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DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

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Re: DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

#61

Post by wvh »

twblalock wrote: post #23

> When I first started using the phone I noticed the Today scope showed temperatures in the weather forecast in Fahrenheit rather than Celsius. This can be adjusted by changing our selected language in the device's settings panel and restarting the phone . Really? You have to restart to change the temperature units? What a joke.

I guess setting the locale requires all applications using it to restart to pick up the changes in their environment, just like on regular Linux/Unix systems – processes inherit the environment from their parent.

I don't know how iOS works, but it might also have to restart processes if it uses system locales for such settings.

Re: DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

#62

Post by wvh »

IshKebab wrote: post #58

It seems kind of mad to think Ubuntu could succeed where Microsoft failed. I just can't see any way they will convince third party developers to write apps for it.

Well they might count on a great deal of open-source development and related good-will, not to mention they are probably already using a lot of standard libraries and applications to provide expected functionality. I wouldn't mind not having many "commercial" apps available if I could just use almost any already existing open-source application, not unlike on Linux desktop systems.

I know it doesn't look easy for Jolla and Ubuntu Phone, but I hope at least one of them prevails so we can have a reasonably open Linux system running on phones.

Re: DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

#63

Post by rglullis »

luxpir wrote: post #54
rglullis wrote: post #46

I got the BQ Aquarius 5 a few months ago, after my Moto G2 SIM card stopped working. So when comparing two budget-but-capable-phones, I can say that the hardware on the Ubuntu phone is not the problem. The software they have is great, and I haven't seen any half-backed features. The updates are consistent and always bring something interesting. The idea of lenses and scopes are great as an alternative to the lack of…

> - There is no decent story for messaging/VoIP I have many gripes with my Ubuntu phone, but this isn't one of them. Aside from my personal preference of opting out of Whatsapp, they do have the webapp version so you don't need to carry that Android around once registered. They also have Signal, which works well. I SSH/tmux into a box with command line Finch (pidgin for CLI) and IRSSI when I really need to IM 'on the…

The web version of whatsapp does not do calls, only messages. And when you have family/friends scattered around 3 continents, traditional PSTN calling is not an option.

About Signal: especially now that Whatsapp has adopt their encryption protocol, it is very hard for me to convince everyone else to switch to Signal, and AFAIK Signal does not do group messaging, so I would have to convince other people to switch to an inferior solution with no extra value to justify the tradeoff. If I had decent XMPP/SIP clients I could at least try to sell the extra value of having your communications outside of control of any single company.

Re: DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

#64

Post by mavhc »

Sylos wrote: post #35
mappu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to have a poor reputation for security, though.

It does, I don't think that affects it much, though, because it's still so much less likely to catch a virus on Mint than it is on Windows, that it's still an upgrade for people switching over from Windows, which is sort of Mint's target user-base anyways. They've also done some work on security with their latest release, mainly making kernel-updates more accessible...

Do they support upgrading yet though? If I wanted to reinstall my OS every year I'd go back to using Windows 95

Re: DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

#65

Post by r080 »

rglullis wrote: post #63
luxpir wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - There is no decent story for messaging/VoIP I have many gripes with my Ubuntu phone, but this isn't one of them. Aside from my personal preference of opting out of Whatsapp, they do have the webapp version so you don't need to carry that Android around once registered. They also have Signal, which works well. I SSH/tmux into a box with command line Finch (pidgin for CLI) and IRSSI when I really need to IM 'on the…

The web version of whatsapp does not do calls, only messages. And when you have family/friends scattered around 3 continents, traditional PSTN calling is not an option. About Signal: especially now that Whatsapp has adopt their encryption protocol, it is very hard for me to convince everyone else to switch to Signal, and AFAIK Signal does not do group messaging, so I would have to convince other people to switch to a…

Signal has group messaging.

Re: DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

#66

Post by chromalife »

rglullis wrote: post #46

I got the BQ Aquarius 5 a few months ago, after my Moto G2 SIM card stopped working. So when comparing two budget-but-capable-phones, I can say that the hardware on the Ubuntu phone is not the problem. The software they have is great, and I haven't seen any half-backed features. The updates are consistent and always bring something interesting. The idea of lenses and scopes are great as an alternative to the lack of…

What about linphone for VoIP.

Re: DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

#68

Post by dmca »

Brakenshire wrote: post #57
dmca wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for this OS but I use OsmAnd ( http://osmand.net ) in place of google maps on cyanogenmod and it does do a reasonable job of voice navigation (using the same OpenStreetMap data as uNav). It's open source so it should be able to work in principle.

I agree there are good applications available, but OSMAnd is an Android app, you'd need some sort of compatibility layer for it to run on stock Linux. I think there is work going on for that happen, but it's not there yet. The project I can recall is Shashlik, there are one or two others as well. I think Android app compatibility is necessary for a Linux phone. You won't be able to use Play Services, but a lot of app…

There's a (presumably unofficial) desktop port of OsmAnd (called offroad) although I don't know how stable it is/how it's implemented. I agree that a fully functional and more general compatibility layer could be rather useful.

Re: DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

#69

Post by Sylos »

IshKebab wrote: post #58

It seems kind of mad to think Ubuntu could succeed where Microsoft failed. I just can't see any way they will convince third party developers to write apps for it.

Well, a few things which might help:

- There's going to be developers who will develop for Ubuntu Touch in their free time, just because they want the platform to succeed, similar to desktop Linux. And essentially no one will do that for Windows Phone, meaning that Windows Phone depends much more on developers to be able to make a profit off of it, and therefore much more on having market share to begin with.

- Ubuntu Touch appeals more to developers than Windows Phone does. And if a developer already uses a platform, it's much more likely that they write an app for it in their free time.

- Because Ubuntu Touch is open-source, it can be ported to existing phones. You can for example dual-boot it on a few of the Nexus devices already, which again, makes it easier to develop for. Also means there's another way for people to try it out.

Re: DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

#70

Post by Sylos »

mavhc wrote: post #64
Sylos wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, I don't think that affects it much, though, because it's still so much less likely to catch a virus on Mint than it is on Windows, that it's still an upgrade for people switching over from Windows, which is sort of Mint's target user-base anyways. They've also done some work on security with their latest release, mainly making kernel-updates more accessible...

Do they support upgrading yet though? If I wanted to reinstall my OS every year I'd go back to using Windows 95

You can manually edit the APT-sources to point to the new release and then let it perform a dist-upgrade, which is, as far as I understand it, the same as Ubuntu or Fedora do automatically.

The Linux Mint devs just don't think that's a good way of handling upgrades, so they don't have a button for it. You can read their reasoning here in section E : https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2

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