Ubuntu Phone will include a Terminal application • Hacker News Board

Re: Ubuntu Phone will include a Terminal application

#21

Post by columbo » Mon, Jan 28, 2013, 3:26 PM UTC

AlexeyBrin wrote: post #2

Having a Terminal application will make the Phone more appealing to coders and old school Linux users. I fail to see how this will make the Ubuntu Phone more appealing to the average user. EDIT: Apparently saying something that goes against the current on HN will start a shit storm (downvotes, obviously).

Yeah you're probably right... but...

If these really just acted like little linux boxes wouldn't that be a huge plus for corporate support? Being able to SSH into these phones to install VPN or other default applications instead of forcing the users/ui to see them? What about being able to 'flash' a corporate phone to a default install or manage permissions?

shrug just a thought

Re: Ubuntu Phone will include a Terminal application

#22

Post by Mavrik » Mon, Jan 28, 2013, 3:27 PM UTC

ht_th wrote: post #4

AlexeyBrin wrote: post #2

Having a Terminal application will make the Phone more appealing to coders and old school Linux users. I fail to see how this will make the Ubuntu Phone more appealing to the average user. EDIT: Apparently saying something that goes against the current on HN will start a shit storm (downvotes, obviously).

But a general purpose device like a phone should be able to cater to different audiences. There is no problem to include applications that will be used by only a subset of the audience. Plus, installing and removing applications is easy, I suppose.

Not really. We already have several different platforms out there catering to "average Joe". I think it's time hackers actually get something tailored to their use instead of having to suffer compromises on other platforms.

Re: Ubuntu Phone will include a Terminal application

#23

Post by Nursie » Mon, Jan 28, 2013, 3:27 PM UTC

AlexeyBrin wrote: post #11

jiggy2011 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everything has to be for the benefit of the "average user" whoever they are.

Agree, my point was that this will remain a niche phone.

Wait, so including features that don't immediately appeal to the average user necessarily means there will be nothing that appeals to the average user?

Your logic is broken there somewhere.

Re: Ubuntu Phone will include a Terminal application

#24

Post by jstanley » Mon, Jan 28, 2013, 3:30 PM UTC

dhimes wrote: post #14

jstanley wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, it seems to have been mocked up by someone who doesn't know the difference between a terminal and a shell :( I would rather they concentrated on making a decent standards-compliant terminal emulator and didn't have to hack up the shell to accommodate it.

It's not clear to me that everything appearing in the terminal is a shell response. It may be a more sophisticated interface than, say, UXTerm, with some mid-level processing for command completion perhaps. At least we can hope....

This is the kind of thing I'm hoping against. I don't want anything "smart" being done by the terminal; that is the job of the shell.

Re: Ubuntu Phone will include a Terminal application

#25

Post by eli » Mon, Jan 28, 2013, 3:30 PM UTC

I'm skeptical, but I was also skeptical of Firefox for Android and it turned out to be a pretty solid browser.

Re: Ubuntu Phone will include a Terminal application

#26

Post by vy8vWJlco » Mon, Jan 28, 2013, 3:30 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #8

I fear this is going to be very much a niche phone but I just might get one to support the project. Between Android, iOs, the remnants of blackberry and the Microsoft offering there will not be a whole lot of room for a new entrant that is not compatible with any of the above. A hackable phone that is not tied to one of the three largest 500 lbs+ gorillas sounds like a really neat thing to have. Here's to hoping batt…

I'll definitely buy one, iff it's a full computer. I'm so sick of all the neutered tech out there.

Re: Ubuntu Phone will include a Terminal application

#27

Post by killerpopiller » Mon, Jan 28, 2013, 3:32 PM UTC

stinos wrote: post #20

cs702 wrote: post #12

As soon as Ubuntu Phone becomes stable enough for daily use, I will switch from Android to it. Coupled with a powerful processor and plenty of spare solid-state memory, Ubuntu Phone will allow me to walk around and travel with my entire desktop environment in my pocket -- including round-the-clock access to everything available in official and third-party Ubuntu repositories. (Have you ever needed access to an editor…

This sounds somewhat too optimistic? Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd think the majority of people using their laptop for the tasks you talk about would prefer a real keyboard and some usable screen estate over a small screen and slow typing anyday. Might get the job done, but fun is otherwise and it's definitely not the right tool for the desktop job.

well thats the beauty, you can just plug keyboard/mouse via usb and hdmi for screen into your phone, ehm desktop-PC - see raspberry pis, cubieboard and so on.

really looking forward to it.

Re: Ubuntu Phone will include a Terminal application

#28

Post by dhimes » Mon, Jan 28, 2013, 3:32 PM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #24

dhimes wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear to me that everything appearing in the terminal is a shell response. It may be a more sophisticated interface than, say, UXTerm, with some mid-level processing for command completion perhaps. At least we can hope....

This is the kind of thing I'm hoping against . I don't want anything "smart" being done by the terminal; that is the job of the shell.

I see. I would vote the other way- keep the shell intact, and install a new UI. UIs can be swapped out, but breaking the shell may lead to unforeseen undesirable consequences.

Re: Ubuntu Phone will include a Terminal application

#29

Post by graue » Mon, Jan 28, 2013, 3:38 PM UTC

endianswap wrote: post #19

cs702 wrote: post #12

As soon as Ubuntu Phone becomes stable enough for daily use, I will switch from Android to it. Coupled with a powerful processor and plenty of spare solid-state memory, Ubuntu Phone will allow me to walk around and travel with my entire desktop environment in my pocket -- including round-the-clock access to everything available in official and third-party Ubuntu repositories. (Have you ever needed access to an editor…

Won't many of the projects in the Ubuntu repositories be unavailable because of architectural reasons, i.e. ARM phones versus x86/64 desktops?

What projects are you concerned about?

I run Raspbian, another Debian-based distro, on my Raspberry Pi (ARMv6 CPU) and haven't run into any missing packages yet. Can't imagine there are many projects out there these days that are still architecture-specific, outside of compilers and JITs and so forth, many of which (e.g. LuaJIT, V8, LLVM) already support ARM.

Re: Ubuntu Phone will include a Terminal application

#30

Post by AnthonyMouse » Mon, Jan 28, 2013, 3:38 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #8

I fear this is going to be very much a niche phone but I just might get one to support the project. Between Android, iOs, the remnants of blackberry and the Microsoft offering there will not be a whole lot of room for a new entrant that is not compatible with any of the above. A hackable phone that is not tied to one of the three largest 500 lbs+ gorillas sounds like a really neat thing to have. Here's to hoping batt…

>Between Android, iOs, the remnants of blackberry and the Microsoft offering there will not be a whole lot of room for a new entrant that is not compatible with any of the above

It seems exceedingly likely that if more than a few dozen people use this, someone (if not Canonical itself) will produce an Android compatibility layer.

What I wish Canonical would do is to do it right. The naive implementation is to take the existing Android source and hack it into Ubuntu like WINE, which is almost certainly a lot easier when the source is already available. What Canonical ought to do is superset Android natively: Make all of the APIs available the same as they are on Android, so that you can take the source to an Android app and just run it on Ubuntu, but you can also start from there and make relatively few changes in order to comply with any differences in Ubuntu's usability standards and have your existing Android app running properly and natively on Ubuntu in very short order.

That would give Ubuntu all of the Android apps right away, and then give Android developers an easy way to fix any compatibility-related issues with running those apps on Ubuntu without making significant changes to their existing code.

Meanwhile now you have Android running next to POSIX and developers have the temptation to use all the traditional gnu stuff plus whatever Ubuntu adds to make it appropriate to the form factor, which has the developers pushing Google to put that stuff in Android.

There is a foreseeable future in which Android and Ubuntu end up as different distributions of the same basic OS the same as RedHat and Ubuntu today.