8 ms·

Ubuntu Edge is dead, long live Ubuntu phones

63 points by uladzislau 13y ago

itg 13y ago
What a terrible headline, it's only the Ubuntu Edge they wont' be making, Ubuntu phones are still coming out. Right from the article - "But this doesn't mean Ubuntu phones themselves are dead. The smartphone interface for the Ubuntu operating system is still being developed, and carriers around the world have signed on as potential launch partners."
- hga 13y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_king_is_dead,_long_live_the_king http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_king_is_dead,_long_live_the...!
  - mistercow 13y ago
    I think sometimes people don't realize that the two instances of "king" in the saying refer to different people. They therefore assume that "long live the king" is an idiom for "RIP the king" or similar. The Lion King probably didn't help matters with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctJ9jZ-_fFc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctJ9jZ-_fFc
    - megablast 13y ago
      Taken that way, it is very strange for people to wish a long life to the king who just died.
      - mistercow 13y ago
        People are used to idioms they don't understand though. They're much like words in that we learn their meaning from context, and the etymological content is more of a subconscious mnemonic than something we explicitly pay attention to. Sort of like being surprised when you first notice that "disintegrate" is "dis- integrate". This is particularly common with idioms because they often to get truncated over time so that their meaning is harder to extract from the content. If you've never heard "the pot calling the kettle black", but you've heard "pot: meet kettle", you'll likely get the meaning from context, and you'll have no idea what the connection is between hypocrisy, pots, and kettles.
- Alterlife 13y ago
  Funny... I think the headline perfectly summarizes what you wrote.
- wyager 13y ago
  Did you actually read the headline? That is precisely what it is saying.
EGreg 13y ago
"Long live" meant to refer to the next king, i.e. the king that is now king when this is uttered. So is the phrase abused?
- jlgreco 13y ago
  Eh, it was clear to me what the headline meant.
yuhong 13y ago
Personally, I wish for an ARM notebook market coming out of the Chromebook, with different configurations for Chrome OS and Ubuntu etc.
- akr 13y ago
  This. I really would like a small netbook type ARM device which runs a normal Linux distribution and doesn't cheap out on battery capacity. The Samsung ARM Chromebook comes near but it could have a better display, casing and keyboard (ideally with a trackpoint).
  - peatmoss 13y ago
    My ideal machine looks a lot like this as well. I'm surprised someone hasn't built something in between the Pixel and the Samsung, and partnered with Canonical.
bayesianhorse 13y ago
I really didn't and don't understand what Ubuntu was trying to achieve with the Edge campaign. The project sounds great and I would have bought one, but there was no chance in hell they were pulling this crowdfunding campaign off. That they got 12 Million is already a big achievement and surprise.
- crdoconnor 13y ago
  I'm pretty sure it was a way of kicking risk averse asian handset manufacturers into action. Setting the bar at $32 million meant that they could demonstrate interest without actually dealing with the headache of making the phone themselves.
teejaygreen 13y ago
"Since the campaign didn't meet its funding requirement, refunds will be processed to backers within five business days, Canonical said." Do you think Indiegogo made interest on that 12 million dollars over the past month? If so, how much?
- Roboprog 13y ago
  1) Less than inflation 2) Something, which won't be going back with those devalued refund dollars.
- __alexs 13y ago
  No idea but I'm sure PayPal are going to do their best with the $12m in new account balances they just got though.
- coob 13y ago
  I thought it was just an authorisation on the card, I didn't think they took the actual money?
  - akandiah 13y ago
    No, they did. My available balance has been deducted and the transaction is fully shown.
  - duskwuff 13y ago
    Authorizations have a limited lifespan, and it's quite a bit shorter than crowdfunding sites would need.
ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
If the phones had more realistic specs, meaning they got the price down to $500 or so, and ran the campaign for 60 days instead of 30 they probably would have succeeded. The phones they were competing with had 1gb and 2gb of RAM, yet the Ubuntu Edge was given 4gb. Really? What happened to launching a modest product, and after gaining traction improving it? PLUS they should have warned people and starting advertising that their indiegogo campaign was going to launch 2 months before it actually did. That way they'd have a huge list of people ready to pre-order and ad campaigns set up by the community just in time for the campaign launch.
- Yaggo 13y ago
  It's easy to boost with specs when the competing products can be bought right now while your product exists only on a drawing board.
chmike 13y ago
The phone was too expensive and the risk too high that at the time it is delivered it would be outdated. Here in France we have a company configuring and selling wiko smartphones (made in china) which are very cheap for their capacity. Offering Ubuntu on such cheap phones could be a better way to get adopted by the Ubuntu community that doesn't have the money to buy Apple or windows computer. People would be much more forgiving for some software flaws or glitches.
- rahoulb 13y ago
  Ubuntu Edge isn't a straight-forward phone OS though - it was intended to be a desktop/laptop replacement in a phone-sized package (run the Phone UI when disconnected, run a "desktop" UI when connected to an external monitor/keyboard/mouse). So a cheap piece of hardware would not be sufficient.
pqs 13y ago
There is something I can't understand. They couldn't produce a really necessary Ubuntu laptop and they think they will be able to create a phone that doubles as netbook. They are deluded. I'll soon have to buy a new laptop. I really would like to buy an "Ubuntu Air" laptop, if it existed. But it doesn't. Those that wan't to buy an Ubuntu laptop (or any other linux laptop) must study all the components of the computer they are going to buy and check for driver compatibility, plus some prayers, because you never know if it is really going to work well. This is really painful, and I'm not taking into account the usual regressions when upgrading. At the end, I will probably buy a Mac. I have a baby and I don't have time to spend configuring wireless card drivers for days. But I'd love to have a high quality linux laptop.
- izacus 13y ago
  sigh Not this FUD again. Ubuntu will work well on pretty much any single-graphics Ultrabook currently on the market. Can we leave the wifi problems complaints in previous decade where they belong?
  - Alterlife 13y ago
    > Ubuntu will work well on pretty much any single-graphics Ultrabook I have a dell vostro 3360 which I bought thinking that everything would be ubuntu-fine... Not an ultrabook, but similar hardware. It turns out that on on stock ubuntu, even for light tasks, the fan runs overtime. This is not a problem on the manufacturer provided Windows 7. Dell provides Linux drivers to control the fan speed... but they do not work very well even after a fair amount of tweaking (there's a settings file which determines when the fan is supposed to switch on). To me, this is one of the most annoying problems that a machine can have. Manufacturer support of operating systems matters.
  - AlexanderDhoore 13y ago
    Yeah, this is not FUD. I have a thinkpad edge running Ubuntu (and I tried a few other distros). Both the Broadcom wifi and the AMD graphics are very wonky. Broadcom worked, but a kernel upgrade broke it. AMD driver works, kind of, but not when I plug in an external screen. I had it fail on me during a presentation I was giving. Next time I'll use my macbook, just to be safe. Obviously I don't blame Ubuntu. I blame myself for not buying a laptop with Ubuntu support. Next time I'll buy System 76.

63 points by uladzislau 13y ago

itg 13y ago

What a terrible headline, it's only the Ubuntu Edge they wont' be making, Ubuntu phones are still coming out. Right from the article - "But this doesn't mean Ubuntu phones themselves are dead. The smartphone interface for the Ubuntu operating system is still being developed, and carriers around the world have signed on as potential launch partners."

hga 13y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_king_is_dead,_long_live_the_king http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_king_is_dead,_long_live_the...!
- mistercow 13y ago
  I think sometimes people don't realize that the two instances of "king" in the saying refer to different people. They therefore assume that "long live the king" is an idiom for "RIP the king" or similar. The Lion King probably didn't help matters with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctJ9jZ-_fFc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctJ9jZ-_fFc
  - megablast 13y ago
    Taken that way, it is very strange for people to wish a long life to the king who just died.
    - mistercow 13y ago
      People are used to idioms they don't understand though. They're much like words in that we learn their meaning from context, and the etymological content is more of a subconscious mnemonic than something we explicitly pay attention to. Sort of like being surprised when you first notice that "disintegrate" is "dis- integrate". This is particularly common with idioms because they often to get truncated over time so that their meaning is harder to extract from the content. If you've never heard "the pot calling the kettle black", but you've heard "pot: meet kettle", you'll likely get the meaning from context, and you'll have no idea what the connection is between hypocrisy, pots, and kettles.
Alterlife 13y ago
Funny... I think the headline perfectly summarizes what you wrote.
wyager 13y ago
Did you actually read the headline? That is precisely what it is saying.

EGreg 13y ago

"Long live" meant to refer to the next king, i.e. the king that is now king when this is uttered. So is the phrase abused?

jlgreco 13y ago
Eh, it was clear to me what the headline meant.

yuhong 13y ago

Personally, I wish for an ARM notebook market coming out of the Chromebook, with different configurations for Chrome OS and Ubuntu etc.

akr 13y ago
This. I really would like a small netbook type ARM device which runs a normal Linux distribution and doesn't cheap out on battery capacity. The Samsung ARM Chromebook comes near but it could have a better display, casing and keyboard (ideally with a trackpoint).
- peatmoss 13y ago
  My ideal machine looks a lot like this as well. I'm surprised someone hasn't built something in between the Pixel and the Samsung, and partnered with Canonical.

bayesianhorse 13y ago

I really didn't and don't understand what Ubuntu was trying to achieve with the Edge campaign. The project sounds great and I would have bought one, but there was no chance in hell they were pulling this crowdfunding campaign off. That they got 12 Million is already a big achievement and surprise.

crdoconnor 13y ago
I'm pretty sure it was a way of kicking risk averse asian handset manufacturers into action. Setting the bar at $32 million meant that they could demonstrate interest without actually dealing with the headache of making the phone themselves.

teejaygreen 13y ago

"Since the campaign didn't meet its funding requirement, refunds will be processed to backers within five business days, Canonical said." Do you think Indiegogo made interest on that 12 million dollars over the past month? If so, how much?

Roboprog 13y ago
1) Less than inflation 2) Something, which won't be going back with those devalued refund dollars.
__alexs 13y ago
No idea but I'm sure PayPal are going to do their best with the $12m in new account balances they just got though.
coob 13y ago
I thought it was just an authorisation on the card, I didn't think they took the actual money?
- akandiah 13y ago
  No, they did. My available balance has been deducted and the transaction is fully shown.
- duskwuff 13y ago
  Authorizations have a limited lifespan, and it's quite a bit shorter than crowdfunding sites would need.

ChrisNorstrom 13y ago

If the phones had more realistic specs, meaning they got the price down to $500 or so, and ran the campaign for 60 days instead of 30 they probably would have succeeded. The phones they were competing with had 1gb and 2gb of RAM, yet the Ubuntu Edge was given 4gb. Really? What happened to launching a modest product, and after gaining traction improving it? PLUS they should have warned people and starting advertising that their indiegogo campaign was going to launch 2 months before it actually did. That way they'd have a huge list of people ready to pre-order and ad campaigns set up by the community just in time for the campaign launch.

Yaggo 13y ago
It's easy to boost with specs when the competing products can be bought right now while your product exists only on a drawing board.

chmike 13y ago

The phone was too expensive and the risk too high that at the time it is delivered it would be outdated. Here in France we have a company configuring and selling wiko smartphones (made in china) which are very cheap for their capacity. Offering Ubuntu on such cheap phones could be a better way to get adopted by the Ubuntu community that doesn't have the money to buy Apple or windows computer. People would be much more forgiving for some software flaws or glitches.

rahoulb 13y ago
Ubuntu Edge isn't a straight-forward phone OS though - it was intended to be a desktop/laptop replacement in a phone-sized package (run the Phone UI when disconnected, run a "desktop" UI when connected to an external monitor/keyboard/mouse). So a cheap piece of hardware would not be sufficient.

pqs 13y ago

There is something I can't understand. They couldn't produce a really necessary Ubuntu laptop and they think they will be able to create a phone that doubles as netbook. They are deluded. I'll soon have to buy a new laptop. I really would like to buy an "Ubuntu Air" laptop, if it existed. But it doesn't. Those that wan't to buy an Ubuntu laptop (or any other linux laptop) must study all the components of the computer they are going to buy and check for driver compatibility, plus some prayers, because you never know if it is really going to work well. This is really painful, and I'm not taking into account the usual regressions when upgrading. At the end, I will probably buy a Mac. I have a baby and I don't have time to spend configuring wireless card drivers for days. But I'd love to have a high quality linux laptop.

izacus 13y ago
sigh Not this FUD again. Ubuntu will work well on pretty much any single-graphics Ultrabook currently on the market. Can we leave the wifi problems complaints in previous decade where they belong?
- Alterlife 13y ago
  > Ubuntu will work well on pretty much any single-graphics Ultrabook I have a dell vostro 3360 which I bought thinking that everything would be ubuntu-fine... Not an ultrabook, but similar hardware. It turns out that on on stock ubuntu, even for light tasks, the fan runs overtime. This is not a problem on the manufacturer provided Windows 7. Dell provides Linux drivers to control the fan speed... but they do not work very well even after a fair amount of tweaking (there's a settings file which determines when the fan is supposed to switch on). To me, this is one of the most annoying problems that a machine can have. Manufacturer support of operating systems matters.
- AlexanderDhoore 13y ago
  Yeah, this is not FUD. I have a thinkpad edge running Ubuntu (and I tried a few other distros). Both the Broadcom wifi and the AMD graphics are very wonky. Broadcom worked, but a kernel upgrade broke it. AMD driver works, kind of, but not when I plug in an external screen. I had it fail on me during a presentation I was giving. Next time I'll use my macbook, just to be safe. Obviously I don't blame Ubuntu. I blame myself for not buying a laptop with Ubuntu support. Next time I'll buy System 76.