8 ms·

Why Mark Shuttleworth thinks Ubuntu on phones will outclass Android

48 points by sk2code 14y ago

benologist 14y ago
I've been excited about this ever since they announced it a year ago, the thought of having "just a phone" instead of a phone, laptop and tablet is so awesome it's going to outclass everything. The one thing I'm afraid of is how resource-intensive certain classes of software are. I tried a netbook over a year ago and wouldn't want that kind of performance except in emergencies, even today every single IDE I run is a slow piece of crap on last year's maxed out macbook air.
- ownagefool 14y ago
  Its a nice idea but you're still going to need to put the money down for the specialist docking stations to turn this a laptop, tablet or a desktop, and you'll probably be stuck with the processing power and more importantly the IO of your phone for all of them. I'm not sure the reality will turn out as good as the idea, at least not for several years yet. That'll give Canonical time to catch up to Microsoft, the latter of which isn't really popular because they've shown how easy it is to botch the idea.
- TallGuyShort 14y ago
  If the resource requirements of your IDE are out-pacing high-end hardware manufacturing, it sounds like you need a different IDE.
  - fierarul 14y ago
    My ideal IDE should need a whole datacenter and use AI to help me work better. If your IDE isn't using your whole hardware, it's probably not doing enough.
    - bigdubs 14y ago
      Some IDE's are just better at doing similar things than others. VS2k10 intellisense is orders of magnitude faster/stable/* than implementations in other IDE's.
    - ffk 14y ago
      Have you tried emacs? ;)
    - ffk 14y ago
      In all seriousness though, I do agree with this with the exception that the IDE needs to make room for the application you're writing. If it can use an extra core to provide smarter autocompletion or discover potential bugs, I'm all for it.
  - benologist 14y ago
    I agree completely but I use most of the popular ones so I'm starting to suspect what I really need is a better IDE!
- TylerE 14y ago
  Let me tell you a little story. I spent the long NYE weekend in Washington, DC. On Friday night, my phone was stolen. This was, obviously, rather painful and distressing, not to mention inconvenient (being alone in the middle of a city I don't know very well, suddenly cut off from maps, yelp, wiki, etc. Luckily, back at the hotel I had my laptop, from which I was able to remote wipe my phone, get contact info for my carrier to get service shut-off, and file an insurance claim to get a replacement phone. The moral of this story: Beware of excessive convergence, and always have a Plan B.
  - benologist 14y ago
    Plan B is to make your profile independent of your hardware and just get a replacement, same thing I had to do when my laptop was stolen and smartphones were even dumber than me for letting my laptop get stolen. :(
- gte910h 14y ago
  OT: Do you by any chance run Xcode on the MBA? 11 or 13? I'm debating a yearly/bi yearly replaecment of a MBA instead of a bi yearly/triyearly replacement of the maxed out top of the line MBP. How much is this going to hurt with two ACDs plugged into it?
  - apostlion 14y ago
    MacBook Airs don't support two ACDs, at all.
    - gte910h 14y ago
      http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5219?viewlocale=en_US#dispnum http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5219?viewlocale=en_US#dispnum This says they do.
mseepgood 14y ago
So, where did all the 20 million new Ubuntu PCs sold in 2012 go? http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/20-million-new-ubuntu-linux-pcs-in-2012/10770 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/20-million-new-ubuntu-... How many Ubuntu TVs were sold? This guy lives in a reality distortion field beyond belief.
- rgbrenner 14y ago
  1. In May of 2012 they announced 2011 numbers. So, it's about 3 days in to 2013... might want to give them a little more time. 2. In 2011, they sold 8-10 million, and in May said they were on track to reach 20 million in 2012. http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/05/ubuntu-to-ship-on-5-of-all-pcs-sold-next-year http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/05/ubuntu-to-ship-on-5-of-al... 3. In October of 2011, Dell started featuring Ubuntu in over 200 retail stores in China. http://blog.canonical.com/2011/10/27/retail-stores-in-china/ http://blog.canonical.com/2011/10/27/retail-stores-in-china/ So it's entirely possible they could meet the 20m number.
drcube 14y ago
I'm not nearly as excited for dockable PC/phone hybrids as I am for a phone running GNU free software. In fact I'm already looking to replace my perfectly usable HTC phone for a Nexus so I can install the image Ubuntu is supposed to release in a few weeks. I stopped using Ubuntu on my laptop because there are better alternatives out there. But I think Ubuntu can really shine as a mobile OS, and it will almost certainly be better than Android or iOS for my purposes.
- javert 14y ago
  it will almost certainly be better than Android or iOS for my purposes Can you give specific examples? I'm genuinely curious.
  - drcube 14y ago
    For one thing, we've got Unix "apps" that have been maintained for 30 years, like vim and emacs. So in my mind, the software ecosystem is much better, even before launch. Configurability is a huge plus for me. Could you imagine recompiling your phone's kernel? Configuring your phone with dotfiles? Serving webpages and email? Not everyone's cup of tea, and I hope there are more user-friendly options available, but having that power is enticing. I'm looking forward to better multitasking, and multiple user accounts. Also a more open hardware ecosystem, such as USB and HDMI ports, docks, chargers, USB keyboards, maybe a laptop "shell" I can insert my phone into? If we look at the "dockable PC" side of things, the developer tools are unparalleled. And of course free software. CyanogenMod is pretty great already, and Busybox too, but I think a GNU presence will only help. Maybe I drank too much of RMS's koolaid.
    - javert 14y ago
      I would love for my phone to be my primary computer, and just plug it into a mouse/keyboard/monitor whenever I need to do real work (the latter implies having full control of anythin I want to control, like I have now in Arch Linux). Other than that, I don't really see the use case (for me personally) for most of what you're saying. I mean, vi/emacs are not useful on the phone, because it doesn't have a real keyboard. Since it doesn't have a real keyboard, I can't do real things with it, so there is no need for a lot of customization (e.g. with dotfiles).
yardie 14y ago
As long as we have some honest to god, native-C support I'll be pleasantly pleased. I'd rather be an android consumer rather than an android programmer, Dalvik just doesn't interest me at all.
- javert 14y ago
  Why? Because you don't like having to program in Java (I'm with you there) or for other reasons?
  - yardie 14y ago
    Java. I'm not passionate about it at all and if I can't find the motivation to learn it then I'm not going to use it. The great thing about C is it's practically universal. And the fact that you had no UI library in the NDK (this might have changed since 2.3) meant I was going nowhere with that on that front.
- Andrex 14y ago
  Have you checked out the Android NDK? http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html You still have to go through JNI and use Java/XML for the interface, but the NDK has been growing to encompass more and more with each release. (And in my opinion, keeping a standard way for making the actual UI users see is important for consistency. It's more difficult to enforce that with purely native apps.)
codeulike 14y ago
Android (and I think iOS?) both reserve the right to purge paused apps from memory if memory is needed (a paused app being an app that the user is not currently looking at). This seems well suited to phones, but leads to a totally different programming model whereby apps must be ready to persist their state and be deflated/reinflated/stopped without warning. Will Ubuntu for Phones struggle to make good use of the phone memory if it doesn't use this technique? (I assume it just uses the desktop-PC model of 'a thing is running until its stopped, page to disk if necessary?') edit: also, as people have pointed out, there are battery life implications
- BenoitEssiambre 14y ago
  Interesting question. That would be a fundamental architectural difference with lots of ramifications. I too would like to know the answer to this.
- subway 14y ago
  With speedy enough flash, this could be essentially accomplished in the kernel with swap space.
- Jach 14y ago
  Perhaps Shuttleworth is counting on phones having more than a few gigs of RAM in the near future, making app suspension rather pointless if your concern is memory. (Rather, it is more useful to me in prolonging battery life.)
  - jeremyjh 14y ago
    They are trying to target the low end though.
- CJefferson 14y ago
  While this is important for memory, it is also really important for battery usage. My experience with Android is that waking every second is enough to kill a phone's battery noticeably faster. I suspect most existing linux apps and frameworks are not good at saving CPU and battery enough to be on a phone. I would be happy to be proved wrong.
jiggy2011 14y ago
One of the biggest criticisms levelled at android has been that the UI feels a little clunky and slow and that changes made by carriers and manufacturers usually make the experience worse. If they can make this phone feel like an iPhone in terms of smoothness and keep a nice consistent feel then this might have a chance of being a premium choice over android.
- SG- 14y ago
  The Verge played with the Ubuntu phone and while it's a dev release at this point, you can see from the video it's painfully slow on the latest hardware for UI things: http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/2/3828266/ubuntu-phone-os-hands-on http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/2/3828266/ubuntu-phone-os-han...
olleicua 14y ago
I cannot wait for this!
lnanek2 14y ago
Too bad they aren't big like Microsoft, who can flat out pay people to port apps and run constant developer events, etc.. Heck, even BlackBerry has been constantly giving out phones and prizes and benefits to developers. Ubuntu just doesn't have the infrastructure to get the apps on to the platform, and the users want good apps. Even if you can port something from a Linux desktop version easily, it's still going to lack software.
Inufu 14y ago
> Canonical's secret sauce in selling carriers on Ubuntu might lie in helping them sell their own services to end users. Carriers "care about brand and we know how to accommodate that," Shuttleworth said. "They care about their own content and we've essentially put their content on an equal footing with content from the ecosystem. The handset manufacturer or operator that has music, films, or other types of content can promote their content to their users or other users directly in a way that doesn't feel like a bolt-on or a sideshow." I do not want any content from my phone manufacturer, much less operator. From experience, this is almost exclusively overpriced crap, useless apps or branding.
- taude 14y ago
  Shouldn't it be about what "the consumer" wants and not what "the carrier" wants? I think Apple has this right.
vemv 14y ago
Canonical should just do the world a favor and disappear.
dschiptsov 14y ago
A system should have evolved, not being pushed. Unity and accompanied py-qt based stuff is crap being pushed. I don't see why to expect something different form a repetition of the same "strategy" - pushing half-baking crap in a rush.
oscargrouch 14y ago
I Think if somebody can make a phone os better than android, and more intuitive (easy for non-tech people).. not only that but have the capacity to enchant the mobile hardware players(good lobby push) Android can be beaten away.. but not the same can be said about to IOS.. its all about brand.. its a tough fight.. But android market share, is not much about the consumers that want it because they need..(theres no sentimental decision about it) its about the device makers, making the decision for this share of the market.. if ubuntu can convince device makers to put that in their phones.. (with the help of some good apps, so theres no cultural shock).. i think people will not care much.. and for developer comunity, i think is better.. we need to get free from the centralized app market model from apple.. whoever delivers that is my friend :)
codex 14y ago
"Shuttleworth believes that Ubuntu will be more user-friendly for people who barely know how to use a smartphone." An experience that is more user friendly than iOS and more user friendly than Windows Phone will be hard to do. Beating Android might be easier. Furthermore, very few people with money haven't already used a smartphone, so they'll be aiming for the market of people who have no money. Not exactly lucrative, and Android has distinct advantages there. Android can be cheaper than Ubuntu because they can monetize mobile advertising better. In short, this effort will totally fail. There is no compelling reason to have a 5th player in the smartphone market, and given Ubuntu's track record with desktop UI, I don't think their effort in mobile will be terribly inspired.

48 points by sk2code 14y ago

I've been excited about this ever since they announced it a year ago, the thought of having "just a phone" instead of a phone, laptop and tablet is so awesome it's going to outclass everything. The one thing I'm afraid of is how resource-intensive certain classes of software are. I tried a netbook over a year ago and wouldn't want that kind of performance except in emergencies, even today every single IDE I run is a slow piece of crap on last year's maxed out macbook air.

ownagefool 14y ago
Its a nice idea but you're still going to need to put the money down for the specialist docking stations to turn this a laptop, tablet or a desktop, and you'll probably be stuck with the processing power and more importantly the IO of your phone for all of them. I'm not sure the reality will turn out as good as the idea, at least not for several years yet. That'll give Canonical time to catch up to Microsoft, the latter of which isn't really popular because they've shown how easy it is to botch the idea.
TallGuyShort 14y ago
If the resource requirements of your IDE are out-pacing high-end hardware manufacturing, it sounds like you need a different IDE.
- fierarul 14y ago
  My ideal IDE should need a whole datacenter and use AI to help me work better. If your IDE isn't using your whole hardware, it's probably not doing enough.
  - bigdubs 14y ago
    Some IDE's are just better at doing similar things than others. VS2k10 intellisense is orders of magnitude faster/stable/* than implementations in other IDE's.
  - ffk 14y ago
    Have you tried emacs? ;)
  - ffk 14y ago
    In all seriousness though, I do agree with this with the exception that the IDE needs to make room for the application you're writing. If it can use an extra core to provide smarter autocompletion or discover potential bugs, I'm all for it.
- benologist 14y ago
  I agree completely but I use most of the popular ones so I'm starting to suspect what I really need is a better IDE!
TylerE 14y ago
Let me tell you a little story. I spent the long NYE weekend in Washington, DC. On Friday night, my phone was stolen. This was, obviously, rather painful and distressing, not to mention inconvenient (being alone in the middle of a city I don't know very well, suddenly cut off from maps, yelp, wiki, etc. Luckily, back at the hotel I had my laptop, from which I was able to remote wipe my phone, get contact info for my carrier to get service shut-off, and file an insurance claim to get a replacement phone. The moral of this story: Beware of excessive convergence, and always have a Plan B.
- benologist 14y ago
  Plan B is to make your profile independent of your hardware and just get a replacement, same thing I had to do when my laptop was stolen and smartphones were even dumber than me for letting my laptop get stolen. :(
gte910h 14y ago
OT: Do you by any chance run Xcode on the MBA? 11 or 13? I'm debating a yearly/bi yearly replaecment of a MBA instead of a bi yearly/triyearly replacement of the maxed out top of the line MBP. How much is this going to hurt with two ACDs plugged into it?
- apostlion 14y ago
  MacBook Airs don't support two ACDs, at all.
  - gte910h 14y ago
    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5219?viewlocale=en_US#dispnum http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5219?viewlocale=en_US#dispnum This says they do.

mseepgood 14y ago

So, where did all the 20 million new Ubuntu PCs sold in 2012 go? http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/20-million-new-ubuntu-linux-pcs-in-2012/10770 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/20-million-new-ubuntu-... How many Ubuntu TVs were sold? This guy lives in a reality distortion field beyond belief.

rgbrenner 14y ago
1. In May of 2012 they announced 2011 numbers. So, it's about 3 days in to 2013... might want to give them a little more time. 2. In 2011, they sold 8-10 million, and in May said they were on track to reach 20 million in 2012. http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/05/ubuntu-to-ship-on-5-of-all-pcs-sold-next-year http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/05/ubuntu-to-ship-on-5-of-al... 3. In October of 2011, Dell started featuring Ubuntu in over 200 retail stores in China. http://blog.canonical.com/2011/10/27/retail-stores-in-china/ http://blog.canonical.com/2011/10/27/retail-stores-in-china/ So it's entirely possible they could meet the 20m number.

drcube 14y ago

I'm not nearly as excited for dockable PC/phone hybrids as I am for a phone running GNU free software. In fact I'm already looking to replace my perfectly usable HTC phone for a Nexus so I can install the image Ubuntu is supposed to release in a few weeks. I stopped using Ubuntu on my laptop because there are better alternatives out there. But I think Ubuntu can really shine as a mobile OS, and it will almost certainly be better than Android or iOS for my purposes.

javert 14y ago
it will almost certainly be better than Android or iOS for my purposes Can you give specific examples? I'm genuinely curious.
- drcube 14y ago
  For one thing, we've got Unix "apps" that have been maintained for 30 years, like vim and emacs. So in my mind, the software ecosystem is much better, even before launch. Configurability is a huge plus for me. Could you imagine recompiling your phone's kernel? Configuring your phone with dotfiles? Serving webpages and email? Not everyone's cup of tea, and I hope there are more user-friendly options available, but having that power is enticing. I'm looking forward to better multitasking, and multiple user accounts. Also a more open hardware ecosystem, such as USB and HDMI ports, docks, chargers, USB keyboards, maybe a laptop "shell" I can insert my phone into? If we look at the "dockable PC" side of things, the developer tools are unparalleled. And of course free software. CyanogenMod is pretty great already, and Busybox too, but I think a GNU presence will only help. Maybe I drank too much of RMS's koolaid.
  - javert 14y ago
    I would love for my phone to be my primary computer, and just plug it into a mouse/keyboard/monitor whenever I need to do real work (the latter implies having full control of anythin I want to control, like I have now in Arch Linux). Other than that, I don't really see the use case (for me personally) for most of what you're saying. I mean, vi/emacs are not useful on the phone, because it doesn't have a real keyboard. Since it doesn't have a real keyboard, I can't do real things with it, so there is no need for a lot of customization (e.g. with dotfiles).

yardie 14y ago

As long as we have some honest to god, native-C support I'll be pleasantly pleased. I'd rather be an android consumer rather than an android programmer, Dalvik just doesn't interest me at all.

javert 14y ago
Why? Because you don't like having to program in Java (I'm with you there) or for other reasons?
- yardie 14y ago
  Java. I'm not passionate about it at all and if I can't find the motivation to learn it then I'm not going to use it. The great thing about C is it's practically universal. And the fact that you had no UI library in the NDK (this might have changed since 2.3) meant I was going nowhere with that on that front.
Andrex 14y ago
Have you checked out the Android NDK? http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html You still have to go through JNI and use Java/XML for the interface, but the NDK has been growing to encompass more and more with each release. (And in my opinion, keeping a standard way for making the actual UI users see is important for consistency. It's more difficult to enforce that with purely native apps.)

codeulike 14y ago

Android (and I think iOS?) both reserve the right to purge paused apps from memory if memory is needed (a paused app being an app that the user is not currently looking at). This seems well suited to phones, but leads to a totally different programming model whereby apps must be ready to persist their state and be deflated/reinflated/stopped without warning. Will Ubuntu for Phones struggle to make good use of the phone memory if it doesn't use this technique? (I assume it just uses the desktop-PC model of 'a thing is running until its stopped, page to disk if necessary?') edit: also, as people have pointed out, there are battery life implications

BenoitEssiambre 14y ago
Interesting question. That would be a fundamental architectural difference with lots of ramifications. I too would like to know the answer to this.
subway 14y ago
With speedy enough flash, this could be essentially accomplished in the kernel with swap space.
Jach 14y ago
Perhaps Shuttleworth is counting on phones having more than a few gigs of RAM in the near future, making app suspension rather pointless if your concern is memory. (Rather, it is more useful to me in prolonging battery life.)
- jeremyjh 14y ago
  They are trying to target the low end though.
CJefferson 14y ago
While this is important for memory, it is also really important for battery usage. My experience with Android is that waking every second is enough to kill a phone's battery noticeably faster. I suspect most existing linux apps and frameworks are not good at saving CPU and battery enough to be on a phone. I would be happy to be proved wrong.

jiggy2011 14y ago

One of the biggest criticisms levelled at android has been that the UI feels a little clunky and slow and that changes made by carriers and manufacturers usually make the experience worse. If they can make this phone feel like an iPhone in terms of smoothness and keep a nice consistent feel then this might have a chance of being a premium choice over android.

SG- 14y ago
The Verge played with the Ubuntu phone and while it's a dev release at this point, you can see from the video it's painfully slow on the latest hardware for UI things: http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/2/3828266/ubuntu-phone-os-hands-on http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/2/3828266/ubuntu-phone-os-han...

olleicua 14y ago

I cannot wait for this!

lnanek2 14y ago

Too bad they aren't big like Microsoft, who can flat out pay people to port apps and run constant developer events, etc.. Heck, even BlackBerry has been constantly giving out phones and prizes and benefits to developers. Ubuntu just doesn't have the infrastructure to get the apps on to the platform, and the users want good apps. Even if you can port something from a Linux desktop version easily, it's still going to lack software.

Inufu 14y ago

> Canonical's secret sauce in selling carriers on Ubuntu might lie in helping them sell their own services to end users. Carriers "care about brand and we know how to accommodate that," Shuttleworth said. "They care about their own content and we've essentially put their content on an equal footing with content from the ecosystem. The handset manufacturer or operator that has music, films, or other types of content can promote their content to their users or other users directly in a way that doesn't feel like a bolt-on or a sideshow." I do not want any content from my phone manufacturer, much less operator. From experience, this is almost exclusively overpriced crap, useless apps or branding.

taude 14y ago
Shouldn't it be about what "the consumer" wants and not what "the carrier" wants? I think Apple has this right.

vemv 14y ago

Canonical should just do the world a favor and disappear.

dschiptsov 14y ago

A system should have evolved, not being pushed. Unity and accompanied py-qt based stuff is crap being pushed. I don't see why to expect something different form a repetition of the same "strategy" - pushing half-baking crap in a rush.

oscargrouch 14y ago

I Think if somebody can make a phone os better than android, and more intuitive (easy for non-tech people).. not only that but have the capacity to enchant the mobile hardware players(good lobby push) Android can be beaten away.. but not the same can be said about to IOS.. its all about brand.. its a tough fight.. But android market share, is not much about the consumers that want it because they need..(theres no sentimental decision about it) its about the device makers, making the decision for this share of the market.. if ubuntu can convince device makers to put that in their phones.. (with the help of some good apps, so theres no cultural shock).. i think people will not care much.. and for developer comunity, i think is better.. we need to get free from the centralized app market model from apple.. whoever delivers that is my friend :)

codex 14y ago

"Shuttleworth believes that Ubuntu will be more user-friendly for people who barely know how to use a smartphone." An experience that is more user friendly than iOS and more user friendly than Windows Phone will be hard to do. Beating Android might be easier. Furthermore, very few people with money haven't already used a smartphone, so they'll be aiming for the market of people who have no money. Not exactly lucrative, and Android has distinct advantages there. Android can be cheaper than Ubuntu because they can monetize mobile advertising better. In short, this effort will totally fail. There is no compelling reason to have a 5th player in the smartphone market, and given Ubuntu's track record with desktop UI, I don't think their effort in mobile will be terribly inspired.