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Comment by jt2190 | Hacker News Reader

Hey commenters:

1. Backing this project is using your dollars to "vote" for this device to exist. It's not as unimaginative as "buying a phone", it's about helping to establish a new mobile device os as a real alternative.

2. This type of fundraising rarely follows a linear growth curve, so there's nothing to infer about the ultimate success of the project by projecting that way.

I have not backed the project, and I'm not sure if I will, but I really appreciate that others are trying to make this happen.

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Your first point is hitting the nail on the head, and it's exactly why I backed this project on day 1.

To other commenters: if you see this as "buying a phone that doesn't exist yet and won't for at least another year", then this project is probably not meant for you anyway.

But are you sure it's a good alternative?

It runs a slow and ugly UI, comes with built-in Amazon ads and privacy concerns, and will drain battery rapidly when using as a desktop, so you won't be able to make a call when your car breaks down on the way home.

If this is the future, count me out.

Typically when being run as a desktop, it would be plugged in. Maybe not always, but I don't see people expecting to regularly use a desktop computer off of battery power.

The built-in Amazon ads are enough for me to not use it, however.

Shouldn't it be charging when you are using it as a desktop?

This is what's keeping me from buying into it, I just cannot in good conscience support Canonical's approach to Ubuntu. They're authoritarian and secretive in their feature development, and that runs directly contrary to any notion of hacker ethics or FLOSS philosophy.

I used to subscribe to the linux sub-reddit but left because of all the Canonical apologists, "But they're nowhere near as bad as Microsoft/Apple/Google" and "They've got to make money somehow, what's wrong with anonymous search statistics being sent to Amazon?" etc etc.

Man, they just keep adding letters to OSS...

That's because FL (Free/Libre) is at least slightly different from the O (Open) part of the acronym.

And here all this time I thought that releasing your source code under the GPL qualified as "FLOSS philosophy".

Seriously, working on something for a while until you get it into a state where you're happy releasing it to the world isn't an attack on Freedom. Especially when you GPL it once you do release it.

How can you say it is slow? It isn't out yet. When it will come out it will basically be a high-end Android device that can be used as an Ubuntu desktop (all current HDMI adapters require power, so it won't drain the battery when you are using it as a desktop). Perhaps this is a concern to you, but it won't be much harder to keep charged then it is to keep a current smartphone charged while using it. And if you really are concerned, buy an external charger / car adapter.

The Unity interface has been notoriously buggy and slow. Canonical write core parts of their OS in Python. All my experience with their software indicates it will be slow.

I don't think the people working there are incompetent, more likely overstretched to breaking point.

It's fast and stable. Canonical write core parts of their OS in C. All my experience with their software indicates it will be fast.

Even some of their ubuntu one storage engineers know graphics programming well enough to win game programming competitions. They're good, and have copious free time to make this perfect.

Have you even tried it?

Unity on desktop is very, very good.

Unity on the phone (running on my nexus 4) is blazingly fast. I mean, stupidly fast. Android and iOS feel super laggy compared to it. Particularly Android.

Just seems like you are trolling.

What a pathetically misinformed comment. Core parts of their OS in Python? That automatically means it will be slow?

Yes, Python is slow.

They are not using Python for the phone version, but something coming from QT that runs at native speed.

Same here. I am writing this on an Ubuntu machine. But I am using it strictly for writing and a bit of web surfing. I would never use it on my phone. It seems to try to emulate a user friendly touch and feel but it fails at doing this (at least for me). Since removing the program listing menus I am forced to use the search option much more ( hello amazon!), the working spaces are completely unusable because they not separated entities and interfere with another, etc. As the only programs I am running are more or less Firefox, Libre & Acrobat I am to lazy to install a different distribution, but otherwise I would be long gone.

One of the great parts about it being Ubuntu is that you can simply remove the Amazon stuff: http://askubuntu.com/questions/192269/how-can-i-remove-amazo...

I'm running Ubuntu right now and love it. I do wish that it didn't come with Amazon by default, but as a free OS, I accept that there's going to be some of that sort of thing happening.

Regarding battery, I was under the impression that it would charge when being used as a desktop. Is this not correct?

That's not good enough. Defaults are extremely important in software, because that's the experience novice users will be stuck with permanently.

It's not even implemented in an intuitive or user-friendly way. When you search your computer, you don't expect Amazon search results to randomly appear.

Compare the Ubuntu dash search to Spotlight on OSX, it looks very amateurish. Instead of improving it, their developers have to waste their time fudging Amazon search results in.

You don't expect it because it doesn't occur with other OS's, but it's common functionality with web search. I'd prefer that it was off by default, but if the only price I pay for what I find to be an excellent free OS is that I have to toggle ads off, then I'm OK with that. Your opinions about the UI are subjective, of course; I find Ubuntu's search UI to be better than OSX's Spotlight. I also don't find sluggishness to be an issue at all, in fact I experience just the opposite.

Please don't defend the Amazon shopping lens. It is indefensibly awful. Ubuntu should drop it, and it is the primary thing that makes people distrust Canonical now. Go ahead and promote all the other benefits of Ubuntu all you like, they are real.

I hold the opposite opinion: if Amazon shopping lens supports Ubuntu providing their awesome operating system, it's very well they have it. Also I don't see a distrust point at all, hey it's a click away to disable, some commands away to uninstall.

Why so particular with Ubuntu, do you e.g. distrust (and stop using) Google for displaying ads? What about Windows/OSX which are orders of magnitude less trust-able than an open source OS. If you don't like a more mainstream consumer Linux then why not install Arch or Debian or Bodhi and refrain from badmouthing?

"but as a free OS..."

There's a missing apostrophe there. It's "free" in that it doesn't come with a price-tag. It's being paid for, just in other ways. It might seem nit-picky, but to me, at least, it's an important distinction. Facebook is "free" also, but you're paying for it by looking at ads. Google search/email is "free", but you pay for it with ads.

I personally hate the idea that something is "free" but you pay for it with your time/eyeballs. In some regards (like this) I am old-school. I like the simple model of I pay $X for Y product, done.

I don't think that's an old-school mentality. Even in 'old-school' times, I don't think anyone would have picked up a free newspaper and said "this isn't free!" if it had ads in it.

I don't really agree with the mentality of "ad-supported is not free". It's one thing if you're giving up your data (as in the case of Facebook), it's another if it's limited to glancing at an ad (in the case of a blog or newspaper). I don't know the details of where Ubuntu would fall, but if you define merely "looking at something" as payment, you should be asking for refunds from any man or woman you've ever "paid".

Yet, people are ready to start a holy war against Oracle for shipping free Java with an Ask Toolbar.

"but as a free OS" - from customer's viewpoint it's not anymore free than iOS on Apple devices. You pay for a product and it comes with an OS - you are not getting an invoice for both. And therefore - why would a customer treat them differently?

This is a great point and I agree with you in the case of the Edge. Is it confirmed that the shopping/Amazon lens would be enabled by default on the Edge? I think this is a reasonable situation to argue for a disabled default.

> but as a free OS, I accept that there's going to be some of that sort of thing happening

The vast majority of Linux distributions are free and include none of this sort of things, with some of them (e.g. Debian) having been in continuous existence for about 20 years. Whatever your opinion about this move by Ubuntu, you can't say that it's something that has to happen with free OSes and that you have to accept.

The vast majority of Linux distros have also also never had a lot of casual desktop users outside of developers and server admins. Expanding consumer mindshare costs money, and it that has been Ubuntu's main priority since day one. Debian on the other hand has long prioritized stability/reliability as a good workhorse OS. Neither are bad goals, but it's disingenuous to imply that they are the same and should thus take the same paths to accomplishing them.

It is rather hard to imagine a situation in which one would have an external monitor that is plugged in and no way to plug in the Edge as well

Wow you seem to already own this phone. That's amazing!

It's running a Ubuntu variant. I used Ubuntu for many years (and previously recommended it to others). I even helped with repo's at one point.

Canonicals downfall has been long and well-documented. Try to keep up.

I believe Nexus 4 is one of the supported devices for the Ubuntu phone variant, and will have a similar OS as the Edge.

This phone is a first generation. In line with jt2190 notion, you are not buying the phone as much as you are creating the market. Once that market exists, it can be iterated on and improved.

Nice. 2 hr old account, 2 hr old comment. A troll comment? Yeah, I think we know what's up.

As long as it's good enough, it could help pave the way for future phones that are better.

Well if you end up not liking it you can install Android on it and still have a great phone.

It will come with Android pre-installed already, in a dual-boot configuration.

The current Ubuntu Phone image does not have any Amazon integration at all.

When in desktop mode, you will be plugged into A/C power.

Still much faster than Android/Java apps.

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