9 ms·

Ubuntu Phone will include a Terminal application

166 points by dave1010uk 14y ago

AlexeyBrin 14y ago
Having a Terminal application will make the Phone more appealing to coders and old school Linux users. I fail to see how this will make the Ubuntu Phone more appealing to the average user. EDIT: Apparently saying something that goes against the current on HN will start a shit storm (downvotes, obviously).
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Not everything has to be for the benefit of the "average user" whoever they are.
  - AlexeyBrin 14y ago
    Agree, my point was that this will remain a niche phone.
    - daliusd 14y ago
      I see possibility that I (as geek) will choose it over cheap slow Android phones for my mother or younger sisters.
    - Nursie 14y ago
      Wait, so including features that don't immediately appeal to the average user necessarily means there will be nothing that appeals to the average user? Your logic is broken there somewhere.
      - tree_of_item 14y ago
        I think it's pretty clear the OP's point was only in reference to the Terminal app, not Ubuntu in general. It's a valid point and doesn't really deserve the snark in your last sentence.
        Nursie 14y ago
        I think it's pretty clear that the OPs point was that there was a terminal app on the phone and therefore it was a geek phone that's never going to take off, and that my snark was absolutely appropriate. In fact he specifically said "I fail to see how this will make the Ubuntu Phone more appealing to the average user." shortly followed by "my point was that this will remain a niche phone." -Edit to remove somewhat unnecessary snark- I don't think 'your logic is broken there somewhere' is all that snarky in the grand scheme of things, in fact it's a pretty clear statement of fact. The two things "terminal apps are not appealing to average users" and "this phone will remain niche" are absolutely not logically connected.
        jiggy2011 14y ago
        I would argue that a good terminal app can help make something easier to use for both technical and average users alike. Since you can assume that the terminal will be never or very rarely used by average users you can make the advanced functionality available as command line applications and leave the most basic/common options in the GUI. A naive user is far more likely to check a box and click apply by accident than they are to type "rm -rf /". A good example is a modern version of Windows, the control panel is full of options,tabs,checkboxes etc that can do weird stuff to your system and consequently make it harder to use because (until recently with powershell) windows has never had a useful commandline.
- ht_th 14y ago
  But a general purpose device like a phone should be able to cater to different audiences. There is no problem to include applications that will be used by only a subset of the audience. Plus, installing and removing applications is easy, I suppose.
  - Mavrik 14y ago
    Not really. We already have several different platforms out there catering to "average Joe". I think it's time hackers actually get something tailored to their use instead of having to suffer compromises on other platforms.
- diminish 14y ago
  u fail to see this isn't an announcement from ubuntu on declaring their strategy on getting average users and so fail to see that on HN, mostly hackers usually like to hack their device.
- jsight 14y ago
  I upvoted you, because I think you raise a valid question. IMO, to build a successful smartphone that is appealing to the average user, that smartphone will require a base of desirable applications. I see basically two routes to attempt to achieve this: 1) Build a phone that is so desirable to average users that app developers will find it profitable to develop for it (eg, iPhone). 2) Build a phone that is so desirable to developers that many will pick it up regardless of the profitability of the market. Then hope that these apps are of sufficient quality/desirability that they become part of making the phone desirable to average users. #1 is incredibly difficult to achieve right now due to the maturity of the market, with two major players. Even Microsoft is having a tremendous amount of difficulty with this route. For Canonical, I believe it would be effectively impossible. With #2, getting to step 1 (modest developer adoption) is easy. Where it often breaks down, is in getting the developers to build apps that aren't just appealing to them (eg, more terminal apps, more ssh apps, more special purpose tools that appeal to geeks, etc). But modest developer adoption is better than no adoption at all, perhaps? I honestly don't see Canonical having much success with this at all, but I don't think avoiding apps that are appealing to coders will help in their case.
- AnthonyMouse 14y ago
  >Having a Terminal application will make the Phone more appealing to coders and old school Linux users. I fail to see how this will make the Ubuntu Phone more appealing to the average user. Step 1: Get coders to use your device. Step 2: Coders want their own apps to run on their own device, so they port them. Result: Now your device has lots of apps and you've removed one of the most significant barriers to normal people using it.
- columbo 14y ago
  Yeah you're probably right... but... If these really just acted like little linux boxes wouldn't that be a huge plus for corporate support? Being able to SSH into these phones to install VPN or other default applications instead of forcing the users/ui to see them? What about being able to 'flash' a corporate phone to a default install or manage permissions? shrug just a thought
- nextparadigms 14y ago
  I agree with you. I want Ubuntu and Linux to succeed in having at least a significant part of the market, but I don't think it's possible, or not as fast as I would hope, if they keep prioritizing stuff for developers and stuff, when Linux is still considered confusing and hard to use by many "normal" people. So they should really prioritize that part. Leave the developer/geeky stuff for later.
yuchi 14y ago
Want to have a look into their mockups? https://ubuntu.mybalsamiq.com/projects/ubuntuphonecoreapps/grid https://ubuntu.mybalsamiq.com/projects/ubuntuphonecoreapps/g... (found on the link)
- jstanley 14y ago
  Unfortunately, it seems to have been mocked up by someone who doesn't know the difference between a terminal and a shell :( I would rather they concentrated on making a decent standards-compliant terminal emulator and didn't have to hack up the shell to accommodate it.
  - noahl 14y ago
    I've been thinking for a while, actually, that terminal emulation isn't something I want today. It might still be appropriate to have some terminal/shell distinction, but emulating an old text-only terminal imposes UI issues. For instance, my shell sometimes prints "you have new mail" to tell me about it. But my computer already has a notification system built-in - I don't need random text strings in my work area. I think the ideas in this mockup are at least moving in the right direction, which is using all of the capabilities of the computer.
  - dhimes 14y ago
    It's not clear to me that everything appearing in the terminal is a shell response. It may be a more sophisticated interface than, say, UXTerm, with some mid-level processing for command completion perhaps. At least we can hope....
    - jstanley 14y ago
      This is the kind of thing I'm hoping against. I don't want anything "smart" being done by the terminal; that is the job of the shell.
      - dhimes 14y ago
        I see. I would vote the other way- keep the shell intact, and install a new UI. UIs can be swapped out, but breaking the shell may lead to unforeseen undesirable consequences.
jacquesm 14y ago
I fear this is going to be very much a niche phone but I just might get one to support the project. Between Android, iOs, the remnants of blackberry and the Microsoft offering there will not be a whole lot of room for a new entrant that is not compatible with any of the above. A hackable phone that is not tied to one of the three largest 500 lbs+ gorillas sounds like a really neat thing to have. Here's to hoping battery life will be acceptable and that they won't spoil it by tying it to Ubuntu services all over the place. Ideal would be NBR + phone capability, possibility to hook up an external display and hold the marketing.
- bthomas 14y ago
  Agree on phone, but a hackable ubuntu tablet could have a large market.
- vy8vWJlco 14y ago
  I'll definitely buy one, iff it's a full computer. I'm so sick of all the neutered tech out there.
- AnthonyMouse 14y ago
  >Between Android, iOs, the remnants of blackberry and the Microsoft offering there will not be a whole lot of room for a new entrant that is not compatible with any of the above It seems exceedingly likely that if more than a few dozen people use this, someone (if not Canonical itself) will produce an Android compatibility layer. What I wish Canonical would do is to do it right. The naive implementation is to take the existing Android source and hack it into Ubuntu like WINE, which is almost certainly a lot easier when the source is already available. What Canonical ought to do is superset Android natively: Make all of the APIs available the same as they are on Android, so that you can take the source to an Android app and just run it on Ubuntu, but you can also start from there and make relatively few changes in order to comply with any differences in Ubuntu's usability standards and have your existing Android app running properly and natively on Ubuntu in very short order. That would give Ubuntu all of the Android apps right away, and then give Android developers an easy way to fix any compatibility-related issues with running those apps on Ubuntu without making significant changes to their existing code. Meanwhile now you have Android running next to POSIX and developers have the temptation to use all the traditional gnu stuff plus whatever Ubuntu adds to make it appropriate to the form factor, which has the developers pushing Google to put that stuff in Android. There is a foreseeable future in which Android and Ubuntu end up as different distributions of the same basic OS the same as RedHat and Ubuntu today.
cs702 14y ago
As soon as Ubuntu Phone becomes stable enough for daily use, I will switch from Android to it. Coupled with a powerful processor and plenty of spare solid-state memory, Ubuntu Phone will allow me to walk around and travel with my entire desktop environment in my pocket -- including round-the-clock access to everything available in official and third-party Ubuntu repositories. (Have you ever needed access to an editor, language, database backend, etc. when you happen to be without a laptop? No problem, Ubuntu Phone will allow you to install and run all these things on your phone.)
- endianswap 14y ago
  Won't many of the projects in the Ubuntu repositories be unavailable because of architectural reasons, i.e. ARM phones versus x86/64 desktops?
  - graue 14y ago
    What projects are you concerned about? I run Raspbian, another Debian-based distro, on my Raspberry Pi (ARMv6 CPU) and haven't run into any missing packages yet. Can't imagine there are many projects out there these days that are still architecture-specific, outside of compilers and JITs and so forth, many of which (e.g. LuaJIT, V8, LLVM) already support ARM.
    - Inufu 14y ago
      As an example, Yesod doesn't work on the raspberry pi, because GHCi is not in the debian ARM repositories. This is annoying, because compiling everything yourself takes forever on the raspberry.
      - graue 14y ago
        Ah, interesting, had actually looked into GHC and knew there was no GHCi support for ARM (also, ARM is only a Tier 2 platform), but did not realize that made it impractical to use Yesod. That kinda sucks. http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Platforms http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Platforms
zokier 14y ago
It's bit funny/sad that today having a terminal in Linux distro is news.
- graue 14y ago
  That's not news. Having a terminal on your phone is news.
  - Andrex 14y ago
    Is it, though? https://play.google.com/store/search?q=terminal&c=apps https://play.google.com/store/search?q=terminal&c=apps
    - dmak 14y ago
      Those aren't native to the operating system though.
      - Andrex 14y ago
        Define native. I'm sure at least some of them use the NDK. Do you mean bundled with the OS?
  - balakk 14y ago
    There were terminals on phones even a decade ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_9000_Communicator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_9000_Communicator
    - brudgers 14y ago
      There are webservers for Symbian.
    - zokier 14y ago
      I must admit that serial terminals were not something I was excepting to pop up in this thread :D
atirip 14y ago
And pine as default e-mail client?
eli 14y ago
I'm skeptical, but I was also skeptical of Firefox for Android and it turned out to be a pretty solid browser.
listic 14y ago
Just how far away this Ubuntu Phone is? I assume quite some time away, if we are still discussing features?
- Andrex 14y ago
  The first Ubuntu phone will be released in early 2014.
  - listic 14y ago
    Any info on exactly which phone that might be?
    - Andrex 14y ago
      It's probably still being made. They demo'd the phone at the announcement event on Galaxy Nexuses. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLtcj7FdIYA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLtcj7FdIYA
    - nextparadigms 14y ago
      No info. But hopefully the first one will be based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and will be 64-bit (Cortex A57 and Cortex A53 class chips). It would be a mistake for them to start out with a 32 bit version, just to switch to the 64 but version months later or a year later.
      - zanny 14y ago
        One concern is that Ubuntu is probably shaping up to start rolling release and Wayland support in 14.10, and they face a current real issue of dealing with X in the embedded space. If the launch the phone with 14.04 (though, they don't have much of a choice if aiming for an H1 release) they end up ripping out the graphics stack half a year or a year later if they use X. And there are still those awful rumors of Canonical writing their own windowing server and compositor. They spread themselves so thin sometimes that you rip the bread apart.
      - zokier 14y ago
motters 14y ago
Really I wouldn't want just a busybox terminal. I already have that on Android. It's ok, but has limited functionality. What I'd want would be the full range of typical GNU commands.
- shmerl 14y ago
  Sailfish will have normal coreutils which come from Mer repo.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
shmerl 14y ago
That's good. Terminal is a norm for regular mobile Linux, and not some exotic third party application like on Android.
ZeroGravitas 14y ago
Have the commented on whether they're going with Gecko or Webkit for the browser and embedded HTML views?
- zanny 14y ago
  The apps built against it will be using qtwebkit, I imagine they will go with webkit. Maybe use a reskinned rekonq or some other qt based browser as a "default" browser. What I'm more worried about than the choice of html engine, is if they are going to use chrome or firefox webapp manifests, because they are incompatible and one of them is necessary for first class web applications.
tombrossman 14y ago
Yes, but will grep -R give me Amazon results? https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/command-not-found/+bug/1055766 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/command-not-found/...
feralchimp 14y ago
The market for people who want a native terminal on their phone should be roughly equivalent to people who ever want to terminal INTO their phone. The market already well served by iOS, Android, etc., is people who want to terminal OUT OF their phone and onto a real computer someplace. What are the real-world tasks you expect to do with the former that you couldn't do, or couldn't do as well, with the latter?
- tree_of_item 14y ago
  If I'm understanding you correctly, you wouldn't need to SSH in to your phone from another device. You could run something like SQLite locally and access it from the terminal, or write Ubuntu applications that expect services to be available on certain ports.
robomartin 14y ago
Just thinking out loud here. You know where a market for disruption exists? The millions of iOS devices that are now being relegated to the trash bin of tech. Very soon everything from iPhone 3GS and back will be obsolete. You will not be able to update apps or OS. I have a nice pile of iPod Touch units that I can't develop for and will not move past their last update (was it iOS 4.2-something?). You don't have to build any hardware. It's already there. And it's nice too. Provide a path for a Linux (or whatever) phone to be loaded into these devices and you instantly create a market for probably hundreds of millions of devices that will either end-up in the trash bin or forever forgotten in a desk drawer. If I were Microsoft I'd throw money at making W8 Phone run as a viable replacement for iOS on these devices. And I'd make the software 100% free of charge. Instant access to millions upon millions of customers who will be facing a very real choice of having to spend hundreds of dollars to get a new iOS device or, instead, try W8 Phone for iDevices for free. Yes, apps will be important. For some, this will not work. For others it would be a no-brainer. The same would be true of Google/Android. If I could load something else onto my half-dozen now-obsolete iPod's I'd do it. Yes, I know you can Whited00r up to a somewhat crippled iOS5, but that's not really a solution, certainly not for a hundred million devices.
- dobbsbob 14y ago
  Android you can, with bulk surplus Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus phones because the binaries for the proprietary hardware have been released, albeit with very restrictive conditions on what you can do with those binaries, so distribution is out of the question unless you're selling for bitcoins. iOS nothing has been released so you have to reverse engineer everything.
- untog 14y ago
  If I were Microsoft I'd throw money at making W8 Phone run as a viable replacement for iOS on these devices. And I'd make the software 100% free of charge. Never, ever, ever going to happen. Apple would provide the access required to do that, so you'd need to reverse engineer the device in order to install a custom OS on it- something that Apple would likely take legal action against. Add to that the perception that WP is a dead-end OS for crappy old devices, and you're ruined your brand too.
dobbsbob 14y ago
Would rather have a bsd phone. Hell even a netbsd phone than a linux phone but I will accept your Ubuntu phone over Android anyday though I fully expect Ubuntu to get sued out of existence once they start getting into the mobile biz. There isn't a day that goes by when Samsung isn't being sued by a hundred different corporations or Samsung isn't themselves suing a hundred different corporations. I'm also secretly hoping Ubuntu is paying attention to security with all the mobile spying going on and not just concentrating on making the latest supercoleslawesome twitter integration while they develop this.
hexonexxon 14y ago
I'd rather see open hardware before yet another O/S that runs on proprietary hardware with suspicious firmware. Maybe one day
- icebraining 14y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_FreeRunner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_FreeRunner
achiang 14y ago
I just want to point out that the link is for user submitted design suggestions and is not necessarily official Canonical plan of record for what will ship. http://www.jonobacon.org/2013/01/23/community-driven-ubuntu-phone-core-apps/ http://www.jonobacon.org/2013/01/23/community-driven-ubuntu-... It's a subtle distinction I wanted to point out. Not speaking on behalf of Canonical, just in my own capacity.
- sourcefrog 14y ago
  Yes, this: the "will" of the title is unjustified. "Someone would like to have a terminal on the Ubuntu phone" would be more accurate. There are plenty of "official" blueprints that never made it into the product.
andor 14y ago
I think it's sad that the core apps include Facebook and Twitter, but not a real instant messaging client (as in "I can install my own server if necessary", "end to end encryption", etc.) Instead of more client implementations for the same commercial services, the free software world should work on bringing the state of the art to free (as in freedom) tools. No, this is not Richard Stallman speaking. I just want to keep my data on my own server, or at least have the choice to host it at a company in my own country.
- icebraining 14y ago
  Facebook Chat is just their private server of an open protocol (XMPP). Unless the client specifically prevents you from doing so, you should be able to use your own server just like you can with e.g. Pidgin.
  - hackmiester 14y ago
    Well, I have some unfortunate news for you: to my knowledge, not one single Facebook Chat app allows this. There is no market. It is beyond wishful thinking to expect Ubuntu to turn this around.
    - icebraining 14y ago
      Well, it depends on whether they're planning to build a Facebook Chat app, or a Chat app that supports Facebook (like the previously mentioned Pidgin). The document is just a use case map, not a proposal for any specific application.
    - andor 14y ago
      Exactly, there is no market for real privacy and openness, and it certainly is not in Google's or Apple's interests. That's why I count on free software to close the gap. Free as in: free of corporate interests, no need to make money, no need to provide access to intelligence agencies. I pay for the hardware, and I pay to transmit data. But the data stays mine.

166 points by dave1010uk 14y ago

Having a Terminal application will make the Phone more appealing to coders and old school Linux users. I fail to see how this will make the Ubuntu Phone more appealing to the average user. EDIT: Apparently saying something that goes against the current on HN will start a shit storm (downvotes, obviously).

jiggy2011 14y ago
Not everything has to be for the benefit of the "average user" whoever they are.
- AlexeyBrin 14y ago
  Agree, my point was that this will remain a niche phone.
  - daliusd 14y ago
    I see possibility that I (as geek) will choose it over cheap slow Android phones for my mother or younger sisters.
  - Nursie 14y ago
    Wait, so including features that don't immediately appeal to the average user necessarily means there will be nothing that appeals to the average user? Your logic is broken there somewhere.
    - tree_of_item 14y ago
      I think it's pretty clear the OP's point was only in reference to the Terminal app, not Ubuntu in general. It's a valid point and doesn't really deserve the snark in your last sentence.
      - Nursie 14y ago
        I think it's pretty clear that the OPs point was that there was a terminal app on the phone and therefore it was a geek phone that's never going to take off, and that my snark was absolutely appropriate. In fact he specifically said "I fail to see how this will make the Ubuntu Phone more appealing to the average user." shortly followed by "my point was that this will remain a niche phone." -Edit to remove somewhat unnecessary snark- I don't think 'your logic is broken there somewhere' is all that snarky in the grand scheme of things, in fact it's a pretty clear statement of fact. The two things "terminal apps are not appealing to average users" and "this phone will remain niche" are absolutely not logically connected.
        jiggy2011 14y ago
        I would argue that a good terminal app can help make something easier to use for both technical and average users alike. Since you can assume that the terminal will be never or very rarely used by average users you can make the advanced functionality available as command line applications and leave the most basic/common options in the GUI. A naive user is far more likely to check a box and click apply by accident than they are to type "rm -rf /". A good example is a modern version of Windows, the control panel is full of options,tabs,checkboxes etc that can do weird stuff to your system and consequently make it harder to use because (until recently with powershell) windows has never had a useful commandline.
ht_th 14y ago
But a general purpose device like a phone should be able to cater to different audiences. There is no problem to include applications that will be used by only a subset of the audience. Plus, installing and removing applications is easy, I suppose.
- Mavrik 14y ago
  Not really. We already have several different platforms out there catering to "average Joe". I think it's time hackers actually get something tailored to their use instead of having to suffer compromises on other platforms.
diminish 14y ago
u fail to see this isn't an announcement from ubuntu on declaring their strategy on getting average users and so fail to see that on HN, mostly hackers usually like to hack their device.
jsight 14y ago
I upvoted you, because I think you raise a valid question. IMO, to build a successful smartphone that is appealing to the average user, that smartphone will require a base of desirable applications. I see basically two routes to attempt to achieve this: 1) Build a phone that is so desirable to average users that app developers will find it profitable to develop for it (eg, iPhone). 2) Build a phone that is so desirable to developers that many will pick it up regardless of the profitability of the market. Then hope that these apps are of sufficient quality/desirability that they become part of making the phone desirable to average users. #1 is incredibly difficult to achieve right now due to the maturity of the market, with two major players. Even Microsoft is having a tremendous amount of difficulty with this route. For Canonical, I believe it would be effectively impossible. With #2, getting to step 1 (modest developer adoption) is easy. Where it often breaks down, is in getting the developers to build apps that aren't just appealing to them (eg, more terminal apps, more ssh apps, more special purpose tools that appeal to geeks, etc). But modest developer adoption is better than no adoption at all, perhaps? I honestly don't see Canonical having much success with this at all, but I don't think avoiding apps that are appealing to coders will help in their case.
AnthonyMouse 14y ago
>Having a Terminal application will make the Phone more appealing to coders and old school Linux users. I fail to see how this will make the Ubuntu Phone more appealing to the average user. Step 1: Get coders to use your device. Step 2: Coders want their own apps to run on their own device, so they port them. Result: Now your device has lots of apps and you've removed one of the most significant barriers to normal people using it.
columbo 14y ago
Yeah you're probably right... but... If these really just acted like little linux boxes wouldn't that be a huge plus for corporate support? Being able to SSH into these phones to install VPN or other default applications instead of forcing the users/ui to see them? What about being able to 'flash' a corporate phone to a default install or manage permissions? shrug just a thought
nextparadigms 14y ago
I agree with you. I want Ubuntu and Linux to succeed in having at least a significant part of the market, but I don't think it's possible, or not as fast as I would hope, if they keep prioritizing stuff for developers and stuff, when Linux is still considered confusing and hard to use by many "normal" people. So they should really prioritize that part. Leave the developer/geeky stuff for later.

yuchi 14y ago

Want to have a look into their mockups? https://ubuntu.mybalsamiq.com/projects/ubuntuphonecoreapps/grid https://ubuntu.mybalsamiq.com/projects/ubuntuphonecoreapps/g... (found on the link)

jstanley 14y ago
Unfortunately, it seems to have been mocked up by someone who doesn't know the difference between a terminal and a shell :( I would rather they concentrated on making a decent standards-compliant terminal emulator and didn't have to hack up the shell to accommodate it.
- noahl 14y ago
  I've been thinking for a while, actually, that terminal emulation isn't something I want today. It might still be appropriate to have some terminal/shell distinction, but emulating an old text-only terminal imposes UI issues. For instance, my shell sometimes prints "you have new mail" to tell me about it. But my computer already has a notification system built-in - I don't need random text strings in my work area. I think the ideas in this mockup are at least moving in the right direction, which is using all of the capabilities of the computer.
- dhimes 14y ago
  It's not clear to me that everything appearing in the terminal is a shell response. It may be a more sophisticated interface than, say, UXTerm, with some mid-level processing for command completion perhaps. At least we can hope....
  - jstanley 14y ago
    This is the kind of thing I'm hoping against. I don't want anything "smart" being done by the terminal; that is the job of the shell.
    - dhimes 14y ago
      I see. I would vote the other way- keep the shell intact, and install a new UI. UIs can be swapped out, but breaking the shell may lead to unforeseen undesirable consequences.

jacquesm 14y ago

I fear this is going to be very much a niche phone but I just might get one to support the project. Between Android, iOs, the remnants of blackberry and the Microsoft offering there will not be a whole lot of room for a new entrant that is not compatible with any of the above. A hackable phone that is not tied to one of the three largest 500 lbs+ gorillas sounds like a really neat thing to have. Here's to hoping battery life will be acceptable and that they won't spoil it by tying it to Ubuntu services all over the place. Ideal would be NBR + phone capability, possibility to hook up an external display and hold the marketing.

bthomas 14y ago
Agree on phone, but a hackable ubuntu tablet could have a large market.
vy8vWJlco 14y ago
I'll definitely buy one, iff it's a full computer. I'm so sick of all the neutered tech out there.
AnthonyMouse 14y ago
>Between Android, iOs, the remnants of blackberry and the Microsoft offering there will not be a whole lot of room for a new entrant that is not compatible with any of the above It seems exceedingly likely that if more than a few dozen people use this, someone (if not Canonical itself) will produce an Android compatibility layer. What I wish Canonical would do is to do it right. The naive implementation is to take the existing Android source and hack it into Ubuntu like WINE, which is almost certainly a lot easier when the source is already available. What Canonical ought to do is superset Android natively: Make all of the APIs available the same as they are on Android, so that you can take the source to an Android app and just run it on Ubuntu, but you can also start from there and make relatively few changes in order to comply with any differences in Ubuntu's usability standards and have your existing Android app running properly and natively on Ubuntu in very short order. That would give Ubuntu all of the Android apps right away, and then give Android developers an easy way to fix any compatibility-related issues with running those apps on Ubuntu without making significant changes to their existing code. Meanwhile now you have Android running next to POSIX and developers have the temptation to use all the traditional gnu stuff plus whatever Ubuntu adds to make it appropriate to the form factor, which has the developers pushing Google to put that stuff in Android. There is a foreseeable future in which Android and Ubuntu end up as different distributions of the same basic OS the same as RedHat and Ubuntu today.

cs702 14y ago

As soon as Ubuntu Phone becomes stable enough for daily use, I will switch from Android to it. Coupled with a powerful processor and plenty of spare solid-state memory, Ubuntu Phone will allow me to walk around and travel with my entire desktop environment in my pocket -- including round-the-clock access to everything available in official and third-party Ubuntu repositories. (Have you ever needed access to an editor, language, database backend, etc. when you happen to be without a laptop? No problem, Ubuntu Phone will allow you to install and run all these things on your phone.)

endianswap 14y ago
Won't many of the projects in the Ubuntu repositories be unavailable because of architectural reasons, i.e. ARM phones versus x86/64 desktops?
- graue 14y ago
  What projects are you concerned about? I run Raspbian, another Debian-based distro, on my Raspberry Pi (ARMv6 CPU) and haven't run into any missing packages yet. Can't imagine there are many projects out there these days that are still architecture-specific, outside of compilers and JITs and so forth, many of which (e.g. LuaJIT, V8, LLVM) already support ARM.
  - Inufu 14y ago
    As an example, Yesod doesn't work on the raspberry pi, because GHCi is not in the debian ARM repositories. This is annoying, because compiling everything yourself takes forever on the raspberry.
    - graue 14y ago
      Ah, interesting, had actually looked into GHC and knew there was no GHCi support for ARM (also, ARM is only a Tier 2 platform), but did not realize that made it impractical to use Yesod. That kinda sucks. http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Platforms http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Platforms

zokier 14y ago

It's bit funny/sad that today having a terminal in Linux distro is news.

graue 14y ago
That's not news. Having a terminal on your phone is news.
- Andrex 14y ago
  Is it, though? https://play.google.com/store/search?q=terminal&c=apps https://play.google.com/store/search?q=terminal&c=apps
  - dmak 14y ago
    Those aren't native to the operating system though.
    - Andrex 14y ago
      Define native. I'm sure at least some of them use the NDK. Do you mean bundled with the OS?
- balakk 14y ago
  There were terminals on phones even a decade ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_9000_Communicator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_9000_Communicator
  - brudgers 14y ago
    There are webservers for Symbian.
  - zokier 14y ago
    I must admit that serial terminals were not something I was excepting to pop up in this thread :D

atirip 14y ago

And pine as default e-mail client?

eli 14y ago

I'm skeptical, but I was also skeptical of Firefox for Android and it turned out to be a pretty solid browser.

listic 14y ago

Just how far away this Ubuntu Phone is? I assume quite some time away, if we are still discussing features?

Andrex 14y ago
The first Ubuntu phone will be released in early 2014.
- listic 14y ago
  Any info on exactly which phone that might be?
  - Andrex 14y ago
    It's probably still being made. They demo'd the phone at the announcement event on Galaxy Nexuses. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLtcj7FdIYA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLtcj7FdIYA
  - nextparadigms 14y ago
    No info. But hopefully the first one will be based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and will be 64-bit (Cortex A57 and Cortex A53 class chips). It would be a mistake for them to start out with a 32 bit version, just to switch to the 64 but version months later or a year later.
    - zanny 14y ago
      One concern is that Ubuntu is probably shaping up to start rolling release and Wayland support in 14.10, and they face a current real issue of dealing with X in the embedded space. If the launch the phone with 14.04 (though, they don't have much of a choice if aiming for an H1 release) they end up ripping out the graphics stack half a year or a year later if they use X. And there are still those awful rumors of Canonical writing their own windowing server and compositor. They spread themselves so thin sometimes that you rip the bread apart.
    - zokier 14y ago

motters 14y ago

Really I wouldn't want just a busybox terminal. I already have that on Android. It's ok, but has limited functionality. What I'd want would be the full range of typical GNU commands.

shmerl 14y ago
Sailfish will have normal coreutils which come from Mer repo.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

shmerl 14y ago

That's good. Terminal is a norm for regular mobile Linux, and not some exotic third party application like on Android.

ZeroGravitas 14y ago

Have the commented on whether they're going with Gecko or Webkit for the browser and embedded HTML views?

zanny 14y ago
The apps built against it will be using qtwebkit, I imagine they will go with webkit. Maybe use a reskinned rekonq or some other qt based browser as a "default" browser. What I'm more worried about than the choice of html engine, is if they are going to use chrome or firefox webapp manifests, because they are incompatible and one of them is necessary for first class web applications.

tombrossman 14y ago

Yes, but will grep -R give me Amazon results? https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/command-not-found/+bug/1055766 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/command-not-found/...

feralchimp 14y ago

The market for people who want a native terminal on their phone should be roughly equivalent to people who ever want to terminal INTO their phone. The market already well served by iOS, Android, etc., is people who want to terminal OUT OF their phone and onto a real computer someplace. What are the real-world tasks you expect to do with the former that you couldn't do, or couldn't do as well, with the latter?

tree_of_item 14y ago
If I'm understanding you correctly, you wouldn't need to SSH in to your phone from another device. You could run something like SQLite locally and access it from the terminal, or write Ubuntu applications that expect services to be available on certain ports.

robomartin 14y ago

Just thinking out loud here. You know where a market for disruption exists? The millions of iOS devices that are now being relegated to the trash bin of tech. Very soon everything from iPhone 3GS and back will be obsolete. You will not be able to update apps or OS. I have a nice pile of iPod Touch units that I can't develop for and will not move past their last update (was it iOS 4.2-something?). You don't have to build any hardware. It's already there. And it's nice too. Provide a path for a Linux (or whatever) phone to be loaded into these devices and you instantly create a market for probably hundreds of millions of devices that will either end-up in the trash bin or forever forgotten in a desk drawer. If I were Microsoft I'd throw money at making W8 Phone run as a viable replacement for iOS on these devices. And I'd make the software 100% free of charge. Instant access to millions upon millions of customers who will be facing a very real choice of having to spend hundreds of dollars to get a new iOS device or, instead, try W8 Phone for iDevices for free. Yes, apps will be important. For some, this will not work. For others it would be a no-brainer. The same would be true of Google/Android. If I could load something else onto my half-dozen now-obsolete iPod's I'd do it. Yes, I know you can Whited00r up to a somewhat crippled iOS5, but that's not really a solution, certainly not for a hundred million devices.

dobbsbob 14y ago
Android you can, with bulk surplus Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus phones because the binaries for the proprietary hardware have been released, albeit with very restrictive conditions on what you can do with those binaries, so distribution is out of the question unless you're selling for bitcoins. iOS nothing has been released so you have to reverse engineer everything.
untog 14y ago
If I were Microsoft I'd throw money at making W8 Phone run as a viable replacement for iOS on these devices. And I'd make the software 100% free of charge. Never, ever, ever going to happen. Apple would provide the access required to do that, so you'd need to reverse engineer the device in order to install a custom OS on it- something that Apple would likely take legal action against. Add to that the perception that WP is a dead-end OS for crappy old devices, and you're ruined your brand too.

dobbsbob 14y ago

Would rather have a bsd phone. Hell even a netbsd phone than a linux phone but I will accept your Ubuntu phone over Android anyday though I fully expect Ubuntu to get sued out of existence once they start getting into the mobile biz. There isn't a day that goes by when Samsung isn't being sued by a hundred different corporations or Samsung isn't themselves suing a hundred different corporations. I'm also secretly hoping Ubuntu is paying attention to security with all the mobile spying going on and not just concentrating on making the latest supercoleslawesome twitter integration while they develop this.

hexonexxon 14y ago

I'd rather see open hardware before yet another O/S that runs on proprietary hardware with suspicious firmware. Maybe one day

icebraining 14y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_FreeRunner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_FreeRunner

achiang 14y ago

I just want to point out that the link is for user submitted design suggestions and is not necessarily official Canonical plan of record for what will ship. http://www.jonobacon.org/2013/01/23/community-driven-ubuntu-phone-core-apps/ http://www.jonobacon.org/2013/01/23/community-driven-ubuntu-... It's a subtle distinction I wanted to point out. Not speaking on behalf of Canonical, just in my own capacity.

sourcefrog 14y ago
Yes, this: the "will" of the title is unjustified. "Someone would like to have a terminal on the Ubuntu phone" would be more accurate. There are plenty of "official" blueprints that never made it into the product.

andor 14y ago

I think it's sad that the core apps include Facebook and Twitter, but not a real instant messaging client (as in "I can install my own server if necessary", "end to end encryption", etc.) Instead of more client implementations for the same commercial services, the free software world should work on bringing the state of the art to free (as in freedom) tools. No, this is not Richard Stallman speaking. I just want to keep my data on my own server, or at least have the choice to host it at a company in my own country.

icebraining 14y ago
Facebook Chat is just their private server of an open protocol (XMPP). Unless the client specifically prevents you from doing so, you should be able to use your own server just like you can with e.g. Pidgin.
- hackmiester 14y ago
  Well, I have some unfortunate news for you: to my knowledge, not one single Facebook Chat app allows this. There is no market. It is beyond wishful thinking to expect Ubuntu to turn this around.
  - icebraining 14y ago
    Well, it depends on whether they're planning to build a Facebook Chat app, or a Chat app that supports Facebook (like the previously mentioned Pidgin). The document is just a use case map, not a proposal for any specific application.
  - andor 14y ago
    Exactly, there is no market for real privacy and openness, and it certainly is not in Google's or Apple's interests. That's why I count on free software to close the gap. Free as in: free of corporate interests, no need to make money, no need to provide access to intelligence agencies. I pay for the hardware, and I pay to transmit data. But the data stays mine.