Canonical Plans For Usable Ubuntu Phone By Month's End

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Canonical Plans For Usable Ubuntu Phone By Month's End

On the same day as sharing their plans for Ubuntu's own package format and installer, Rick Spencer of Canonical has laid out plans for the Ubuntu Phone to be "usable as our daily phones" by month's end...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTM2ODE

[timothyja]

Imagine how good the Linux Desktop could be by now if they had contributed all this time and effort to desktop projects rather than wasting it on the tablet/phone fad. Now instead of being successful on one platform they are bleeding money and getting nowhere on three.

[d2kx]

Imagine how good the Linux Desktop could be by now if they had contributed all this time and effort to desktop projects rather than wasting it on the tablet/phone fad. Now instead of being successful on one platform they are bleeding money and getting nowhere on three.

Canonical has grown a lot recently and the work on Ubuntu Touch will also benefit the desktop, as Mir and Unity Next will be used there aswell.

[scionicspectre]

Looks like some good development. I'm guessing the desktop version of Ubuntu won't be seeing a lot of stable updates until 14.04, so hopefully all of this work pays off in a year's time. Still, it will be exciting to try out all this new stuff near the end of the year. If nothing else, this is exciting because Ubuntu will be the first OS to fully support this multitude of form-factors with one code base within a year or so.

I'm also excited because now we have a good idea of what to use for future development, that is Qt with QML and HTML5. With these two technologies, every major platform will be supported, as well as the more minor options.

It's certainly going to be exciting to behold as these worlds finally meet without cannibalizing each other like we've seen with Windows 8. I hope it will finally stabilize a bit afterwards, so we can focus on polish.

[Fenrin]

nice development on the smartphone market!

I am actually not even a smartphone user yet. But I am eager to get one with a nice OS this year. Perhaps one with Firefox OS or Sailfish OS. Will be nice if these two, plus Ubuntu get all a marketshare of atleast 1+% each. Good to have several open OS options.

A nice talk with representatives from Mozilla, Canonical and Jolla about their smartphone OS's is here (from the Mobile World Congress 2013):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkEb3WSs3CI

[timothyja]

Canonical has grown a lot recently and the work on Ubuntu Touch will also benefit the desktop, as Mir and Unity Next will be used there aswell.

My point is there are many more basic things that need to be improved on the Desktop that are higher priority to the average user then touch or a new display server.

[e8hffff]

Cool news. I may look into getting the code working on my old U8150 Huawei phone, but that is memory restricted so I hope they have their memory manager efficient.

[e8hffff]

My point is there are many more basic things that need to be improved on the Desktop that are higher priority to the average user then touch or a new display server.

I'm a little disappointed they strayed from the sketches people helped create for the application concepts and functionality. The default apps now look real basic.

[V!NCENT]

If "they" (some company) made a phone that has:
1. Touch screen;
2. Nokia E7-00 style slider qwerty keyboard;
3. Proprietary firmware (across all components or not) or open (unlocked/not secured);
4. Fully open source Linux drivers (not counting firmware, like AMD Radeon);
5. GNU toolchain;
6. Proprietary Navtaq and Whatsapp app;
7. Build in VoIP;
8. Open document XML WYSIWYG editor;
9. Free and proprietary codecs;
10. Webkit2 browser.

I'm sold. Seriously. I want a pocket computer that I can navigate and call with. I want websites instead of "apps" for everything on the go and I also want to be able to listen to music. I also want to type on the go and read some email.

Good camera, Gorrila glass and waterproof is icing on the cake.

Why does nobody simply treat smartphones as computers?! Why is it soooo hard to just make a useful phone?

[przemoli]

Imagine how good the Linux Desktop could be by now if they had contributed all this time and effort to desktop projects rather than wasting it on the tablet/phone fad. Now instead of being successful on one platform they are bleeding money and getting nowhere on three.

Before you say anything more...


Linux captured 60+ % of telephone market.
Linux captured 50+ % of tablet market.

Linux captured 2+ % of desktop market.

And telephone market is bigger than desktop market.


So if Canonical do nice job on mobile version of Ubuntu they will "help" more Linux users...