UBports Ships Its Stable OTA-1, Convergence Progress

[phoronix]

Phoronix: UBports Ships Its Stable OTA-1, Convergence Progress

The UBports camp is now shipping their first stable over-the-air (OTA-1) update to those wishing to use this fork of Ubuntu Phone / Unity 8...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=UBports-Stable-OTA-1

[fuzz]

This project is unfortunately dead on arrival since they aren't concerned about the process/workflow of application development (the one area Canonical lacked the most as well).

[profoundWHALE]

Do you get apps first? or devices first?

[fuzz]

Do you get apps first? or devices first?

Devices first didn't exactly work out well for Canonical.

EDIT:
They were very close to having a good app development ecosystem where you could develop your apps without devices. They would work on the desktop too.

[starshipeleven]

This project is unfortunately dead on arrival since they aren't concerned about the process/workflow of application development (the one area Canonical lacked the most as well).

Yeah, because if they made a great application development environment then developers would jump on UBports store asap.

Their plan is much smarter than Canonical's. The plan was to get a working Android environment emulator so they could run native Android apps and piggyback on its FAR FAR FAR bigger ecosystem, that is also the only realistic and sensible choice for such a project.

[ZeroPointEnergy]

This project is unfortunately dead on arrival since they aren't concerned about the process/workflow of application development (the one area Canonical lacked the most as well).

Unlike Canonical no one in the UBports project has the illusion or plan to compete with Google or Apple. They just create a phone they would like to use in their own free time.

I use an Ubuntu Touch as my daily phone and will soon switch to UBports as soon as I'm sure it is a stable experience for daily use. To me a full GNU Userland is far more worth than a Store full of trash apps. This device actually feels like I am in control and have a general purpose computing device I actually own and not just a toy full of ads which is locked down and controlled by someone else.

[fuzz]

Unlike Canonical no one in the UBports project has the illusion or plan to compete with Google or Apple. They just create a phone they would like to use in their own free time.

I use an Ubuntu Touch as my daily phone and will soon switch to UBports as soon as I'm sure it is a stable experience for daily use. To me a full GNU Userland is far more worth than a Store full of trash apps. This device actually feels like I am in control and have a general purpose computing device I actually own and not just a toy full of ads which is locked down and controlled by someone else.

I used it as well for months. There is no way I could ever use it as a daily phone. Too many apps that just aren't there.

But it's not just about app availability -- that I understand and can deal with. As a developer, the experience of creating apps was abysmal. I tried to create apps and had tons of problems. If you have developers actively trying to create apps for your ecosystem and having issues you really need to reevaluate your priorities.

[starshipeleven]

If you have developers actively trying to create apps for your ecosystem and having issues you really need to reevaluate your priorities.

That is more a critique for Canonical than for UBports though.

[fuzz]

That is more a critique for Canonical than for UBports though.

Sure, but UBports isn't learning anything from that failure.

[ZeroPointEnergy]

I used it as well for months. There is no way I could ever use it as a daily phone. Too many apps that just aren't there.

I totally understand, and the platform is not for everyone currently. This may slightly change when android apps are supported.

But it's not just about app availability -- that I understand and can deal with. As a developer, the experience of creating apps was abysmal. I tried to create apps and had tons of problems. If you have developers actively trying to create apps for your ecosystem and having issues you really need to reevaluate your priorities.

Yes this is absolutely horrible but they are completely aware of that. At the moment they try to ship what they have and squish bugs so they can keep releasing security updates for the users. From what I get from the forums they are thinking about how to change the app situation, maybe even together with plasma mobile so they could both use the same apps, since both use QT.

What I find completely stupid is that canonical was somehow whining about the wider open source community ignoring their stuff when they created it in a way that the SDK was only able to run on Ubuntu with no info about how you would build that monstrosity on any other distro.