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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.
Seems like it would be better to report results rather than intentions
or as soon as it compiles
I think there's a big question of, "Why?" Is Ubuntu worried about becoming obsolete? Do they believe in the Microsoft motto of, "one UI everywhere?" What is their motivating factor? It's definitely not a response to demand, because people aren't exactly lining up to put this thing on their phone.....
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
They failed to take any reasonable market share with Ubuntu on the desktop, so they're trying mobile while at the same time making stupid decisions that ruin their desktop-focused distro even further. Shuttleworth should just give up and leave Linux to its niche, rather than ruin the direction it's taking.
There's nothing wrong with Linux remaining in its niche of geeky and nerdy users. It's worked out well so far.
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.
So millions of 'not zealots' discovered the hard way how much they hated Unity on the desktop and Canonical missed the most important opportunity (in 10 years) for Linux on the desktop by rolling out an entirely new desktop paradigm at exactly the same time as Windows Hate was being forcefed to consumers. Windows is now backtracking, Canonical is slogging ahead. "We can do it! If we test it enough, we'll get it right!".
Nobody except zealots cares what's running on their phone, they care that it works. So the only people who will bother flashing their phones across to another OS (apart from whatever it came with) are people who tinker with their toys. Some of those tinkerers are tinkering with Android and now (at some un-named time in the future) some of those tinkerers will start to tinker with Ubuntu. And some (unknown) time after that, Ubuntu might actually manage to get a handset onto the market with a stable, working, feature filled operating system on it. And until that time, the Ubuntu developers are playing catch up trying to keep up with the likes of Google (for those not in the know, Google has multitudes of business units and huge influence on the interwebs) and Apple (apparently recently judged only the second richest corporation in the world).
Call me pessimistic, but does it even matter anymore what the Ubuntu developers are doing? Does a Ubuntu mobile phone have any future, and for that matter, does Ubuntu Linux or Canonical?
If Ubuntu touch is anything like the desktop version of Ubuntu, then I can expect:
* Daily update nags
* Several hours of reconfiguring software after each update
* Changes to the user interface that you didn't ask for
* Loss of previous functionality after each update
Ubuntu was my first Linux, and it was great for a time, but they just play too fast-and-loose with new software. They've unapologetically wasted many hours of my time on many fronts - I still have nightmares from when they switched me to unity without my consent. Seriously, if I wanted OSX, I would just go and buy a mac. I fear for these poor phone users in advance!
I give Ubuntu five years before Microsoft pumps and dumps them
Well, Microsoft has proven that they sometimes make really bad decisions.
there is nothing to run on it
You'd enjoy running several things on it:
1. Water
2. Wild Elephants
3. A Marathon
There's probably other things, but I haven't used it yet.
Well no one is actually asking *anyone* to put it on their phone right now because it's still in development. They're just looking for testers right now. If you can't spare time or money to test then don't worry about it. If you can, sure, go ahead.
Ubuntu is a opensource software,seems to be popular with many users,based with linux,will it stable in touch phone. I've no idea will this phone has a market,does people change their iphones to ubuntu? Nowadays,touch phones are made of polycarbonate sheets,i think that would be safer then other materials.
How is porting Unity to Qt proceeding? Because in its current state Unity is such a horribly slow piece of shit that it won't give a good experience on mobile. Try it on an Atom netbook and experience the pain. On a similar machine, most basic functions of Windows are fluid and just fine.
I don't buy an android tablet because I want to be able to run my stuff on it without needing a separate "app". I don't like having to learn a new interface because the device is slightly different.
And now you see what Microsoft was doing with Windows 8. It made the desktop version's Start Menu look like the tablet UI so that users of Windows RT and Windows Phone wouldn't have to learn a new interface for a different form factor.
Why in all that is holy would I put something like this on my expensive phone that I rely on for my income?
Well I dont know, maybe you wouldn't but I can tell you why I would. (If you don't know why you would, why are you asking us?)
For one, it is promised to function as a "real computer" when you connect it to a keyboard and monitor, able to run desktop apps in a real windowing system with real multiple windows, not the dumbed down Android experience.
Also unlike with Android, with Ubuntu touch it is likely to be closer to Linux than Android is (even though yes android is based on linux originally) and thus be a more open platform based on largely open source apps rather htan closed apps doing hell knows what as is common on Android.
YOU might not want that, but some of us do.
I wonder how much of the requirement for non-free software on the phone is the doing of regulators such as the FCC and radio layer patent holders such as Qualcomm.
Why in all that is holy would I put something like this on my expensive phone that I rely on for my income? I wouldn't even put it on my old phone out of curiosity.
Something like what? The preview version was clearly aimed for developer, and not ready to be used as a daily driver, they even explicitly tell you that . If you're not planning to develop something for the platform, why the heck would you put it on your phone?
"Wait. Other Linux developers don't eat their own dogfood?" That's right.
Hubris much?
You do realise that a large percentage of open source projects are started with the intention of filling a need that is currently not satisified by other software? (Novel concept, I know!). And therefore, there is an imperative to "dogfood" as soon as possible.
Granted, those open source projects weren't led by an asshole dictator with a commercial imperative. And hey, I've been unfortunate enough to try Unity. Given that precedent for "usability", dog-fooding in this case may well be a painful process
You want an encrypted phone? Nothing is stopping you. Android happily lets you replace the dialer with your own. Hell, millions do it already. Just most people value price, call quality and having someone to call over encryption. How is Ubuntu going to improve on this?
Don't tell me about being stuck in the past and then try to claim that Ubuntu is better. A Linux system today would be very recognizable to someone from the 80s. You want earth shattering ideas you don't look toward desktop Linux.
When I said unfinished I mean that it feels like an alpha release. As in it has plain and obvious bugs. Those are finally getting worked out. That window is definitely closing fast, as Microsoft has discovered. Ubuntu is just another incompatible me-too system in this respect, except of course it's all just different enough to be incompatible. In that sense it carries on the Linux tradition, I guess.
boldly going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse
I can't even find a SIP phone app in the Ubuntu 13.04 repository that works!
It's not Microsoft setting up roadblocks. Some of the roadblocks result from traditions that were in place before Bill Gates was born. One of these is the way that devices capable of radio transmission are licensed, dating back to the Communications Act of 1934. Another is voluntary agreements among carriers not to use tech that's 20 years old, and this dates back to the Patent Act of 1790.