ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Mitchell Reese <dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 25/02/17 08:14, Rodney Dawes wrote:
> On Fri, 2017-02-24 at 21:37 +0100, Matthias Apitz wrote:
> > Rodney, three questions about that:
> >
> > The Fairphone 2 is, AFAIK, a 32-bit device. What will be shown at
> > MWC,
> > announced by Canonical, will this be snap or click based?
> The FP2 port is like any other current device on UBports. It is the
> same phone image base as all other current devices. There are currently
> no snap based images for phones or tablets.
>
> > The word 'image' for the thing the Community could build, hides some
> > fundamental detail: At the moment we need some Android kernel parts
> > to
> > control the hardware of the mobile device. Do you really think that
> > there will be other images apart of the 'officially supported images'
> > in
> > the near future?
> An "image" in the snap world will just be a thing which contains a set
> of default installed snaps, which you flash on a device. This means at
> least the ubuntu-core snap, a kernel snap (which may be kernel +
> android container bits, i'm not sure if the specific there have been
> ironed out), and the unity8, mir, pulseaudio, cups, etc… snaps. It will
> not be the same as how system images work today.
>
> I see no reason why there couldn't be unofficial ports, and soon after
> we have the details worked out on how to build those images and flash
> them to devices.
>
> > Why Canonical is not supporting the existing BQ E4.5 and E5 devices
> > with
> > a new officially supported image and why you leave us alone (apart of
> > security updates)
> > and without any visible upgrade path, not even to a new hardware?
> This is not something I am able to answer.

For the record, I also find it a bit irritating at the lack of 
communication from Canonical - keeping the community in the loop seems a 
no brainer to me. That said, I think its too early to tell what will be 
supported, and what won't - how easy it will be, etc. I think this is 
mainly because no one really knows yet. Once the project is snapified 
we'll have more info, even if that involves working out ourselves what 
we can flash the system on.

I'm going to throw my ring into the hat and defend Canonical's lack of 
communication. Given how people have been jumping on /every/ bit of 
'official' media to point to the demise of this project, I can 
understand how Canonical might want to stay silent until they know what 
is going on. Personally, I think this sucks, but can understand the idea 
behind it. Lets wait and see what happens.

Mitchell
>