What went wrong? Ubuntu was such a good desktop OS , but Ubuntu Touch was a huge failure and got squeezed out by Apple and Android.
What went wrong?
What went wrong? Ubuntu was such a good desktop OS , but Ubuntu Touch was a huge failure and got squeezed out by Apple and Android.
It was pointless, It ran on top of android.
wrong, It installs to baremetal. The android driver is used for hw acceleration because proprietary
It was ahead of it's time. Ubuntu Touch was released while Android and iOS were still evolving rapidly. Canonical did not have the resources to keep up.
It's already the case that no one wants to use Loonix when it's free and works flawlessly on 90% or computers. I don't know why anyone thought that anyone would go out of their way to buy a Loonix phone.
yea because Android isn't based on a modified Linux kernel and open-source software right? kek
Android is Linux, not Loonix.
>Ubuntu Touch was a huge failure and got squeezed out by Apple and Android.
The iOS-Android duopoly was already solidified before Ubuntu Touch was even a twinkle in Mark Shuttleworth's eye.
Wasn't the hardware a bit shit? I remember Shuckleberg doing a fundraiser to create a premium phone, and the freetards donated something ridiculous like 280 quid.
1. you need apps
2. you need to bring something to the table android and iOS do not
3. you need to take a use profit loss for quite a while possibly.
>Ubuntu Touch was a huge failure
the performance wasnt good on phones
they've tried making the os slimmer and more performant but then they gave up on making their display server, unity os and ubuntu touch, they decided to focus on servers
a real shame, I really would have liked it to have been finished properly, the ubuntu phone concept was ahead of its time too
samsung dex still exists though, canonical should have released ubuntu images for it
being able to use proper desktop apps on your phone is good enough, no compromises
>being able to use proper desktop apps on your phone is good enough, no compromises
no.
It is quite literally the definition of useless.
phones are not for productivity, they are for comms.
if it can't do comms in the sense of social media, whatsapp whatever else it might as well not exist.
Games on top of phones are extra.
Krita released on android a while back, no one will use it because no one wants a desktop app on a phone or tablet. And if you say you do you are deluding yourself.
My laptop is already a good enough laptop. I don't need my phone to also be a laptop, I need it to be a phone.
>being able to use proper desktop apps on your phone is good enough
why should any sane person use desktop apps designed for mouse and keyboard on small screen phones?
You need apps and you need to be the default OS on the device, so you need to do deals with the main device makers.
Being on more devices attracts in apps. Having more apps attracts device makers. It's a feedback loop.
It's the nature of the global smartphone+tablet market that it's basically big enough for two main players. That's why Blackberries failed. That's why Microsoft failed at entering it. Canonical also failing isn't surprising. It's not a technical reason, it's an economic one. Getting big enough to break into being profitable in the area is going to be crazy hard.
There was no use case for it
Setting aside stuff like development, or being too early, or ecosystems or anything like that.
The one big reason it failed is because no one REALLY wanted it.
Plenty of people went "oh this sounds neat!" but only the biggest nerd would actually install it on their device and even then it probably wouldn't be a device they use regularly, they'd tinker with it for a bit and then forget about it.
Tablets and phones are the "eh, frick it" devices, they're for doing relatively simple things (from the user's perspective) as quickly as possible and with as little thought put into it as possible, at the cost of things that are more power-user-y.
Phones have the extra complication where they needed to be as reliable as possible as often as possible, missing calls or messages because some update fricked your settings is unacceptable to regularly uses their phone to communicate with people.
Making your phone/tablet more like a computer will give you a bad, uncomfortable computer at the cost of a worse phone.
The very concept is silly beyond it being sort of neat for a couple of hours.
Excellent post.
Garbage post.
there just isn't any market. Of course the idea sounds great, but any normal person that has to do stuff that requires multitasking or more than 3 browser tabs just uses a proper laptop instead.
fighting against arm platform is tiresome
Not enough support for cheap phones, lost third world market.
linux doesnt have good marketshare for consumer products in any category
I've got a pixel 3a running it because I like the idea of using Ubuntu on my phone and desktop but it just wasn't a good experience.
I get it out every now and again to test updates, but the one bug I submitted was ignored
What the frick is your problem?
Canonical has a tendency to start making shit but never finishing it. They expect a lot of help from the outside. The concept of a Linux phone would be great, also now that docking stations with a unified connector that are are the same connector both phones and laptops use are thing convergence makes more sense.
They were way too early, didn't want to finish the work they started, and that's the story of every canonical project ever.
Also Linux and arm hardware is a shit show.
The fat frick Linux YouTuber just released a video crying about how the pinephone pro sucks and said "I can have a better experience with Android phones that can run Linux mobile" not knowing that you can never run a mainline kernel because almost none of the drivers for the hardware are open source on those phones. So they have to run a shim on a ancient 4.9 kernel they can't even update themselves for risk of bricking the phone. Linux mobile is a great idea that will probably never happen
>implying Ubuntu is a good OS
Linux on the desktop survived because 1)Hardware was not locked so it did not depend on buying or building a setup just for Linux and 2)Desktop computers in 1992 were far less necessary and practical than smartphones were in 2012.
Early adopters are hobbyists and home computers were in general hobby machines but these days you carry your phone around and depend on dozens of apps for your daily routine so even fans are less likely to tolerate playtesting half baked hobbyist software until it becomes good enough
Ubuntu Touch is still around (pic related, screenshot from my UT phone). The UI is fantastic and it's a great OS, but overall it cant compete with the android forks (such as lineage). Here are some of the problems:
>overall slow device
>lack of apps
>browser is shit compared to android browsers
>lack of sophisticated ad blocking (you can only block at the hosts file level)
>many apps in the appstore are broken
>lack of VoIP and SMS
You can work around some of these issues (by using waydroid and installing android apps, but then why not just use android?), but most people won't have the patience for it and will get irritated and the experience will suck. However, it is a good device if you just want to do a little programming on the phone and are already using ubuntu or debian.
oh and ive tried many other mobile linux OSes, they all suck in one way or another and none of them can realistically replace android (which fricking sucks since android gets shittier every update)
Is there any way to run Android that is completely FOSS? I have heard mention of such a thing, but that it breaks several key services that the phone performs. Besides Graphene, is there any way to be free as in freedom with your phone OS?
>Besides Graphene, is there any way to be free as in freedom with your phone OS?
Graphene relies on proprietary blobs, it's not fully free. The only phoned that are fully free software are Replicant (and android fork, but it has not been updated in a while and required an external dongle to use wifi, so basically useless at this point) and PureOS on the Librem 5 (but it's shit, I own one of these phones and both the hardware and software suck, can go into more detail if you want).
pure aosp on a pixel
https://www.replicant.us/
>newest device it runs on is from 2012
KEK!
let me guess; you need more?
Ubuntu still is a good desktop OS