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DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

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Re: DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

#81

Post by _ea1k »

coolspot wrote: post #17
lake99 wrote: post #6

> About 1GB of memory is required to run the phone with its default scopes and settings, leaving us about 2GB of space for applications and other features. I did not see this coming. I was under the impression that moving away from a JVM would have lowered the memory requirements. A comparison of the two versions of Meizu Pro 5, Android and Ubuntu, would have been useful too. I am curious if the move away from the An…

Ubuntu Touch actually runs parts of Android in the LXC container. Maybe this is why is not very memory efficient. https://developer.ubuntu.com/static/devportal_uploaded/13698...

AFAIK, that is just the Android HAL. I can't imagine that part using much memory.

Re: DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

#82

Post by fps »

rplnt wrote: post #34
lambda wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. I've just never installed any ad-based applications. If there's a no-ad paid version for a buck or two I'll buy it, otherwise, I just don't use it.

How did you know which apps have ads? Until recently it was not shown anywhere I think?

The latest version of the play store identifies apps that show ads or have in-app purchases.

https://files.derf.us/Screenshot_20160801-105001.png

Re: DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

#83

Post by dublinben »

rplnt wrote: post #34
lambda wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. I've just never installed any ad-based applications. If there's a no-ad paid version for a buck or two I'll buy it, otherwise, I just don't use it.

How did you know which apps have ads? Until recently it was not shown anywhere I think?

If you only download Free Software, like from F-Droid, you can be certain it won't have advertisements or other creepy features.

The Play Store is a wild west of crap though, so you have to be much more careful.

Re: DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

#84

Post by type0 »

yAnonymous wrote: post #36
benbristow wrote: post #28

Distrowatch is definitely looking dated nowadays. Could do with a re-design at some point or another.

They rank distros by popularity based on how many clicks they get, so I always viewed it as a kind of parody/entertainment website.

It is web 1.0 clicking game for linux enthusiasts. Linux Mint users have been most avid clickers for a while now it seems.

Re: DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

#85

Post by type0 »

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

Well, they support it for better or worse, you can upgrade from version 17 to 18 since they don't use systemd, on Ubuntu if you go from 14.04 to 16.04 you should do clean install.

Re: DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

#86

Post by snuxoll »

mrmondo wrote: post #53
Arnt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twenty years ago we linuxheads poked fun at Irix for starting 36 daemons on a singleuser workstation. Or was it 43? Whatever the number, I guess ubuntu has caught up.

Sir, I approve of your comment :) Ubuntu is the one distro that I wouldn't want to run on my phone, but I'd love a functioning Linux phone that's well setup and maintained, I think the real kicker for me would be able to plug it into a simple dock when I get to work and have my full desktop OS running, but first we need a distro that's more... shall we say 'sensible' or 'tested' taking on that task I think. I wonder…

It's Ubuntu, so it'd be AppArmor, and I would say "I sure hope so".

Re: DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

#87

Post by IshKebab »

wvh wrote: post #62
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 Jol…

Few existing open source apps are touchscreen apps though. Enjoy your stylus!

Re: DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

#88

Post by benologist »

kogepathic wrote: post #19

> Over the past year and a half I have become accustomed to the idea that I get to run free applications on my phone in exchange for being shown semi-frequent ads. This tended not to bother me most of the time, except when Android apps would suddenly show me full screen videos at high volume. Really? I installed AdAway [1] on my Android phone and since then I have seen no ads. Zero. The only issue is that some legiti…

I think at this point you're better off going network-wide blocking to cover all your devices instead of just the few empowered to provide this security themselves.

I use a self-hosted DNS server called https://pi-hole.net/ for that, it was created for Raspberry Pis but I put it into a Vagrantfile and combined it with block lists similar to Ghostery from https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts to form https://github.com/benlowry/pihole-extended-hosts

A commercial solution similar to that was just all over HN too - https://optimal.com

Re: DistroWatch Ubuntu Phone review

#90

Post by CaptSpify »

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…

As this is just linux under the hood, can you not just run Google maps via the browser?
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