ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Eric Holmi <empholmi@xxxxxxxxx>]

Unfortunately and painfully, I must agree that the project may be ending. I
must disagree with the "if you build it they will come" logic. I know many
people who love my phone and what to work on making convergence based apps,
but won't because of the lacking infrastructure. And, this project has to
be costly to maintain. That's not really practical in today's environment.
I truly wish I could say otherwise but it no longer seems viable for this
project to continue the way it is. Unless the community alone takes
entire control of the project, it seems like it will die.

If we wanted a crutch, we could do something like Kali Nethunter, which I
have also been testing, but I think that would upset many in the community.
I personally would be disappointed.

I personally am just starting to learn. I can not help with the project
yet. I hope that others will contribute, but to those who don't, I
understand.


Perhaps it may become a viable project if it focused and supported 1 modern
device and one only. Perhaps it would become a viable project if apps from
the Google play store could be run. But otherwise, it no longer seems
viable for the company running it.

On Monday, September 12, 2016, Jo-Erlend Schinstad <
joerlend.schinstad@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On 12 September 2016 at 15:16, <mail@xxxxxxxxx
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','mail@xxxxxxxxx');>> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>> BACK TO MY POINT --
>> Linux didn't achieve the current level of market share by caring about
>> what the world thought of it. Nor should Ubuntu Touch developers care.
>> Linux won gradually, because it was a good decision and people realized it
>> made a lot of sense. The mobile OS market NEEDS Ubuntu Touch, or something
>> like it.
>>
>> "If you build it, they will come."  Yes, actually, this phrase DID work
>> with Linux. And it WILL work with Touch.
>>
>
> I agree with pretty much everything you wrote. However, there is a
> difference in that x86 is extremely simple do deal with because it has
> things like BIOS/UEFI and ACPI. Phones and tablets doesn't have that yet.
> This means that you can't just download and install Ubuntu on your phone
> like you can with your PC. Ubuntu must be ported to each device and even
> then, installing is much more complicated than just booting from a CD or
> USB stick and following the instructions. And if you do it incorrectly,
> your phone doesn't work, so it feels rather dangerous. GNU+Linux could grow
> because lots of people had the proper hardware and even spare hardware to
> toy with. The market was already established. That's not the case with
> phones.
>
> When I first started really using GNU+Linux on my main computer, it was
> with RedHat 5.0, in 1997, I think. I spent five days getting getting a
> desktop working. I spent a Saturday getting the mouse to work. It was very
> frustrating and you really had to be seriously dedicated in order to do it.
> This is similar to the current situation with Ubuntu for phones, even when
> you have a supported model. You need to learn quite a bit just to find out
> which OS image to download. The images are there to download and install,
> but it's easy to understand why relatively few users actually do it. This
> can be made much easier in the future, but it will not be as easy as
> installing Ubuntu on your PC any time soon. But that's ok, because if you
> don't have the dedication and knowledge to go through that process, you
> might not want to use Ubuntu for phones yet, but rather wait for a finished
> product.
>
> Because the fact is that Ubuntu for phones isn't finished yet. There's
> lots of stuff to do and things can still break horribly. That doesn't
> matter much if you have the skills to fix it, but if you don't, then it's a
> disaster. The technical challenges of installing it actually protects
> people from making mistakes that they'll regret. For many people, $370usd
> is a lot of money and if you regret buying it, then that's a big regret and
> it's not good PR.
>
> The way I see it, the biggest benefit of Meizu and Bq having sold phones
> with Ubuntu pre-installed, is that we now have some confidence in what to
> expect. That makes it much easier for you to buy a phone and just install
> Ubuntu on it yourself – as you would with a PC. We don't need a large
> number of phones in order to prove that the system works.
>
> One last thought to prove my point... look at the success of Cyanogenmod.
>> People are willing to risk their device warranty and bricking their phone
>> to get it. But what does it offer over the stock Android? Why is it so
>> successful? Answer: Security and privacy.  How many of those people would
>> flash Touch instead, if it ran on their particular device?
>>
>
> Not a big percentage, I think. People who are willing to flash their
> phones might be willing to try Ubuntu, but most of the Cyanogen users
> probably want a better Android. Cyanogen is that, but Ubuntu is something
> else. Ubuntu has to rely on the Ubuntu community. But that's fine; we are
> many.
>
>
>