Canonical has announced that the next version of Ubuntu will come with support for multitouch.
Company founder Mark Shuttleworth yesterday announced that Ubuntu 10.10, scheduled for release in October, will feature multitouch support in the form of UTouch.
Multitouch is nothing new, however, Shuttleworth says Canonical tried to do something different with its implementation in Ubuntu.
"The design team has lead the way, developing a “touch language” which goes beyond the work that we’ve seen elsewhere," Mr. Shuttleworth writes on his blog. "Rather than single, magic gestures, we’re making it possible for basic gestures to be chained, or composed, into more sophisticated 'sentences,'" he explains. "The basic gestures, or primitives, are like individual verbs, and stringing them together allows for richer interactions. It’s not quite the difference between banging rocks together and conducting a symphony orchestra, but it feels like a good step in the right direction."
Expect things to be pretty basic in 10.10, but Shuttleworth hopes that as third part developers jump on board, Ubuntu's multitouch experience will start to fill out quite nicely.
Ars Technica reports that uTouch is tightly integrated with Unity, Ubuntu's new lightweight netbook environment, and relies on recent improvements to the Linux kernel like the Xorg display server, and the Gtk+ toolkit.
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Thats interesting, in my case i find it to be the opposite
Also, with all the people working on it, it might be better...
Also, with all the people working on it, it might be better...
Thats interesting, in my case i find it to be the opposite
The biggest issue I saw with Ubuntu is that the software installation is buggy and very limited. I used the software browser that came with it, found an app I wanted to try, then Id click install, it would appear to do it; but then for some of the apps it would say installed, but there was not any apparent way to open it, and I could not find it in the file system. The user experience was very dissatisfying for me when trying to add to the OS, the built in applications worked well enough though.
I also downloaded Chrome, ran it. Turned off the computer. Came back the next day, and Chrome was gone, but the installer was still there and acting like it was installed, there was just no way to open it. I guess it could have been done in a command line, but i dont know.
So I find it just stupid that they are adding multi touch when doing basic things like adding new programs can be a bitch. Can they not make it as easy as windows or mac, download a file, run the file, app is installed.
Its 2010, and if I have to go to a command line, then the OS is garbage.
I understand what you are saying, but i personally haven't experienced any slow programs apart from limewire because its java but thats slow to start in windows also, it could be because i use xubuntu rather than ubuntu and use preload to improve app start up.
Having said that though there is always room for improvement
Err, how exactly? You mean by being software?
Try utorrent instead
I have transmission but can you use it to search for songs like you do in limewire?
Linux has already taking over the server and the cellphone, next it will take over the desktop.
Just my off-topic $0.02.
Why is it garbage if you need to do things in the fastest possible way vs the slowest possible way? I know my way around the Windows GUI fairly well so I don't have much need for the CLI (and on top of that the Windows CLI is garbage), but when I switch to any Linux distro I do things on the command line quite often. It's just so much faster than digging around through fancy menus.
That said, you should not need to use the command line for most basic tasks in Ubuntu. From the sound of it you've just run into one of Ubuntu's "features," ie. half-baked additions that don't work all the time. From the looks of it, this Multitouch thing will also be a half-baked idea. Rather than keeping it purely in the development branch until it's polished they will put something in 10.10 just because it sort-of-kinda works when the planets are aligned right. That's the Ubuntu way though. Add unpolished features, change the theme and create a ton of hype. Canonical have very good marketing considering their size, I'll give them that.
Just my off-topic $0.02.
Thats all you have to do in ubuntu as well, open up synaptic package manager - search for the app then click install.
And every OS has hiccups and inconveniences including windows 7 despite it still costing $$$
And i managed to get windows 7 ultimate for free but i still use xubuntu