[PLUG] Ubuntu on Android - official release

[Mayuresh]

On Fri, Jan 04, 2013 at 09:06:00AM -0800, Devendra Laulkar wrote:
> Any specific frustrations ? The android system has its way of doing things,

Sorry, I realize, it's hard to answer this without making it sound like an
essay. I'll hold myself back a bit in answering this.

My problem is not with there being a "different" way of doing things. My
problems is with that way being as productive and rewarding as it is on
*nix.

The gist is, if you talk of just "feasibility" of doing something on one
OS or the other, purely in terms of functionality, everything would be
more or less feasible on every platform and remember that includes
_Windows_ as well.

More than feasibility it's about ease of _improvising_ new applications by
putting together components in ways that would not even have been
envisaged when creating those components, which is the philosophy of *nix
platforms.

The amount of code you have to write to quickly build things that meet
your own taste, to get precisely what you individually want and effort in
maintaining them, is remarkably less on *nix systems.

I could get into examples. I have done numerous things using N900 and
other *nix devices. For each one of them, you might tell me a way of doing
that on Android. Only when you look holistically at the non functional
aspects of doing all this - ease, flexibility etc. would the value of *nix
come out.

I have great respect for Android (and Windows) for what they achieved for
a common user. But, hey, a common user does not try to improvise and churn
out new ways of doing things day in day out and settle on what suits him
the most. For technical people who want to do that *nix philosophy and
tools that come by default with these systems are a boon.

Mayuresh