Quantum OS: Android's Material Design in Linux
Material Design has been a big hit in Android 5.0 Lollipop. But now a distro developer has plans to incorporate it into a desktop distribution called Quantum OS.
Jack Wallen at TechRepublic shares his thoughts about Quantum OS and Material Design:
Bridging these two ecosystems makes perfect sense. Canonical has been desperately attempting to bring the phone and desktop environments together (with Ubuntu Linux and the vaporware Ubuntu Phone). However, a new mobile wheel doesn't need re-invention. Quantum OS only need follow through with their current intent and then blow a hole through the creative roof by adding the necessary pieces (such as ARChon) to bring Android apps to their Material Design desktop.
It sounds simple, though it's most likely not. But the seed has been planted, and it should be allowed to germinate and spread. Yes, the work may be challenging, but the reward would be massive. I tip my hat to Mr. Spencer and his goals. I see big things with Quantum OS and fully believe in the project.
Quantum OS The Quantum OS site has much more information about how Material Design will be incorporated into the Linux desktop:
Welcome to Quantum OS! We are working on developing an operating system based upon Linux which conforms to Google’s Material Design guidelines. The focus will be on creating a stable and easy-to-use operating system with a heavy emphasis on well-thought-out design.
This project was originally named Quartz OS but has since been renamed to Quantum OS because of conflicts with the OS X graphics technologies.
Redditors reacted to the possibilities of Quantum OS in a thread from the end of November:
"Both KDE and GNOME want their apps as native binaries that uses their widget system. Quantum wants to do everything using the QML engine in realtime. Meaning: all their "native" apps will be text based .qml files that are read and interpreted on the fly. KDE5 will support QML, but Quantum seems to want to make QML a 1st class citizen in application development."
"I hate this "let's ditch everything and make our own new standard" stuff going on in the Linux world. I don't want to use QML apps, I want to use the thousands and thousands of existing apps and have support for all the different APIs already out. "
Opera 26 released for Linux
Opera is a browser that might work well as an alternative to Firefox and other browsers used in Linux. A stable version for Linux has just been released according to The Next Web.
Abhimanyu Ghoshal at The Next Web reports on the release of Opera 26:
Opera has just released version 26 of its desktop browser, that sees a stable Linux version, a new bookmark sharing feature and a few other small updates.
The latest version allows users to share individual bookmarks or an entire folder of them with just a couple of clicks, negating the need to laboriously copy and paste links into an email or social network message.
Ruari Odegaard at the Opera Desktop blog has a helpful FAQ for Linux users:
After a lot of hard work and testing by regular readers of this blog, the release of Opera 26 marks the return of major updates to our stable Linux browser!
In the run up to this release, a number of you asked questions about installing and running Opera on your Linux desktop. Below, you will find answers to some of the most frequently-asked questions.