Don't Hold Your Breath On UBports' Ubuntu Touch For Purism's Librem 5 Smartphone

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Don't Hold Your Breath On UBports' Ubuntu Touch For Purism's Librem 5 Smartphone

While Ubuntu Touch that continues to be worked on by the UBports community remains one of the most viable and furthest along Linux open-source smartphone operating systems, it doesn't look like there will be any solid support in time for launch-day of the upcoming Purism Librem 5 smartphone...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=UT-No-Librem-5-Progress

[Ironmask]

I sure hope this isn't Purism being petty and trying to dissuade Ubuntu Touch from being ported to the system because it's not "freedom-respecting enough"

[drlamb]

As a backer of the Librem 5 I do hope ubports support materializes. It would be nice if canonical were to throw some weight behind the project now the "Linux phones" are becoming a thing.

[Michael]

As a backer of the Librem 5 I do hope ubports support materializes. It would be nice if canonical were to throw some weight behind the project now the "Linux phones" are becoming a thing.

With Canonical still eyeing an IPO in the years ahead, it's unlikely they would re-add any resources to this effort when it's still a money losing venture. (Purism did already burn through their Librem 5 crowdfunding money.)

[Vasant1234]

Just like in the desktop world, we will end up having 5 half baked mobile distribution for the GNU/Linux phone and none will ever come close to Android and its app ecosystem.
The GNU/Linux developers suffer from the NIH (not invented here) syndrome.

[Toggleton]

I sure hope this isn't Purism being petty and trying to dissuade Ubuntu Touch from being ported to the system because it's not "freedom-respecting enough"

It did sound to me (in the Matrix Chats) like Purism has no Dev Kits left to sell/give

[starshipeleven]

Just like in the desktop world, we will end up having 5 half baked mobile distribution for the GNU/Linux phone and none will ever come close to Android and its app ecosystem.

Window of opportunity for a successful mainstream mobile OS has long since closed, not even fucking Microsoft (on mobile) could ever come close to Android and its app ecosystem.

Competing with Android isn't the project goal.

The GNU/Linux developers suffer from the NIH (not invented here) syndrome.

There is no such thing as "GNU/Linux developers".

Also, this is a different project porting their stuff on the device. Purism should have just needed to provide devkits and documentation.

[L_A_G]

This is exactly why I suggested just using stock i.MX8 reference boards as the first version of the software devkit. Outside of the SoC it won't be anything close to fully representative of the final product, but at least it allows people to get started on doing software development months before the first boards production-representative sofrware dev boards are ready to start shipping.

Now the proper device is going to be massively late, but software devs aren't going to get anywhere near that amount of extra time to get everything working. I'm starting to fear that this may eventually turn into a repeat of the last time Microsoft took a real stab at Windows Mobile, which turned into a drawn out and expensive textbook case of too little too late.

[Guest]

Considering that Ubuntu Phone has been effectively dead for a while, this is a good thing, as they haven't wasted these dev kits to get a dying platform up and running.

[andyprough]

Ubports is planning to support the PinePhone from day 1 from what I've been reading.