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Comment by rpgmaker | Hacker News Reader

They might as well remove it altogether...

Btw, when it's Canonical going to announce that they will stop developing Ubuntu Phone? The writing has been in the wall for months and with Mozilla's recent announcement I believe it's just a matter of time. I think the vast majority of the mobile OS market has just moved on and is pretty ok with the two most popular OS options.

I kind of feel sorry for Ubuntu[1] and Linux[2] in general, they never had a firm foot in the desktop (market share-wise) and then this tectonic shift happens where everything goes mobile, a market where they aren't even a player, and to add insult to injury people stop caring enough about the desktop to even consider changing their OS to Linux in the first place.

1. I say this as a long time Linux user.

2. I know android is a modified version of Linux but here I use it as it has been traditionally understood in the desktop space.

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I've seen a few comments over the last few days speculating about us halting development on Ubuntu phone. Nothing could be further from the truth. The software development continues apace, and more devices and more ports to existing devices on the way next year.

Good to hear. Waiting for a useable version on a good phone in the US. Preferably a OnePlus.

OnePlus devices are indeed on the roadmap for community ports. If people are interested in helping with that effort, I'm sure the people working on it would appreciate it.

Android isn't a modified Linux, it just uses the very same Linux kernel as any other OS that uses Linux. Android is otherwise this userspace thing where other Linux-based systems have X11 and such with Qt and gtk and other things.

Although not perfect, this really shows the value in the name "GNU/Linux" for the desktop distros and such vs "Android/Linux"

Anyway, Ubuntu phone may not make it (seems unlikely), but it has more of a shot given the death of Firefox OS, not less. Ubuntu phone now has less competition in the alternative-mobile space.

> this really shows the value in the name "GNU/Linux" for the desktop distros and such vs "Android/Linux"

I don't really agree. For desktop users, the DE matters a lot more than who made `cp`. For server users, the distro matters more because of the particular weirdness of each.

GNOME is part of the GNU project, as well as emacs, gtk, etc.

I am well aware of that. I don't use GNOME or GTK (indeed, on my Linux desktop libglib isn't even installed).

What are you running, Alpine?

I'm running Debian with KDE. The GNU tools are installed but by weight they're nowhere near the majority of the code on the system, to say nothing of the components I actually use. So calling that machine "GNU/Linux" instead of "KDE/X.org/Linux", given the relative importance of the individual components, would be stupid.

Fortunately, we have the nearly universally understood "Linux" instead, and weird specializations like Android can be called something else.

I agree that "naming all the things" is a bit silly. But I think GNU/Linux indicates Linux kernel, GNU libc, compiled with gcc -- which is actually kind of useful information. It doesn't say anything about the Graphical UI (if any). Similarly I think Android/Linux is useful, because it indicates something about what kind of (binary) software you can expect will work - and what will not.

I also happen to think distinctions such as Debian/kFreeBSD (a Debian distribution based around the FreeBSD kernel, as opposed to (just) the regular FreeBSD user-land) are informative.

I'm not sure what one should/would call a Linux distribution with an alternative (non-GNU) libc that relied on a non-GNU compiler chain... Probably "brandname"/Linux or "function"/Linux (eg: Linux Router Project or something)...

This isn't a technical thing for any of the major proponents, though. It's a marketing thing, because after the spectacular failure of Hurd GNU was relegated to effectively a sideline (a useful one, for sure, but a sideline). I get a lot more direct and personal value out of code not provided by GNU than I do by code provided by GNU. I don't think they merit top billing, and I don't think the two decades of holding one's breath and turning purple deserves a reward.

Look, the Linux kernel itself uses the GNU GPL, so GNU probably is the most important factor in all of this. Linux kernel under a proprietary license or even under BSD-style, you probably would never have heard of it. At any rate, basically nobody thinks HURD is useful anymore. RMS thinks time spent on HURD is a waste since it is totally unneeded now that we have the Linux kernel. GNU is a political movement about software freedom as much or more than a particular set of software, and even KDE is licensed with a GNU license. etc.

"Look," the creator of Linux could not give the faintest fart about GNU and has said he'd use a different license if he could. Why should a political movement that specializes in lousy marketing campaigns and haranguing be given a nod?

I do like that attempt, though. "Well, they used a license that GNU wrote, so GNU should get top billing!" Do you want to talk about how well Apache/Dropwizard and PostgreSQL/PostgreSQL work with Apache/Kotlin on GNU/OpenJDK8?

> has said he'd use a different license if he could

Citation?

A constantly repeated quote from Linus is precisely: "Making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did." from a 1997 interview according to https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds

I've never heard Torvalds say anything regretful about using GPL. When I heard him in person just last year, he clarified his dislike of GPLv3 while emphasizing his preference and like of GPLv2.

And anyway, I didn't say anything about "top billing". The fact is, Linux itself is, admittedly, absurd billing for Linus given that he is the leader of the kernel project but is among thousands of people who make it happen. GNU is not a term that credits Richard Stallman. GNU is a community project with a particular political aim. And my point all along was just about some practical way to differentiate Android from the other primary Linux-based systems, and "GNU/Linux" is a way to do that.

This is not correct. Android has 150+ patches to Linux last I checked. It is not insignificant. There is not a good collection of patches to simply apply to a kernel of your choice either. Additionally, there are often many modifications made per-device or company (E.g. Samsung) or hardware configuration.

Finally, many of those patches are unlikely to make it upstream anytime soon, as they are usually controversial.

Please don't spread these falsehoods.

Disagree that people are 'pretty ok' with the two options.

Ubuntu phone was a glimmer of hope for me, a very faint glimmer, but it was something.

I remember people saying the compact disc was dead. History makes fools of many.

the compact disk is not dead?

I use 100gb blurays for backup.

Why would having fewer competitors make someone want to drop out of the race?

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