Wow.. I see where Mr. Shuttleworth is coming from.
I'd like to state that I'm a happy Ubuntu user, and have been using Unity for the past few years and have generally found it to be a good ui for the desktop. I know many many others fall in the same bucket.
Wow. This is a real shock, it wouldn't be out of place for April 1st.
This is good news for linux on the desktop. Not that diversity isn't good, but Unity has been stale for years while Gnome has been progressing, but suffering from the fragmentation that Canonical caused.
Hopefully this will result in more contributions upstream, which will benefit all linux distributions. This was always the main complaint with Canonical.
I can't tell you how happy I am to see convergence dying. My desktop is not just a big phone and people put out some atrocious user interfaces in the name of "convergence".
WRT to unity, at least it's improved. Ubuntu w/ unity currently has the best multi-monitor multi-dpi user experience I've seen on linux. I have a retina laptop with 2 external displays and ubuntu unity is the only thing that just works out of the box.
> My desktop is not just a big phone and people put out some atrocious user interfaces in the name of "convergence".
I agree. Sadly, GNOME's huge controls also seem to be optimised for touch screens. There are several semi-maintained hacks to reduce the padding throughout the DE:
Font rendering is entirely up to how you configure it. Install GNOME Tweak Tool and go to Fonts. Keep in mind that different settings will look better on different monitors. But try setting Hinting to Slight and Antialiasing to RGBA. After a reboot the settings will take effect.
I am on GNOME 3.22 and the title bars are still crazy - look at the Night Light screenshot for example.
Most GNOME apps look great because they titlebar is actually a toolbar, but I spend most of my time in portable third-party apps which have large, empty titlebars. This is the one thing I immediately envy when I see a Unity screenshot.
But it's not convergence. It's making the look and feel, and some APIs similar enough someone could target multiple machines.
I want convergence. Real bloody convergence. I want to hook my laptop's /dev and /sys , port applications over to my phone, continue using them, until I get to work, and then expand them back out there. And all the while, they would never quit, halt, freeze, or die.
Or I want to be able to collaborate on a program, send it to a buddy, have them work on it, and then get it back.
Does that mean they're going to make it easy not to have the taskbar on the side - or god forbid, even put it at the bottom by default? I remember that "convergence" with mobile was the primary reason why the Ubuntu UI was designed the way it was and why the taskbar was put on the side.
Yes, I realize a lot of Ubuntu users have already gotten used to it, and some may even prefer it, but I'm sure the majority of new users would feel confused and turned off by it. I would argue Ubuntu has to focus more on gaining Windows users than on keeping the hardcore Linux users.
To me as a Firefox-and-terminals user, the main difference between the two is that Unity has a fugly taskbar always on the left of my screen where I don't want it, and windows have their menu somewhere unrelated to the window (at the top of the screen). If Gnome doesn't have either, great!
> We will shift our default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
Legitimately never thought I'd ever see this. Possibly the best thing that could happen for desktop Linux in this age.
Edit: and of course this would mean Ubuntu/Canonical and Fedora/RedHat basing their desktop OS's on the same platform, which can only mean easier development of desktop software and services.
I'm a bit torn. I like the design of Unity more than I do that of Gnome, but I think that less fragmentation is extremely desirable.
Ultimately, I think it's a good, necessary move. Linux on the desktop will only happen when the environment is at least as uniform as that of Windows—from the perspective of application developers, at least.
honestly I agree there, but I'm an i3 fanatic, gnome is much better, KDE plasma has a beautiful interface, but being able to do everything via hotkeys, and tile windows is just an amazing thing once you do it for a bit.
I don't think either screenshot looks particularly nice. However, this is mostly due the ugly default background and color scheme (its an ubuntu insider joke and its the first thing people change).
I personally care only about function but even if you are form-above-function guy Unity gives you many tools to make it look good:
That's a 6 year old screenshot. They've made incremental improvements since... but yes, I've grown to appreciate it. The most annoying part of unity7's interface is its alt-tab function: It toggles between apps, not windows, and that's annoying.
That's the same behaviour as OSX. At first I also hated this behaviour, coming form the Linux/Window environment. But after using it in conjunction with ALT+` (to cycle through app's Windows) I actually find it better than the standard Windows behaviour.
My biggest issue with the macOS way is that there are edge causes when using Spaces. The biggest being "stand-alone" Chrome apps like Signal Desktop are still tied to Chrome, even though they get their own icon and a separate place on the Dock. CMD-Tab'ing to Signal Desktop might just send me to a Chrome window. Ugh.
Alt+` (or whatever key is above tab, if you have non-US keyboard) toggles between windows of the same app. I don't know if there is key combination to toggle between all windows, though.
It looks acceptable, but more important than how it looks is how it works. Ubuntu has by far the most usable desktop, in the default configuration, of any linux variant. UI isn't just about the shade of purple you choose.
UNIX was never very good, though. Even at its inception it was a stripped down OS for the PDP-11 because they could not run Multics. C was a stripped down version of BCPL that didn't even have floating point numbers. Looking to the "UNIX way" as the gold standard sets the bar very low.
As a web dev/devops guy, most of my interaction with both is to set up service files. Switching was relatively easy and I found systemd servics files to be sensible and easy to write. And now I don't have to maintain separate Debian/Ubuntu variants.
So from my purely practical non-sysadmin perspective - a positive change.
Looking at the 20 years before systemd, we apparently couldn't. There were a lot of init systems that were better than sysvinit, but only systemd played the politics part of init system adoption correctly.
Well, I agree if by "played the politics" you mean "were willing to force it on users". The other alternatives to the init system were rejected because, in general, init was good enough. Not perfect - but not worth the turmoil, fragmentation, and re-learning required to change it. Basically, those who control popular distributions are able to ignore the masses who use those distributions. Open source has gotten lost.
And that's why people are so against systemd. It's not a better system. Sure, it has some parts that are better, but it, as a whole, is worse. They were just able to play the politics game. Not sure why people always tout that as a positive.
I might be a small minority, but I _like_ Unity 7. I have never used Unity 8, and I thought the Ubuntu phone was misspent effort, but wow. Now I have to figure out if there is a way to style Gnome to look like Unity 7.
I wonder what this means for Mir vs Wayland as well.
Well, Canonical was heavily involved with Mir because of Unity, right? So, with this change, I guess we can expect a Wayland related news in the following weeks/months.
BTW, I would go even further: will they still invest in the Snap package or they will do the same and go to a community oriented package system?
Okay, but from what I've seen Snaps are better (from the perspective of flexibility and simplicity) than Flatpak, isn't this a case where it'd be better for GNOME to adapt rather than vice versa?
In distros yes, but in market snappy has been well received
https://partners.ubuntu.com/programmes/iot . For me the next move of which package manager will be adopted is gonna be based on companies which are gonna develop on it and get support. Only when Red Hat enters the game, you'll see a big adoption of snaps. For now, Canonical is ahead in this game.
If they are going to integrate gnome with snaps and snaps having an actual market, I doubt flatpak can compete against them. BUT, it would be easier for Canonical if they do something with their CAL, that'd be the real game changer.
There is nothing to strip out. The GNOME Software app (an app store) has an optional Flatpak plugin but except for that, nothing in GNOME depends on Flatpak.
Going back to GNOME implies going with Wayland, as Wayland is built-in to GNOME. Wayland isn't like X11, you can't just run the desktop on a different display server.
Same here. I love the keyboard friendliness out of the box, and especially how sparingly it uses vertical space.
I like gnome3 visually, but some design choices by the gnome team I don't understand. While unity uses a global menu, which displays the menu items in several columns, The gnome global menu has 1 column, with for most apps a single entry (quit).
Hopefully this means that Wayland is now the unified future for the Linux desktop.
I don't think it would be too hard for Canonical to create some installed by default extensions and themes to make Unity users feel more at home in Gnome. The global menu is the only thing I can think of that would maybe be a little too tricky to be worth the effort.
I ended up dropping desktop Linux entirely last year, but Unity was the only thing that I thought wasn't matched by any other desktop operating system.
Let me say that the only thing I am sad about is Unity 8. I genuinely liked Unity and it's easy to use, not-too-resource-hungry interface. I definitely do not like GNOME as much. It lacks the cohesion that Unity has (I understand why, but that doesn't negate the point).
I will be happy to see if the best parts of Unity make it back to GNOME - GNOME just feels clunky right now. But I will continue using Ubuntu regardless.
what? unity? has it changed so much in the last 2 years that its defining features have changed from being difficult to use, resource-hungry, to the opposite of that?
I get that they're moving away from convergence, but what does this ultimately mean for Ubuntu as a mobile OS? In the grand scheme of things, what does this mean for users who want a completely FOSS stack for their phone (let's ignore the baseband for now)?
As far as I can tell, this just means that your only options are Android or iOS. It's not easy to get a Jolla/SailfishOS phone that will work on most Canadian or USA networks, and with this announcement it seems that Ubuntu phones won't be around for much longer. This coupled with the death of Firefox OS means that there's really not much of a choice. Certainly you can run AOSP with no Google Apps, but not having Google Play Services tends to cause more and more problems, or at the very least means your phone is less and less capable as time goes on.
I guess in general we can all celebrate that Ubuntu is moving to GNOME / Wayland and is ditching convergence, but I think the fact that there's no healthy alternative to iOS / Android is quite sad. If Canonical is exiting the mobile space to work on other things, what other alternatives do users have?
This is my worry. The technical challenge of maintaining a usable mobile OS seems too high for companies like Canonical and Mozilla to have a chance, since getting hardware produced, marketed and into people's hands is a gargantuan task, and supporting Android handset installs is fighting a losing battle.
Having said that, I am not sure why? Ubuntu Phone seems largely functional on a few devices, but installing it and using it remains a pain.
Jep, I don't understand it. It is completely understandable to drop a product that is not working on the market. It is less understandable to drop a product that never really was on the market, after the big initial investment is already done. Same for FF, same for WebOS: How can you draw the conclusion that something is not working on the market if you never tried making it available to customers, on regular hardware?
> you never tried making it available to customers, on regular hardware?
I'm pretty sure they tried very hard indeed. They just didn't succeed.
I say this as a long-time user of Ubuntu Touch. I don't love it, it is not without its flaws. It's just the best mobile OS I've found, primarily because it doesn't nag you with privacy-invasion at every turn. I'll miss it when it's gone.
> I'm pretty sure they tried very hard indeed. They just didn't succeed.
I don't know about this. The last phone they released was the Meizu Pro 5, which had an Android variant (sold in stores) and an Ubuntu variant (sold online only, and you had to dig for it if you didn't get redirected from ubuntu.com). The hardware itself for the phone wasn't awful by any means, but buying one was hard enough because the manufacturer only sold out of Asia.
Further, the Meizu Pro 5 didn't work on most networks in Canada and the United States. Why would I buy a phone that doesn't support 3G/4G? I'd _love_ to support Canonical by purchasing an Ubuntu touch device, but you could hardly say that they tried. Their handsets were few and far between, and they locked out a large portion of the market because of the phone's baseband frequencies.
I think that they could have succeeded, at least in the small, had they actually released a device that power users could use comfortably.
I'd suggest the best remaining option for a FOSS-driven phone (now that Canonical have dropped the ball) is Tizen. It's got the backing of a large phone manufacturer (Samsung) and the Linux Foundation, and seems to be actively developed. It'll probably end up being used on low-end devices at first, but is likely to be more open than the two leading platforms, so hopefully they get some traction amongst tech community.
It's also worth pointing out that Samsung has been investing in Servo, and that Tizen has good support for HTML5 apps, so hopefully we can see mobile web apps increase in popularity to get us away from the walled garden approach.
I don't see many other options emerging. It's possible that a community-led effort to finish work on Unity 8 (and possibly port it to Wayland) may emerge, but that would only solve the phone UI issue, the main problem holding back open-source phones is likely to be closed bootloaders and lack of drivers. By supporting Tizen we can get Samsung to handle the low level stuff.
Doesn't really help that there's a source website if there's not a sane process for actually submitting PRs and merging patches, and apparently there isn't one.
"This document provides information about how to contribute code to Tizen, including the following:
* Cloning over SSH
* Submit a patch to the Gerrit
* Review a patch on the Gerrit
* Submit a package to the build system
* Review and accept a package on the build server (for release engineer only)
For more information about the whole work process, please refer to Tizen Development Working Mechanism."
Last two weeks I've estimating Tizen, Ubuntu or Sailfish worth port an app. Like sample apps, build scripts debugging, etc. Although Tizen has large corp support, Ubuntu and Sailfish look more developer friendly. CMake, QT , C++.
C# look like a dead end, though much better than first WinPhone with "SilverLight." If you have written c/ or c++ engine, you need just a good bridge to OS UI language. Well, also platform + tools that work well on each Unix/Linux.
Just to mention I used to like MS technologies.
Least problems I had with ASP 2 / AJAX web app which works for nine years without significant problems.
How is Tizen different then Android from a privacy/OS perspective?
What will stop Samsung from closing it off when it gets too popular? (And, BTW, it's not like Samsung hardware is the pinnacle of OS design. Exynos is notorious for being hard to make custom ROMs)
It's developed with the support of the Linux Foundation, with the code released under open source licences. There are some parts of the design that are licenced by Samsung (e.g the SDK), but overall it looks pretty open to me.
>"it's not a real platform"
It has shipped in multiple devices, including every TV Samsung have sold since 2015:
>"It's a toy Samsung uses to threaten Google with."
It's a little more than that. At the moment it's not got much traction on phones, but I still maintain it's the best option for an open-source mobile OS that we've got left now that Ubuntu are out of the picture. If you can think of a better alternative that currently exists, by all means feel free to share it.
> It's developed with the support of the Linux Foundation, with the code released under open source licences. There are some parts of the design that are licenced by Samsung (e.g the SDK), but overall it looks pretty open to me.
Some core components are not (or were not) free software. And the license for the SDK gives Samsung the rights to revoke forbid specific users from using it.
>"How can anyone invest time developing for them?"
What alternative do you suggest? I suggested they were the best remaining option for an open-source mobile OS now that Ubuntu were dropping out of the race. What other options are there? Sailfish? Anything else?
Oh, you make it sound so simple. A platform is an alternative to dominating ecosystems if it exists at all. It having apps, locking you into Microsfot, or even existing 5+ years down the road doesn't matter? If that's true, there should be all kinds of people on all kinds of smartphone platforms right now instead of most of them on two.
Meanwhile, Tizen is available for people wanting whatever their changing offering is. I guess just budget regular rewrites in a new language/platform you had to learn into your FOSS app on Tizen with either few contributors or the more common zero. That's some great ROI.
That's even worse than the already-terrible market for FOSS phones. You get something that will have Linux or some standard API but probably disappear eventually. Then add the aggravation of having to change your stack constantly. Yeah, I'd pass on it unless it stabilizes into a standard stack. Preferably not dependent on Microsoft or Oracle tech either to reduce patent/copyright risk a bit.
What about tomorrow's? Copyright's, patents, and software last a long time. Better to know you aren't dependent on a malicious party who can turn against you any time.
In today's market, I think Microsoft would rather give a competitor a royalty free permanent license to all their patents than let Google continue to just own the industry. Mobile is only one of the many markets they compete in, but Google is using their mobile dominance to help lead and push their expansion elsewhere. Microsoft needs a new mobile OS option out there, even if it isn't theirs.
Microsoft makes several hundred million to billion on Android royalties alone. They did that with either actual lawsuits or the threat of them. I don't remember what it was in the start but do know they suck a fortune out of Android vendors (esp Samsung) while they did everything they could to put it out of business with Windows Phone. Nothing contributed, but billions taken via patent claims.
Exactly. There absolutely is an open source Android experience (at the level of the applications and API -- drivers are a different story) for those who want it. It really doesn't suck, and it's a clean migration from the commercial environments (which is to say, you don't really need F-Droid as almost all this stuff is in the Play Store already).
Open source on Android is in pretty good shape on the whole, which is one of the big reasons why Unity never really caught on except among the tiny fraction of developers who were genuinely into Linux desktop application development specifically.
I know. The point was that if you are an Android user and want to try out "open source app X", there's no need to install an open ROM or F-Droid. Just grab the app from the existing app store. The path between "normal users" and "pure free software" ones is smooth and easy. It's not like the desktop where you need to convince people to install Ubunto or Arch instead of Windows or macOS.
As an UM user: I completely disagree. I think it's got a solid foundation, but they should have never marked it as production ready. If they had baked it a bit more, it could have been.
What I don't understand is Shuttleworth basically said "the market has spoken, and does not want an Ubuntu phone." But I checked their website a few times a year to see if I could buy an Ubuntu phone and always saw a message about "Coming soon" or "sold out". How was the market supposed to get their hands on Ubuntu phone?
Agreed. Additionally, the phone is far from production ready. It's a great start, but clearly still in the beta phase. I find it insincere to put a couple of beta phones out, then complain that nobody is buying them.
I think he means that they were not able to sell the idea to device vendors sufficiently. The 'market' he refers to are the device vendors, not the end users.
If you make a mobile operating system but you don't make devices, you need to be able to convince device vendors to sell the product for you to end users. They didn't succeed in that.
>I think he means that they were not able to sell the idea to device vendors sufficiently.
And the implication from that is that if vendors aren't looking to make a ubuntu phone, it's because their customers aren't asking for a ubuntu phone. Regardless of how many layers there are between Canonical and the end user, there weren't a lot of end-users asking for a Ubuntu phone.
This is probably why they tried the Edge campaign 4 years ago. They weren't getting anywhere with vendors then, and weren't now, so they eventually had to give up.
It should be a bit concerning how uncompetitive the market is that you really cannot even try to launch a mobile OS of your own as a product, since you are beholden to telecom operators and handset manufacturers on both ends, all of whom have government granted monopolies or protection in their own industries to prevent competition.
I agree that it sucks there is so little competition in the mobile OS space, but I don't think government involvement is enough to explain this situation.
Take Microsoft - it became a handset manufacturer and is still struggling to make Windows Phone a winner.
That is exactly why government involvement is such an issue. Microsoft could throw around insane sums of money with its mobile aspirations - and has - while at the same time most users of it say it was the best of the major offerings, they had no success.
That was because Microsoft could have all the money in the world, but couldn't operate a cell network out of thin air that would promote their devices. They also had limited access to hardware - they had to outright buy Nokia to even get minor device manufacturer access, and even then few companies ever offered Windows Phone devices despite Microsoft throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at it.
When Microsoft cannot make inroads - a company that outright buys entire business sectors to own competition - its disastrous.
I'm in the same boat. I backed the original Ubuntu Edge indiegogo campaign, but it never happened. And I would check the site periodically to see if there was a phone that shipped/worked in the States (and there never was) or if it was running on anything newer than a Nexus 5.
FirefoxOS phones were pretty much the same story. Limited hardware that wasn't available in the US market.
With both, it may not have been a lack of global interest; but a lack of interest in the limited markets they chose to release in.
The shotgun approach that both FirefoxOS and Ubuntu Phone took saddens me - I think they could have done very well had they focused on acquiring power/niche users instead of trying to be a mass-market consumer product from the get-go.
When the iPhone first launched, it wasn't adopted by everyone. I remember when, in ~2009, I and a few friends were the only ones I knew who had an iPhone. It wasn't until around 2011 that pretty much everyone I knew had a smartphone.
The basic business lesson is that you have to "cross the chasm" from early adopters to mainstream users - you can't just start selling a new product to everyone and expect to succeed without massive resources, and even then your product can still struggle (see: Apple Watch). Really, the only way to pull it off is to establish a niche market before targeting the general market. This book [1] does a great job of explaining the process - Mozilla and Canonical execs would do well to read it!
Sadly, many startups don't seem to have very good business sense and long-term thinking. "If we're not the iPhone yesterday, then we can't compete and we might as well 'pivot' and 'focus' on our 'core offerings'" - not true! There is a market for a user-respecting, fully (or even mostly!) FLOSS smartphone, but my parents certainly aren't going to buy one - they just got their first iPhone last year after all - so sell to me and people like me, not them. Then, maybe in 6-8 years, once the platform has matured and the FLOSS benefits become obvious, you'll start to break into the general market and start to challenge iOS and Android. But I don't think most companies are down for that; sadly, most are just focused on next quarter's profits instead of building something lasting.
Building something lasting takes resources. Canonical simply had no chance. Even Microsoft, despite their aquisition of Nokia, their marketing budget, their massive dev resources, is failing on mobile. They even have their own convergence feature and it's not enough to attrack customers.
Microsoft made a mobile OS that didn't offer a compelling enough alternative to either iOS or Android.
iOS = Locked in ecosystem
Windows Phone = Locked in ecosystem
Android = Alternative to iOS
Windows = Alternative to iOS
On a technical level, Windows Phone devices performed around the same as iOS devices (fantastic), but lacked mainstream apps (the same problem as Blackberry) but without the backwards compatibility with Android apps.
Basically, Windows Phone was doomed to be the "not android, and not iOS" smartphone despite the great technical aspects of the OS.
Actually by 8.1 people that don't have the bugdet to buy iPhones and disliked Android where buying Windows Phones, up to the point they almost managed 10% world wide.
But then came the Windows Phone 10 reboot, with the promise that all 8.1 devices would get an WP 10 update, promise that they eventually broke by allowing only premium devices to get it.
So no, WP wasn't doomed if Microsoft managed to keep the roadmap steady, instead of rebooting left and right.
On the other hand, they seem to be having some luck with hybrid laptops/tablets. Something that most Android devices still do very poorly.
Not just that but they did it multiple times - 6.5, 7, 8, 10 - all pretty much incompatible from both a handset and even a developer's perspective. Imagine Apple doing that and having their first four iOS iterations all going in different directions every time, they'd also br in Microsoft's position now. They seem to have learned now and I could still see them turn around.
If, "Canonical simply had no chance", then does that mean we're stuck with iOS and Android period? And no other mobile OS has a shot? If you believe that, then you're certainly entitled to your opinion, but I feel like that's not the type of hacker mindset that moves the world forward.
I'm optimistic because I've never seen one of these 3rd option OSes take the approach mentioned in the Crossing the Chasm book linked in my earlier post - they all went straight to mass market vs. targeting a niche, dominating, and then using that beachhead to expand into other markets. If someone makes a legit or mostly-legit FLOSS mobile device, targets it at the appropriate audience, and slowly and patiently nurtures an ecosystem, I think a 3rd option can succeed.
I heard the same thing about desktop Linux for years. 200 distros later, guess what, Windows is still king and Apple is still selling boatloads of pricey machines.
I agree that Linux on the desktop is not a mass market consumer product in 2017, but are you saying that we should just accept that and move on? What about innovative disruption and building the future we want?
I won't tell you what you should or shouldn't do. I will, however, tell you that Apple and Google won the mobile OS game and both of them are working on the next big thing: AI.
Blackberry "won" the mobile OS game in the early 2000's, but look what happened to them: Apple came along with a better product and now Blackberry is pretty much a joke looking for a punchline.
No market is ever truly "won" - they are all susceptible to disruption, no matter what monopolies or duopolies may exist. Not saying said disruption is easy, but it is always possible, and personally I think it is something worth pushing for vs. settling for the status quo, esp. when said status quo is either closed (iOS) or not very user-respecting (stock Android w/Google services).
Again, you're talking like the Linux fanboys I've been hearing for years: "Vista is total crap, it's only a matter of time before Linux takes over", "Windows 8 is a disaster, this is the year of Linux on the desktop!", "Windows 10 is a privacy nightmare! It's only a matter of time before people wake up and switch to Linux", "Steam on Linux? Game Over Microsoft! loll", etc...
Now, you are absolutely right that no market is won forever. Like you said, Blackberry was once king of the hill and was toppled by Apple. But again, like you said, Apple had a better product (and the resources to bring it to market).
So now, the question is: what's the next thing? The next "winner"? Where's the better product than iOS and Android today? Sailfish? Tizen? Mer? Fuchsia is in development at Google and looks intriguing, plus it's open source. What else could "win" mobile?
Not really sure how to respond to your first paragraph, but I'll take a stab at it. All I'm saying is I think there _was_ a viable way for Canonical to bring Ubuntu Touch to market, they didn't follow that path, Ubuntu Touch failed as a result, and I wish that things had turned out differently. Had they followed the approach outlined in Crossing the Chasm, I think they had a decent shot at upsetting the status quo.
^^ I don't see how the above makes me a Linux fanboy?
As far as the next "thing" or "winner" goes, I'm not sure what that will be. My only hope is that it's not locked down and non-free by default like mobile operating systems have been. However, seeing the way AI and such are shaping up, I'm skeptical that we're not headed for a very closed, proprietary future with few if any viable alternatives to the mainstream offerings of Apple, Google, Amazon, etc.
I don't believe that a "better product than iOS and Android" exists today. Sadly, Ubuntu Touch will never be that better product, nor did Canonical ever really give it the opportunity to be.
So, what could "win" mobile? Given that the smartphone market has basically matured, the only two viable approaches are:
1. Develop a niche product that could eventually grow into a mainstream offering, or
2. Build the next "big thing"
Unfortunately, Canonical tried to make Ubuntu Touch a direct iOS/Android competitor from the get-go and they barely made it to market before everything folded, so I'd argue they tried to take a 3rd approach and failed. Right now, I don't see anyone who's really taking either of the above approaches with much success, but I guess the good news is disruption _is_ coming. When and how, we'll just have to see, but one thing is for sure: Ubuntu Touch is out of the running.
Basically torn between two streams - the one that paid for everything with AWS and ubuntu server doing well, driving juju and b2b stuff west coast, meanwhile open hostility and slow adoption of the marmite of DMs Unity, Ubuntu nOne (~dropbox) by the 'ingrates' and not helped by on-by-default Amazon (!) ads, BDFL RMS rants and various other missteps. It was unbelievably ambitious. I noted recently some Redmond 'embracing' going on (and we know what happens after 'embrace') wondering would 'Microsoft Linux' finally arrive - some partnership/deal. Ultimately the resource wasn't there for all of it, they aren't Google, and they are overtaken on all fronts now. I guess Mark wants to focus on what is bringing home the Bacon (if that pun is not too painful).
> what does this mean for users who want a completely FOSS stack for their phone (let's ignore the baseband for now)?
And also ignore locked bootloaders, DRM code in ARM TrustZone, never updated BSP that make most devices use old kernels, userspace blobs for graphics and video playback, lack of proper hardware documentation and fact that most of out-of-tree drivers that are open source are simply horrible.
Google never wanted FOSS stack on your phone in first place. Same true for phone manufacturer's, hardware vendors, carriers, media companies and governments.
So there simple not much you can do other that support rare open hardware efforts and use extremely overpriced custom-built phones.
I wonder what would have happened, if everyone that wanted a FOSS phone would have poured their money and effort into a real FOSS project instead of giving it to Google/Android along with their privacy.
>The Neo900 project aims to provide a Fremantle (Maemo™ 5) compatible successor to the N900, with a faster CPU, more RAM and an LTE modem. This is all based on a free, mature and stable platform - the GTA04. We'll provide complete, ready-to-use devices, as well as motherboard replacements for your current devices.
Most importantly, the Neo900 is an open platform, carrying on in the tradition of the Openmoko project. Neo900 will support all operating systems available for GTA04 (QtMoko, SHR, Debian, Replicant, ...)"
I just got the Ubuntu phone. It's the first smart-phone that I don't hate. I do agree that Ubuntu needs to stop with their NIH syndrome when it comes to desktop, but the phone market is just flat out terrible.
I would be willing to spend a lot of money for a decent FOSS phone, but there just isn't anything out there. Ubuntu was my only hope |:(
Have you tried using that? Android without Google play is still an exercise in frustration. And Google is purposely designing it that way more and more as time goes on. I don't think the Ubuntu phone is a great phone, but if I have problems, I can usually fix them myself. Good luck doing that with any android that I've tried on.
> What are your pain points? Because not being able to install most of the apps in the Play Store also applies to Ubuntu Phone.
Mostly being able to find OOTB tools that I want. I use f-droid on my android and I usually end up just going back to the play store to find anything worthwhile.
The Ubuntu phone gives me a real OS that I can just "apt-get install" something, then make a shell-script or something similar to fix my problem. Android's shell-system is a joke, which makes sense as they don't really want it to be usable. Ubuntu's shell system is much better, which means I can fix the problems that I come across myself.
EDIT: I can even use my existing scripts and tools that I have for my desktop on my ubuntu phone. It may be more accurate to say that I want a "Linux" phone, than a "FOSS" phone, but, I'd like it to be both.
> Mostly being able to find OOTB tools that I want. I use f-droid on my android and I usually end up just going back to the play store to find anything worthwhile.
Okay but to be fair: If you had the Play Store on Ubuntu Phone you would probably also go there a lot more often. Especially for OOTB experiences ;)
> The Ubuntu phone gives me a real OS that I can just "apt-get install" something, then make a shell-script or something similar to fix my problem. Android's shell-system is a joke, which makes sense as they don't really want it to be usable. Ubuntu's shell system is much better, which means I can fix the problems that I come across myself.
> If you had the Play Store on Ubuntu Phone you would probably also go there a lot more often.
Actually, I would probably not, though I can't deny I would be intrigued to have it as an option. I am able to set up most of the things that I would want via something like apt, or shell scripts or similar
I'm not sure that I would. I guess I could set up some kind of "I'm on my pc, send this address to my phone" script, or "tell $contact when I arrive at $location".
With BB10 (Blackberry's OS) it was backwards compatible with most Android apps, but they didn't use the resources as well and slowed the phone down. If there was a native app, I always went with the native app.
Super excited for this. I hate Unity's interface and was instead using Fedora solely for that reason. About 5 months ago I switched to Ubuntu GNOME and have been loving the stability of Ubuntu with the advanced interface of GNOME.
I've mostly been using the excellent Ubuntu MATE lately, but of the "modern" desktops I've always preferred GNOME to Unity, despite the latter having some good ideas. Ubuntu GNOME exists, but it'll be better with official support.
This is going to be interesting. The whole reason I moved away from Ubuntu, which was my goto linux distribution, around a decade ago was because they moved to Unity. I switched to Linuxmint and have been on it ever since.
Now that Ubuntu is going back to Gnome, although I may not switch back to it immediately, it will at least be in my mind as an option whenever I keep upgrading Linuxmint.
Wow this is impressive just after the Ask HN they did few days back. It's been few years users complaining and opposing Mir so it seems it just took that last feedback cry. It's great that they listen to their users and also that there's going some love given back to the desktop+server (+IoT).
Disclaimer: I am really happy using Ubuntu everyday.
I really wonder if they events are related though. I can't imagine Shuttlework saying "ok, those guys in HN called it", but on the other hand, the timing given motives match so perfectly.
GNOME has been doing some really cool stuff as of late (http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/03/top-features-in-gnome-3-2...). I'm still using Cinnamon, because I still like the look a bit more, but it's getting harder to ignore all of the excellent features GNOME provides, including:
- Drive support for file manager
- Gmail/Outlook support for GNOME accounts and built-in calendars
- Working Wayland implementation
I'm holding out at the moment, as it's missing one feature from Cinnamon that I really like (the ability to launch and control any audio player from the sound icon in the tray), but when Fedora 26 launches I may finally have to switch over.
I hope that Canonical shifting back to GNOME will further its development under Wayland and not spend a crapload of time doing more work for Mir.
It looks like it needs to be hard-coded for compatibility with every app, which makes it not so friendly. Wouldn't work with the unofficial Google Music Desktop Player (https://www.googleplaymusicdesktopplayer.com/), for instance, which I use heavily.
Do you really think that? To me, this is just a collection of really old stuff and features that should be a matter of course.
Case in point: "the headline feature" (adjusting the color temperature of your display depending on the time of day) is something that has been around for years one way or the other on all operating systems.
Or take: "Bookmarking webpages in Web now takes a single click." Hasn't that been the case since, like, always? Even if I'm wrong, I would hardly file such a feature under "really cool stuff".
Case in point: "the headline feature" (adjusting the color temperature of your display depending on the time of day) is something that has been around for years one way or the other on all operating systems.
But not in Wayland. I'm happily using Redshift in Cinnamon (one of the other things keeping me on Cinnamon), but the fact remains that having it built into the distro makes it more readily accessible to everyone.
Third party software has been available on Linux distributions for a long time all the same.
Shipping this feature out of the box with an OS install started happening only recently (e.g. Night Shift came to iOS only 1 year ago, Windows 10 is getting it just now, AOSP has a "secret" knob to turn it on and it's enabled in 3rd party ROMs, etc).
Windows 10 will have it next week in the Creators Update. Android has it in 7 "Nougat" but most Android users don't have that version yet. It seems to me like GNOME was right on time.
I was not very happy when they decided to make Unity mac-like by moving the menu to the top bar. It has to be the most idiotic decision around for anyone who has multiple monitors. Even with a single monitor, it is a pain in the ass to move the mouse all the way to the top left corner for the menu to appear, and then orienting myself with the items presented.
You could always use keyboard shortcuts to access the menu. Unity also let you search through the menu items with the Alt key - no manual navigation necessary.
I thought that integrated menus are a great idea - even Apple does it. It saves vertical space and looks "at one" with the rest of the system.
GNOME has solved in a radical way by simplifying menus, so you need neither search nor frequent mouse/keyboard navigation.
Honestly 'even Apple does it' is a poor argument. If global menu would be a really good and generally accepted idea we'd see it implemented in GNOME and KDE (via extensions at least).
I don't mind the principles of it -- and I don't mind it in macOS. At least the menu is always there, the problem with unity is that it is hidden and will slowly appear when you hover the mouse on top. It's really hard to aim for what I want when I actually have to access a function on the menu.
I am using KDE on anything I can, and I have no problem with them doing things like the global menu. KDE tends to get things right to my taste.
That's great, but not all apps will be able to trim down their menu items. Being able to quickly search all the entries, like in macos / Unity, is a huge help for new users.
I'm entirely convinced that Shuttleworth's vision of convergence will happen. It looks like an inevitability, as mobile computing power continues to grow faster than typical consumer workloads (the same forces already made it possible for $400 laptops to be good enough for most mainstream users).
Canonical just didn't have the resources to push a 3rd mobile platform. Hell, even Microsoft gave up (who did have the resources, and IMO made a mistake in giving up).
Just my opinion: It will be Chromebook+Android or more the mixture of both. Google is playing well by saying: "The time and technology is not yet ready for this to happen." But I'm also convinced it will happen sooner or later. And I'm sure Apple has some experiments in this direction... iOS and macOS are technically more the same than Android vs. ChromeOS.
I just hope I get a good usable *nix terminal with the laptop mode ;)
Sometimes the market and/or the user base is not ready for a new piece of tech. I agree with you about the inevitability of convergence but perhaps it wasn't supposed to happen just now.
Yep , I thing OS will all go the convergation way. The main problem is that they couldn't gain more apps to that vision. Classic chiken and egg problem.
And to be more ironic ,a few weeks ago, I was under the impression that Ubuntu Phone and SailfishOS have stated to getting traction.
Damn. Just been forced to switch to Mate at work and find it like living in the past. Lots of defaults seem ugly or unusable (hunting through menus for programs etc.).
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 384 ms ] threadI'd like to state that I'm a happy Ubuntu user, and have been using Unity for the past few years and have generally found it to be a good ui for the desktop. I know many many others fall in the same bucket.
This is good news for linux on the desktop. Not that diversity isn't good, but Unity has been stale for years while Gnome has been progressing, but suffering from the fragmentation that Canonical caused.
Hopefully this will result in more contributions upstream, which will benefit all linux distributions. This was always the main complaint with Canonical.
WRT to unity, at least it's improved. Ubuntu w/ unity currently has the best multi-monitor multi-dpi user experience I've seen on linux. I have a retina laptop with 2 external displays and ubuntu unity is the only thing that just works out of the box.
I agree. Sadly, GNOME's huge controls also seem to be optimised for touch screens. There are several semi-maintained hacks to reduce the padding throughout the DE:
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_1QSDkzYY2vc/TbVt04mk52I/A...
It's a mess. I wish GNOME just automatically looked like the bottom screenshot when there's no touch screen connected.
[1]https://people.gnome.org/~engagement/screenshots/gnome-3-24-...
Most GNOME apps look great because they titlebar is actually a toolbar, but I spend most of my time in portable third-party apps which have large, empty titlebars. This is the one thing I immediately envy when I see a Unity screenshot.
I want convergence. Real bloody convergence. I want to hook my laptop's /dev and /sys , port applications over to my phone, continue using them, until I get to work, and then expand them back out there. And all the while, they would never quit, halt, freeze, or die.
Or I want to be able to collaborate on a program, send it to a buddy, have them work on it, and then get it back.
Yes, I realize a lot of Ubuntu users have already gotten used to it, and some may even prefer it, but I'm sure the majority of new users would feel confused and turned off by it. I would argue Ubuntu has to focus more on gaining Windows users than on keeping the hardcore Linux users.
My mother in law managed to find that option on her own, I'm sure you can as well :)
Legitimately never thought I'd ever see this. Possibly the best thing that could happen for desktop Linux in this age.
Edit: and of course this would mean Ubuntu/Canonical and Fedora/RedHat basing their desktop OS's on the same platform, which can only mean easier development of desktop software and services.
Ultimately, I think it's a good, necessary move. Linux on the desktop will only happen when the environment is at least as uniform as that of Windows—from the perspective of application developers, at least.
me, i like gnome 3 and unity. all told i think this is really good news from canonical, for wayland, for gnome, for desktop linux in general, etc.
I personally care only about function but even if you are form-above-function guy Unity gives you many tools to make it look good:
http://imgur.com/gallery/sQFw7
(courtesy of r/unixporn )
Just because OSX does it (I don't think windows 10 does this) it doesn't mean it is a good idea.
https://neosmart.net/blog/2017/easy-window-switcher/
So from my purely practical non-sysadmin perspective - a positive change.
But we could have a system that works like service-files without all the downsides of systemd.
And that's why people are so against systemd. It's not a better system. Sure, it has some parts that are better, but it, as a whole, is worse. They were just able to play the politics game. Not sure why people always tout that as a positive.
I might be a small minority, but I _like_ Unity 7. I have never used Unity 8, and I thought the Ubuntu phone was misspent effort, but wow. Now I have to figure out if there is a way to style Gnome to look like Unity 7.
I wonder what this means for Mir vs Wayland as well.
BTW, I would go even further: will they still invest in the Snap package or they will do the same and go to a community oriented package system?
Try the Firefox Nightly for example: https://firefox-flatpak.mojefedora.cz/
I like gnome3 visually, but some design choices by the gnome team I don't understand. While unity uses a global menu, which displays the menu items in several columns, The gnome global menu has 1 column, with for most apps a single entry (quit).
I'm fairly sure implementing unity/mac style global menus on GNOME can be done with an extension.
And if they don't contribute as much to the desktop, we'll probably see improvements in other areas such as performance.
In my understanding, GNOME Shell doesn't support Mir, only X11 and Wayland, so.
I have tried gnome shell in the past, but I still prever unity because of the global menu.
[0] https://github.com/GNOME/gnome-globalmenu
I don't think it would be too hard for Canonical to create some installed by default extensions and themes to make Unity users feel more at home in Gnome. The global menu is the only thing I can think of that would maybe be a little too tricky to be worth the effort.
In a way, maybe the year of the Linux Desktop was more convincing. At least people knew why they wanted that.
I ended up dropping desktop Linux entirely last year, but Unity was the only thing that I thought wasn't matched by any other desktop operating system.
I will be happy to see if the best parts of Unity make it back to GNOME - GNOME just feels clunky right now. But I will continue using Ubuntu regardless.
what? unity? has it changed so much in the last 2 years that its defining features have changed from being difficult to use, resource-hungry, to the opposite of that?
As far as I can tell, this just means that your only options are Android or iOS. It's not easy to get a Jolla/SailfishOS phone that will work on most Canadian or USA networks, and with this announcement it seems that Ubuntu phones won't be around for much longer. This coupled with the death of Firefox OS means that there's really not much of a choice. Certainly you can run AOSP with no Google Apps, but not having Google Play Services tends to cause more and more problems, or at the very least means your phone is less and less capable as time goes on.
I guess in general we can all celebrate that Ubuntu is moving to GNOME / Wayland and is ditching convergence, but I think the fact that there's no healthy alternative to iOS / Android is quite sad. If Canonical is exiting the mobile space to work on other things, what other alternatives do users have?
Having said that, I am not sure why? Ubuntu Phone seems largely functional on a few devices, but installing it and using it remains a pain.
Only makes sense if there is no money left.
I'm pretty sure they tried very hard indeed. They just didn't succeed.
I say this as a long-time user of Ubuntu Touch. I don't love it, it is not without its flaws. It's just the best mobile OS I've found, primarily because it doesn't nag you with privacy-invasion at every turn. I'll miss it when it's gone.
I don't know about this. The last phone they released was the Meizu Pro 5, which had an Android variant (sold in stores) and an Ubuntu variant (sold online only, and you had to dig for it if you didn't get redirected from ubuntu.com). The hardware itself for the phone wasn't awful by any means, but buying one was hard enough because the manufacturer only sold out of Asia.
Further, the Meizu Pro 5 didn't work on most networks in Canada and the United States. Why would I buy a phone that doesn't support 3G/4G? I'd _love_ to support Canonical by purchasing an Ubuntu touch device, but you could hardly say that they tried. Their handsets were few and far between, and they locked out a large portion of the market because of the phone's baseband frequencies.
I think that they could have succeeded, at least in the small, had they actually released a device that power users could use comfortably.
It's also worth pointing out that Samsung has been investing in Servo, and that Tizen has good support for HTML5 apps, so hopefully we can see mobile web apps increase in popularity to get us away from the walled garden approach.
https://www.tizen.org/
https://source.tizen.org/
I don't see many other options emerging. It's possible that a community-led effort to finish work on Unity 8 (and possibly port it to Wayland) may emerge, but that would only solve the phone UI issue, the main problem holding back open-source phones is likely to be closed bootloaders and lack of drivers. By supporting Tizen we can get Samsung to handle the low level stuff.
https://source.tizen.org/documentation/developer-guide/getti...
"This document provides information about how to contribute code to Tizen, including the following:
For more information about the whole work process, please refer to Tizen Development Working Mechanism."https://www.tizen.org/blogs/dh0922/2016/tizen-.net-developer...
https://www.tizen.org/blogs/myungjae/2017/samsung%E2%80%99s-...
Just to mention I used to like MS technologies. Least problems I had with ASP 2 / AJAX web app which works for nine years without significant problems.
http://statisticstimes.com/tech/top-computer-languages.php
> "you need just a good bridge to OS UI language"
For moblie apps, Xamarin is that bridge (can always build web apps too):
https://www.xamarin.com/
Plus, .NET Core is cross-platform, good cross-platform tooling becoming available (VS Code, etc...), and you don't have to use C#.
If you're interested in writing games, Unity uses .NET (Mono in particular):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_(game_engine)
What will stop Samsung from closing it off when it gets too popular? (And, BTW, it's not like Samsung hardware is the pinnacle of OS design. Exynos is notorious for being hard to make custom ROMs)
It's developed with the support of the Linux Foundation, with the code released under open source licences. There are some parts of the design that are licenced by Samsung (e.g the SDK), but overall it looks pretty open to me.
>"it's not a real platform"
It has shipped in multiple devices, including every TV Samsung have sold since 2015:
https://wiki.tizen.org/wiki/Devices
>"It's a toy Samsung uses to threaten Google with."
It's a little more than that. At the moment it's not got much traction on phones, but I still maintain it's the best option for an open-source mobile OS that we've got left now that Ubuntu are out of the picture. If you can think of a better alternative that currently exists, by all means feel free to share it.
Some core components are not (or were not) free software. And the license for the SDK gives Samsung the rights to revoke forbid specific users from using it.
1 - GTK+ based
2 - Took Bada OS C++ SDK with its Symbian C++ like flavour
3 - Rewrote the C++ API into something more appealing
4 - Thrown everything away and replaced with EFL, plain C API with C++ will come soon
5 - Now they are adopting .NET Core with Xamarin Forms
How can anyone invest time developing for them?
What alternative do you suggest? I suggested they were the best remaining option for an open-source mobile OS now that Ubuntu were dropping out of the race. What other options are there? Sailfish? Anything else?
This ideology of open-source mobile OS goes back to Openmoko.
None of them managed to sell enough devices to keep a profitable business.
Nokia managed it with the N900 and the N9, the only reason they didn't continue is they lost their bottle and sold out to Microsoft.
Also as a former employee I can tell they didn't sell that much units, specially when compared with Symbian devices.
https://github.com/ExpressOS/expressos
http://genode.org/
Meanwhile, Tizen is available for people wanting whatever their changing offering is. I guess just budget regular rewrites in a new language/platform you had to learn into your FOSS app on Tizen with either few contributors or the more common zero. That's some great ROI.
https://plasma-mobile.org/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2015/11/01/microsoft...
Open source on Android is in pretty good shape on the whole, which is one of the big reasons why Unity never really caught on except among the tiny fraction of developers who were genuinely into Linux desktop application development specifically.
If you make a mobile operating system but you don't make devices, you need to be able to convince device vendors to sell the product for you to end users. They didn't succeed in that.
And the implication from that is that if vendors aren't looking to make a ubuntu phone, it's because their customers aren't asking for a ubuntu phone. Regardless of how many layers there are between Canonical and the end user, there weren't a lot of end-users asking for a Ubuntu phone.
It should be a bit concerning how uncompetitive the market is that you really cannot even try to launch a mobile OS of your own as a product, since you are beholden to telecom operators and handset manufacturers on both ends, all of whom have government granted monopolies or protection in their own industries to prevent competition.
Take Microsoft - it became a handset manufacturer and is still struggling to make Windows Phone a winner.
That was because Microsoft could have all the money in the world, but couldn't operate a cell network out of thin air that would promote their devices. They also had limited access to hardware - they had to outright buy Nokia to even get minor device manufacturer access, and even then few companies ever offered Windows Phone devices despite Microsoft throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at it.
When Microsoft cannot make inroads - a company that outright buys entire business sectors to own competition - its disastrous.
FirefoxOS phones were pretty much the same story. Limited hardware that wasn't available in the US market.
With both, it may not have been a lack of global interest; but a lack of interest in the limited markets they chose to release in.
When the iPhone first launched, it wasn't adopted by everyone. I remember when, in ~2009, I and a few friends were the only ones I knew who had an iPhone. It wasn't until around 2011 that pretty much everyone I knew had a smartphone.
The basic business lesson is that you have to "cross the chasm" from early adopters to mainstream users - you can't just start selling a new product to everyone and expect to succeed without massive resources, and even then your product can still struggle (see: Apple Watch). Really, the only way to pull it off is to establish a niche market before targeting the general market. This book [1] does a great job of explaining the process - Mozilla and Canonical execs would do well to read it!
Sadly, many startups don't seem to have very good business sense and long-term thinking. "If we're not the iPhone yesterday, then we can't compete and we might as well 'pivot' and 'focus' on our 'core offerings'" - not true! There is a market for a user-respecting, fully (or even mostly!) FLOSS smartphone, but my parents certainly aren't going to buy one - they just got their first iPhone last year after all - so sell to me and people like me, not them. Then, maybe in 6-8 years, once the platform has matured and the FLOSS benefits become obvious, you'll start to break into the general market and start to challenge iOS and Android. But I don't think most companies are down for that; sadly, most are just focused on next quarter's profits instead of building something lasting.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Crossing-Chasm-3rd-Disruptive-Mainstr...
iOS = Locked in ecosystem Windows Phone = Locked in ecosystem
Android = Alternative to iOS Windows = Alternative to iOS
On a technical level, Windows Phone devices performed around the same as iOS devices (fantastic), but lacked mainstream apps (the same problem as Blackberry) but without the backwards compatibility with Android apps.
Basically, Windows Phone was doomed to be the "not android, and not iOS" smartphone despite the great technical aspects of the OS.
But then came the Windows Phone 10 reboot, with the promise that all 8.1 devices would get an WP 10 update, promise that they eventually broke by allowing only premium devices to get it.
So no, WP wasn't doomed if Microsoft managed to keep the roadmap steady, instead of rebooting left and right.
On the other hand, they seem to be having some luck with hybrid laptops/tablets. Something that most Android devices still do very poorly.
I'm optimistic because I've never seen one of these 3rd option OSes take the approach mentioned in the Crossing the Chasm book linked in my earlier post - they all went straight to mass market vs. targeting a niche, dominating, and then using that beachhead to expand into other markets. If someone makes a legit or mostly-legit FLOSS mobile device, targets it at the appropriate audience, and slowly and patiently nurtures an ecosystem, I think a 3rd option can succeed.
No market is ever truly "won" - they are all susceptible to disruption, no matter what monopolies or duopolies may exist. Not saying said disruption is easy, but it is always possible, and personally I think it is something worth pushing for vs. settling for the status quo, esp. when said status quo is either closed (iOS) or not very user-respecting (stock Android w/Google services).
Now, you are absolutely right that no market is won forever. Like you said, Blackberry was once king of the hill and was toppled by Apple. But again, like you said, Apple had a better product (and the resources to bring it to market).
So now, the question is: what's the next thing? The next "winner"? Where's the better product than iOS and Android today? Sailfish? Tizen? Mer? Fuchsia is in development at Google and looks intriguing, plus it's open source. What else could "win" mobile?
^^ I don't see how the above makes me a Linux fanboy?
As far as the next "thing" or "winner" goes, I'm not sure what that will be. My only hope is that it's not locked down and non-free by default like mobile operating systems have been. However, seeing the way AI and such are shaping up, I'm skeptical that we're not headed for a very closed, proprietary future with few if any viable alternatives to the mainstream offerings of Apple, Google, Amazon, etc.
I don't believe that a "better product than iOS and Android" exists today. Sadly, Ubuntu Touch will never be that better product, nor did Canonical ever really give it the opportunity to be.
So, what could "win" mobile? Given that the smartphone market has basically matured, the only two viable approaches are:
1. Develop a niche product that could eventually grow into a mainstream offering, or 2. Build the next "big thing"
Unfortunately, Canonical tried to make Ubuntu Touch a direct iOS/Android competitor from the get-go and they barely made it to market before everything folded, so I'd argue they tried to take a 3rd approach and failed. Right now, I don't see anyone who's really taking either of the above approaches with much success, but I guess the good news is disruption _is_ coming. When and how, we'll just have to see, but one thing is for sure: Ubuntu Touch is out of the running.
And also ignore locked bootloaders, DRM code in ARM TrustZone, never updated BSP that make most devices use old kernels, userspace blobs for graphics and video playback, lack of proper hardware documentation and fact that most of out-of-tree drivers that are open source are simply horrible.
Google never wanted FOSS stack on your phone in first place. Same true for phone manufacturer's, hardware vendors, carriers, media companies and governments.
So there simple not much you can do other that support rare open hardware efforts and use extremely overpriced custom-built phones.
>The Neo900 project aims to provide a Fremantle (Maemo™ 5) compatible successor to the N900, with a faster CPU, more RAM and an LTE modem. This is all based on a free, mature and stable platform - the GTA04. We'll provide complete, ready-to-use devices, as well as motherboard replacements for your current devices. Most importantly, the Neo900 is an open platform, carrying on in the tradition of the Openmoko project. Neo900 will support all operating systems available for GTA04 (QtMoko, SHR, Debian, Replicant, ...)"
No, thanks.
- Replicant (http://www.replicant.us)
- Plasma Mobile (https://plasma-mobile.org)
- Tizen (https://www.tizen.org)
I would be willing to spend a lot of money for a decent FOSS phone, but there just isn't anything out there. Ubuntu was my only hope |:(
Ask one of your Chinese friends, they have a driving eco system over there.
Yes, works fine and there are a lot of awesome apps, e. g. https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=osm&fdid=net... or https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=youtube&fdid...
> Android without Google play is still an exercise in frustration.
What are your pain points? Because not being able to install most of the apps in the Play Store also applies to Ubuntu Phone.
Mostly being able to find OOTB tools that I want. I use f-droid on my android and I usually end up just going back to the play store to find anything worthwhile.
The Ubuntu phone gives me a real OS that I can just "apt-get install" something, then make a shell-script or something similar to fix my problem. Android's shell-system is a joke, which makes sense as they don't really want it to be usable. Ubuntu's shell system is much better, which means I can fix the problems that I come across myself.
EDIT: I can even use my existing scripts and tools that I have for my desktop on my ubuntu phone. It may be more accurate to say that I want a "Linux" phone, than a "FOSS" phone, but, I'd like it to be both.
Okay but to be fair: If you had the Play Store on Ubuntu Phone you would probably also go there a lot more often. Especially for OOTB experiences ;)
> The Ubuntu phone gives me a real OS that I can just "apt-get install" something, then make a shell-script or something similar to fix my problem. Android's shell-system is a joke, which makes sense as they don't really want it to be usable. Ubuntu's shell system is much better, which means I can fix the problems that I come across myself.
That sounds nice indeed!
Actually, I would probably not, though I can't deny I would be intrigued to have it as an option. I am able to set up most of the things that I would want via something like apt, or shell scripts or similar
GPL is cancer, literally. The sooner businesses realize it the better.
Now that Ubuntu is going back to Gnome, although I may not switch back to it immediately, it will at least be in my mind as an option whenever I keep upgrading Linuxmint.
Disclaimer: I am really happy using Ubuntu everyday.
I'm holding out at the moment, as it's missing one feature from Cinnamon that I really like (the ability to launch and control any audio player from the sound icon in the tray), but when Fedora 26 launches I may finally have to switch over.
I hope that Canonical shifting back to GNOME will further its development under Wayland and not spend a crapload of time doing more work for Mir.
EDIT: Nevermind, this ticket looks like it might: https://github.com/MarshallOfSound/Google-Play-Music-Desktop...
> It looks like it needs to be hard-coded for compatibility with every app
By using a white-list? I thought it worked with every app which uses the MPRIS DBus interface.
https://github.com/p-e-w/argos
Do you really think that? To me, this is just a collection of really old stuff and features that should be a matter of course.
Case in point: "the headline feature" (adjusting the color temperature of your display depending on the time of day) is something that has been around for years one way or the other on all operating systems.
Or take: "Bookmarking webpages in Web now takes a single click." Hasn't that been the case since, like, always? Even if I'm wrong, I would hardly file such a feature under "really cool stuff".
But not in Wayland. I'm happily using Redshift in Cinnamon (one of the other things keeping me on Cinnamon), but the fact remains that having it built into the distro makes it more readily accessible to everyone.
Windows 10 doesn't have that. What's your point?
(Also, FWIW, Win10 insider builds do have it out of the box.)
Shipping this feature out of the box with an OS install started happening only recently (e.g. Night Shift came to iOS only 1 year ago, Windows 10 is getting it just now, AOSP has a "secret" knob to turn it on and it's enabled in 3rd party ROMs, etc).
I was not very happy when they decided to make Unity mac-like by moving the menu to the top bar. It has to be the most idiotic decision around for anyone who has multiple monitors. Even with a single monitor, it is a pain in the ass to move the mouse all the way to the top left corner for the menu to appear, and then orienting myself with the items presented.
I thought that integrated menus are a great idea - even Apple does it. It saves vertical space and looks "at one" with the rest of the system.
Honestly 'even Apple does it' is a poor argument. If global menu would be a really good and generally accepted idea we'd see it implemented in GNOME and KDE (via extensions at least).
I am using KDE on anything I can, and I have no problem with them doing things like the global menu. KDE tends to get things right to my taste.
It's certainly not perfect and I had some complaints with it (I like window-local menus), but they didn't make the decisions just because.
Canonical just didn't have the resources to push a 3rd mobile platform. Hell, even Microsoft gave up (who did have the resources, and IMO made a mistake in giving up).
I just hope I get a good usable *nix terminal with the laptop mode ;)