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Ubuntu Touch OS wins its first smartphone partner
- TallGuyShort 13y agoIf it's Verizon, I intend to be their first smartphone customer :) edit: mind you - I'm guessing this is a manufacturing partner, not a network / distribution partner...
- sirkneeland 13y agoYes, it is a manufacturing partner, since they've already announced network partners. I do wonder which manufacturer it could be...
- amartya916 13y agoThis might be far-fetched, but I wonder whether it is Lenovo. Just saying because Lenovo's PCs and Servers have excellent Ubuntu support.
- sirkneeland 13y agoMy wild card guesses would be Lenovo and Dell (which, out of nowhere, made a pretty solid piece of hardware with the WP7 Venue Pro)
- dingaling 13y agoThe Venue Pro and the contemporaneous Streak Android models were designed and manufactured for Dell by Qisda. They were indeed very solid pieces of kit, being aimed at the corporate Latitude-laptop-buying market. My Streak 5 is still going strong after four years.
- keithpeter 13y agoExcellent for Canonical. I look forward to the day I can walk into the local phone shop and buy an Ubuntu Mobile. Bit worried by the 'high end' qualification in the OA. I'd imagine Apple/Samsung have that sewn up, and the lower end in China/Asia has the volume. But we shall see.
- shurcooL 13y agoAs soon as there's a powerful mobile device that comes with a Terminal as a first class citizen and lets me compile/run Go programs, I'm ditching my iOS device and getting that.
- programminggeek 13y agoThis would be amazing on a device like the Moto G or something similar. If they get this in the sub $200 or sub $100 price point with reasonable performance, it could be a real big deal.
- georgemcbay 13y agoThey should be able to hit the sub-$200 price point with one of their hardware partners, but that is hardly a differentiator these days now that the Moto G and the Lumia 520 are already there for Android and Windows Phone. I'm personally mildly excited for the idea of a "real" Linux phone, if it carries out the concept of being a phone that can be used in desktop/laptop docks (which various people have attempted without success on Android phones) to serve as your one very portable computer. Also it needs to have a competent nav/driving app. Basically the sole thing that keeps me on Android these days is Google Maps, and Google has even been testing me with that since the dreadful redesign they did with 7.x.x.
- voltagex_ 13y agoDon't the planned Ubuntu Touch phones (and the current Dev builds) run a modified Cyanogen kernel and a bionic-linked userland? (i.e. Android in Ubuntu-brown)? As far as I'm concerned, the next Linux phone is the Jolla.
- noahl 13y agoI believe the current builds run a (standard?) kernel, with a partial Android userland in an LXC container. I assume the point of this is to access some services that are implemented in Android. They were indeed running Android with Ubuntu in the container, until the container flip a few months ago.
- mdwrigh2 13y ago> I believe the current builds run a (standard?) kernel, with a partial Android userland in an LXC container. I assume the point of this is to access some services that are implemented in Android. Most mobile devices use an Android kernel since there's far more support for ARM SoCs, etc. with the Android kernel. Plus you can't really run an Android userland without running an Android kernel somewhere; they're intimately tied (see Binder).
- winslow 13y ago"Shuttleworth founded Canonical in 2004, back in the day when Linux on the desktop was, if not exactly a contender, at least a more widely discussed alternative to Windows PCs than it is today." I feel like Linux is a better contender now then it was in 2004. Or am I just in a "developers tech savvy world" and viewing linux as a viable contender now compared to the typical layman?
- r-s 13y agoThey are simply wrong on this.
- coldtea 13y agoNope, they are very right. In fact, it was even earlier too, e.g all around 1999/2004, when Linux was discussed to win the Desktop "any day now". There were even desktop targeted Linux distros backed by companies such as Corel, startups working on Linux desktop/office desktop stuff (like the Evolution email client or the Nautilus file browser), and skyrocketing Linux IPOs (VA Linux anyone). Plus several attempts at releasing pre-installed Linux PCs at places like Walmarts (that most people bought for cheap and converted to Windows).
- simbolit 13y agoYes, i remember that in 99 Linux was all the Linux was all the rage and doing something with Linux would shoot VC dollars toward you startup.
- winslow 13y agoTrue, RedHat had a massive IPO if I recall. Yeah VA linux IPO ouch - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LNUX.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LNUX.png Red Hat went public on August 11, 1999, achieving the eighth-biggest first-day gain in the history of Wall Street.[0] So maybe in a business sense Linux had a better standing versus windows back then compared to current day. [0] - http://www.redhat.com/about/corporate/timeline.html http://www.redhat.com/about/corporate/timeline.html
- 13y ago
- jolohaga 13y agoCan't wait for a BSD phone
- wcfields 13y agoThey already exist, there's a small fruit-named company that happens to make them.
- TkTech 13y agoAre you thinking of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bada ? I've never heard of a purpose-built BSD phone other than those (although there are plenty of unofficial ports)
- ac29 13y agoiOS is based on OS X/Darwin which is in turn based on BSD.
- Arelius 13y agoDarwin itself uses very little BSD code. It's built on Mach. OS X does however import much of the BSD userland, but I don't even know if much of that makes it into iOS. I think it'd be a fair guess to say that iOS likely contains very little BSD Unix code.
- mdwrigh2 13y agoFor what it's worth, Android also uses a lot of BSD userspace code (see toolbox).
- mekkz 13y agoWhoosh
- pianoben 13y agoI can't bring myself to get too excited; with so many details unknown, this smells strongly of the vapors. That said... I'm still holding out for the Ubuntu One, or something like it.
- fidotron 13y agoThis could really turn into a messy war versus the crippled but strangely compelling ChromeOS, which once croutoned becomes radically more useful. Something that doesn't have those restrictions out of the box is going to have a clear advantage. The problem from a dev point of view is just what security model for apps are they going to go with? I haven't seen any discussion about the exact details for how they plan on managing the app packaging, separation and permissions fun that exists on mobile today.
- bobbles 13y agoI really wonder whether this is going to be a partnership with Xiaomi... after Hugo Barra went there from Google and made this quote "“If I do my job right, in a few years, the world will be talking about Xiaomi in the same way that they talk about Google and Apple today.”" It appears the company will be gearing up for a big smartphone release in 2014, which would also fit into the timelines here. Xiaomi tends to be known for the high-performance low-price phones, but have always had poor software letting the devices down.
- seferphier 13y agothat would be awesome. Xiaomi sells their smartphone at cost and monetizes customers through add on services. I'm not quite sure what add on services they can add on Ubuntu.
- drill_sarge 13y agoI think/hope it will be some of those "chinese phones" which is quite interesting. Even the big ones of them like Huawei, make really good phones for good prices. Thats why I did not understand the hype about this Motorola thing for 200 bucks or something. Those china guys do this for quite a while and are now really pushing here (europe) in the market with really quality and competitive phones.
- arunoda 13y agoWaiting for it.
- nsxwolf 13y agoIs Ubuntu Touch OS the same thing as Ubuntu for Android? It's not clear on their site.
- Danieru 13y agoThey are different. Ubuntu for Android is for running a desktop Ubuntu from a phone plugged into a monitor. Meanwhile Ubuntu Touch is the stand-alone mobile OS.
- notnowlewis 13y agoTouch is both desktop and mobile. You have a full mobile OS, but plug it into a monitor and you have a full desktop OS.
- chipaca 13y agoNot yet, it isn't.
- notnowlewis 13y agoSorry yeah, that's what it'll be. The latest dev previews already identify as Trusy.
- afriday11 13y agoAny idea when it will be?
- kriro 13y agoGreat news, I think once you get one others will follow if it's good enough. I've been rooting for the Ubuntu Phone ever since they released that marketing video with the docking station. That really hit a nerve for me...gogo let me buy one in 2014 :) This also means I'll not get a Nexus/Nexus 4 for xmas now (solely for Ubuntu stuff, I own another smartphone) because I'll just wait a bit. I was somewhat set on tinkering but thankfully there's other tinkering projects.
- yaph 13y agoAlcatel seems to be open to experiment, they already have a FireFox OS phone out and they are based in France.
- tehwalrus 13y agoI await news of the handset specs excitedly - I'm going to be upgrading sometime next year and I hope Ubuntu will be a viable alternative.