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Will Linux phones stay around this time?

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Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#311

Post by pabs3 »

bregma wrote: post #292

I spent years working on the Ubuntu phone. It was a fully convergent device: by default it would present a phone UI, but plugin an a keyboard and screen and it presents a full desktop UI. The UI was designed by a team of brilliant professional designers and it was a technical success. Why isn't it around any more? (1) The carriers. Many people get a free or heavily subsidized phone from their carrier, who makes money…

Is the UBPorts community continuing the Ubuntu Phone convergence vision, or did the code get thrown away?

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#312

Post by II2II »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #139

I'd be shocked if it took off. The FOSS development paradigm seems to be allergic to good UI design, and this is far more important for people on mobile than desktop.

Yes, bad UI design exists. On the other hand, good UI design is largely a matter of what people are familiar with. This is true of both open source and commercial software. If we see bad UI design in open source software more, it is likely a product of open source software being more accessible. (People are more likely to try something they can download for free than something they have to pay $1000, $100, or even $10 for.)

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#313

Post by patentatt »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #138
smhost wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I just want it for completeness. With phone hardware getting powerful enough to run mid-to-high end games, I want to be able to carry around a phone that I can hook up peripherals to and use it just like I would use a desktop. The Android ecosystem is pretty good in its own way, but it's qualitatively different compared to the Linux ecosystem for my use case. Windows and several popular Linux distros are…

Exactly, I would love a smartphone-size universal computing device, to use on the go or plug into desktop/laptop docking devices when needed. The individual parts are all there. Phones are powerful enough, we have USB-C with displayport for docking, KDE/qt has (or used to have?) an alternate small/touch GUI setup, phones can throttle their CPUs up when placed in a dock with active cooling, every individual part of th…

> Microsoft tried it and Samsung tried it, but both were too tied to their own proprietary ecosystems. I think it could work with a det of open and freely available standards.

Sorry, but in what world has a new UI paradigm or physical form factor reached mass adoption via an open source project? Not knocking open source in general, it’s just that these are not the open source communities’ strengths in general. Meanwhile, single platform monolithic companies with end-to-end control and lots of financial resources tend to do much better here. Added to the fact that this was the basic thrust of the Ubuntu phone and (iirc) the Mozilla phone projects as well, and I just don’t see it. Maybe Apple will popularize the idea with an M1 (or M2, M3, etc) based iPhone (15?) that is truly powerful enough to pull it off and can run iOS and Mac OS side by side.

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#314

Post by EvilEy3 »

pyrale wrote: post #307
EvilEy3 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Not parent poster, but the interface works as a plaster that obfuscates the stuff I need. Add to it the many mobile imports pushed onto the user (don't care about cloud? Well, W10 cares, and it will push it at every turn) and you get a product that's built to push how Microsoft thinks you should use your computer. My aging father has used Microsoft OSes since dos, and W10 is the first product he's having real trouble…

Original question was regarding UI. What's wrong with W10 UI?

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#315

Post by EvilEy3 »

herbst wrote: post #293
EvilEy3 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is full of distractions Define distraction in terms of computing first.

Popups, weird confirmation dialogs nobody reads, configurations hidden in X different uis without console interface, the amount of screen space wasted for whatever reasons and the possibility that the wasted space contains text and icons that suddenly start to blink and move (attention seeking apps), .... I feel distracted working on Windows or Mac. As if someone is putting stones everywhere and i have to mangle inbe…

I don't see how any of this happens all the time. If I were to maximize terminal and IDE/Browser I won't see those things either.

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#316

Post by EvilEy3 »

kgwxd wrote: post #306
EvilEy3 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is sarcastic. Person who advocates for Firefox on Android doesn't even know that it is already there.

You misread the comment.

Yep, apologies to OP. I thought I was replying to different comment.

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#317

Post by rkagerer »

_0w8t wrote: post #286
AussieWog93 wrote: post #139

I'd be shocked if it took off. The FOSS development paradigm seems to be allergic to good UI design, and this is far more important for people on mobile than desktop.

Modern UI on the phones makes discovering features really hard. One often ends up with searching obscure forums just to know very useful feature like IPhone trick with holding the space bar to move cursor. I can understand that on 4” inch phones there were no space for extra buttons, but with 6” screens this became ridiculous. So much for “good” design.

I really miss Palm's zen. Great sweet spot of discoverability with a clutter-free design that didn't sacrifice functionality. I could even make the buttons do useful things instead of just opening a Bixby TOS I've declined a dozen times.

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#318

Post by ryukafalz »

pabs3 wrote: post #311
bregma wrote: post #292

I spent years working on the Ubuntu phone. It was a fully convergent device: by default it would present a phone UI, but plugin an a keyboard and screen and it presents a full desktop UI. The UI was designed by a team of brilliant professional designers and it was a technical success. Why isn't it around any more? (1) The carriers. Many people get a free or heavily subsidized phone from their carrier, who makes money…

Is the UBPorts community continuing the Ubuntu Phone convergence vision, or did the code get thrown away?

From my limited perspective as a former user who still keeps up with some of it: they seem to be continuing down that path, just slower as they don't have Canonical's paid dev team to work on it.

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#319

Post by tedchs »

Stories about "Linux as the underdog" have confused me for several years. The truth is, Linux has won, and it's OK to recognize that.

The majority of phones sold are "Linux phones" -- it's the kernel for Android!

The top selling laptops for years provide "Linux on the desktop" -- Chromebooks run ChromeOS, which is Linux!

Nearly all host servers, at nearly every cloud provider, run Linux. The vast majority of cloud VMs run Linux.

The vast majority of set-top boxes, IP cameras, IoT controllers, and other embedded devices are Linux based.

Linux is even powering an autonomous helicopter on MARS, that has been wildly successful in its mission.

The narrative of "poor underrated Linux gets no love" was plausible until maybe around the mid-2000s. But it's long past time to drop this idea as a community.

Now, I think it IS fair to say that several forms of userspace ecosystems, based on the Linux kernel, have failed to get traction over the years. Maybe we can say "Ubuntu Touch" failed to get adoption, but that has little to do with some characteristic of Linux itself.

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#320

Post by mch82 »

cookiengineer wrote: post #103

This is kind of anecdotal to Meego, WebOS, FirefoxOS and all the other forms of them that happened in the past. I don't think that people will use the phone solely because it's Linux. They'll use it if it can solve their tasks at hand. Personally I think that Linux will never take off if we won't create financial incentives to make and deploy apps, additionally to fix the mess that's user rights/permission management…

I think you’re right. I don’t understand why more UI toolkits aren’t adopting CSS for layout, especially the newer CSS grid. It’s so much simpler than alternatives like TKinter.

I get the memory/performance issues with Electron. Those can be solved. I’m able to open large XML files in VSCode that simply crush other apps like Notepad and XMLSpy.

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