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I hope this project takes off. Would love to have a completely open source mobile phone or tablet. I think the key is low entry barrier for developers. Develop

by z3t4 10y ago

I hope this project takes off. Would love to have a completely open source mobile phone or tablet. I think the key is low entry barrier for developers. Developing an SDK/IDE is too much work, and personally I feel locked in and rather use the command line instead. A fast emulator or a KVM image would also be nice.

afandian 10y ago
You can buy one now. Not open source hardware, and there's probably closed binaries in there somewhere, but you can buy a BQ Aquaris M10 with Ubuntu Touch installed. The thing itself has a command line and in theory you can compile your own programs and install packages with apt, though you are heavily discouraged from doing so. (the software is not very good yet, and it's not really usable, but I'm biding my time)
Freak_NL 10y ago
I hope there is a niche where Ubuntu Touch can fit in. I have the Meizu Pro 5 with Ubuntu Touch, and it suits me just fine. The reason I chose this phone is that it comes as close to a free software smartphone as I can get now. A huge part of wanting something other than Android is that I don't feel comfortable with the current app-driven smartphone world. Everything seems financed either via analysis of what I do (targeted advertising) or subscriptions with vendor lock-in. Even the most popular apps require access to data they shouldn't need. I also dislike the way a lot of services used by sometimes even the majority of people (i.e., WhatsApp) are exclusive to pre-approved smartphone operating systems (even desktop operating systems are excluded without tethering!). The delicate counterweight we have on the desktop (between major commercial OSes and free software OSes) is missing on the smartphone; it boils down to a duopoly of Apple and Google, and a whole bunch of service-silos, and there is no threat of users migrating to an OS with more freedom if you push them too far (as I believe there is on the desktop).
pjmlp 10y ago
You do you do great UI design with the command line?
- majewsky 10y ago
  I've had a marvelous experience building HTML5 UIs in my command-line vim.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    I bet you had lots of productive hours save/browser refresh fun cycles making something like Material design with that workflow. What about the users, have they had a marvelous experience using that UI?
    - zdkl 10y ago
      There exist tools outside of your apparent zone of comfort that let us do whatever we damn please from the command line. I think you'd be surprised how much user facing code was written using Emacs/Vim.
      - pjmlp 10y ago
        I was already coding in the 80's, back then it was called VI. So I know pretty well how the UNIX System V experience for GUI programming looks like.
        AnonymousPlanet 10y ago
        And I used Windows already back in the 90s, so I know exactly what the PC experience looks like with all its BSODs and token rings.
        pjmlp 10y ago
        At least it already had RAD GUI tools that cared about usability while most UNIX terminals that I was still using in 1994 were green phosphor ones.
        AnonymousPlanet 10y ago

by z3t4 10y ago

afandian 10y ago

You can buy one now. Not open source hardware, and there's probably closed binaries in there somewhere, but you can buy a BQ Aquaris M10 with Ubuntu Touch installed. The thing itself has a command line and in theory you can compile your own programs and install packages with apt, though you are heavily discouraged from doing so. (the software is not very good yet, and it's not really usable, but I'm biding my time)

Freak_NL 10y ago

I hope there is a niche where Ubuntu Touch can fit in. I have the Meizu Pro 5 with Ubuntu Touch, and it suits me just fine. The reason I chose this phone is that it comes as close to a free software smartphone as I can get now. A huge part of wanting something other than Android is that I don't feel comfortable with the current app-driven smartphone world. Everything seems financed either via analysis of what I do (targeted advertising) or subscriptions with vendor lock-in. Even the most popular apps require access to data they shouldn't need. I also dislike the way a lot of services used by sometimes even the majority of people (i.e., WhatsApp) are exclusive to pre-approved smartphone operating systems (even desktop operating systems are excluded without tethering!). The delicate counterweight we have on the desktop (between major commercial OSes and free software OSes) is missing on the smartphone; it boils down to a duopoly of Apple and Google, and a whole bunch of service-silos, and there is no threat of users migrating to an OS with more freedom if you push them too far (as I believe there is on the desktop).

pjmlp 10y ago

You do you do great UI design with the command line?

majewsky 10y ago
I've had a marvelous experience building HTML5 UIs in my command-line vim.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  I bet you had lots of productive hours save/browser refresh fun cycles making something like Material design with that workflow. What about the users, have they had a marvelous experience using that UI?
  - zdkl 10y ago
    There exist tools outside of your apparent zone of comfort that let us do whatever we damn please from the command line. I think you'd be surprised how much user facing code was written using Emacs/Vim.
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      I was already coding in the 80's, back then it was called VI. So I know pretty well how the UNIX System V experience for GUI programming looks like.
      - AnonymousPlanet 10y ago
        And I used Windows already back in the 90s, so I know exactly what the PC experience looks like with all its BSODs and token rings.
        pjmlp 10y ago
        At least it already had RAD GUI tools that cared about usability while most UNIX terminals that I was still using in 1994 were green phosphor ones.
        AnonymousPlanet 10y ago