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Had enough of Android? First 'Focal' based Ubuntu Touch is out

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21–30 of 73 posts

Re: Had enough of Android? First 'Focal' based Ubuntu Touch is out

#21
While not a daily driver, I have been running Focal on a Pinephone Pro for a few weeks now. It is beta, things are not working. The Kali Nethunter pro for the phone arguably works better.

But the UI of Ubuntu Touch is really nice. I don't even daily driver the thing and when I pull out my android phone, I am trying to do some the of the UT swipe gestures because they are so natural.

I hope this community continues to thrive!

Re: Had enough of Android? First 'Focal' based Ubuntu Touch is out

#22
What kind of a bubble do the Ubuntu devs live in if they dont see a reason to show even a single screenshot of their product? What goes through the head of the product manager writing a whole essay and a full extensive changelog but not bothering to add a fucking picture?

Re: Had enough of Android? First 'Focal' based Ubuntu Touch is out

#23
post #11

Screenshots! The first thing most people want when evaluating an operating system for a personal device is a screenshot. A picture is worth a thousand words, and in the case of a screenshot, you can choose what’s in it to visually communicate key features. I’ve been digging around the site for several minutes and I have yet to find a single one.

https://youtu.be/ltxj8YBoTMU

https://youtu.be/qmlabKbpTGM&t=5m44s

Not this exact version but it should be close. Much better than what I was expecting

Re: Had enough of Android? First 'Focal' based Ubuntu Touch is out

#24

What kind of a bubble do the Ubuntu devs live in if they dont see a reason to show even a single screenshot of their product? What goes through the head of the product manager writing a whole essay and a full extensive changelog but not bothering to add a fucking picture?

tbh the screenshot probably wouldn't tell much anyways, but have my upvote

Re: Had enough of Android? First 'Focal' based Ubuntu Touch is out

#25
post #6

> Had enough of Android? Replace it with a barely working unsecure ecosystems linux distro with effectively 0 adaption. Oh and youll still need an Android Phone for you messengers, bank accounts, ... FTFY

People already largely answered on many points, but I'll just answer on one point:

> unsecure

How is security defined? What is your threat model? If your threat model includes includes running random native binary blobs from random places like Android or iOS does, then yes, you can definitely consider it unsecure.

But that's NOT the target paradigm here, and if you consider it is, you're throwing away 90%+ of the GNU/Linux distributions out there. Last time I checked, running GNU/Linux on servers or desktops wasn't considered bad practice, quite the opposite.

Instead, it may be more secure than iOS, depending on your usage, because the paradigm is to install only opensource software that you actually trust.

Re: Had enough of Android? First 'Focal' based Ubuntu Touch is out

#26
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bank App, NFC bank card payments? Tap and pay or paywave are the best thing to happen in mobile IMO. I don't even carry a wallet anymore. I had having to carry a phone and wallet. Now it's back down to only have to carry one thing. Perfect

> I don't even carry a wallet anymore. That is a lot of faith in the technology. You don't worry about a dead battery? Cracked screen? Phone getting stolen out of your hand in the subway?

[dead]

Re: Had enough of Android? First 'Focal' based Ubuntu Touch is out

#27

The catch-22 of it is that if you have the ability to install this on your phone, you also have the ability to root it and fix most of what's wrong with android to begin with, while maintaining compatibility with your app library.

Lack of support is a big killer when it comes to Android. The OEM drops support after a few years, then it's pure luck whether some benevolent dev picks up maintenance of a FOSS ROM like LineageOS. My phone was that lucky for a good few years, but now support for it has been dropped. I don't think I have the time or energy to work out how to bootstrap, port, and maintain an Android distro for my phone. Conversely, th…

Most modern (less than 5 years old) Android smartphones support Project Treble/GSI, which largely reduce the maintenance cost.

But that Treble technology is actually being used by ubports which does Ubuntu Touch using Android drivers, and porting Ubuntu Touch on any modern Android smartphones is quite easy nowadays (assuming you have kernel source code available). It pretty much just requires rebuilding kernel source code with different parameters and that's it.

Re: Had enough of Android? First 'Focal' based Ubuntu Touch is out

#29
post #12
post #11

Screenshots! The first thing most people want when evaluating an operating system for a personal device is a screenshot. A picture is worth a thousand words, and in the case of a screenshot, you can choose what’s in it to visually communicate key features. I’ve been digging around the site for several minutes and I have yet to find a single one.

Nah, just seeing Ubuntu does it makes me want to not touch it.

Why don't you like Ubuntu? Because of the Amazon store thing?

Re: Had enough of Android? First 'Focal' based Ubuntu Touch is out

#30

What kind of a bubble do the Ubuntu devs live in if they dont see a reason to show even a single screenshot of their product? What goes through the head of the product manager writing a whole essay and a full extensive changelog but not bothering to add a fucking picture?

It's because Ubuntu Touch is actually meant to be used from the command line.
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