Ubuntu Touch Developers Aim for Daily Phone Usability Before June

colinneagle writes with the latest Ubuntu Touch news. From the article: "The team behind Ubuntu Touch (aka 'Ubuntu for Phones') have committed to pushing forward to a ready-to-use version of the OS, one that the group will use to 'eat their own dog food,' by the end of May. What that means: Over the next few weeks, the team behind Ubuntu Touch is going to be attempting to implement enough functionality to make it possible to use Ubuntu on your phone (such as the Nexus 4) on a day-to-day basis. At which point their development team will be doing exactly that." The developers are aiming just to have basic functionality working by the end of the month: calls, sms, data over wifi and cellular, a working address book, and preservation of user data across OS flashes.

Comments

Android

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing that keeps me from being excited about even the idea of this is that there *is* an open Linux-based environment for phones, and it's called Android. Google runs the development and has a closed license on apps like Maps, Chrome, etc., but, again, there *is* an open Linux-based environment for phones.

There are plenty of places Ubuntu could add value. They could build an alternative to the non-open 'with Google' ecosystem--imagine if Cyanogen were developed with the backing of a larger group like Canonical. They could reinvent some bits of UI like the launcher/keyboard/task switcher. (Amazon hacked up their own ecosystem and UI, just with a buy-from-Amazon focus rather than an open-source focus.) They could do some crazy difficult engineering to get desktop Linux apps running alongside Android .apk's.

Whatever they do, reinventing the foundations of Android isn't where the juice is.

Re:Android

[camperdave]

I'd like Android a lot better if it weren't so intimately tied to Google. I managed for a decade with my Handspring Visor without any online presence. I don't see the need for my calendar and address book and other data to be strewn across servers that I have no control over. The less of a digital footprint, the better: Less spam, less hacking attempts, less headaches. But Android is pretty much a lame duck without a Google account. So, linux phone without the Google apron strings? Bring it on!

Re:Android

[prefec2]

As a person, a group of people, or a company, I can do with my time what I want. If I want to develop a second open source phone OS. It is my pleasure or nemesis. If you like it use or contribute to it, if not don't. The same applies to Firefox OS or any other project heading in that direction. What some people miss out in open source is, there is no centralized plan to gain world dominance. The plan is freedom. This includes freedom of choice, but is not limited to it. I also can decide that I want to collaborate with others or that I want to make something completely different. Sometimes these differences are in nuances to the public, but they mean everything to me or my group or my company.

Sometimes I have the feeling, that people blame others just because they choose different paths. Yes I know this results in fragmentation. And too much fragmentation is bad for interoperability and therefore bad for the OSS movement, but multiple phone and tablet operation systems and UIs are not a problem as long as they all support open communication standards. In the end fragmentation often resulted in new standards on data exchange and communications, which allowed us to work together, but still try out our own ideas.