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Ubuntu Touch: The Other Linux OS For Your Phone

Posted by samzenpus on from the take-a-look dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Ars takes a look at what Ubuntu Touch has to offer so far. From the article: 'It can't be stressed enough that even in this updated form, Ubuntu Touch is nowhere near usable as a mainstream mobile operating system. Canonical makes no claim that it is. For now, the software is about half development environment and half proof-of-concept tech demo. As such, we aren't going to be evaluating Ubuntu Touch using quite the same criteria we'd use for a shipping product—we're going to be focusing more on how the OS looks and works and less on how it performs. As we get closer to Ubuntu 14.04 and presumably Ubuntu Touch's retail availability, we'll certainly be revisiting it with a more critical eye.'"

12 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. I love the idea, but... by Covalent · · Score: 2

    I'm an Ubuntu user on the desktop. I mostly love it (even Unity), though it does have its occasional bugs. Part of me really wants an Ubuntu phone OS so that my phone and my computer can speak the same language seamlessly.

    But part of me worries that this will result in the same fragmentation and lack of focus that has plagued Linux on the desktop since, well, since Linux on the desktop. Android is already fragmenting as so many phone companies won't update the OS on older phones. The result is 4 or 5 versions of Android running out there. Adding Ubuntu phone to the mix will further complicate matters.

    So, my dream wish is that the Android people and the Ubuntu people will get together (for their own financial good, I think) and decide on some actual standards....and then actually stick with them.

    As this makes a fair amount of sense, it will almost certainly not happen.

    --
    Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
    1. Re:I love the idea, but... by gmuslera · · Score: 4, Informative

      Even in Linux for desktops or servers if well there are several distributions there is no big effect of fragmentation, most programs run unchanged in all of them. You can run KDE apps in gnome desktops (provided that you have installed the libraries, and that the app is not specific for the desktop environment, like being a plasma extension), the difference between distributions (package formats? location of files? names of daemons?) is usually easy to fix or consider in your code, and as most is open source programs can be recompiled if is for another architecture.

      If everything will be native linux, based on open libraries, probably won't be so hard to put a translation layer that makes easy to run the apps for one mobile OS into another (i.e. like Preenv for maemo). And apps probably will be HTML5 (that most should run in all platforms, no matter if is linux or not, have Firefox OS apps running in my N9 with Hydra WRT), or in QT/QML (that maybe could be able to run with minimal changes, or not too hard to port, in other QT/QML platforms, be BB10, Sailfish, Meego, desktop or even android, besides Ubuntu Touch).

    2. Re:I love the idea, but... by exomondo · · Score: 2

      The upcoming SailfishOS (descendant of Meego) will be able to run Android apps via the Alien dalvik engine.

      It has the same problem that all these new mobile operating systems have: There is nothing compelling about them. It seems Firefox OS is just going to try and take a slice of the low end market so maybe they'll be able to get a foothold in a race to the bottom, but SailfishOS, MeeGo, Ubuntu Phone, Windows Phone, webOS, etc... are just not compelling, it's not that they are inherently bad, they're just not disruptive enough to make people want to change. You need a 'killer app' - in this case some great feature - to make people stray from the status quo (Android or iOS) especially when for most people it's a 2 year commitment on contract.

  2. It will be an uphill struggle by Chrisq · · Score: 2

    It will be an uphill struggle to get this accepted while the other free OS, Android, has such a head start. A few people who want to be sure that metrics are not sent to google will go for it. A few more who want non-JVM centric applications too (or the complex NDK) might too, but I think it will be a niche market

    1. Re:It will be an uphill struggle by fph+il+quozientatore · · Score: 2

      As a niche person who wants to be sure that metrics are not sent to google, I am looking forward to Ubuntu phone.

      --
      My first program:

      Hell Segmentation fault

    2. Re:It will be an uphill struggle by fph+il+quozientatore · · Score: 2

      That is indeed an issue, but if I can clean everything up in 10 "apt-get remove" lines, then it's a huge step forward with respect to Android.

      --
      My first program:

      Hell Segmentation fault

    3. Re:It will be an uphill struggle by mrvan · · Score: 2

      I'd much rather send my phone info to canonical than to google, for the simple reason that google already has too much info. It has always been the case that a large number of entities (eg your boss, spouse, mistress, bank, tax service, football pals) together had a lot of info on you. The scary thing with google is the amount of info placed into the hands of one entity. The more I can spread my info around, the better.

      (Of course, this depends on the info being hard to link and recombine, otherwise canonical will just sell the info back to google and they can join it up. So I'm fine with canonical having my search info and location, but not so fine with them having my browser data including gmail account...)

  3. Re:Great! What's the point, again? by Covalent · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I agree with the orphaned phones idea. The one thing that Ubuntu is pretty good at is regularly updating their OS while keeping it runable on old tech. This might make it a good option for the low-end smart phone market, too.

    --
    Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
  4. Re:Great! What's the point, again? by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 2

    That's Ubuntu for Android and a separate project. It actually, IMHO, has more usefulness than an entire Ubuntu OS for phones, which is what this thread is actually about. It's hard to search for information for one of these without getting information about the other.

  5. The Other Linux OS For Your Phone by anti-pop-frustration · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just to recap, the main Linux based Android alternatives currently under development are:

    - Ubuntu Touch
    - Firefox OS
    - Sailfish OS (based on MeeGo/Mer)
    - Tizen (Samsung)

    Software merit aside, Ubuntu seems like the least likely option to succeed. As far as I know (please correct me), they don't have much in terms of phone maker or carrier support. Firefox OS has Telephonica and GeeksPhone (still just a startup). Sailfish is developed by Jolla (a bunch of former Nokia employees), they seemed to be backed by a Finnish carrier. All these projects are relatively small scale compared to Samsung's Tizen. NTT Docomo is also backing Tizen which means the project both has the world's largest smartphone manufacturer and one of the world's largest phone carrier behind it.

    I want at least one or two of these projects to actually succeed. Why? Because we badly need open source/linux alternatives to Android, which has severe problems (not all caused by Google - the carriers/manufacturers bear a large part of the blame):
    - The security/updates situation is a mess, there's no way to deny it. Can you imagine a world where both PC manufacturers and/or ISPs must approve and deploy Windows updates before they reach the end user? This is Android right now.
    And before the inevitable "Buy Nexus if you want updates" answer: Do you know how insane that sounds? "Buy Toshiba if you want to access Windows update", that's how.
    - For Google, Android is just another platform to deliver adds, which means they built the system in a way that won't let the average user block them: The consequence is no effective root access for the user (in order to prevent - amongst other things - host file based and system wide ad blocking). This means Google or the manufacturer owns your phone, not you.
    And no, being able to unlock the bootloader and install an after-market rom because you have a Nexus phone is *not* enough. Regular users don't need to install a special version of Windows/OS X/Ubuntu to have root access to their computers. Why should it be different with phones?

    Linux is Free. Windows and OS X have to be purchased, Android on the other way is paid for by looking at Google's ads... hardly a sane and secure model for an OS. We need to get away from ad-based computing.

  6. Cyanogenmod by brunes69 · · Score: 2

    If you are super paranoid and don't want anything sent to Google then just install Cyanogenmod and don't install any Google apps.

  7. Re:2013 by kurkosdr · · Score: 2

    Linux, succeeding everywhere it doesn't need X.org to function. Server (if you run a linux server with a GUI, you are doing it wrong), Android, TiVo, embedded. X.org is like the kiss of death, everything that uses it is DOA on the desktop (Linux, *BSD, Solaris etc). Remember when Sun unsuccessfully tried to compete in the desktop market? Or when X.org was making IRIX slow?