Ubuntu For Phones To Arrive Next Week On Nexus 4 107
nk497 writes "Canonical has revealed that a developer preview of Ubuntu for phones will arrive next week, on the 21st of February. The touch preview will initially only be available for the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 4 smartphones, but Canonical plans to support more devices. The release is designed to let developers create apps — and to give 'enthusiasts' a sneak peek — ahead of the smartphone side of Ubuntu arriving in version 13.10 in October. Canonical suggested that the OS will initially only support low-end smartphones, but the group plans to also support higher-end models, too, and the OS will work across mobile devices, PCs and TVs."
Re:Oh, the stupidity! (Score:5, Informative)
Really? I have pages and pages of apps. Rather than memorize where that rarely used but critical app is, I just search.
Re:Oh, the stupidity! (Score:4, Insightful)
And do you want to remember and tap that obscure name into the phone's keyboard? I also have many pages of apps, but with a decent set of named folders to organize them, I can get to any of them in a few taps.
Foe example, I know I have an app of the periodic table, but I certainly don't remember it's named "EMD PTE" (by the way, that's an absolutely terrific free periodic table app if you need one), yet I swipe and tap into my "Weather and Science" folder and there it is.
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While your anecdotal use of EMD PTE is interesting, I personally have never forgotten the names of any of the apps on my phone. And other than games, I don't see any of my apps that are illogically named, or difficult to remember.
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I know I have an app of the periodic table, but I certainly don't remember it's named "EMD PTE" (by the way, that's an absolutely terrific free periodic table app if you need one)
Thank you, yes, I need one.
By the way, I, like you, cannot be arsed to remember the name of the apps I have installed on my Nexus 7.
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Really? I have pages and pages of apps. Rather than memorize where that rarely used but critical app is, I just search.
While it's easier to find an app you're looking for whose name you know by searching by name rather than wading through categories, it's easier to find an application/function/feature of a particular type the other way.
Re:Oh, the stupidity! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Oh, the stupidity! (Score:5, Interesting)
Files in folders is great. I have no problems with it at all. So far, no one has found anything better.
If you have something better, write it up. If nothing else, you'll learn to appreciate the current system.
Nothing yet proposed has matched (or even come close) to the simplicity and utility we have now. Steve's goofy idea didn't make anyone's life easier. The lack of FS access on iOS has done nothing but made simple, common, tasks difficult or impossible . iTunes is about as far from ease-of-use as it gets. The whole library and sync concepts just don't work very well outside a very narrow (and uncommon!) use-case.
Trying to extend that bad idea to other user data like documents, pictures, etc. was one of the biggest mistakes Apple's ever made. Why do you think dropbox is so popular with iOS users? It gives them some of the control they're absolutely desperate to get back. It let's them do simple things like "copy and damn file" and organize their documents, photos, etc. in whatever way suits them best. Dropbox is primarily a workaround for a broken UI.
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If you have something better, write it up. If nothing else, you'll learn to appreciate the current system.Nothing yet proposed has matched (or even come close) to the simplicity and utility we have now. Steve's goofy idea didn't make anyone's life easier.
Here's a better idea. Let's put files in folders ***over the internet***. You can store unlimited files (at a hefty price)! We can market it with a sweet name, like "The human brain," "the human network," or "water vapor storage."
Q: And what do I do when I don't have an internet connection?
A: Nobody doesn't always have an internet connection!
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Oh, like Spotlight, the incredibly useful search mechanism I use daily on my mbp?
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My Galaxy nexus speedtests at 1,380 kb/s in 3G CDMA mode.
same phone, same spot, speedtests 22,100 kb/s in 4G LTE mode.
that's a 16fold improvement. What the hell more do you want between generations? hell even ethernet only increases 10fold between generations.
Wrong.
That's an improvement of 16 times, or 4 fold. Ethernet increases 10 times between generations, or just over 3 fold.
1380 * 16 = 22080 ...or...
1380 * 2 = 2760
2760 * 2 = 5520
5520 * 2 = 11040
11040 * 2 = 22080
= 4 fold
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Might want to re-investigate your math. For base 10, which is what I was working in, I am correct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fold_change
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I stand corrected.
My definition of fold was simply wrong... sure made more sense to me that it meant to behave like folding a piece of paper (so 4 fold would be N * 2^4), and I thought that was the case for many many years, but it looks like I'm wrong, as you pointed out. Sorry.
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i could see it. (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't see it ever becoming more than a gnat on the side of Android and iOS, but I can see it filling a particular niche - a phone for more technically literate people who are not happy with Apple's draconian control and Android's data harvesting (excepting certain community mods like Cyanogenmod, granted).
If it turns into a device that can run my desktop software with a "real" windowing system with good mouse/kbd support, e.g, not a bunch of fullscreen touch apps when it's talking to PC peripherals, and without losing good touch support when it's acting as a mobile device, then hey I'm down. Hope they port it to the Galaxy S3 or upcoming S4.
Apps will be tricky since the community will be so much smaller than iOS and Android. But we need to support phones that don't march us ever closer to a world where everybody's experience is beholden to megacorps. Even if there are amazon-shoppping-whatzits installed on the Ubuntu phone by default, if it's really fairly bog stock ubuntu underneath without a ton of carrier-locked-down shit, could be good. I could see it being everything the N770/N800/N900 series could have been had it kept on being developed: a hacker's dream phone.
Will reserve final judgment until I get to test drive one.
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When has Ubuntu ever been targeted at the "more technically literate"?
The more technically literate are aware you can install (more or less) all the same packages as you can on any distro, including throwing out Unity and using KDE or XFCE or E17. On a phone, Unity might even be a good interface, but you're getting a device that can presumably do both.
A Unity phone will be far more suitable to the technically literate than iOS, and even Android.
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You lost me there. When has Ubuntu ever been targeted at the "more technically literate"?
They certainly are more technically literate than the 90% of people that don't know Ubuntu even exists.
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You lost me there. When has Ubuntu ever been targeted at the "more technically literate"?
When? When your Mom starts bitching about DRM and vendor lock-in, and extolling open source like she's RMS while ripping her CDs to FLAC, that's when.
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You lost me there. When has Ubuntu ever been targeted at the "more technically literate"?
Ubuntu has always been the best distro for the more technically literate.
"Minimal" distros like Gentoo and Arch are great for newbs who want to watch pages and pages of compiler output so they can pretend they're learning about Linux. Those of us that actually have to Get Stuff Done use Ubuntu, and are up and running in ten minutes.
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Arch uses pre-compiled packages, just like Ubuntu.
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Those of us that actually have to Get Stuff Done use Ubuntu, and are up and running in ten minutes.
That very much depends on your definition of "Get Stuff Done." If you are only using your OS as a platform to run common applications like Libreoffice, Eclipse, etc, then sure you're up and running fast.
If getting stuff done means building an embedded system, or something else that is off the beaten path, then a distro like Gentoo is likely to be far more useful. You're going to have to rebuild half the system from source anyway, so you might as well use a distro that makes it easy.
Oh, and most people run
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I spend far less time dealing with retarded bullshit on Arch than on Ubuntu. Far less breakage and pacman is much faster than apt get. It takes longer to initially set up, but you get a system configured how you want and you don't have a cluster fuck update every 6 months.
Ubuntu has a lot more bugs and quirks, both from using unity and by heavily patching upstream packages.
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the hw in n9 isn't any more designed for gestures than say xperia play, 808, samsung galaxy or whatever else that's cap touch screen...
and this thing eats memory.
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I can see it filling a particular niche - a phone for more technically literate people who are not happy with Apple's draconian control and Android's data harvesting (excepting certain community mods like Cyanogenmod, granted).
I
I'm holding out for the command line phone. Anything else is just for sissies.......
Re:no one cares (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd love to see Ubuntu replace Android. In case you haven't noticed, Android is a bit of a mess. Even Android development is a nightmare compared to iOS and BB10.
Now, if they can ditch the over-engineered pile of garbage that is X and replace it with something sensible we could see the whole of Linux improve dramatically. That's probably not going to happen, sadly. Still, Ubuntu phone is a step in the right direction.
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Isn't that the point of Wayland? Did you miss the memo?
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Those profits come from the bling factor of Apple phones. It's like Rolex. People want to be seen using it. Never mind if it's any good.
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Those profits come from the bling factor of Apple phones. It's like Rolex. People want to be seen using it. Never mind if it's any good.
An irrational aspect of human behavior I will never understand.
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What about FirefoxOS? (Score:2)
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Not sure about that, at least Mozilla has a hardware partner that will launch Firefox OS devices. Ubuntu Phone sounds like the Ubuntu TV announcement from last year, no hardware partner at that time, no TVs yet. Images for existing phones will not get them any market share
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Is the Nexus 4 low-end? (Score:3)
If they're targeting low-end smartphones, either there's a range of super amazing phones I'm completely unaware of, or the decision to release for Nexus 4 as well is a bit odd.
Re:Is the Nexus 4 low-end? (Score:5, Interesting)
I figure the Nexus 4 is a low-end 2014 smartphone, the target for Ubuntu.
Re:Is the Nexus 4 low-end? (Score:4, Insightful)
The preview release has nothing to do with high or low end. The Nexus 4 devices have community support through AOSP and are targets for community development such as replicant and freedreno. It's a hacker phone, a shipping product that provides a base platform on actual hardware. Such that first-world nerds such the average Slashdotter might possibly own and thereby try out Ubuntu and contribute to the ecosystem.
By targeting the Nexus 4, they support one of the more popular SoCs in Snapdragon. Coincidentally, Snapdragons are found in the both the developer phones that Geeksphone are producing for Firefox OS, neither of which are super high end by flagship Samsung/HTC/Apple standards.
"Low-end" smartphones? (Score:1)
"Canonical suggested that the OS will initially only support low-end smartphones... will initially only be available for the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 4 smartphones." Low-end?? And who would replace their latest and greatest Android with Ubuntu "testing"? Canonical sure know how to make new friends.
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Smartphones and tablets in the 1980s? What universe are you from?
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The image for Nexus 4 is a developer release- something for their army of coders to use to write applications and so forth. It is not necessarily representative of their "for the market" offerings, which they claim will all be purpose made, with Ubuntu pre-installed, in the normal fashion for phones.
Nexus 4 is higher spec than their claimed "low spec" requirements, if I recall correctly, but is not as powerful as their "high spec superphone" requirements, which seems to be aimed at hardware which isn't like
What does Canonical get out of this? (Score:3)
Is there any? I ask because I don't see the possibility of support conracts...Or do they exist? Anyone?
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They want to convence phone makers to make Ubuntu phones rather then Android phones.
The people trying it out aren't really the target audience, they are the argument.
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Sure it exists, its called a Landscape subscription. Being able to manage both the desktops and smartphones/tablets for a company all through Landscape is actually kinda compelling. I know a lot of IT pros, since I used to be one before going back into programming and they universally hate hate hate iOS/Android/etc phones, because they is no good central management for them.
I'm sure for paid apps (on the desktop or phone or phone-desktop hybrid) Canonical gets a cut. The phone app store is much more a cultu
Will they be releasing source? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ubuntu has been surprisingly close to the chest on this effort. I haven't seen any source code come out for this, or for their Ubuntu for Android work. If they release the source for this, it will be ported to a plethora of devices in a very short time period. There is a very active community of developers on xda-developers.com who would be all over this.
So it makes me wonder, if they plan on releasing source at all, or if this will be some closed-source fork, and thus useless.
Re:Will they be releasing source? (Score:5, Informative)
London, 15th February 2013:
Images and open source code for the Touch Developer Preview of Ubuntu will be published on Thursday 21st February, supporting the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 4 smartphones.
Canonical press release [canonical.com]
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Where is the source for Ubuntu for Android though?
That has been promoted since last summer, and was actually demoed last fall. Yet we have seen no source at all, they are only giving access to handset makers.
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Well, has Ubuntu for Android been release to the general public in binary form? It does not look like it [ubuntu.com], and as far as I can tell [pcpro.co.uk] they will release the source when they release the binaries.
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Exactly... why? This could get done so much faster and they could get so much assistance if they would open it up more. Why do you need to be a handset maker to see this? If they had released the source last year then I could be runnig it on my Optimus G right now.
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OK, but that's just a difference in opinion about the better marketing approach, and it appeared to me that you earlier insinuated that they would try to violate the GPL ("if they plan on releasing source at all"), and risk to alienate the whole community.
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Exactly... why? This could get done so much faster and they could get so much assistance if they would open it up more. Why do you need to be a handset maker to see this? If they had released the source last year then I could be runnig it on my Optimus G right now.
ubuntu for android is/was trolling for some handset manufacturer to give them cash for development - but those big enough to be possibly interested and which would have had money to throw around tried their own things in the similar space(lapdock etc)..
(technically what they have on their ubuntu for android page as an example image isn't possible on most phones, if any, with hdmi out you see..).
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They CAN'T fork it closed-source due to the GPL. Even if they could, they'd risk alienating everyone who helps Ubuntu for free.
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Ubuntu has been surprisingly close to the chest on this effort. I haven't seen any source code come out for this, or for their Ubuntu for Android work. If they release the source for this, it will be ported to a plethora of devices in a very short time period. There is a very active community of developers on xda-developers.com who would be all over this.
So it makes me wonder, if they plan on releasing source at all, or if this will be some closed-source fork, and thus useless.
There's not much that needs to be ported, really. All the Ubuntu-specific stuff is in userspace, so it can be used as is or with a recompile at most. The bit that differs between phones is the kernel, and that's where the bulk of the effort will be in targeting other phones (either in modifying the Android kernel to function like the mainline Linux kernel, or merging the drivers into the mainline kernel).
Target Obsolete Devices (Score:3)
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Hint to anyone peddling a new phone OS, target devices which have been abandoned. Why would someone who explicitly bought an Android device which will always be updated suddenly abandon ship and install another OS? On the other hand users who have been abandoned on an older version are much more likely to roll the dice and throw something on.
well.. they'll be obsolete devices in few years!
but their web apps mentality would provide you with really, really basic stuff on 100$ zte's.
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Because we like to tinker?
I have a Galaxy Nexus, which is my only phone, and I will be installing this at the first opportunity. I have no idea how long it will *stay* on there (nandroid backup standing by), but I want to check it out.
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You won't be modded down for being a heretic; it will be because you're delusional. Most companies are still using Windows because they consider themselves stuck with it, which to a degree, they are. Plenty of companies *do* use Linux and a few big ones (Google, IBM) saw what was coming much sooner than most and also run non-MS desktops. The hard part is extracting themselves from the lock-in.
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... and I realize that I'm probably being trolled, but I wouldn't trust most of the 'professional' MSCEs I've met too install a browser add-on.
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a few big ones (Google, IBM) saw what was coming much sooner than most and also run non-MS desktops
IBM? Hmm. It's been a couple of years since I left IBM, but back then desktops and laptops almost all ran Windows. Plenty of technical people ran Linux on their machines and there was an officially-supported internal distro, but it was far from the norm.
At Google (where I work now), Linux really is the norm on desktops. On laptops it's probably 60% OS X, 30% Linux and 10% ChromeOS, though Chromebooks seem to be replacing MacBooks at a good clip, so the first and last numbers are changing. Windows does ex
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Not sure if hard to use is still fair assessment. Back when it was purely a geek affair, but these days you don't even have to run a typical package manger. Just fire up Ubuntu Software Center, search and install. Just as you would on a smart phone. Easier than Windows at this point. Did that come 10 years too late, maybe, but the "Linux" of 10 years ago isn't the same as the one of today.
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The sad thing is you are 100% right.
The not-so-sad thing is that Linux is still damn useful in many situations and those who know how to use it will continue to do so for those applications where it is appropriate.