18

I see Jorge Castro has been replacing with here and here. (Hi Jorge!)

Shouldn't those two tags be kept distinct?

is the newly announced project with the mobile interface, and is the attempt to run Ubuntu desktop edition on phones and tablets. They seem different to me.

6
  • 1
    Ubuntu-for-phones tag should vanish mysteriously and never return!
    – Bruno Pereira Mod
    Commented Jan 3, 2013 at 14:58
  • 2
    Also note that the announcement is not for a new OS. It is for Ubuntu running on phones. Same OS, different devices, that's the whole concept.
    – David Planella
    Commented Jan 3, 2013 at 20:53
  • 3
    @DavidPlanella: that's what they're saying, but we don't really know how different Ubuntu desktop edition and Ubuntu for phones will be. They'll have a different UI, but will have they have different repos, different releases numbers, etc?
    – Flimm
    Commented Jan 3, 2013 at 21:37
  • @DavidPlanella: I've edited the question to call it a "project" instead of an "OS" to avoid getting sidetracked.
    – Flimm
    Commented Jan 3, 2013 at 21:50
  • 2
    The tag mobile itslef is too vague, Suppose an iphone user want to connect his phone to ubuntu, He will tag with it mobile, then We have to manually retag them. So it is better to keep clear tags like ubuntu-for-phone instead of vague tags like mobile
    – Tachyons
    Commented Jan 4, 2013 at 5:08
  • it seems like the actual problem is that aren't (yet) any tags for the specific devices, similar to "nexus-7". Does the ubuntu-on-phones project have a hardware name or codename that could be used in conjunction with "mobile"?
    – ImaginaryRobots
    Commented Jan 8, 2013 at 14:08

6 Answers 6

Reset to default
10

I strongly agree with Flimm on keeping them distinct.

My opinion on is that it's overly broad and ambiguous being a general adjective. That being another discussion, see this: Can we please disambiguate or discourage the 'mobile' tag?

A specific tag like is a lot more self-descriptive and much less likely to be used erroneously. Especially for new users. I'm not saying this is a good tag name, though.

Clearly, this is likely to result in a lot of retagging work ahead in reviewing questions if we would merge them. This is not gonna be fun and may discourage people from reviewing. Now is the time to prevent that from happening.

Other supporting arguments against merging:

  • Canonical's ambitions are huge on this product. If Landscape, Ubuntu One and MAAS deserve their own tag, then it does not make sense to me if 'Ubuntu for phones' would not.
  • We can merge later. IMHO just one more tag is very harmless as it can be merged later if we decide to do so.
  • We don't know much yet how 'Ubuntu for phones' is going to work out. See the response to David Planella's comment below.
  • As pointed out by Flimm very well in his comment:

    It's easy to subscribe to more than one tag, but it's impossible to subscribe to half a merged tag.

In response to the answer of Jorge Castro about current subscriptions of the development team...
In my opinion the team(s) are just subscribing to the wrong tag here. It is to their advantage to have a distinct and obvious tag for a such a product they're working on.

In response to David Planella on "It's the same OS, just different devices" (paraphrased):
Canonical may present this to be as the same Ubuntu for users, but it just can't be the same. This is the marketing machine and it's working well apparently. Regarding Q&A this will be horrible, I'm expecting. One does not install a phone using a ISO. One does not want to receive software recommendations for Desktop-UI apps. One does not want to read answers about shortkeys on a touch screen phone. We don't know yet to what extent it will be the same to the desktop OS in terms of technical aspects, release management, customizations by operators, etc. All we know for sure is that it will have a different UI to users, a completely new approach regarding app development and it will simply result in different questions/answers.

3
  • 2
    How does mobile not cover the efforts of the phone?
    – Marco Ceppi Mod
    Commented Jan 3, 2013 at 17:56
  • 5
    @MarcoCeppi I'm not stating it isn't. On the contrary, I think it's too ambiguous, as it covers too many different things.
    – gertvdijk
    Commented Jan 3, 2013 at 18:10
  • 3
    I strongly agree that these are two distinct subjects. By @Jorge's argument, anything about smartphone or tablet is indistinguishable from the root issue: How to modify/improve Ubuntu to work on mobile devices. IMHO 'mobile' is about (all of) portable (smartphone, tablet), low-CPU power, touch interface, RAM limitations, ARM (or similar) processors, etc. Whereas, 'Ubuntu-for-phones' is a boutique offering (like for Nexus-7), that is purely a smartphone play (and product demonstration).
    – david6
    Commented Jan 3, 2013 at 21:44
3

I've been keeping them in because that's where the existing teams have been subscribed to for the Nexus and they want to keep everything in one place.

Also of note, we have a too if we want to use that for something, so maybe

Does that satisfy the Pedantic Knights?

17
  • Ok, this is the answer. Merging the tags.
    – jrg Mod
    Commented Jan 3, 2013 at 16:51
  • 7
    @jrg How is this the answer when there is another one with more votes?
    – N.N.
    Commented Jan 3, 2013 at 17:13
  • 1
    @N.N. this is the answer when the people who are responsible for maintaining this tag, the content in it, and writing the documentation for this project say that this is the tag to use.
    – jrg Mod
    Commented Jan 3, 2013 at 17:21
  • 8
    @jrg The community here does not seem to agree given the votes.
    – N.N.
    Commented Jan 3, 2013 at 17:24
  • 1
    @N.N. I rest my case, since the people who are responsible for maintaining it want a central place. General tags are better, and a specific ubuntu-for-phones tag is not the thing to do, just like we don't do "ubuntu-for-netbooks" now, or "ubuntu-for-thinkpads".
    – jrg Mod
    Commented Jan 3, 2013 at 17:26
  • 2
    Yeah I don't get the need to keep creating more tags, I think it's because people think that we're trying to organize the site into categories instead of being used by people. :)
    – Jorge Castro
    Commented Jan 3, 2013 at 17:32
  • 1
    @jrg: The reason there is no ubuntu-for-netbooks tag is because there is no "Ubuntu for netbooks" UI or product, but there definitely is a "Ubuntu for phones" UI and product, which just got announced.
    – Flimm
    Commented Jan 3, 2013 at 21:40
  • 7
    It's easy to subscribe to more than one tag, but it's impossible to subscribe to half a merged tag. Isn't it conceivable that there will be people interested in answering questions about the "Ubuntu for phones" UI, but not interested in answering questions about running normal desktop Unity on phones?
    – Flimm
    Commented Jan 3, 2013 at 21:43
  • 1
    there is a "ubuntu for netbooks" @Flimm help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuNetbookEdition covered by the ubuntu-netbook tag. Note on #1 thing you need to know about the phone version, zdnet.com/…
    – Mateo
    Commented Jan 4, 2013 at 1:00
  • 2
    Ubuntu for phone team are lazy to subscribe two tags, Obviously ubuntu for phone project will die, subscribing two tags are not difficult than implementing ubuntu ui on phone
    – Tachyons
    Commented Jan 4, 2013 at 1:51
  • It's not about just two tags, it keeps growing to include other tags, which is why we have a tag mess to begin with, what advantages does having a separate tag provide?
    – Jorge Castro
    Commented Jan 4, 2013 at 2:34
  • having to tag both mobile and phone for phones? Are you kidding? I think 99% is referring to mobile phones on this website when talking about phones. And what's not clear about nexus-7 without mobile?
    – gertvdijk
    Commented Jan 4, 2013 at 9:03
  • @jrg: jorge is a canonical employee and community manager, But in askubuntu he is nothing more than a trusted community user, So please wait for the community responce on this topic
    – Tachyons
    Commented Jan 4, 2013 at 10:35
  • 1
    I accepted this answer because it seems to be the decision the moderators and trusted users are taking, even though it doesn't have the highest score and it isn't the one I agree with.
    – Flimm
    Commented Jan 4, 2013 at 13:42
  • 2
    We went through this with ubuntu-desktop too, don't worry, it'll be fine!
    – Jorge Castro
    Commented Jan 4, 2013 at 13:48
2

Okay, I kinda disagree with both Jorge's answer and gertvdijk's answer to this question.

is not exactly "overly broad" - of course it also includes and of course a great ton of stuff fits into it, but it was made with the "running (actual) Ubuntu on mobile devices" idea in mind.

on the other hand is, for the most part, focused on the phone derivate of ubuntu - which certainly provides a wholly different UX.

These two should, in my opinion, be kept apart.

However, since does include , perhaps renaming the previous to something more distinct - "mobile-ubuntu", "mobile-installation", something like that - might be in order.

2

This question was asked when Ubuntu for Phones was first announced. Since then, it seems like Canonical and the community have settled on Ubuntu Touch to mean the product that is targeted for phones and tablets.

The tag to be used now is .

This is the tag that the Canoncal team is using, and the , and have been merged into it.

0

The tag is too vague and not self descriptive, because we use the terms we use phone and mobile for same device, So users may tag questions like sync symbian mobile mobile with ubuntu with tag. I belive that ubuntu mobile and connecting some other phones with ubuntu are diffrent and should have separate tags .

Edit:

We don't need separate tag( with ) for because it won't make ambiguity

1
-2

I believe we should stick with mobile as this will ensure we see a broad spread of mobile-related questions in the same tag, many of the topics of which are related (e.g. memory consumption on a tablet and memory consumption on a phone are both limited-memory environments).

Adding another tag in addition to mobile such as phone could be useful though.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .