Had enough of Android? First 'Focal' based Ubuntu Touch is out
theregister.com
theregister.com
https://youtu.be/qmlabKbpTGM&t=5m44s
Not this exact version but it should be close. Much better than what I was expecting
Maybe it's my myopia, but I feel they were easily the most dev friend years ago, and poured their life and money into it, to benefit others
But then after ubuntu phone, the level of ingratitude from us devs were shocking
Project focus wasn't always on the ball, but we the community ripped them apart for it
So yeah, snaps is a little more lookin' after number one. I agree with that assessment, but I hardly blame them
> effectively forking the Debian ecosystem
The company and project were founded by a Debian user and developer, who employed and still employs a number of Debian developers, to make a version of Debian for ordinary people.
How is that a bad thing?
Ubuntu changes feed back into Debian. Debian now has the `apt` command instead of `aptitude`. It has the Ubuntu GUI tool for configuring repositories and so on. It has various bits of Ubuntu.
ISTM that this was as friendly and cooperative as a sub-project can be, and Debian has benefitted significantly from it.
I tried Debian before Ubuntu. It was hard and I didn't use it because it was too hard for me to bother.
(I used Caldera OpenLinux and then later SUSE.)
Nowadays Debian is a lot better and easier, and I reckon a lot of that is down to the Ubuntu influence.
I find it hard to see that as a bad thing.
But seriously: Shuttleworth tried a classic EEE play on Debian, over and over and over. Obviously nerds mostly want to get along and will end up talking to each other, but it doesn't change the fact that, at the time, it was a (not-that-) thinly veiled, well-funded takeover attempt on the Debian ecosystem and community.
> Ubuntu changes feed back into Debian. Debian now has the `apt` command
It's nice that you bring up a classic case of unashamed namesquatting. People have been referring to "apt" in general terms since apt-get came on the scenes, 6 YEARS before Canonical was founded. But why give up the chance to piggyback on someone else's brand, eh...? So when the time came to churn on the umpteen apt-get frontend, they did just that.
APT as a set of tools is ancient. `apt` as a command isn't. It is handy, it's simpler and easier, it eliminates the nonsensical split between apt-get and apt-cache and aptitude and so on... and you can tell, because Debian adopted it.
I like it. I use it all the time. The upstream project adopted it, but to you, that's bad, because it falsifies your angry claim.
Yeah, no. End of thread.
As one example, ubuntu-minimal is the minimal meta package, but it has a sneaky dependency on ubuntu-advantage-tools
and ubuntu-advantage-tools is sort of the master phone-home system.
As an example, if you install Windows 98, then Windows XP, then Windows 10 side by side, the following things happen:
1. Windows 98 installs its bootloader.
2. Windows XP takes a dump of 98's bootloader into a file and then overwrites the MBR with NTLDR. NTLDR is then configured with an option to chainload into 98's bootloader by reading its dump file.
3. Windows 10 takes a dump of NTLDR into a file and then overwrites the MBR with Windows Boot Manager. Windows Boot Manager is then configured with an option to chainload into NTLDR by reading its dump file.
This means you can install Windows 10 (and Windows Boot Manager), install Linux and have it install its bootloader (eg: GRUB) somewhere, then configure Windows Boot Manager to chainload the Linux bootloader (eg: GRUB) by reading from wherever it's stored.
That being said, as I wrote in a comment[1] further down both NTLDR and Windows Boot Manager are capable of chainloading into other bootloaders, including Linux bootloaders like GRUB.
Which was always a letdown for me. Loading Ubuntu via a LiveCD onto the family computer to circumvent NetNanny was one of the first "hacker" things I ever did. I was really excited at the prospect of having Ubuntu on a phone.
Maybe I'll pick up a 3a just to tinker with this...
Great artists steal.
Torvalds, Stallman, Gosling, they don't steal, they innovate.
I gave Ubuntu Touch a chance, particularly as I was longing for something comparable to Maemo on the Nokia N900. At first it was great. OpenSSH, bash, etc. I had some fun hacking on it. However, I quickly realized they threw a beta product at the people.
I missed phone calls because of race conditions. I couldn't connect to my wifi because my password was too long.... It overall really seemed the team at Canonical didn't have enough man power.
Eventually, these things got fixed, but too late for me. In some ways it's cool that the community hasn't given up on Ubuntu touch, unlike Canonical. I don't know how much has changed under the hood, but one can only hope the software stack is more reliable now.
Most painful loss of a device I've suffered.
Edit: this one is good too https://youtu.be/ltxj8YBoTMU
But the UI of Ubuntu Touch is really nice. I don't even daily driver the thing and when I pull out my android phone, I am trying to do some the of the UT swipe gestures because they are so natural.
I hope this community continues to thrive!
I don't think I have the time or energy to work out how to bootstrap, port, and maintain an Android distro for my phone. Conversely, the rest of my systems run off mainline GNU/Linux, which I am able to set up and maintain. I'd be happy if I could get a phone with a similar experience.
But that Treble technology is actually being used by ubports which does Ubuntu Touch using Android drivers, and porting Ubuntu Touch on any modern Android smartphones is quite easy nowadays (assuming you have kernel source code available). It pretty much just requires rebuilding kernel source code with different parameters and that's it.
It's also a weird headline, wouldn't users choose iPhones then?
If I were to mention some points that would be high on my wish list:
Radical reliability.
Frequent security updates.
Rare feature updates. Make the feature set solid to begin with, . There are only so many tasks that are critical on a phone
A UI Insane speed and responsiveness, with as much eye candy removed as possible.
An email client and SMS messenger modelled after the classic Blackberry OS. I have never even come close to the speed and convenience of Blackberry for email and SMS Esp. with dedicated hardware buttons.
(Note this was long before Blackberry on Android or Blackberry Touch. BB was never going to catch up with the iPhone to be an iPhone copy and they should not have tried.)
Note: This was in their classic days.
I loved it so much I tried hard for a while to start a company producing a copy. Hardware costs kept that from ever going anywhere. (Which I sort of knew but wanted a proper real life change)
Then pivoting to Android to make an app that was plugged in at a low enough level to achieve the desired features Ideally combined with a small dock keyboard that attached to te bottom of the phone where the powerplug is.
Then a different company made such a dock so we were in talks with them. It proved impossible to get the dock keyboard stable enough for our needs.
Eventually we gave up on the Android version. It felt like we were spending far too much time fighting Android instead of developer our goal the email/SMS app.
I hope someone else can eventually succeed in this but I think the market for it is small. :(
I have a couple of the Planet phones with build in Keyboard. One a "copy" of the Psion5l But again Android is far too dominant in day to day use.
It could be anything else, but it had to be Ubuntu.
Using a community-maintained port of an abandoned Canonical project would be nice to experiment with, but I doubt it would be anywhere near as usable, reliable, secure and future-proof as Graphene.
FTFY
Just get Beeper and a Linux Matrix Client and you can communicate with iMessage, Telegram and WhatsApp users without having an Android phone
My bank account works in the Browser
Tap and pay or paywave are the best thing to happen in mobile IMO. I don't even carry a wallet anymore. I had having to carry a phone and wallet. Now it's back down to only have to carry one thing. Perfect
That is a lot of faith in the technology. You don't worry about a dead battery? Cracked screen? Phone getting stolen out of your hand in the subway?
Sounds like pure hell on mobile.
Also, not everyone is willing to use fingerprints, so there's that too.
Willing or unwilling is per person and bit different question which is out of my interest for now.
> unsecure
How is security defined? What is your threat model? If your threat model includes includes running random native binary blobs from random places like Android or iOS does, then yes, you can definitely consider it unsecure.
But that's NOT the target paradigm here, and if you consider it is, you're throwing away 90%+ of the GNU/Linux distributions out there. Last time I checked, running GNU/Linux on servers or desktops wasn't considered bad practice, quite the opposite.
Instead, it may be more secure than iOS, depending on your usage, because the paradigm is to install only opensource software that you actually trust.