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Ubuntu Phone will include a Terminal application

wiki.ubuntu.com

51–60 of 106 posts

Re: Ubuntu Phone will include a Terminal application

#51
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you're going to use all those adapters & accessories... you may as well just use a desktop or laptop. Which probably already has all those packages you frequently use, and runs them faster.

Re: Ubuntu Phone will include a Terminal application

#52
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 is the funniest comment I've read in a long time. Kudos, cs702!

Re: Ubuntu Phone will include a Terminal application

#53
The market for people who want a native terminal on their phone should be roughly equivalent to people who ever want to terminal INTO their phone.

The market already well served by iOS, Android, etc., is people who want to terminal OUT OF their phone and onto a real computer someplace.

What are the real-world tasks you expect to do with the former that you couldn't do, or couldn't do as well, with the latter?

Re: Ubuntu Phone will include a Terminal application

#54
post #38
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As an example, Yesod doesn't work on the raspberry pi, because GHCi is not in the debian ARM repositories. This is annoying, because compiling everything yourself takes forever on the raspberry.

Have you tried using distcc for compiling large packages?

Re: Ubuntu Phone will include a Terminal application

#55
Just thinking out loud here.

You know where a market for disruption exists? The millions of iOS devices that are now being relegated to the trash bin of tech. Very soon everything from iPhone 3GS and back will be obsolete. You will not be able to update apps or OS. I have a nice pile of iPod Touch units that I can't develop for and will not move past their last update (was it iOS 4.2-something?).

You don't have to build any hardware. It's already there. And it's nice too.

Provide a path for a Linux (or whatever) phone to be loaded into these devices and you instantly create a market for probably hundreds of millions of devices that will either end-up in the trash bin or forever forgotten in a desk drawer.

If I were Microsoft I'd throw money at making W8 Phone run as a viable replacement for iOS on these devices. And I'd make the software 100% free of charge. Instant access to millions upon millions of customers who will be facing a very real choice of having to spend hundreds of dollars to get a new iOS device or, instead, try W8 Phone for iDevices for free. Yes, apps will be important. For some, this will not work. For others it would be a no-brainer.

The same would be true of Google/Android.

If I could load something else onto my half-dozen now-obsolete iPod's I'd do it. Yes, I know you can Whited00r up to a somewhat crippled iOS5, but that's not really a solution, certainly not for a hundred million devices.

Re: Ubuntu Phone will include a Terminal application

#56
post #32
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…

Have you ever needed access to an editor, language, database backend, etc. when you happen to be without a laptop? Honestly? No. I can't imagine the agony of trying to type out a SQL query on my phone. I have a Macbook Air, which is light enough for me to carry around with me the vast majority of the time- it's great. If I wanted something smaller I would perhaps get a tablet with a keyboard (or a netbook, if they we…

its an absolutely EPIC tool.

I use my phone right now for sshing into my home machines and getting analytics, benchmarks, error logs, making spot changes to files, editing users and groups, etc. If you have a smartphone with a foldout keyboard, you're set. The possibility of me being able to do this with urxvt and emacs running on the phone is just awesome. Interacting with postgres on the cli with my phone is a dream as well. Obviously writing out huge statements is a pain, but you're generally just running one liners through to find some info.

Re: Ubuntu Phone will include a Terminal application

#57
post #56
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever needed access to an editor, language, database backend, etc. when you happen to be without a laptop? Honestly? No. I can't imagine the agony of trying to type out a SQL query on my phone. I have a Macbook Air, which is light enough for me to carry around with me the vast majority of the time- it's great. If I wanted something smaller I would perhaps get a tablet with a keyboard (or a netbook, if they we…

its an absolutely EPIC tool. I use my phone right now for sshing into my home machines and getting analytics, benchmarks, error logs, making spot changes to files, editing users and groups, etc. If you have a smartphone with a foldout keyboard, you're set. The possibility of me being able to do this with urxvt and emacs running on the phone is just awesome. Interacting with postgres on the cli with my phone is a drea…

Which keyboard would you recommend, I have a Galaxy Nexus, and use to for emergency ssh sessions when I dont have access the computer.

Re: Ubuntu Phone will include a Terminal application

#58
post #38
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As an example, Yesod doesn't work on the raspberry pi, because GHCi is not in the debian ARM repositories. This is annoying, because compiling everything yourself takes forever on the raspberry.

It should be noted there is a difference between "not in repos, so I have to manually build, but it works" and "there is absolutely no way to run this software on this platform due to the processor".

It is really promising for the current software written against glibc and friends to have all these arm devices running homebrew ARM builds without many hitches.

Especially compared to a platform like, say, Windows, where even though there is an ARM version (Windows RT) which is extremely stripped down and awful on all fronts, there is no software for it because of API compatibility issues and the fact that without open source recompiling most of the Windows software catalog is impossible.

Re: Ubuntu Phone will include a Terminal application

#59
post #56
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever needed access to an editor, language, database backend, etc. when you happen to be without a laptop? Honestly? No. I can't imagine the agony of trying to type out a SQL query on my phone. I have a Macbook Air, which is light enough for me to carry around with me the vast majority of the time- it's great. If I wanted something smaller I would perhaps get a tablet with a keyboard (or a netbook, if they we…

its an absolutely EPIC tool. I use my phone right now for sshing into my home machines and getting analytics, benchmarks, error logs, making spot changes to files, editing users and groups, etc. If you have a smartphone with a foldout keyboard, you're set. The possibility of me being able to do this with urxvt and emacs running on the phone is just awesome. Interacting with postgres on the cli with my phone is a drea…

I guess I can't see the need to do any of those things on a bus, or on the street. It's extremely rare that I would have to do something that couldn't wait for an hour or two until I'm either at work or home.

Re: Ubuntu Phone will include a Terminal application

#60
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any info on exactly which phone that might be?

No info. But hopefully the first one will be based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and will be 64-bit (Cortex A57 and Cortex A53 class chips). It would be a mistake for them to start out with a 32 bit version, just to switch to the 64 but version months later or a year later.

One concern is that Ubuntu is probably shaping up to start rolling release and Wayland support in 14.10, and they face a current real issue of dealing with X in the embedded space. If the launch the phone with 14.04 (though, they don't have much of a choice if aiming for an H1 release) they end up ripping out the graphics stack half a year or a year later if they use X.

And there are still those awful rumors of Canonical writing their own windowing server and compositor. They spread themselves so thin sometimes that you rip the bread apart.

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