The Ubuntu convergence announced a couple of years ago is starting to take shape, and this video of the Flashback app is the perfect example of why this is a good idea.

Canonical has been touting this convergence for a while and it seems that it's still too far away. In fact, the notion of convergence has changed over the years, at least for Canonical, but now we can see much better what they had in mind.

A couple of years back we thought that we'd have mobile phones that would able to expand their purpose and work as PCs, with the same interface and improved functionality. Now, that idea of convergence is no longer feasible and it's no longer pursued by developers. Instead, convergence has evolved on a software level and Flashback is a good example.

Convergence is coming and there is nothing you can do to stop it

Not everyone is a fan of convergence, but a lot of people don’t know exactly what it is. In the case of Canonical and Ubuntu, some people think that the desktop will have some sort of interface that will look a lot more like the mobile version. That is definitely not the case and the developers have an entire different vision.

Canonical and its devs are trying to unite the platforms at the code level. Ideally, sometime in the near future, there will be a single Ubuntu system that will run on anything, and the same will be true for the apps built for it. The work on the OS level is still ongoing and there is a long road ahead, but applications are ready now.

Ubuntu developers released a while ago a very important tool called the Ubuntu SDK, which helps people make apps for that platform much more easily. It uses QML and this programming language is extremely flexible. In principle, if the developer puts a little effort into it, his application will run on Ubuntu Touch and Ubuntu desktops without any issues.

Everyone else is doing it too

It's hard to say who came up with this idea, but the truth is that both Microsoft and Apple are trying similar things. Just like Canonical, they still have a long way to go, but it looks like the Linux platform is ahead. Flashback is an application that provides users with information about movies, actors, and all sorts of details about this industry. The code is the same and it works perfectly on Ubuntu Touch and Ubuntu desktop.

An Ubuntu user, Sorin Popescu, shared a video of Flashback in action and it looks amazing. The menus, the text, and everything else seems to blend perfectly, no matter what screen format is used. You can see why it's called a next-gen Ubuntu app.