Do We Really Need Another Smartphone OS?

I'm interested in seeing Ubuntu getting a fair shot at the market. I don't know what to think about web-apps based operating systems like Firefox OS yet, but I think it will help Firefox, the browser, become more competitive from what they learn making the OS.

I don't care as much about Tizen and Sailfish, but I'd rather see strong open source competitors standing up against Android and iOS, than more closed ones like WP8 and BB10.

I think, if not Samsung, at least more desperate companies like HTC, LG and Sony should definitely give Ubuntu a fair try. Asus might do it anyway, as they are already making Ubuntu laptops, and they have that whole Padfone thing going on, but they haven't been very successful in smartphones yet.

This is the first headline I've ever seen that violates Betteridge's law of headlines[0], which states that any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by "no". But in the case of this headline, the answer is a resounding "yes".

[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines

> mandatory Unity interface

Mandatory?

    sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

 * log out
 * choose kde
 * log in

> I don't know what to think about web-apps based operating systems like Firefox OS yet,

I think it is a mistake. A modern operating system, particularly on mobile where power management and security are concerns, needs a mature well-optimized managed code environment to write middleware and more complicated applications in - hence Objective-C with automatic reference counting on iOS and Java/Dalvik on Android.

HTML5 for all uses under the sun is going to either underperform users' expectations or drain power, or both; and letting unmanaged C applications in is a recipe for disaster.

I would like to be excited about this, but I do not think the architecture as presented makes any sense.

I would absolutely love to see Ubuntu and others (Jolla) succeed. Unfortunately I'm also highly skeptical they will. The reason is that currently their marketing story seems so far removed from actual consumers: think about the fact that they're even trying to sell the idea of an operating system, not a complete product. This seems really backwards compared to the evidently successful Apple model. Granted, they are probably having discussions with manufacturers right now, but we'll have to wait for the results. I'd be happy to hear somebody refute this argument!