1 Jun
2011
1 Jun
'11
3:15 p.m.
Touch interface is good for some things. Not useful
for all things (for example,
there is no way to "hover" over anything using a touch interface). I don't
think
that an interface that's good for one will be good of the other.
Personally, I think that the desktop Linux GUIs are way too late to the mobile
game. Android is the *Nix standard bearer in that field.
It may well be a fools chase and bound to fail, or they may make something good,
in any case it seems that it is the touch interface that is the target for
gnome, though I guess that may change.
And to quibble, iOS is a darwin GUI, so is certainly also *nix, though just as
certainly mach rather than linux, while android is a linux GUI, though I
understand that google and the rest of the kernel developers have parted company
and the maintenance of the google code was taken out of the main linux kernel,
then the code was too ... it is still at least a fork of linux, and not far from
it yet.
At least in its OSX version darwin is actually certified unix I believe, so no *
needed there.
How open/free/locked etc those systems may or may not be is another question
altogether, which may have more than a little bit to do with why they are the
ones preferred by companies selling phones, and is certainly the reason I'd like
to see other options around.
Simon.