7 ms·

Ubuntu Off to a Promising Start on Smartphones

69 points by sk2code 14y ago

bebop 14y ago
I think it will be really interesting to see if this will also do something like Ubuntu for Android, where you will be able to dock the phone and have a full version of Ubuntu Desktop. I could see being able to use this as a development machine (Django/Flask/RoR) that you can take with you. I would have one setup docking station at work, and one in my home office. I would no longer need to keep two or more machines in sync via vcs/database dumps. Things are looking up.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Maybe, if you are using your desktop PC mainly as an SSH terminal. OTOH there are always going to be tradeoffs between things like weight/battery life and power. I assume my smartphone would choke if I threw all the stuff I use on my desktop (eclipse,photoshop,VMs,emulators etc) at it. You might be able to make a smartphone that can do this but then it's unlikely to last as long on batteries or be as lightweight as one that couldn't. Regardless of what computer I'm using , my work is never more than a dropbox sync or git pull away.
  - bebop 14y ago
    Yeah, as far as batter life, I was assuming that any heavy lifting would be done when it was in a docking station and charging. Used like a normal phone when not, as I would never try and program with a touch keyboard. Yeah, dropbox and VCS' work. My main problem is that if I just want to quickly do a few things, it becomes a time burden to spend 5 minutes or so doing the sync (and other things like db updates, what have you). This little extra time sometimes destroys my motivation to work on something real.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      Once you start putting extra hardware into the docking station to do heavy lifting you essentially end up back where you are now with a mobile device that can do some but not all tasks but also acts as a mobile filestore. I would imagine that as broadband speeds become faster we will see a diversification of devices rather than the other way around. Things like kindle , roku and xbox seem to be selling a lot better than things like MS Surface for example.
  - zanny 14y ago
    > I assume my smartphone would choke if I threw all the stuff 5 years ago your smartphone would have choked on a GUI transition with transparency. In 5 years, We will probably have ARM v9 with 10 hour battery life easily running these workloads. When the first desktop in your pocket hits the market in force, think of it like the first iphone, tablet, or netbook. Primitive and slow, but a precursor of things to come when efficiency ramps up.
- noahl 14y ago
  Yes, it will. This is actually part of their video about it. Their idea is to have one OS that can smoothly scale up and down to different form factors. They show people docking their phone into a tablet shell, a laptop, and a desktop, and having the UI expand to fill each space.
  - taeric 14y ago
    Do you (or anyone) know of a resource where I could try some of these ideas on just a plain convertible laptop?
    - noahl 14y ago
      I don't, unfortunately. I suppose your best bet would be to install the Ubuntu Touch Preview on the laptop, but I don't know how well it would work. As far as I know, it's only been ported to phones so far, although in theory it should work anywhere CyanogenMod does. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices for a list of supported devices.
      - taeric 14y ago
        Cool, thanks! From the looks of it, I'm fairly alone in wanting to even try this.
        noahl 14y ago
        I would be interested. However, I would bet that there are plenty of people at Canonical who are even more interested (or do this already, even). Thinking about it now, since their plan is to have the same software run on the laptop and phone, you can do it just by installing Ubuntu (or really, Ubuntu in 1-2 future versions). The only thing you won't get to see is what it looks like on small screen sizes - for that you'll need some sort of emulator. I don't know much about virtualization - is there a host program that can dynamically change screen sizes, or pretend that you just plugged into a dock? If so, that should do it.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
I've been watching this with some interest. It was particularly interesting to see how much better Canonical did creating a credible 'desktop->laptop->tablet->phone' design for an OS than Microsoft did. Microsoft could do a lot worse than just copy it. That said, Glass and what not threaten to upset the applecart. There is a lot of potential in the 'smart brick in your pocket' linking to a variety of UI devices around your body, that has yet to be played out.
LilValleyBigEgo 14y ago
The funny thing about alternative phone OS's is that they make your phone do everything but work as a phone. Wake me up when data is working.
ibudiallo 14y ago
Ubuntu is already takin huge market in the desktop and server space. I have made the full switch. It will be very interesting to see how it tackles smartphone . Just thinking 'Sudo Apt-get install Apache' gives me the shivers
- zanny 14y ago
  pacman -S apache! That presents an interesting prospect - once Ubuntu hits phones, and there is a proven infrastructure for "mobile" distros, will we see the mass proliferation of such OSes? There is nothing inherent to the phone that makes it harder to have distro like behavior on, just that since it is mainly a media consumption device it would probably be less fun to tinker with. Hell, Plasma Active even presents a viable interface that isn't the mobile Unity that Canonical probably won't be all sunshine handholding open contribution with already.
  - claudius 14y ago
    I don’t think my N9 is less fun to tinker with just because it is mostly a ‘media consumption device’ and given appropriate support (i.e. SDK and all such things), it’s not even harder to tinker with it than with the OS on my laptop. I would still prefer a truly open system where I don’t have to circumvent silly kernel modules (aegis, I am looking at you) every other day, though.
meaty 14y ago
A promising start is when they sell them and lots of them and people start dropping good reviews. With Firefox OS around and with a brand name more people recognise, I doubt they will get anywhere. I mean even Microsoft have had to work hard to get their stuff on the market.
anoncow 14y ago
Hardware - Canonical should get into making their own hardware. Open hardware with unlocked bootloaders on which you could install ubuntu, ff os, android and if ms releases images then winrt as well. Plus, they could make money this way. The boom that windows/pc's saw in the 1990s was in part due to easily available hardware. Why can't we have something similar but based on open source values for mobile phones.
macco 14y ago
I hope they will win a few carriers to support Ubunto Phone. Otherwise the will fail badly.

69 points by sk2code 14y ago

bebop 14y ago

I think it will be really interesting to see if this will also do something like Ubuntu for Android, where you will be able to dock the phone and have a full version of Ubuntu Desktop. I could see being able to use this as a development machine (Django/Flask/RoR) that you can take with you. I would have one setup docking station at work, and one in my home office. I would no longer need to keep two or more machines in sync via vcs/database dumps. Things are looking up.

jiggy2011 14y ago
Maybe, if you are using your desktop PC mainly as an SSH terminal. OTOH there are always going to be tradeoffs between things like weight/battery life and power. I assume my smartphone would choke if I threw all the stuff I use on my desktop (eclipse,photoshop,VMs,emulators etc) at it. You might be able to make a smartphone that can do this but then it's unlikely to last as long on batteries or be as lightweight as one that couldn't. Regardless of what computer I'm using , my work is never more than a dropbox sync or git pull away.
- bebop 14y ago
  Yeah, as far as batter life, I was assuming that any heavy lifting would be done when it was in a docking station and charging. Used like a normal phone when not, as I would never try and program with a touch keyboard. Yeah, dropbox and VCS' work. My main problem is that if I just want to quickly do a few things, it becomes a time burden to spend 5 minutes or so doing the sync (and other things like db updates, what have you). This little extra time sometimes destroys my motivation to work on something real.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    Once you start putting extra hardware into the docking station to do heavy lifting you essentially end up back where you are now with a mobile device that can do some but not all tasks but also acts as a mobile filestore. I would imagine that as broadband speeds become faster we will see a diversification of devices rather than the other way around. Things like kindle , roku and xbox seem to be selling a lot better than things like MS Surface for example.
- zanny 14y ago
  > I assume my smartphone would choke if I threw all the stuff 5 years ago your smartphone would have choked on a GUI transition with transparency. In 5 years, We will probably have ARM v9 with 10 hour battery life easily running these workloads. When the first desktop in your pocket hits the market in force, think of it like the first iphone, tablet, or netbook. Primitive and slow, but a precursor of things to come when efficiency ramps up.
noahl 14y ago
Yes, it will. This is actually part of their video about it. Their idea is to have one OS that can smoothly scale up and down to different form factors. They show people docking their phone into a tablet shell, a laptop, and a desktop, and having the UI expand to fill each space.
- taeric 14y ago
  Do you (or anyone) know of a resource where I could try some of these ideas on just a plain convertible laptop?
  - noahl 14y ago
    I don't, unfortunately. I suppose your best bet would be to install the Ubuntu Touch Preview on the laptop, but I don't know how well it would work. As far as I know, it's only been ported to phones so far, although in theory it should work anywhere CyanogenMod does. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices for a list of supported devices.
    - taeric 14y ago
      Cool, thanks! From the looks of it, I'm fairly alone in wanting to even try this.
      - noahl 14y ago
        I would be interested. However, I would bet that there are plenty of people at Canonical who are even more interested (or do this already, even). Thinking about it now, since their plan is to have the same software run on the laptop and phone, you can do it just by installing Ubuntu (or really, Ubuntu in 1-2 future versions). The only thing you won't get to see is what it looks like on small screen sizes - for that you'll need some sort of emulator. I don't know much about virtualization - is there a host program that can dynamically change screen sizes, or pretend that you just plugged into a dock? If so, that should do it.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

I've been watching this with some interest. It was particularly interesting to see how much better Canonical did creating a credible 'desktop->laptop->tablet->phone' design for an OS than Microsoft did. Microsoft could do a lot worse than just copy it. That said, Glass and what not threaten to upset the applecart. There is a lot of potential in the 'smart brick in your pocket' linking to a variety of UI devices around your body, that has yet to be played out.

LilValleyBigEgo 14y ago

The funny thing about alternative phone OS's is that they make your phone do everything but work as a phone. Wake me up when data is working.

ibudiallo 14y ago

Ubuntu is already takin huge market in the desktop and server space. I have made the full switch. It will be very interesting to see how it tackles smartphone . Just thinking 'Sudo Apt-get install Apache' gives me the shivers

zanny 14y ago
pacman -S apache! That presents an interesting prospect - once Ubuntu hits phones, and there is a proven infrastructure for "mobile" distros, will we see the mass proliferation of such OSes? There is nothing inherent to the phone that makes it harder to have distro like behavior on, just that since it is mainly a media consumption device it would probably be less fun to tinker with. Hell, Plasma Active even presents a viable interface that isn't the mobile Unity that Canonical probably won't be all sunshine handholding open contribution with already.
- claudius 14y ago
  I don’t think my N9 is less fun to tinker with just because it is mostly a ‘media consumption device’ and given appropriate support (i.e. SDK and all such things), it’s not even harder to tinker with it than with the OS on my laptop. I would still prefer a truly open system where I don’t have to circumvent silly kernel modules (aegis, I am looking at you) every other day, though.

meaty 14y ago

A promising start is when they sell them and lots of them and people start dropping good reviews. With Firefox OS around and with a brand name more people recognise, I doubt they will get anywhere. I mean even Microsoft have had to work hard to get their stuff on the market.

anoncow 14y ago

Hardware - Canonical should get into making their own hardware. Open hardware with unlocked bootloaders on which you could install ubuntu, ff os, android and if ms releases images then winrt as well. Plus, they could make money this way. The boom that windows/pc's saw in the 1990s was in part due to easily available hardware. Why can't we have something similar but based on open source values for mobile phones.

macco 14y ago

I hope they will win a few carriers to support Ubunto Phone. Otherwise the will fail badly.