6 ms·

Had enough of Android? First 'Focal' based Ubuntu Touch is out

124 points by lproven 4y ago

ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
I'm tempted to give it a try on my JingPad A1 tablet - it's running the previous 16.04 version at the moment which annoyingly doesn't have wireguard support built in.
bacchusracine 4y ago
I'm thrilled this exists, I just wish that there were more recent phones available for it. Most of the ones listed as supported are a bit long in the tooth now or not available for a North American audience.
causality0 4y ago
The catch-22 of it is that if you have the ability to install this on your phone, you also have the ability to root it and fix most of what's wrong with android to begin with, while maintaining compatibility with your app library.
- rickdeckard 4y ago
  And do so almost regardless of the specific device-model that you have...
- williamvds 4y ago
  Lack of support is a big killer when it comes to Android. The OEM drops support after a few years, then it's pure luck whether some benevolent dev picks up maintenance of a FOSS ROM like LineageOS. My phone was that lucky for a good few years, but now support for it has been dropped. I don't think I have the time or energy to work out how to bootstrap, port, and maintain an Android distro for my phone. Conversely, the rest of my systems run off mainline GNU/Linux, which I am able to set up and maintain. I'd be happy if I could get a phone with a similar experience.
  - phh 4y ago
    Most modern (less than 5 years old) Android smartphones support Project Treble/GSI, which largely reduce the maintenance cost. But that Treble technology is actually being used by ubports which does Ubuntu Touch using Android drivers, and porting Ubuntu Touch on any modern Android smartphones is quite easy nowadays (assuming you have kernel source code available). It pretty much just requires rebuilding kernel source code with different parameters and that's it.
dtx1 4y ago
> Had enough of Android? Replace it with a barely working unsecure ecosystems linux distro with effectively 0 adaption. Oh and youll still need an Android Phone for you messengers, bank accounts, ... FTFY
- hdhrufjdi 4y ago
  You don't need an Android phone for messengers. Just get Beeper and a Linux Matrix Client and you can communicate with iMessage, Telegram and WhatsApp users without having an Android phone My bank account works in the Browser
  - clircle 4y ago
    > My bank account works in the Browser Sounds like pure hell on mobile.
    - hdhrufjdi 4y ago
      It isn't though. What fits into a app screen of a phone also fits into a browser screen on a phone
      - helf 4y ago
        [dead]
      - CoolCold 4y ago
        how your bank's push notifications work without native app? Recently I see there is fingerprint support in browsers on Android, but AFAIK it's quite new - have you had to enter password each time?
        toast0 4y ago
        Webpush is a thing? But I don't get push notifications from my bank, so I don't know what I would be missing? Also, not everyone is willing to use fingerprints, so there's that too.
mrtweetyhack 4y ago
[dead]
teucris 4y ago
Screenshots! The first thing most people want when evaluating an operating system for a personal device is a screenshot. A picture is worth a thousand words, and in the case of a screenshot, you can choose what’s in it to visually communicate key features. I’ve been digging around the site for several minutes and I have yet to find a single one.
- adql 4y ago
  Nah, just seeing Ubuntu does it makes me want to not touch it.
  - RealStickman_ 4y ago
    While the project was started by Canonical, they've since cancelled it and UBports, a group of volunteers, have taken over.
    - nazgulsenpai 4y ago
      But it's still Ubuntu.
    - LanternLight83 4y ago
      Absolutely -- I wouldn't touch ubuntu on a personal device, but UBPorts is well known as the cleanest and most performant desktop for the PinePhone user-base. I'd rather port it than use the other leading mobile desktops (or Ubuntu Touch). They've done great work.
  - mnky9800n 4y ago
    Why don't you like Ubuntu? Because of the Amazon store thing?
    - datkam 4y ago
      Also snaps.. I haven't used Ubuntu in years. I used Manjaro for a while and now Arch for a couple of years.
blackbear_ 4y ago
Happy to hear they are making progress! Lomiri was my favourite UI on the PinePhone already last year, but unfortunately WiFi issues made it unusable as a daily driver.
crtxcr 4y ago
I was one of the relatively early adopters in 2015 when the BQ Aquaris E4.5 came out. I gave Ubuntu Touch a chance, particularly as I was longing for something comparable to Maemo on the Nokia N900. At first it was great. OpenSSH, bash, etc. I had some fun hacking on it. However, I quickly realized they threw a beta product at the people. I missed phone calls because of race conditions. I couldn't connect to my wifi because my password was too long.... It overall really seemed the team at Canonical didn't have enough man power. Eventually, these things got fixed, but too late for me. In some ways it's cool that the community hasn't given up on Ubuntu touch, unlike Canonical. I don't know how much has changed under the hood, but one can only hope the software stack is more reliable now.
- tmtvl 4y ago
  I also was an early adopter of the BQ Aquaris (I even meant to get a tablet, but got too busy), and it was great, Ubuntu Touch felt so much nicer for me to use than Android... and then I stupidly dropped it, and with the bottom left of the screen unresponsive I had to toss it. Most painful loss of a device I've suffered.
nabakin 4y ago
Here's a YouTube video showing off the UI 3 months ago https://youtu.be/qmlabKbpTGM&t=5m44s https://youtu.be/qmlabKbpTGM&t=5m44s it shouldn't be much different than Focal, but if someone has a video of the Focal UI, please post it. They should make it a lot easier to see the UI Edit: this one is good too https://youtu.be/ltxj8YBoTMU https://youtu.be/ltxj8YBoTMU
thow_away_34564 4y ago
While not a daily driver, I have been running Focal on a Pinephone Pro for a few weeks now. It is beta, things are not working. The Kali Nethunter pro for the phone arguably works better. But the UI of Ubuntu Touch is really nice. I don't even daily driver the thing and when I pull out my android phone, I am trying to do some the of the UT swipe gestures because they are so natural. I hope this community continues to thrive!
slowmotiony 4y ago
What kind of a bubble do the Ubuntu devs live in if they dont see a reason to show even a single screenshot of their product? What goes through the head of the product manager writing a whole essay and a full extensive changelog but not bothering to add a fucking picture?
- geraldhh 4y ago
  tbh the screenshot probably wouldn't tell much anyways, but have my upvote
- HeckFeck 4y ago
  It's because Ubuntu Touch is actually meant to be used from the command line.
- mustacheemperor 4y ago
  To be fair to these particular Ubuntu devs, Touch is now a community effort. Canonical abandoned it in 2017. Which was always a letdown for me. Loading Ubuntu via a LiveCD onto the family computer to circumvent NetNanny was one of the first "hacker" things I ever did. I was really excited at the prospect of having Ubuntu on a phone. Maybe I'll pick up a 3a just to tinker with this...
- pcdoodle 4y ago
  I really want to like linux but every dang distro i've tried is 3 feet from gold. It's like the final steps are never taken. Great artists steal.
  - wankle 4y ago
    Gates and Jobs are why I don't use Windows or Mac. Torvalds, Stallman, Gosling, they don't steal, they innovate.
danjoredd 4y ago
If they could release a version for the Pixel 6 I will install it and make it my main mobile OS, Shame the latest they support is the Pixel 3a
- imiric 4y ago
  If you have a Pixel 6, why would you run anything other than GrapheneOS? Using a community-maintained port of an abandoned Canonical project would be nice to experiment with, but I doubt it would be anywhere near as usable, reliable, secure and future-proof as Graphene.
karmakaze 4y ago
I have no faith in Canonical and am moving off Ubuntu desktop. Never tried Touch (though the whole Unity/mobile flavour was already off-putting) and don't intend to. It's also a weird headline, wouldn't users choose iPhones then?
- Georgelemental 4y ago
  This is not an official Canonical project.
  - karmakaze 4y ago
    Then it's unfortunate to be based on Ubuntu. I don't even want to depend on their repo. My next Linux install will be Arch.
charlesrocket 4y ago
Had enough of linux.
deafpolygon 4y ago
Downside is, it's Ubuntu. It could be anything else, but it had to be Ubuntu.
ThinkBeat 4y ago
I like choice and innovation a lot. My "spare" / "retired" cellphones are now, after distributing several to people in need, is now too old to run this. If I were to mention some points that would be high on my wish list: Radical reliability. Frequent security updates. Rare feature updates. Make the feature set solid to begin with, . There are only so many tasks that are critical on a phone A UI Insane speed and responsiveness, with as much eye candy removed as possible. An email client and SMS messenger modelled after the classic Blackberry OS. I have never even come close to the speed and convenience of Blackberry for email and SMS Esp. with dedicated hardware buttons. (Note this was long before Blackberry on Android or Blackberry Touch. BB was never going to catch up with the iPhone to be an iPhone copy and they should not have tried.) Note: This was in their classic days. I loved it so much I tried hard for a while to start a company producing a copy. Hardware costs kept that from ever going anywhere. (Which I sort of knew but wanted a proper real life change) Then pivoting to Android to make an app that was plugged in at a low enough level to achieve the desired features Ideally combined with a small dock keyboard that attached to te bottom of the phone where the powerplug is. Then a different company made such a dock so we were in talks with them. It proved impossible to get the dock keyboard stable enough for our needs. Eventually we gave up on the Android version. It felt like we were spending far too much time fighting Android instead of developer our goal the email/SMS app. I hope someone else can eventually succeed in this but I think the market for it is small. :( I have a couple of the Planet phones with build in Keyboard. One a "copy" of the Psion5l But again Android is far too dominant in day to day use.

124 points by lproven 4y ago

I'm tempted to give it a try on my JingPad A1 tablet - it's running the previous 16.04 version at the moment which annoyingly doesn't have wireguard support built in.

bacchusracine 4y ago

I'm thrilled this exists, I just wish that there were more recent phones available for it. Most of the ones listed as supported are a bit long in the tooth now or not available for a North American audience.

causality0 4y ago

The catch-22 of it is that if you have the ability to install this on your phone, you also have the ability to root it and fix most of what's wrong with android to begin with, while maintaining compatibility with your app library.

rickdeckard 4y ago
And do so almost regardless of the specific device-model that you have...
williamvds 4y ago
Lack of support is a big killer when it comes to Android. The OEM drops support after a few years, then it's pure luck whether some benevolent dev picks up maintenance of a FOSS ROM like LineageOS. My phone was that lucky for a good few years, but now support for it has been dropped. I don't think I have the time or energy to work out how to bootstrap, port, and maintain an Android distro for my phone. Conversely, the rest of my systems run off mainline GNU/Linux, which I am able to set up and maintain. I'd be happy if I could get a phone with a similar experience.
- phh 4y ago
  Most modern (less than 5 years old) Android smartphones support Project Treble/GSI, which largely reduce the maintenance cost. But that Treble technology is actually being used by ubports which does Ubuntu Touch using Android drivers, and porting Ubuntu Touch on any modern Android smartphones is quite easy nowadays (assuming you have kernel source code available). It pretty much just requires rebuilding kernel source code with different parameters and that's it.

dtx1 4y ago

> Had enough of Android? Replace it with a barely working unsecure ecosystems linux distro with effectively 0 adaption. Oh and youll still need an Android Phone for you messengers, bank accounts, ... FTFY

hdhrufjdi 4y ago
You don't need an Android phone for messengers. Just get Beeper and a Linux Matrix Client and you can communicate with iMessage, Telegram and WhatsApp users without having an Android phone My bank account works in the Browser
- clircle 4y ago
  > My bank account works in the Browser Sounds like pure hell on mobile.
  - hdhrufjdi 4y ago
    It isn't though. What fits into a app screen of a phone also fits into a browser screen on a phone
    - helf 4y ago
      [dead]
    - CoolCold 4y ago
      how your bank's push notifications work without native app? Recently I see there is fingerprint support in browsers on Android, but AFAIK it's quite new - have you had to enter password each time?
      - toast0 4y ago
        Webpush is a thing? But I don't get push notifications from my bank, so I don't know what I would be missing? Also, not everyone is willing to use fingerprints, so there's that too.

mrtweetyhack 4y ago

[dead]

teucris 4y ago

Screenshots! The first thing most people want when evaluating an operating system for a personal device is a screenshot. A picture is worth a thousand words, and in the case of a screenshot, you can choose what’s in it to visually communicate key features. I’ve been digging around the site for several minutes and I have yet to find a single one.

adql 4y ago
Nah, just seeing Ubuntu does it makes me want to not touch it.
- RealStickman_ 4y ago
  While the project was started by Canonical, they've since cancelled it and UBports, a group of volunteers, have taken over.
  - nazgulsenpai 4y ago
    But it's still Ubuntu.
  - LanternLight83 4y ago
    Absolutely -- I wouldn't touch ubuntu on a personal device, but UBPorts is well known as the cleanest and most performant desktop for the PinePhone user-base. I'd rather port it than use the other leading mobile desktops (or Ubuntu Touch). They've done great work.
- mnky9800n 4y ago
  Why don't you like Ubuntu? Because of the Amazon store thing?
  - datkam 4y ago
    Also snaps.. I haven't used Ubuntu in years. I used Manjaro for a while and now Arch for a couple of years.

blackbear_ 4y ago

Happy to hear they are making progress! Lomiri was my favourite UI on the PinePhone already last year, but unfortunately WiFi issues made it unusable as a daily driver.

crtxcr 4y ago

I was one of the relatively early adopters in 2015 when the BQ Aquaris E4.5 came out. I gave Ubuntu Touch a chance, particularly as I was longing for something comparable to Maemo on the Nokia N900. At first it was great. OpenSSH, bash, etc. I had some fun hacking on it. However, I quickly realized they threw a beta product at the people. I missed phone calls because of race conditions. I couldn't connect to my wifi because my password was too long.... It overall really seemed the team at Canonical didn't have enough man power. Eventually, these things got fixed, but too late for me. In some ways it's cool that the community hasn't given up on Ubuntu touch, unlike Canonical. I don't know how much has changed under the hood, but one can only hope the software stack is more reliable now.

tmtvl 4y ago
I also was an early adopter of the BQ Aquaris (I even meant to get a tablet, but got too busy), and it was great, Ubuntu Touch felt so much nicer for me to use than Android... and then I stupidly dropped it, and with the bottom left of the screen unresponsive I had to toss it. Most painful loss of a device I've suffered.

nabakin 4y ago

Here's a YouTube video showing off the UI 3 months ago https://youtu.be/qmlabKbpTGM&t=5m44s https://youtu.be/qmlabKbpTGM&t=5m44s it shouldn't be much different than Focal, but if someone has a video of the Focal UI, please post it. They should make it a lot easier to see the UI Edit: this one is good too https://youtu.be/ltxj8YBoTMU https://youtu.be/ltxj8YBoTMU

thow_away_34564 4y ago

While not a daily driver, I have been running Focal on a Pinephone Pro for a few weeks now. It is beta, things are not working. The Kali Nethunter pro for the phone arguably works better. But the UI of Ubuntu Touch is really nice. I don't even daily driver the thing and when I pull out my android phone, I am trying to do some the of the UT swipe gestures because they are so natural. I hope this community continues to thrive!

slowmotiony 4y ago

What kind of a bubble do the Ubuntu devs live in if they dont see a reason to show even a single screenshot of their product? What goes through the head of the product manager writing a whole essay and a full extensive changelog but not bothering to add a fucking picture?

geraldhh 4y ago
tbh the screenshot probably wouldn't tell much anyways, but have my upvote
HeckFeck 4y ago
It's because Ubuntu Touch is actually meant to be used from the command line.
mustacheemperor 4y ago
To be fair to these particular Ubuntu devs, Touch is now a community effort. Canonical abandoned it in 2017. Which was always a letdown for me. Loading Ubuntu via a LiveCD onto the family computer to circumvent NetNanny was one of the first "hacker" things I ever did. I was really excited at the prospect of having Ubuntu on a phone. Maybe I'll pick up a 3a just to tinker with this...
pcdoodle 4y ago
I really want to like linux but every dang distro i've tried is 3 feet from gold. It's like the final steps are never taken. Great artists steal.
- wankle 4y ago
  Gates and Jobs are why I don't use Windows or Mac. Torvalds, Stallman, Gosling, they don't steal, they innovate.

danjoredd 4y ago

If they could release a version for the Pixel 6 I will install it and make it my main mobile OS, Shame the latest they support is the Pixel 3a

imiric 4y ago
If you have a Pixel 6, why would you run anything other than GrapheneOS? Using a community-maintained port of an abandoned Canonical project would be nice to experiment with, but I doubt it would be anywhere near as usable, reliable, secure and future-proof as Graphene.

karmakaze 4y ago

I have no faith in Canonical and am moving off Ubuntu desktop. Never tried Touch (though the whole Unity/mobile flavour was already off-putting) and don't intend to. It's also a weird headline, wouldn't users choose iPhones then?

Georgelemental 4y ago
This is not an official Canonical project.
- karmakaze 4y ago
  Then it's unfortunate to be based on Ubuntu. I don't even want to depend on their repo. My next Linux install will be Arch.

charlesrocket 4y ago

Had enough of linux.

deafpolygon 4y ago

Downside is, it's Ubuntu. It could be anything else, but it had to be Ubuntu.

ThinkBeat 4y ago

I like choice and innovation a lot. My "spare" / "retired" cellphones are now, after distributing several to people in need, is now too old to run this. If I were to mention some points that would be high on my wish list: Radical reliability. Frequent security updates. Rare feature updates. Make the feature set solid to begin with, . There are only so many tasks that are critical on a phone A UI Insane speed and responsiveness, with as much eye candy removed as possible. An email client and SMS messenger modelled after the classic Blackberry OS. I have never even come close to the speed and convenience of Blackberry for email and SMS Esp. with dedicated hardware buttons. (Note this was long before Blackberry on Android or Blackberry Touch. BB was never going to catch up with the iPhone to be an iPhone copy and they should not have tried.) Note: This was in their classic days. I loved it so much I tried hard for a while to start a company producing a copy. Hardware costs kept that from ever going anywhere. (Which I sort of knew but wanted a proper real life change) Then pivoting to Android to make an app that was plugged in at a low enough level to achieve the desired features Ideally combined with a small dock keyboard that attached to te bottom of the phone where the powerplug is. Then a different company made such a dock so we were in talks with them. It proved impossible to get the dock keyboard stable enough for our needs. Eventually we gave up on the Android version. It felt like we were spending far too much time fighting Android instead of developer our goal the email/SMS app. I hope someone else can eventually succeed in this but I think the market for it is small. :( I have a couple of the Planet phones with build in Keyboard. One a "copy" of the Psion5l But again Android is far too dominant in day to day use.