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.

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.

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.....

Hope they fail

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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.