10 ms·

I get that they're moving away from convergence, but what does this ultimately mean for Ubuntu as a mobile OS? In the grand scheme of things, what does this mea

I get that they're moving away from convergence, but what does this ultimately mean for Ubuntu as a mobile OS? In the grand scheme of things, what does this mean for users who want a completely FOSS stack for their phone (let's ignore the baseband for now)? As far as I can tell, this just means that your only options are Android or iOS. It's not easy to get a Jolla/SailfishOS phone that will work on most Canadian or USA networks, and with this announcement it seems that Ubuntu phones won't be around for much longer. This coupled with the death of Firefox OS means that there's really not much of a choice. Certainly you can run AOSP with no Google Apps, but not having Google Play Services tends to cause more and more problems, or at the very least means your phone is less and less capable as time goes on. I guess in general we can all celebrate that Ubuntu is moving to GNOME / Wayland and is ditching convergence, but I think the fact that there's no healthy alternative to iOS / Android is quite sad. If Canonical is exiting the mobile space to work on other things, what other alternatives do users have?

bananaoomarang 10y ago
This is my worry. The technical challenge of maintaining a usable mobile OS seems too high for companies like Canonical and Mozilla to have a chance, since getting hardware produced, marketed and into people's hands is a gargantuan task, and supporting Android handset installs is fighting a losing battle. Having said that, I am not sure why? Ubuntu Phone seems largely functional on a few devices, but installing it and using it remains a pain.
- onli 10y ago
  Jep, I don't understand it. It is completely understandable to drop a product that is not working on the market. It is less understandable to drop a product that never really was on the market, after the big initial investment is already done. Same for FF, same for WebOS: How can you draw the conclusion that something is not working on the market if you never tried making it available to customers, on regular hardware? Only makes sense if there is no money left.
  - jstanley 10y ago
    > you never tried making it available to customers, on regular hardware? I'm pretty sure they tried very hard indeed. They just didn't succeed. I say this as a long-time user of Ubuntu Touch. I don't love it, it is not without its flaws. It's just the best mobile OS I've found, primarily because it doesn't nag you with privacy-invasion at every turn. I'll miss it when it's gone.
    - ThatGeoGuy 10y ago
      > I'm pretty sure they tried very hard indeed. They just didn't succeed. I don't know about this. The last phone they released was the Meizu Pro 5, which had an Android variant (sold in stores) and an Ubuntu variant (sold online only, and you had to dig for it if you didn't get redirected from ubuntu.com). The hardware itself for the phone wasn't awful by any means, but buying one was hard enough because the manufacturer only sold out of Asia. Further, the Meizu Pro 5 didn't work on most networks in Canada and the United States. Why would I buy a phone that doesn't support 3G/4G? I'd _love_ to support Canonical by purchasing an Ubuntu touch device, but you could hardly say that they tried. Their handsets were few and far between, and they locked out a large portion of the market because of the phone's baseband frequencies. I think that they could have succeeded, at least in the small, had they actually released a device that power users could use comfortably.
      - mhall119 10y ago
        Canonical made no handsets, we worked with the companies that wanted to ship Ubuntu phones, but we didn't get to dictate when, where or how many.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - empath75 10y ago
    The customers were device manufacturers, and they didn't want it.
ZenoArrow 10y ago
I'd suggest the best remaining option for a FOSS-driven phone (now that Canonical have dropped the ball) is Tizen. It's got the backing of a large phone manufacturer (Samsung) and the Linux Foundation, and seems to be actively developed. It'll probably end up being used on low-end devices at first, but is likely to be more open than the two leading platforms, so hopefully they get some traction amongst tech community. It's also worth pointing out that Samsung has been investing in Servo, and that Tizen has good support for HTML5 apps, so hopefully we can see mobile web apps increase in popularity to get us away from the walled garden approach. https://www.tizen.org/ https://www.tizen.org/
- Mailtemi 10y ago
  Last two weeks I've estimating Tizen, Ubuntu or Sailfish worth port an app. Like sample apps, build scripts debugging, etc. Although Tizen has large corp support, Ubuntu and Sailfish look more developer friendly. CMake, QT , C++.
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    Perhaps you overlooked this? https://www.tizen.org/blogs/dh0922/2016/tizen-.net-developer-preview https://www.tizen.org/blogs/dh0922/2016/tizen-.net-developer... https://www.tizen.org/blogs/myungjae/2017/samsung%E2%80%99s-third-tizen-.net-developer-preview-introduces-new-visual-studio-tools https://www.tizen.org/blogs/myungjae/2017/samsung%E2%80%99s-...
    - Mailtemi 10y ago
      C# look like a dead end, though much better than first WinPhone with "SilverLight." If you have written c/ or c++ engine, you need just a good bridge to OS UI language. Well, also platform + tools that work well on each Unix/Linux. Just to mention I used to like MS technologies. Least problems I had with ASP 2 / AJAX web app which works for nine years without significant problems.
      - ZenoArrow 10y ago
jhasse 10y ago
LineageOS + F-Droid
- ajross 10y ago
  Exactly. There absolutely is an open source Android experience (at the level of the applications and API -- drivers are a different story) for those who want it. It really doesn't suck, and it's a clean migration from the commercial environments (which is to say, you don't really need F-Droid as almost all this stuff is in the Play Store already). Open source on Android is in pretty good shape on the whole, which is one of the big reasons why Unity never really caught on except among the tiny fraction of developers who were genuinely into Linux desktop application development specifically.
  - jhasse 10y ago
    The Play Store is closed source though.
    - ajross 10y ago
      I know. The point was that if you are an Android user and want to try out "open source app X", there's no need to install an open ROM or F-Droid. Just grab the app from the existing app store. The path between "normal users" and "pure free software" ones is smooth and easy. It's not like the desktop where you need to convince people to install Ubunto or Arch instead of Windows or macOS.
robert_foss 10y ago
Ubuntu Mobile was never really a viable alternative mobile os though.
- mlvskmvd 10y ago
  I disagree. I think if it was marketed as heavily as google markets android it could compete in certain markets like power-users and professionals.
  - spectistcles 10y ago
    It could carve out a niche, but it would never compete. They don't have the money Google has by a vast longshot.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  As an UM user: I completely disagree. I think it's got a solid foundation, but they should have never marked it as production ready. If they had baked it a bit more, it could have been.
Paul-ish 10y ago
What I don't understand is Shuttleworth basically said "the market has spoken, and does not want an Ubuntu phone." But I checked their website a few times a year to see if I could buy an Ubuntu phone and always saw a message about "Coming soon" or "sold out". How was the market supposed to get their hands on Ubuntu phone?
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  Agreed. Additionally, the phone is far from production ready. It's a great start, but clearly still in the beta phase. I find it insincere to put a couple of beta phones out, then complain that nobody is buying them.
- DCKing 10y ago
  I think he means that they were not able to sell the idea to device vendors sufficiently. The 'market' he refers to are the device vendors, not the end users. If you make a mobile operating system but you don't make devices, you need to be able to convince device vendors to sell the product for you to end users. They didn't succeed in that.
  - notatoad 10y ago
    >I think he means that they were not able to sell the idea to device vendors sufficiently. And the implication from that is that if vendors aren't looking to make a ubuntu phone, it's because their customers aren't asking for a ubuntu phone. Regardless of how many layers there are between Canonical and the end user, there weren't a lot of end-users asking for a Ubuntu phone.
  - zanny 10y ago
    This is probably why they tried the Edge campaign 4 years ago. They weren't getting anywhere with vendors then, and weren't now, so they eventually had to give up. It should be a bit concerning how uncompetitive the market is that you really cannot even try to launch a mobile OS of your own as a product, since you are beholden to telecom operators and handset manufacturers on both ends, all of whom have government granted monopolies or protection in their own industries to prevent competition.
SXX 10y ago
> what does this mean for users who want a completely FOSS stack for their phone (let's ignore the baseband for now)? And also ignore locked bootloaders, DRM code in ARM TrustZone, never updated BSP that make most devices use old kernels, userspace blobs for graphics and video playback, lack of proper hardware documentation and fact that most of out-of-tree drivers that are open source are simply horrible. Google never wanted FOSS stack on your phone in first place. Same true for phone manufacturer's, hardware vendors, carriers, media companies and governments. So there simple not much you can do other that support rare open hardware efforts and use extremely overpriced custom-built phones.
- fuck_google 10y ago
  I wonder what would have happened, if everyone that wanted a FOSS phone would have poured their money and effort into a real FOSS project instead of giving it to Google/Android along with their privacy.
walterbell 10y ago
http://neo900.org http://neo900.org >The Neo900 project aims to provide a Fremantle (Maemo™ 5) compatible successor to the N900, with a faster CPU, more RAM and an LTE modem. This is all based on a free, mature and stable platform - the GTA04. We'll provide complete, ready-to-use devices, as well as motherboard replacements for your current devices. Most importantly, the Neo900 is an open platform, carrying on in the tradition of the Openmoko project. Neo900 will support all operating systems available for GTA04 (QtMoko, SHR, Debian, Replicant, ...)"
- dsgsadtsfg 10y ago
  A smartphone with a [1 GHz single-core CPU and 1 GB RAM](http://neo900.org/specs http://neo900.org/specs) for [1000+ EUR](http://neo900.org/estimate.html http://neo900.org/estimate.html)? No, thanks.
  - walterbell 10y ago
    It's for those who know the difference between the Nokia N900 and a "smartphone".
Apocryphon 10y ago
What about Plasma/Mobile for KDE on your phone?
niutech 10y ago
There are some open source alternatives: - Replicant (http://www.replicant.us http://www.replicant.us) - Plasma Mobile (https://plasma-mobile.org https://plasma-mobile.org) - Tizen (https://www.tizen.org https://www.tizen.org)

bananaoomarang 10y ago

This is my worry. The technical challenge of maintaining a usable mobile OS seems too high for companies like Canonical and Mozilla to have a chance, since getting hardware produced, marketed and into people's hands is a gargantuan task, and supporting Android handset installs is fighting a losing battle. Having said that, I am not sure why? Ubuntu Phone seems largely functional on a few devices, but installing it and using it remains a pain.

onli 10y ago
Jep, I don't understand it. It is completely understandable to drop a product that is not working on the market. It is less understandable to drop a product that never really was on the market, after the big initial investment is already done. Same for FF, same for WebOS: How can you draw the conclusion that something is not working on the market if you never tried making it available to customers, on regular hardware? Only makes sense if there is no money left.
- jstanley 10y ago
  > you never tried making it available to customers, on regular hardware? I'm pretty sure they tried very hard indeed. They just didn't succeed. I say this as a long-time user of Ubuntu Touch. I don't love it, it is not without its flaws. It's just the best mobile OS I've found, primarily because it doesn't nag you with privacy-invasion at every turn. I'll miss it when it's gone.
  - ThatGeoGuy 10y ago
    > I'm pretty sure they tried very hard indeed. They just didn't succeed. I don't know about this. The last phone they released was the Meizu Pro 5, which had an Android variant (sold in stores) and an Ubuntu variant (sold online only, and you had to dig for it if you didn't get redirected from ubuntu.com). The hardware itself for the phone wasn't awful by any means, but buying one was hard enough because the manufacturer only sold out of Asia. Further, the Meizu Pro 5 didn't work on most networks in Canada and the United States. Why would I buy a phone that doesn't support 3G/4G? I'd _love_ to support Canonical by purchasing an Ubuntu touch device, but you could hardly say that they tried. Their handsets were few and far between, and they locked out a large portion of the market because of the phone's baseband frequencies. I think that they could have succeeded, at least in the small, had they actually released a device that power users could use comfortably.
    - mhall119 10y ago
      Canonical made no handsets, we worked with the companies that wanted to ship Ubuntu phones, but we didn't get to dictate when, where or how many.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- empath75 10y ago
  The customers were device manufacturers, and they didn't want it.

ZenoArrow 10y ago

I'd suggest the best remaining option for a FOSS-driven phone (now that Canonical have dropped the ball) is Tizen. It's got the backing of a large phone manufacturer (Samsung) and the Linux Foundation, and seems to be actively developed. It'll probably end up being used on low-end devices at first, but is likely to be more open than the two leading platforms, so hopefully they get some traction amongst tech community. It's also worth pointing out that Samsung has been investing in Servo, and that Tizen has good support for HTML5 apps, so hopefully we can see mobile web apps increase in popularity to get us away from the walled garden approach. https://www.tizen.org/ https://www.tizen.org/

Mailtemi 10y ago
Last two weeks I've estimating Tizen, Ubuntu or Sailfish worth port an app. Like sample apps, build scripts debugging, etc. Although Tizen has large corp support, Ubuntu and Sailfish look more developer friendly. CMake, QT , C++.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  Perhaps you overlooked this? https://www.tizen.org/blogs/dh0922/2016/tizen-.net-developer-preview https://www.tizen.org/blogs/dh0922/2016/tizen-.net-developer... https://www.tizen.org/blogs/myungjae/2017/samsung%E2%80%99s-third-tizen-.net-developer-preview-introduces-new-visual-studio-tools https://www.tizen.org/blogs/myungjae/2017/samsung%E2%80%99s-...
  - Mailtemi 10y ago
    C# look like a dead end, though much better than first WinPhone with "SilverLight." If you have written c/ or c++ engine, you need just a good bridge to OS UI language. Well, also platform + tools that work well on each Unix/Linux. Just to mention I used to like MS technologies. Least problems I had with ASP 2 / AJAX web app which works for nine years without significant problems.
    - ZenoArrow 10y ago

jhasse 10y ago

LineageOS + F-Droid

ajross 10y ago
Exactly. There absolutely is an open source Android experience (at the level of the applications and API -- drivers are a different story) for those who want it. It really doesn't suck, and it's a clean migration from the commercial environments (which is to say, you don't really need F-Droid as almost all this stuff is in the Play Store already). Open source on Android is in pretty good shape on the whole, which is one of the big reasons why Unity never really caught on except among the tiny fraction of developers who were genuinely into Linux desktop application development specifically.
- jhasse 10y ago
  The Play Store is closed source though.
  - ajross 10y ago
    I know. The point was that if you are an Android user and want to try out "open source app X", there's no need to install an open ROM or F-Droid. Just grab the app from the existing app store. The path between "normal users" and "pure free software" ones is smooth and easy. It's not like the desktop where you need to convince people to install Ubunto or Arch instead of Windows or macOS.

robert_foss 10y ago

Ubuntu Mobile was never really a viable alternative mobile os though.

mlvskmvd 10y ago
I disagree. I think if it was marketed as heavily as google markets android it could compete in certain markets like power-users and professionals.
- spectistcles 10y ago
  It could carve out a niche, but it would never compete. They don't have the money Google has by a vast longshot.
CaptSpify 10y ago
As an UM user: I completely disagree. I think it's got a solid foundation, but they should have never marked it as production ready. If they had baked it a bit more, it could have been.

Paul-ish 10y ago

What I don't understand is Shuttleworth basically said "the market has spoken, and does not want an Ubuntu phone." But I checked their website a few times a year to see if I could buy an Ubuntu phone and always saw a message about "Coming soon" or "sold out". How was the market supposed to get their hands on Ubuntu phone?

CaptSpify 10y ago
Agreed. Additionally, the phone is far from production ready. It's a great start, but clearly still in the beta phase. I find it insincere to put a couple of beta phones out, then complain that nobody is buying them.
DCKing 10y ago
I think he means that they were not able to sell the idea to device vendors sufficiently. The 'market' he refers to are the device vendors, not the end users. If you make a mobile operating system but you don't make devices, you need to be able to convince device vendors to sell the product for you to end users. They didn't succeed in that.
- notatoad 10y ago
  >I think he means that they were not able to sell the idea to device vendors sufficiently. And the implication from that is that if vendors aren't looking to make a ubuntu phone, it's because their customers aren't asking for a ubuntu phone. Regardless of how many layers there are between Canonical and the end user, there weren't a lot of end-users asking for a Ubuntu phone.
- zanny 10y ago
  This is probably why they tried the Edge campaign 4 years ago. They weren't getting anywhere with vendors then, and weren't now, so they eventually had to give up. It should be a bit concerning how uncompetitive the market is that you really cannot even try to launch a mobile OS of your own as a product, since you are beholden to telecom operators and handset manufacturers on both ends, all of whom have government granted monopolies or protection in their own industries to prevent competition.

SXX 10y ago

> what does this mean for users who want a completely FOSS stack for their phone (let's ignore the baseband for now)? And also ignore locked bootloaders, DRM code in ARM TrustZone, never updated BSP that make most devices use old kernels, userspace blobs for graphics and video playback, lack of proper hardware documentation and fact that most of out-of-tree drivers that are open source are simply horrible. Google never wanted FOSS stack on your phone in first place. Same true for phone manufacturer's, hardware vendors, carriers, media companies and governments. So there simple not much you can do other that support rare open hardware efforts and use extremely overpriced custom-built phones.

fuck_google 10y ago
I wonder what would have happened, if everyone that wanted a FOSS phone would have poured their money and effort into a real FOSS project instead of giving it to Google/Android along with their privacy.

walterbell 10y ago

http://neo900.org http://neo900.org >The Neo900 project aims to provide a Fremantle (Maemo™ 5) compatible successor to the N900, with a faster CPU, more RAM and an LTE modem. This is all based on a free, mature and stable platform - the GTA04. We'll provide complete, ready-to-use devices, as well as motherboard replacements for your current devices. Most importantly, the Neo900 is an open platform, carrying on in the tradition of the Openmoko project. Neo900 will support all operating systems available for GTA04 (QtMoko, SHR, Debian, Replicant, ...)"

dsgsadtsfg 10y ago
A smartphone with a [1 GHz single-core CPU and 1 GB RAM](http://neo900.org/specs http://neo900.org/specs) for [1000+ EUR](http://neo900.org/estimate.html http://neo900.org/estimate.html)? No, thanks.
- walterbell 10y ago
  It's for those who know the difference between the Nokia N900 and a "smartphone".

Apocryphon 10y ago

What about Plasma/Mobile for KDE on your phone?

niutech 10y ago

There are some open source alternatives: - Replicant (http://www.replicant.us http://www.replicant.us) - Plasma Mobile (https://plasma-mobile.org https://plasma-mobile.org) - Tizen (https://www.tizen.org https://www.tizen.org)