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Ubuntu To Start Shipping On Smartphones In October

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  • Ubuntu To Start Shipping On Smartphones In October

    Phoronix: Ubuntu To Start Shipping On Smartphones In October

    There's a report out today that Ubuntu will begin to ship on smart-phones beginning this October...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Give me a hardware keyboard and I'll buy one!

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    • #3
      I'm still not sure what this means exactly. Is it really an Ubuntu smartphone, or is it Android with Ubuntu. I guess it's the real Ubuntu smartphone. But didn't they say it's coming in 2014?

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Krysto View Post
        I'm still not sure what this means exactly. Is it really an Ubuntu smartphone, or is it Android with Ubuntu. I guess it's the real Ubuntu smartphone. But didn't they say it's coming in 2014?

        Anything that runs x11 will get my derision.

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        • #5
          QT?

          I read somewhere, dunno if that was here on a previous similar article, or a /. reference about that article here.
          So I have to double check by asking this :: Did they build it using QT?

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          • #6
            bsn had a nice comprehensive analysis about the chances of the various new mobile OSs, incl firefox and ubuntu.



            Definitly worth reading.

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            • #7
              Do consumers care? This is just another phone OS that can't run users' existing app downloads, is missing the huge app market of iOS and Android, and has no compelling consumer-oriented features. This is like Windows Phone, but with a far smaller and poorer company shoveling it. It's the 1999 Linux desktop story all over again, except this time Apple and Google are the behemoths instead of Microsoft, and nobody really cares about freeing things up since Android is "free enough" for most, and Ubuntu is also lacking for Free purists.

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              • #8
                If this means that I can run any software on it that can be compiled to run on ARM it is time to get a new phone for me when these phones come to Europe.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by elanthis View Post
                  Do consumers care? This is just another phone OS that can't run users' existing app downloads, is missing the huge app market of iOS and Android, and has no compelling consumer-oriented features. This is like Windows Phone, but with a far smaller and poorer company shoveling it. It's the 1999 Linux desktop story all over again, except this time Apple and Google are the behemoths instead of Microsoft, and nobody really cares about freeing things up since Android is "free enough" for most, and Ubuntu is also lacking for Free purists.
                  You are wrong on many levels. First of all, many apps are being developed with HTML5 or JS lately, which are easily cross platform. Secondly, nearly every package that major distros support is on ARM, so there's already the potential to have a fully functional desktop OS if you chose to do so and don't expect windows programs. Thirdly, there is going to be that android compatibility layer. and lastly, wine for ARM is being developed at a very good time (when windows RT is also young and not too complex). This means Ubuntu phone will be able to run most linux programs, android apps, windows rt apps, and web based apps. If anything, Ubuntu phone will have more app support than any other mobile platform.

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                  • #10
                    Let's put it this way- we never relied on PC manufacturers to make their computers compatible with Linux- we created the support because we wanted something we had more control over, something with the qualities we found valuable in an OS. Although there are perhaps more hardware-specific features in smartphones, we're getting to the point where it will be possible to have many devices supported by a traditional Linux stack whether the carrier provides the support or not. This is how Linux grew.

                    However, on top of that, you have a few additional benefits. First, most of these OSes do have some commitment from manufacturers, so we'll definitely see Firefox OS and Sailfish. But aside from that, Android has a very close architecture with these OSes (much closer than say, Windows and desktop Linux). So it would be much easier to provide Android app compatibility on these systems- in fact, Sailfish is shipping with a 1:1 compatibility layer from Myriad. And, seeing as how Android is open source, the work to create a successful FOSS layer would be considerably easier than something like WINE.

                    Now, sure we face the problem of Android apps being ugly and inconsistent with our systems, but many users face some of this already with ultra-customized UIs for many popular Android apps like Netflix. This is not an issue that would be superbly difficult to mitigate.

                    So, unless you think Linux on the desktop is a hopeless and pointless effort, I'd say moving our stack to mobile is much more hopeful than the desktop market ever was. Especially since mobile devices usually play a secondary role, and people don't really need certain apps yet- they can go without one or two without losing significant productivity or work.

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