10 ms·

Announcing Ubuntu and Android dual boot developer preview

146 points by platz 13y ago

pokesmot 13y ago
Only the Nexus 4 has been officially tested. I'm willing to give it a shot with my Nexus 5 in the morning.
bowmanb 13y ago
Has anyone tried this on a Moto X?
- 01Michael10 13y ago
  It does not look like the Moto X is supported in anyway right now --> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices#Working_with_phablet-flash https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices#Working_with_phablet-f...
  - bowmanb 13y ago
    Ah, thanks.
01Michael10 13y ago
Personally, I am waiting (hoping) for SailfishOS to be available to install on my Nexus 5 which is fully Linux based and has the ability to run Android apps. Dual-booting on a phone seems clunky to me... Being able to run VMs on Android would be another better alternative that is in the works (Android 5?).
- deanclatworthy 13y ago
  Have you actually tried it? We have one to play with at work and it's awfully unintuitive to the point where I gave up trying to learn the gestures. It's definitely not consumer friendly and requires a large effort even to be able to do basic tasks.
  - dscrd 13y ago
    Are you serious? It took me 10 minutes with my Jolla to get the basic hang of it and after a day of usage, I don't have to think about how to use the phone anymore. It's a lot cleaner UX paradigm than any of the competitors'.
nashashmi 13y ago
What's that saying? If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
wyager 13y ago
Still no Nexus 7 2013 (flo) support for Ubuntu :(
- georgemcbay 13y ago
  Yeah this is very unfortunate for me, personally. I have a Nexus 4 and a Nexus 7 (2013 model) and I'd love to try this out, but the Nexus 4 is my day-to-day phone and it would be terribly inconvenient to monkey with it so much just to try out an early Ubuntu release. The Nexus 7 is more of a toy and I'd be willing to try it out, but they still don't support the newer model of it.
tzury 13y ago
As a 7 years Ubuntu user, recent releases has been a turn down for me (Desktop releases are letting me down, servers are keeping their quality so far). The decisions, choices and the fact I need to work hard to tweak the system to get it into a sane level of satisfaction is disappointing. Hence, when Canonical announces devices releases, I wonder if it is not more of the same? I still don't have a desktop replacement, but would be happy to find one and try it on. What happened to do one thing well principle? Linux deserves an UI shell that will be head to head with OSx. And it seems lie since the unity fork, we are just going far off-the-track - and OSx wins.
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  Disagree. I prefer Unity to both OSX's DE and any other Linux DE (though Gnome shell is up there too). Also, seems Linux is more mainstream than ever - I see it popping up everywhere...
  - MisterBastahrd 13y ago
    Unity's dock is one of the most pathetic UI failures I've seen recently, and they don't seem to be wanting to fix that, because they're intent on having a desktop experience that is inferior to Windows 8, much less OS X. Desktops are not tablets are not phones. They each deserve to have GUIs that fit their strengths.
    - Mikeb85 13y ago
      > Desktops are not tablets are not phones. They each deserve to have GUIs that fit their strengths. So what tablet features are there? A plethora of keyboard shortcuts? How about the search-able Dash and HUD, both accessed with a few key strokes? Dunno about you, but these are huge wins on the desktop for me.
      - MisterBastahrd 13y ago
        https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/668415/comments/336 https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/668415/comments/336 Having a dash and a HUD have absolutely NOTHING to do with being able to place a dock where you need it. Maybe you don't have good spacial memory, or maybe I don't have adequate keyboard-app-launching-magical-fingers, but I seriously doubt that people are getting any more work done than I do with a dock on the bottom of the screen.
ghoul2 13y ago
Is there a way to pre-download everything downloaded by the Dual boot installer app? My connection is too unreliable for a large direct-app download like this to ever work.
jbk 13y ago
Ah, I wish I could port VLC for Ubuntu Phone safely... But after numerous questions, several mails and IRL contact at tradeshows and conference, I still don't know if I can access the audio output (Pulse) and the video output (either Xv or an OpenGL context). Their developer website is about HTML5, QML and HTML5 Platform access. If you look closely, you get libcanberra or gstreamer options... But I need lower access... How do I do that?
- oelmekki 13y ago
  When I checked last time, you could ssh to the device and basically use apt-get like on any debian like system. Not sure if anything is planned to be implemented to actually launch commands, but some people have already found a way to do it using C++ plugins [1]. The last thing to check would be if vlc is able to use the hardware :) [1] http://askubuntu.com/questions/288494/run-system-commands-from-qml-app http://askubuntu.com/questions/288494/run-system-commands-fr...
  - jbk 13y ago
    Of course, but that does not guarantee that the requested library/API will be present on the final phone or that you will be allowed to go on the market. So, if we cannot access (or are forbidden access to) alsa/pulse, OpenGL or OMX, in the final device, this would be just useless work...
    - oelmekki 13y ago
      Woops, sorry, didn't realize you actually were a vlc developer. I read that like you just wanted to run it on your own device.
      - jbk 13y ago
        Don't worry, my post was not that clear. I am one of the main VLC dev and I've been porting or helping to port on most mobile OSes...
- salient 13y ago
oelmekki 13y ago
Can anybody confirm the browser is usable ? I've tried it a few months ago on my nexus 7, while it was still in alpha, and it was not usable even on very basic tasks. I can understand that most apps and features were mocks (that was an alpha after all), but the browser kept on clicking 10 or 15 px under where I actually clicked (and I suspect it was a qtwebkit problem from qt5, so that's why I feel concerned : it may not be fixable directly by ubuntu). Anyway, I'm glad to see this happen - that's the door for opensource innovations in the field of mobile. Having a true linux on my mobiles is something I really want. I also hope they will make the ubuntu sdk portable. As much as I would love to use and contribute to a mobile ubuntu, I don't want it on my desktop and laptop (and this kind of limitation is the very reason why I didn't ever care to look at ios development).
- dharma1 13y ago
  the browser is switching from webkit to blink soon, and will continue to be improved a lot
- daker 13y ago
  The browser is still WIP, a lot of pieces are still missing(Content Picker, Download manager, Private browsing) they will be integrated in the next months, also the browser will switch to Oxide(based on Chromium Content API).
swetland 13y ago
I'll have to give this a look sometime (though I'll likely hold out until they have it stable on Nexus 7). Adding a 540MB swap file is pretty crazy though. I'd rather not have stuff swapping to the (relatively slow and serialized) eMMC flash. They could probably look into having the recovery partition kexec their kernel to chain-load it, rather than replace it entirely. The kernel source is readily available, as are init and the recovery/updater userspace tools. I still think the holy grail here is to just run a stock "classic" Linux userland under Android -- park it in a container, do an X11/Mir/Wayland/whatever port against the SurfaceFlinger, and make Linux native apps first class citizens running alongside everything else. No need for dual-booting or other awkward shuffling about. It'd take some work, but it's entirely doable.
wslh 13y ago
Instead of dual booting I prefer some kind of virtualization support to run the operating systems side by side. I don't dual boot if I want to run Linux and Windows. Less in a mobile phone!
Tepix 13y ago
This looks promising, I hope it will be tested on a Galaxy Nexus soon.
maga 13y ago
I have a (probably) silly question: does node.js and other x86 compatible software run on Ubuntu on ARM-based phones/tables? I do not expect them to do so, but who knows. node.js and IntelliJ IDEA is probably the only things that keep me on my PC, otherewise I would replace everything with one android phone.
- nawitus 13y ago
  Did you try Googling? :) http://masashi-k.blogspot.fi/2013/08/nodejs-on-android.html http://masashi-k.blogspot.fi/2013/08/nodejs-on-android.html
  - maga 13y ago
    Wow, never knew about it (Debian Kit). Thank you! http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11894384/any-web-java-ides-for-the-arm-architecture-on-linux http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11894384/any-web-java-ide... - even Intellij IDEA could be persuaded to run on Android as it turns out.
ausjke 13y ago
I don't know why I need dual-boot them, plus I am not comfortable to run ubuntu on my small screen devices, though I loved it when I used it for linux development env(and LTS server) on PCs. Now I'm switching back to Debian, first server, then desktop, somehow I think Ubuntu is stretching too thin and lost its focus, you can't do everything at the same time, not to mention ubuntu is still a pretty small company.
archivator 13y ago
Here's a way of triple-booting Android, Firefox OS and Ubuntu on a Nexus 4: http://www.droidviews.com/how-to-triple-boot-nexus-4-on-android-firefox-os-ubuntu-touch/ http://www.droidviews.com/how-to-triple-boot-nexus-4-on-andr... It relies on a piece of kernel infrastructure called kexec-hardboot which to me sounds like black magic - it's like normal kexec but also resets all the peripherals so that they can be reinit by the new kernel. Magic.

146 points by platz 13y ago

pokesmot 13y ago

Only the Nexus 4 has been officially tested. I'm willing to give it a shot with my Nexus 5 in the morning.

bowmanb 13y ago

Has anyone tried this on a Moto X?

01Michael10 13y ago
It does not look like the Moto X is supported in anyway right now --> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices#Working_with_phablet-flash https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices#Working_with_phablet-f...
- bowmanb 13y ago
  Ah, thanks.

01Michael10 13y ago

Personally, I am waiting (hoping) for SailfishOS to be available to install on my Nexus 5 which is fully Linux based and has the ability to run Android apps. Dual-booting on a phone seems clunky to me... Being able to run VMs on Android would be another better alternative that is in the works (Android 5?).

deanclatworthy 13y ago
Have you actually tried it? We have one to play with at work and it's awfully unintuitive to the point where I gave up trying to learn the gestures. It's definitely not consumer friendly and requires a large effort even to be able to do basic tasks.
- dscrd 13y ago
  Are you serious? It took me 10 minutes with my Jolla to get the basic hang of it and after a day of usage, I don't have to think about how to use the phone anymore. It's a lot cleaner UX paradigm than any of the competitors'.

nashashmi 13y ago

What's that saying? If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

wyager 13y ago

Still no Nexus 7 2013 (flo) support for Ubuntu :(

georgemcbay 13y ago
Yeah this is very unfortunate for me, personally. I have a Nexus 4 and a Nexus 7 (2013 model) and I'd love to try this out, but the Nexus 4 is my day-to-day phone and it would be terribly inconvenient to monkey with it so much just to try out an early Ubuntu release. The Nexus 7 is more of a toy and I'd be willing to try it out, but they still don't support the newer model of it.

tzury 13y ago

As a 7 years Ubuntu user, recent releases has been a turn down for me (Desktop releases are letting me down, servers are keeping their quality so far). The decisions, choices and the fact I need to work hard to tweak the system to get it into a sane level of satisfaction is disappointing. Hence, when Canonical announces devices releases, I wonder if it is not more of the same? I still don't have a desktop replacement, but would be happy to find one and try it on. What happened to do one thing well principle? Linux deserves an UI shell that will be head to head with OSx. And it seems lie since the unity fork, we are just going far off-the-track - and OSx wins.

Mikeb85 13y ago
Disagree. I prefer Unity to both OSX's DE and any other Linux DE (though Gnome shell is up there too). Also, seems Linux is more mainstream than ever - I see it popping up everywhere...
- MisterBastahrd 13y ago
  Unity's dock is one of the most pathetic UI failures I've seen recently, and they don't seem to be wanting to fix that, because they're intent on having a desktop experience that is inferior to Windows 8, much less OS X. Desktops are not tablets are not phones. They each deserve to have GUIs that fit their strengths.
  - Mikeb85 13y ago
    > Desktops are not tablets are not phones. They each deserve to have GUIs that fit their strengths. So what tablet features are there? A plethora of keyboard shortcuts? How about the search-able Dash and HUD, both accessed with a few key strokes? Dunno about you, but these are huge wins on the desktop for me.
    - MisterBastahrd 13y ago
      https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/668415/comments/336 https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/668415/comments/336 Having a dash and a HUD have absolutely NOTHING to do with being able to place a dock where you need it. Maybe you don't have good spacial memory, or maybe I don't have adequate keyboard-app-launching-magical-fingers, but I seriously doubt that people are getting any more work done than I do with a dock on the bottom of the screen.

ghoul2 13y ago

Is there a way to pre-download everything downloaded by the Dual boot installer app? My connection is too unreliable for a large direct-app download like this to ever work.

jbk 13y ago

Ah, I wish I could port VLC for Ubuntu Phone safely... But after numerous questions, several mails and IRL contact at tradeshows and conference, I still don't know if I can access the audio output (Pulse) and the video output (either Xv or an OpenGL context). Their developer website is about HTML5, QML and HTML5 Platform access. If you look closely, you get libcanberra or gstreamer options... But I need lower access... How do I do that?

oelmekki 13y ago
When I checked last time, you could ssh to the device and basically use apt-get like on any debian like system. Not sure if anything is planned to be implemented to actually launch commands, but some people have already found a way to do it using C++ plugins [1]. The last thing to check would be if vlc is able to use the hardware :) [1] http://askubuntu.com/questions/288494/run-system-commands-from-qml-app http://askubuntu.com/questions/288494/run-system-commands-fr...
- jbk 13y ago
  Of course, but that does not guarantee that the requested library/API will be present on the final phone or that you will be allowed to go on the market. So, if we cannot access (or are forbidden access to) alsa/pulse, OpenGL or OMX, in the final device, this would be just useless work...
  - oelmekki 13y ago
    Woops, sorry, didn't realize you actually were a vlc developer. I read that like you just wanted to run it on your own device.
    - jbk 13y ago
      Don't worry, my post was not that clear. I am one of the main VLC dev and I've been porting or helping to port on most mobile OSes...
salient 13y ago

oelmekki 13y ago

Can anybody confirm the browser is usable ? I've tried it a few months ago on my nexus 7, while it was still in alpha, and it was not usable even on very basic tasks. I can understand that most apps and features were mocks (that was an alpha after all), but the browser kept on clicking 10 or 15 px under where I actually clicked (and I suspect it was a qtwebkit problem from qt5, so that's why I feel concerned : it may not be fixable directly by ubuntu). Anyway, I'm glad to see this happen - that's the door for opensource innovations in the field of mobile. Having a true linux on my mobiles is something I really want. I also hope they will make the ubuntu sdk portable. As much as I would love to use and contribute to a mobile ubuntu, I don't want it on my desktop and laptop (and this kind of limitation is the very reason why I didn't ever care to look at ios development).

dharma1 13y ago
the browser is switching from webkit to blink soon, and will continue to be improved a lot
daker 13y ago
The browser is still WIP, a lot of pieces are still missing(Content Picker, Download manager, Private browsing) they will be integrated in the next months, also the browser will switch to Oxide(based on Chromium Content API).

swetland 13y ago

I'll have to give this a look sometime (though I'll likely hold out until they have it stable on Nexus 7). Adding a 540MB swap file is pretty crazy though. I'd rather not have stuff swapping to the (relatively slow and serialized) eMMC flash. They could probably look into having the recovery partition kexec their kernel to chain-load it, rather than replace it entirely. The kernel source is readily available, as are init and the recovery/updater userspace tools. I still think the holy grail here is to just run a stock "classic" Linux userland under Android -- park it in a container, do an X11/Mir/Wayland/whatever port against the SurfaceFlinger, and make Linux native apps first class citizens running alongside everything else. No need for dual-booting or other awkward shuffling about. It'd take some work, but it's entirely doable.

wslh 13y ago

Instead of dual booting I prefer some kind of virtualization support to run the operating systems side by side. I don't dual boot if I want to run Linux and Windows. Less in a mobile phone!

Tepix 13y ago

This looks promising, I hope it will be tested on a Galaxy Nexus soon.

maga 13y ago

I have a (probably) silly question: does node.js and other x86 compatible software run on Ubuntu on ARM-based phones/tables? I do not expect them to do so, but who knows. node.js and IntelliJ IDEA is probably the only things that keep me on my PC, otherewise I would replace everything with one android phone.

nawitus 13y ago
Did you try Googling? :) http://masashi-k.blogspot.fi/2013/08/nodejs-on-android.html http://masashi-k.blogspot.fi/2013/08/nodejs-on-android.html
- maga 13y ago
  Wow, never knew about it (Debian Kit). Thank you! http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11894384/any-web-java-ides-for-the-arm-architecture-on-linux http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11894384/any-web-java-ide... - even Intellij IDEA could be persuaded to run on Android as it turns out.

ausjke 13y ago

I don't know why I need dual-boot them, plus I am not comfortable to run ubuntu on my small screen devices, though I loved it when I used it for linux development env(and LTS server) on PCs. Now I'm switching back to Debian, first server, then desktop, somehow I think Ubuntu is stretching too thin and lost its focus, you can't do everything at the same time, not to mention ubuntu is still a pretty small company.

archivator 13y ago

Here's a way of triple-booting Android, Firefox OS and Ubuntu on a Nexus 4: http://www.droidviews.com/how-to-triple-boot-nexus-4-on-android-firefox-os-ubuntu-touch/ http://www.droidviews.com/how-to-triple-boot-nexus-4-on-andr... It relies on a piece of kernel infrastructure called kexec-hardboot which to me sounds like black magic - it's like normal kexec but also resets all the peripherals so that they can be reinit by the new kernel. Magic.