Ubuntu Edge is dead, long live Ubuntu phones | Hacker News Reader

Ubuntu Edge is dead, long live Ubuntu phones

arstechnica.com

63 pointsuladzislau50 comments

There is something I can't understand. They couldn't produce a really necessary Ubuntu laptop and they think they will be able to create a phone that doubles as netbook. They are deluded.

I'll soon have to buy a new laptop. I really would like to buy an "Ubuntu Air" laptop, if it existed. But it doesn't. Those that wan't to buy an Ubuntu laptop (or any other linux laptop) must study all the components of the computer they are going to buy and check for driver compatibility, plus some prayers, because you never know if it is really going to work well. This is really painful, and I'm not taking into account the usual regressions when upgrading.

At the end, I will probably buy a Mac. I have a baby and I don't have time to spend configuring wireless card drivers for days. But I'd love to have a high quality linux laptop.

sigh

Not this FUD again. Ubuntu will work well on pretty much any single-graphics Ultrabook currently on the market.

Can we leave the wifi problems complaints in previous decade where they belong?

> Ubuntu will work well on pretty much any single-graphics Ultrabook

I have a dell vostro 3360 which I bought thinking that everything would be ubuntu-fine... Not an ultrabook, but similar hardware.

It turns out that on on stock ubuntu, even for light tasks, the fan runs overtime. This is not a problem on the manufacturer provided Windows 7.

Dell provides Linux drivers to control the fan speed... but they do not work very well even after a fair amount of tweaking (there's a settings file which determines when the fan is supposed to switch on). To me, this is one of the most annoying problems that a machine can have.

Manufacturer support of operating systems matters.

Yeah, this is not FUD. I have a thinkpad edge running Ubuntu (and I tried a few other distros). Both the Broadcom wifi and the AMD graphics are very wonky. Broadcom worked, but a kernel upgrade broke it. AMD driver works, kind of, but not when I plug in an external screen.

I had it fail on me during a presentation I was giving. Next time I'll use my macbook, just to be safe. Obviously I don't blame Ubuntu. I blame myself for not buying a laptop with Ubuntu support.

Next time I'll buy System 76.

A general rule for good Linux support (not just Ubuntu) is to avoid Broadcom wifi. Get Intel wifi, and Intel graphics. Or, as you say, something that is Ubuntu certified.

Yeah, you can definitely get Linux running on pretty much whatever. But the point would be for Ubuntu to provide something that requires absolutely no fiddling, and where everything is nicely tuned and tested, and hey, maybe with some really kick-ass hardware at that.

I'm in the market for such a machine, and it's driving me absolutely batty.

* The Dell XPS 13 is the front runner, but I would prefer a larger screen. I stare at it all day, so that's more important than having something super portable. Also, compared to my current 1900x1200 screen, I'd be taking a pixel hit going to 1900x1080. Because some morons decided that watching movies was more important than doing actual work with computers. Also, the Wired review does mention Wi-Fi problems with the machine, which are not Linux specific, but probably due to the construction. http://www.wired.com/reviews/2013/07/dell-xps-linux/

* The Chromebook Pixel. Now this is a screen! I love it! The whole package looks pretty nice, although it's maybe a tad underpowered in terms of CPU and memory - I'd spend a bit more to get something I'm going to be comfortable with for the next few years. The killer though: 32 gigs of storage! NOT OK. Yeah, it comes with 'Google Drive' cloud stuff, but that doesn't cut it for me. I don't use a lot of disk - my current machine only has 100 gigs used up, so I'd probably be able to get by with a 128 gig SSD, but 32?! Sorry. Also, I'm a bit worried about support for the machine: Dell's has, for me, been pretty good in the past. I'm not sure I trust Google as much.

* There's a new Samsung that's supposed to come out with a high res screen soon: http://www.samsung.com/global/ativ/ativbook9plus.html - it looks pretty good, but once again, 13 inches... not sure I'd be happy with that, and I'm not sure it'll be out in time for me to get it during my trip to the US:-/

Sure, I can get an external screen, but that means I have a completely different screen environment depending if I'm at home, at work, or somewhere else.

When you have figured out Intel 4965 on the current kernel please report how you did it. The same that works on Windows.

This is not FUD. These are real experiences from real people.

I paid £1800 for the Lenovo X1 Carbon because I'd thought it was the best ultrabook at that time. Installing Ubuntu on it resulted in problems with: volume and brightness settings, trackpad, hibernation, fingerprint reader, mounting my NAS drive.

I don't have it anymore because I got robbed. Although I'm a Linux enthusiast, I ended up replacing it with the 2013 Macbook Air, because I don't want to pay a premium price for a product that I can't use 100%.

Quote from an Ubuntu user with an X1:

The Lenovo X1 Carbon is a dream for Linux. If you want to run Linux on an ultrabook, I cannot recommend the Carbon more highly.

http://www.inaccuratedesign.com/2012/10/22/Linux-on-the-X1-C...

Fedora is also OK apparently: http://sysconfig.org.uk/2013/05/fedora-18-on-lenovo-thinkpad...

Arch too: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1

The Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition, which has Ubuntu preinstalled, is as close to "Ubuntu Air" as it gets. Don't like it?

I just went over to the XPS 13 site, and I found this amusing image:

http://i.dell.com/sites/imagecontent/products/PublishingImag...

That could be an option. But, I once bought a Dell Mini 12 with Ubuntu pre-installed and it was a nightmare. It used a modified version of Ubuntu (with ad-hoc repositories hosted by Canonical) with an unstable binary blob. Therefore, not only it didn't work well, it wasn't upgradable! If I buy a XPS13, will I get stuck with Ubuntu 12.04 for life? Will Ubuntu test its new version (at least the LTS ones) with this machine? If I buy a Mac, I'll be sure that it is upgradable for a long time and that Apple will support it.

Edited to add a link to my own account of the facts (2008): http://bits.quintanasegui.com/2008/12/30/dell-sells-ubuntu-b...

By the way, how about battery life?

According to this article, it has 5h of battery life. http://www.wired.com/reviews/2013/07/dell-xps-linux/

This is half of the battery life of a Macbook Air!

If they sold a similar laptop with a Haswell processor ...

https://www.system76.com/laptops/model/galu1

No?

It's heavier than Air - 1.72 kg (3.8 lbs) vs 1.35 kg for 13-inch Air. Every gram counts when inside a backpack.

I don't think the sell or offer support in Spain.

check out the Lenovo X1 Carbon

Looks like a nice machine, generally, but then we get to the screen size: 1600x900. Pathetic. The new Nexus 7, for $230, has more pixels.

Do you sit closer to your laptop than to your phone? I know in general I don't, and whilst I can certainly appreciate the quality inherent in a very high resolution screen I'm not clamouring for one. I got a MBA 13" over a MBPr as I thought the screen difference wasn't high enough for the tradeoffs.

I currently have a laptop that does 1900x1200, that I purchased a few years back. I don't want anything less than that if at all possible: I can keep a lot of code on the screen at the same time.

>At the end, I will probably buy a Mac. I have a baby and I don't have time to spend configuring wireless card drivers for days.

True. The most compelling reason not to get a Mac for me is price, but if someone told you that for $500 they would come over and fix your daily GNU/Linux headaches (say 2 hours a week, that's 312 hours over 3 years) you'd hire them in a heartbeat.

There is a big motivation to go to mobile since that market is still growing and laptop's market stopped the growth a while ago.

Also, keep in mind that the edge want to replace the laptop in most situations. And finally, they failed to gather funds for this, but they didn't fail producing it, so your comment about being deluded doesn't make a valid comparison.

Hasn't linux benefited by the backport of Android code?

With Haswell it should become easier to find a suitable laptop for Ubuntu. I ended up getting a nice enough, and inexpensive Sony VIAO because it has only Intel HD graphics. Now that Intel's GPU has much higher performance, that configuration should become more common with high-end CPUs, and the new Intel GPUs will drive 4k monitors.

Your wifi card won't be a problem. It hasn't been for years now.

FUD. If you are uncomfortable deciding your own hardware, you can buy from vendors which explicitly support Ubuntu like System76

I really didn't and don't understand what Ubuntu was trying to achieve with the Edge campaign. The project sounds great and I would have bought one, but there was no chance in hell they were pulling this crowdfunding campaign off. That they got 12 Million is already a big achievement and surprise.

I'm pretty sure it was a way of kicking risk averse asian handset manufacturers into action. Setting the bar at $32 million meant that they could demonstrate interest without actually dealing with the headache of making the phone themselves.

"Since the campaign didn't meet its funding requirement, refunds will be processed to backers within five business days, Canonical said."

Do you think Indiegogo made interest on that 12 million dollars over the past month? If so, how much?

1) Less than inflation

2) Something, which won't be going back with those devalued refund dollars.

No idea but I'm sure PayPal are going to do their best with the $12m in new account balances they just got though.

I thought it was just an authorisation on the card, I didn't think they took the actual money?

No, they did. My available balance has been deducted and the transaction is fully shown.

Authorizations have a limited lifespan, and it's quite a bit shorter than crowdfunding sites would need.

What a terrible headline, it's only the Ubuntu Edge they wont' be making, Ubuntu phones are still coming out. Right from the article - "But this doesn't mean Ubuntu phones themselves are dead. The smartphone interface for the Ubuntu operating system is still being developed, and carriers around the world have signed on as potential launch partners."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_king_is_dead,_long_live_the...!

I think sometimes people don't realize that the two instances of "king" in the saying refer to different people. They therefore assume that "long live the king" is an idiom for "RIP the king" or similar. The Lion King probably didn't help matters with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctJ9jZ-_fFc

Taken that way, it is very strange for people to wish a long life to the king who just died.

People are used to idioms they don't understand though. They're much like words in that we learn their meaning from context, and the etymological content is more of a subconscious mnemonic than something we explicitly pay attention to. Sort of like being surprised when you first notice that "disintegrate" is "dis- integrate".

This is particularly common with idioms because they often to get truncated over time so that their meaning is harder to extract from the content. If you've never heard "the pot calling the kettle black", but you've heard "pot: meet kettle", you'll likely get the meaning from context, and you'll have no idea what the connection is between hypocrisy, pots, and kettles.

Funny... I think the headline perfectly summarizes what you wrote.

Did you actually read the headline? That is precisely what it is saying.

If the phones had more realistic specs, meaning they got the price down to $500 or so, and ran the campaign for 60 days instead of 30 they probably would have succeeded.

The phones they were competing with had 1gb and 2gb of RAM, yet the Ubuntu Edge was given 4gb. Really? What happened to launching a modest product, and after gaining traction improving it?

PLUS they should have warned people and starting advertising that their indiegogo campaign was going to launch 2 months before it actually did. That way they'd have a huge list of people ready to pre-order and ad campaigns set up by the community just in time for the campaign launch.

It's easy to boost with specs when the competing products can be bought right now while your product exists only on a drawing board.

The phone was too expensive and the risk too high that at the time it is delivered it would be outdated.

Here in France we have a company configuring and selling wiko smartphones (made in china) which are very cheap for their capacity.

Offering Ubuntu on such cheap phones could be a better way to get adopted by the Ubuntu community that doesn't have the money to buy Apple or windows computer. People would be much more forgiving for some software flaws or glitches.

Ubuntu Edge isn't a straight-forward phone OS though - it was intended to be a desktop/laptop replacement in a phone-sized package (run the Phone UI when disconnected, run a "desktop" UI when connected to an external monitor/keyboard/mouse). So a cheap piece of hardware would not be sufficient.

Personally, I wish for an ARM notebook market coming out of the Chromebook, with different configurations for Chrome OS and Ubuntu etc.

This. I really would like a small netbook type ARM device which runs a normal Linux distribution and doesn't cheap out on battery capacity. The Samsung ARM Chromebook comes near but it could have a better display, casing and keyboard (ideally with a trackpoint).

My ideal machine looks a lot like this as well. I'm surprised someone hasn't built something in between the Pixel and the Samsung, and partnered with Canonical.

"Long live" meant to refer to the next king, i.e. the king that is now king when this is uttered.

So is the phrase abused?

Eh, it was clear to me what the headline meant.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com