does look pretty cool, I admit (though, again, they have the issue of competing with a more established FOSS project here: XBMC). But I have to say, I wish they’d put more effort into making things “just work” than on rolling out new projects. Ubuntu’s biggest problem is that it fails to treat its software collection as a part of the project, e.g. Ubuntu doesn’t see bugs in Banshee as an “Ubuntu bug” because it’s not in Ubuntu – it’s an Banshee. But to an end user, they don’t really care about that distinction, all they care about is the fact that they’re being given a media player that has a quirky bug, and then they conclude that “Ubuntu doesn’t just work”. (Not to pick an Banshee here, it’s just an example.)
And, you know, because it needs to be said: Dear lord, Unity has so many problems on a desktop still. I can’t believe they want to port it to other devices in this state.
And, because I’m thinking selfishly: If they are gonna work on these other platforms, I’d much rather see Ubuntu phones and tablets. I mean, the TV is one part of the average household that I imagine most people think works pretty OK and doesn’t need a lot of work. But Ubuntu doesn’t have the same kind of “device ecosystem” that Apple has with phones/tablets and that actually makes a big difference. (Not that I suggest Ubuntu lock people in the way Apple does, but it’s important to have some different devices that actually play well with your desktop.)