Ubuntu Touch For Phones Hits RTM, First Phones Coming This Year 132
An anonymous reader writes: In early 2013, Canonical showed the world Ubuntu Touch, a version of Ubuntu developed specifically for smartphones. Now, the mobile operating system has finally reached "release to manufacturing" status. (Here's the release announcement.) The first phone running Ubuntu Touch, the Meizu MX4, will start shipping in December. "Details are scarce on its hardware, but a leak from iGeek suggests the Pro variant may have a Samsung Exynos 5430 processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 2560x1536 resolution screen. ... This more powerful hardware is good news if true, and it bodes well for Ubuntu's vision of computing convergence." Softpedia has a preview of the RTM version of the OS. They say performance has improved significantly, even on old phones, and that the UI has been polished into a much better state.
Re: battle with Android and iOS first! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: battle with Android and iOS first! (Score:4, Informative)
True. And! Luckily Canonical has a really stellar track record with users privacy issues. ... yeah, not really
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Apple actually has a fantastic reputation for respecting user privacy. They don't collect/try to profit off of user data.
Really???
iAd is a mobile advertising platform developed by Apple Inc. for its iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad line of mobile devices allowing third-party developers to directly embed advertisements into their applications.[1][2] Announced on April 8, 2010, iAd is part of Apple's iOS 4, originally slated for release on June 21, 2010, the actual date was changed to July 1, 2010. iAd was announced at Apple's June 7, 2010 keynote, with an iPad version appearing in the fall. Hosted and sold by Apple,[3] the iAd platform is expected to compete with Google's AdMob mobile advertising service.
----- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I... [wikipedia.org]
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Ubuntu phones don't have to battle with anybody[..] All it needs to provide is an open source Linux based phone that respects users' privacy
Sooo ... It just needs to battle Jolla?
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And LuneOS, and Tizen.
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All it needs to provide is an open source Linux based phone that respects users' privacy
Apple has been the leader in that space with their announcement of strong encryption enough to even frustrate law enforcement, and they aren't in the business of selling your data like Google is.
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strong encryption.
can request password reset over phone or email.
choose one. you can't choose both. no wonder you posted anon, shill.
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Where as Android users are just passively bending over and taking it from every single company Google is selling your data to. I can see how that's soooo I much better...
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So you've never heard of Jailbreak. Why bashing on Apple when you don't even know the first thing about it?
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"So you've never heard of Jailbreak"
So, make up your mind.. Are apple product secure, or can they be "hacked"?
What is a "jailbreak", If i am not mistaken, that is when you gain "root" access to the device right?
Remember when you could do it just by going to a website?
I can install cyanogenmod on my android devices if i want, and their roms dont come with google play or any google services... Other then "jailbreaking" your apple device, what are your options?
Apple doesn't sell your identity.. good one.. P
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I can install cyanogenmod on my android devices if i want,
No, you can install it if it's supported, officially or as a hack of dubious quality. On the vast majority of Android devices you can't.
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Same thing i posted above. Apple has their iAd service with "customized" ads with apple taking 30% of the revenue and the developer taking the remaining 70%.
So, Google ads = BAD, apple ads = Good because?
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Same thing i posted above. Apple has their iAd service with "customized" ads with apple taking 30% of the revenue and the developer taking the remaining 70%.
So, Google ads = BAD, apple ads = Good because?
Because nobody ever complained about Google not giving enough private information about their customers (that is people buying their products) to the advertisers while those complaints exist about Apple.
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Ubuntu phones don't have to battle with anybody
They do if they want mindshare of application developers. Otherwise, who is going to buy a phone that can't run the apps on which he depends?
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Ubuntu phones don't have to battle with anybody
They do if they want mindshare of application developers. Otherwise, who is going to buy a phone that can't run the apps on which he depends?
It seems pretty likely that Ubuntu smartphones would be able to be shimmed to run Android apps, since that's already happening for regular Linux desktops.
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Considering that you can install ubuntu touch in several of the existing android phones [ubuntu.com], it is already battling with Android on the installed base.
It runs in different fronts. With WP8 is battling against an unified desktop/mobile OS (something that iOS and Android aren't doing). With Sailfish/Tizen is battling for developers of QT/linux environments (and getting enough developers will be good for all 3 platforms),
And as any race, your immediate objective is to catch the ones that are right infront of y
Spyware status (Score:3)
Will Ubuntu Touch for Phones include spyware, like the shopping lens that they ship with the desktop version of Ubuntu?
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It sounds like you're using the wrong version. Install Kubuntu [kubuntu.org] instead of Ubuntu. You get a better, more powerful, more customizable desktop environment, and no "shopping lens" spyware.
Also, donate a few euros or dollars to them so they can keep doing it.
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Don't forget you can also get GNOME 3 with Ubuntu GNOME. Great desktop.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: Spyware status (Score:1)
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For example, if I build a gaming machine which runs Linux using proprietary NVIDIA GPU drivers, and I pull games peppered with DRM from Steam, I am just replicating the restricted Windows environment.
Except that a huge part of it is free and open source software.
My clean PC runs Xubuntu (Score:1)
What shopping lens? I can't find it in Xfce's menu.
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Cloud Strife computing (Score:3, Funny)
Firstly, there's no such thing as a Final Fantasy OS.
Then what's this I keep hearing about Cloud computing?
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Firefox OS It is already on market, and is probably very used on markets like India and South America
And to understand why it matters you must understand the players. The manufacturers are providing cheap phones where they can run without the restrictions/conditions of WP/Android, same goes for carriers (that are actively pushing Firefox OS phones in emergent markets), and developing apps considering that is Firefox OS around means doing open, multiplatform web apps, not just for one OS/device, that is in
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Phone users wants video / music (perhaps no video use unless it's easier to find the stuff on youtube), calendars, messaging etc. and then the killer app is the web.
Who cares if the back end is horrible? It could be perl or Tcl/Tk, doesn't matter much if it gets out of the way. Not having to invest yourself in an "ecosystem" with compatibility concerns like the desktops OSes is good. Horrible slow and bloaty javascript is dealt with bruce force (dual 1.2GHz CPU, 512MB RAM..) like phones did over 10 years a
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Thing is I consider all the phones unsuitable for gaming (no buttons) and the input or even output is so limited it's a fucking chore to go in the menus, file managers, command line etc.
I can "hack" it? (e.g. tie it to a desktop and do some unsupported crap to enable some features that are just regular ones on usual computers). I can have a "root prompt"? Yeah. I'll do that (if I can peck the keyboard keys in less than a minute) and hope this works : find / -iname '*google*'|xargs rm -rf.
Desktop GUI (Score:3)
No doubt the GUI will be optimised for a machine with a keyboard & mouse.
Re:Desktop GUI (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish Canonical would concentrate on making a linux for the destkop with usable UI. Every move they make towards tablets, touch pc's and phones makes Ubuntu worse for desktop users. Which are also the people contributing most to Ubuntu.
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Yep and that's exactly why android will never take over the mobile market.
Oh wait....
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LOL what?
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Yep and that's exactly why android will never take over the mobile market.
No, Android is run as a dictatorship, how many Android window managers are there? Even now the handset manufacturers are allowed less and less room to customize and skin the environment so that it provides a consistent experience rather than dozens of different UI skins and different window managers with various different supporting application libraries and programs that look completely different to one another because they all use different GUI toolkits.
Providing consistency across the platform such that
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If you find it difficult to learn a new desktop environment, you are not the kind of person any company I've ever worked for would hire anyway. That's such a trivial thing that no one would imagine it's any sort of barrier.
Choice is good, for people who want choice. If you don't want choice, feel free to stick to Apple or Windows, both of which are happy to steer you into their corporate locked-in ecosystems. If you are able to think for yourself, evaluate choices on your own, and make informed decisions
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Choice is good, for people who want choice. If you don't want choice, feel free to stick to Apple or Windows, both of which are happy to steer you into their corporate locked-in ecosystems.
I still feel more free under Windows and Mac, as there is more software available to allow me to express the things that I want to do with my computer. There is many kinds of freedom, see?
Anyway. One feature which really hurts Linux desktop is the package management. It works really well when you want to install things just from the distro's own walled garden repositories, but it's a real pain in the ass for third parties. Often you have to target a certain distro and even a certain version of it, and very
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The stupidest thing is that nobody even really uses tablets.
People do use tablets. I use my nexus 7 quite a lot. With Android, which I think is best for phones and tablets. As Ubuntu is the best for desktops, or at least used to be.
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I wish Canonical would concentrate on making a linux for the destkop with usable UI. Every move they make towards tablets, touch pc's and phones makes Ubuntu worse for desktop users. Which are also the people contributing most to Ubuntu.
I do not see anything terribly wrong with the user experience of Unity. It is quite close to a typical Windows or Mac desktop and not a "mobile UI" like a lot of people claim.
Re: Desktop GUI (Score:1)
People were calling it a touch UI when it required mouse hover to bring up certain menus.
People are idiots.
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If the UI morphs when docked (Score:4, Informative)
Use while riding transit (Score:2)
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My understanding is that the converged desktop won't be available on these phones. Sucks...
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To me, the converged desktop would be the killer feature. With it, Ubuntu phone is really the only choice. Without it, the whole thing is a non-starter.
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Except that it only has 2 gig, and comes stock running Android KitKat [gsmarena.com].
Of course, if this is just going to be thrown onto the MX4-core [gsmarena.com], an older phone that has been around for a couple of years, and uses the Exynos chipset mentioned in the article, and not the MX4's MediaTek MT6595, then you get 1 gig of ram.
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The MX4 Pro version [mobile57.com] will apparently still only come with 2 gigs. And runs kitkat.
But here's the question ... why would anyone throw on an OS that isn't going to be supported by the carrier or anyone else? Given Canonical's abysmal record of listening to its' users, do you really want to go there with a device that's going to be more expensive than an iPhone 6+?
Problem you can't solve? You'll have to mail it somewhere or other, same as it was shipped to you in the first place, since this is a "web-only"
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I ran CentOS 5 with 2G for a while. I have two laptops running Kali with Mate - one has 1G, the other 512M.
Are you the King of Bloatland or something?
Too bad for Ubuntu that it runs Android (Score:2)
If you follow all the links (I know, this is slashdot, who reads the summary, never mind the links from the articles to their sources). the Meizu MX4 will be shipping with Android 4.4 (Kitkat). The whole "RTM" hype from Canonical is just that - hype, same as the "Ubuntu TV", the "Ubuntu EDGE Smartphone", the "Ubuntu Cloud", whatever. This phone will come stock with Android. The vendors will be stocking the Android version, because that's what's going to sell. The carriers sure as heck don't want to be
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Meizu MX4 Pro Comes with Latest Android OS, v4.4.4 (Kitkat), Quad-core 2.2 GHz Cortex-A17 & quad-core 1.7 GHz Cortex-A15, Chipset MediaTek MT6595 and GPU PowerVR H6200MP4, IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors, 2560 x 1530 pixels, 5.4 inches, Multitouch up to 10 fingers & Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot,
Meizu MX4 Pro has 20.7 MP, autofocus, LED flash Camera with 1/2.3’’ sensor size, geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection, image & 13 MP, 1080p@30fps front Camera, 16 GB internal, 2 GB RAM and microSD
Apparently it supports up to 64 gig micro sd cards, but the ram is still only 2 gig - and it runs kitkat. So who's going to pay extra for an odd-ball ubuntu version, even if it comes with 4 gig? Nobody. And given canonical's history of not listening to the user base, do you really want to depend on them for your smartphone software updates? I believe most people would say "not a chance in hell."
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Whatever happened to Ubuntu for Android??? (Score:2)
Ubuntu for Android (http://www.ubuntu.com/phone/ubuntu-for-android) was a hybrid Ubuntu/Android OS that promised to allow you to use Android as the phone OS, then plug your phone into HDMI and a Bluetooth mouse/keyboard and have a full Ubuntu experience running alongside. It was announced with a lot of splash and got a lot of people excited. The ability to use a phone as a desktop computer on the road was very enticing. But it never materialized, and the source code was never opened (even though it is supp
Just add keyboard (Score:1)
Where is Ubuntu's direction? (Score:2)
First, let me start off by saying I use to be very "pro-ubuntu". It was a great distro, and one of the few you can just throw the CD in and reboot into a usable system fairly quickly.
Then they seem to flounder around and lack direction so i moved to MINT. Of the 6 desktop PC's in my house, at one point 5 of them ran Ubuntu. Now three are MINT, two remain ubuntu and one is still on windows.
Ubuntu seems to be suffering a bit of the classic "floundering around" you often see in the opensource world. Instea
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The mobile touchscreen world probably needs a linux OS. Thing is, there are some many of them (some were corporate like Intel, Samsung, Nokia) but they are nowhere to be seen in the real world. So maybe it's not so bad that Ubuntu is doing an almost available one, which is closer than the other ones were.
Where is my gentoo phone (Score:1)
Much rather have a gentoo phone
So what's different? (Score:1)
Looking good! (Score:1)