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

Is this pre-news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like it would be better to report results rather than intentions

Re:Is this pre-news?

[lister king of smeg]

that the thing though if they waited it would get no attention from the community and being open source the community are the developers.
On the other hand though this is just another attempt to make ubuntu-phone Frankenstein that will never pan out. remember ubuntu mobile (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Mobile) and there was ubuntu moblin remix. oh and don't forget the aborted ubuntu android compatibility layer meant to run android binaries on top of ubuntu then a few months latter they about-face and try to run ubuntu on top of android. If we could every get a free/opensource tablet with drivers in the mainline kernal and a gnu/linux and desent specs i would stand in line for it, but until then i will have to be content with android

Re:Is this pre-news?

[sabri]

Seems like it would be better to report results rather than intentions

I disagree. I'm sure a number of people would volunteer to be part of that alpha test and report bugs without crying first. The more people test, the more bugs they find, the better the first release will be. I'd volunteer if my phone was not a company phone.

Re:Is this pre-news?

[OhANameWhatName]

Seems like it would be better to report results rather than intentions

Being overly excited leads to premature enunciation.

Why

[phantomfive]

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.....

Re:Why

[Rhys]

I actually had it on my phone back in Feb. It wasn't awful. The lack of 3G data was all that got it removed and android put back on... for now, but I'll probably go back to it once I can get 3G data. I might miss my exchange calendar support, but I doubt that'll be long in appearing (who knows, I might even do that).

But I'm not a big app'er. I need a phone dialer, a tiny bit of sms, a web browser, gchat client, and preferably my corp exchange calendar (email optional). Gmail would be nice too but the browser version would fake it.

Re:Why

[OhANameWhatName]

Is Ubuntu worried about becoming obsolete?

Of course not. They're actively pursuing it.

Re:Why

[OhANameWhatName]

I love this concept. It's the first phone-to-tablet-to-PC concept I've seen that feels somewhat complete

It's great that you like it, it'll remain somewhat complete for the forseeable future.

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

[MrEricSir]

I don't think it's fair to place the blame for this on any one company or project, but it's been disappointing to see how inoperable all the smartphone OSes are so far.

It's particularly disappointing when it comes to open source phones, since interoperability was always one of the purported benefits of open technology.

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

[enos]

Exactly. But more Balkanisation and even more duplication of effort is not the answer.

Why not do something like CyanogenMod where they can keep Android's strengths but fix its weeknesses? I'd also love to not have to involve Google's servers with everything. I missed that the most about the iPhone. But Android is finally shaking off that unfinished feeling, and Ubuntu is 5 years behind.

Re: Android

[Electricity Likes Me]

Except the Ubuntu phone is on to a fairly good concept here: smartphones are getting powerful enough to become desktop PCs. This is an obvious area where you'd actually want a desktop OS running - or at least very compatible - with the phone.

Where they may get tripped up is the trend towards augmented reality type systems, but that's a ways off and there's plenty of low-level work to be done (since AR falls more into the desktop OS design scale then the phone one).

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.

Re:Android

[drinkypoo]

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.

There are many good things about Android, and I enjoy it and would probably not replace it with Ubuntu if it were offered to me. However, more competition is still a good thing.

There are plenty of places Ubuntu could add value.

And this is one of them. One benefit would be having a more standard kernel on your phone, which would permit the use of more software. Today, phones are more powerful than machines I was using as a desktop not very long ago. I would like to run desktop software sometimes.

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

They aren't! The foundations are the same, the Linux kernel! And they're doing less reinvention of that than has Android!

Re:Android

[drinkypoo]

But Android is pretty much a lame duck without a Google account.

There are basically two big features you miss out on without a google account. One is the Play Store. But by definition, you don't want to use this, if you don't want Google tracking your habits. The other is maps, but there are alternate maps apps. So basically, I don't think there is any truth to this assertion. The only things you give up with your Android phone if you don't use google are things which are by definition "using google".

Until 2.3.7 it was horribly hard to not share location information with Google. That's the only thing about Android that I have found to actually be offensive. Otherwise, you can use a device just fine without Google.

As an aside, my Nook Simple Touch runs Android too, and won't leak any information to Google in stock form. But then, it's only half a device in terms of features, which is why it's an aside and not a main point. Naturally, I added a google account to it, so that I could use market and maps.

What does a dog eat for breakfast?

[OhANameWhatName]

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?

Anything like desktop version?

[aws910]

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!

Re:Hope they fail

[camperdave]

Shuttleworth should just give up and leave Linux to its niche

Linux > Ubuntu.

Besides, people switched to Mint a while back.

Re:Anyone that actually uses this is insane.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.