Do We Really Need Another Smartphone OS?
wired.com
wired.com
However I am not sure if the mainstream market will be as interested.
You are correct that there's a VM -- Dalvik is the process virtual machine in Android, and that a common use case is to use Java bytecode and then convert it to Dalvik, but this is a far cry from being "trapped in a Java VM".
In fact, at even the fundamental level, the Java VM is a stack-based machine, while the Dalvik VM is a register-based machine (the merits or criticisms of doing so are beyond the scope of this post; that's a different discussion).
And if the notion of a VM is still utterly offensive, you are welcome to write portions of your Android applications in native code, such as through C or C++, although for many applications there's really no or marginal benefit to doing so.
I believe that we are going to be using our phones as our desktop computers in the not-too-distant future, and what Ubuntu is doing is one of the first steps to achieve this. Android has tried to do this in the past (Atrix), but the desktop experience was abysmal because the experiences were inconsistent.
I'm very excited to see how this develops, but Canonical is going to need some good endurance to see this to a point where it can compete commercially.
For this group something like Jolla's Sailfish (see http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/jolla-sailfish/) or Ubuntu Mobile will be very appealing options.
Disclaimer: I've worked with some of the people behind both Sailfish and Ubuntu Mobile back in the good old Maemo/MeeGo days.
I wish Canonical luck, but I just don't see my non-technical friends caring one whit about this phone unless it does something extraordinary that they can't get elsewhere. And I just don't see that happening.
It says something about the fashion sense of a reporter if they approach the question this way. You should ask, "What capabilities are we going to want in our phone going forward?" and work from there, but fretting over brand awareness seems, well, a bit shallow.
Do you only buy a car because it has a "Hemi" V8 engine ? And wonder, "Do we really need another engine for cars?" Of course you don't. I would love a smart phone that was less susceptible to malware (the tension of programmability meets actual exploits against my bank account). If the current OS makers can do that, fine, if there is a new OS that does this better, that is ok too.
Do we really need more screen sizes?
Do we really need more apps?
That's an inane question, and the article doesn't even try to answer it.
The userspace in Android is very different from the userspace in GNU/Linux. In GNU/Linux, it is very easy to program using your preferred programming language. This isn't the case in Android, everything is very tightly wrapped up around Dalvik. Before you mention the NDK, let me say that it's only a subset of C++ (no exceptions among other things). Ubuntu on the cell phone also opens up the possibility of things like shell scripting, local webservers, etc.
What this really comes down to is programming freedom that you can find in GNU/Linux that isn't found in Android. You will now have a full fledged computer in your pocket instead of a limited device.
Hopefully when phones running Ubuntu are available on the market, they'll come up with a more compelling story for consumers.
[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines
Cons: - Canonical likes making big mistakes (mandatory Unity interface, Amazon search/spyware integration)
Mandatory?
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop
* log out
* choose kde
* log in./call 01
Why wired? Join the discuss here.
I don't care as much about Tizen and Sailfish, but I'd rather see strong open source competitors standing up against Android and iOS, than more closed ones like WP8 and BB10.
I think, if not Samsung, at least more desperate companies like HTC, LG and Sony should definitely give Ubuntu a fair try. Asus might do it anyway, as they are already making Ubuntu laptops, and they have that whole Padfone thing going on, but they haven't been very successful in smartphones yet.
I think it is a mistake. A modern operating system, particularly on mobile where power management and security are concerns, needs a mature well-optimized managed code environment to write middleware and more complicated applications in - hence Objective-C with automatic reference counting on iOS and Java/Dalvik on Android.
HTML5 for all uses under the sun is going to either underperform users' expectations or drain power, or both; and letting unmanaged C applications in is a recipe for disaster.
I would like to be excited about this, but I do not think the architecture as presented makes any sense.
Fact: Objective-C is "managed".
Android is open source. Fork it. Improve it. Why build something completely new. Is it just to keep a brand name like "Ubuntu" and "Firefox"?
android was also deemed the least open of a bunch of high-profile open-source projects: http://www.visionmobile.com/rsc/researchreports/Open%20Gover...