Ubuntu Touch Port-a-Thon 48
jppiiroinen writes "Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, has released the developer preview images for 4 different devices and a SDK Alpha on 21st day. Now two days after it seems that the community has kicked in and the Devices list is growing by the minute on their Ubuntu Touch Port-a-thon."
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Admit It (Score:5, Funny)
You read that as Ubuntu Touch Porn-a-Thon.
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Actually, I read it as Ubuntu Touch Port-a-Jon
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I did, honest to goodness, I really did read the title as "porn-a-thon". And I found myself thinking that "touch" technology must have really taken a new turn.
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I actually parsed it as "Port-A-John" first. A whole new meaning to open source hardware.
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(Goes to the corner and hangs head in shame)
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I was just going to post that. Damn it.
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You beat me to it.
N900 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:N900 (Score:5, Informative)
Doubtful, though multitouch features wouldn't work. The lack of RAM and slow processor would be far greater inhibitors.
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Okay, then I wonder if the resistive touchscreen of the N900 would eliminate the chances of a port to something like a Raspberry Pi?
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I don't know what is in the N900, but the current builds of Ubuntu are sluggish on a Galaxy Nexus (though nice and smooth on a Nexus 4). I would guess that means the N900 would be a slideshow.
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Ask Oracle regarding MySQL... you can always fork MySQL if you don't like Oracle direction, can you do that with Windows or OS/X? With open source you have the option.
In fact, with the porting guide Ubuntu is giving to the community the control, they target is to bundle it with phones under their brand or companies that have an agreement with them. Port this to the devices you want, provided that had enough hardware support to run it. So far don't seem have ned connection to be tied to the company as Andro
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Who care's if some people get to make bucket loads of cash off of open source? And for whatever money the likes of Mr Shuttleworth make off it (and good on them, I say), there's a lot of money being poured back into OS projects that we get to enjoy the fruits of for free. We're all profiting from the hard work of developers in some way or other.
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*cares, not care's.
Edit buttons are much needed, Slashdot!
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and if you typed that from an ubuntu system, they now know everything you just said.
re: ubuntu; its now poisoned fruit. I can't trust them and won't ever install their stuff again. the company I work for was going to deploy ubuntu but I have warned them that, since the keylogging went public, no one should deploy their code, libs, distro.
sorry, but you get one chance to screw yourselves, ubuntu, and sadly, you took that.
game over.
no matter what you do, game over afaiac.
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There's not much worth porting yet (Score:1)
From what little I've played with it, Ubuntu Touch is nothing but a glorified chroot on top of a bare-bones Cyanogen install. Which is good as it eliminates the overhead of standard Android, but I expected something a little more bare metal.
My biggest surprise was the fact that they included the standard 12.10 repo. I was able to install SSH (real OpenSSH not dropbear) per their instructions and install anything I wanted. Pianobar (a shell Pandora client) worked wonderfully with the included ALSA driver. La
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Wow, that's lame...
I, as many others I'm sure, expected this to be a "proper" linux port for devices that previously ran the whole android deal.
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Why would you expect that? It's a developer preview with the API and SDK frameworks so that developers can start testing their applications on the actual devices instead of an interface simulator on the computer. They've been nothing but clear about this since they announced it in January.
The "proper" Linux port will be finished in time for Ubuntu 13.10.
iPhone? (Score:3)
Today I was looking for an iPhone port, I wish they did it if possible. It would be very cool indeed.
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Touchpad (Score:5, Interesting)
Fingers crossed that soon I'll be able to treble boot WebOS, Android and Ubuntu on my HP Touchpad.
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Re:Touchpad (Score:5, Funny)
I'll be able to treble boot
if you do that, all your bass will belong to ubuntu, then!
So, what's the verdict? (Score:2)
So, to all those with compatible hardware and willingness to test out these installs, what do you think so far?
Seeing as these images are packaged for devices that were originally running Android, how does it compare to Android in terms of responsiveness, features, ease of use, intuitiveness, eye candy, etc? Any glitches, glaring ommissions? Any really cool features?
And what's the 'Linux' side of it like? Can you pull up a terminal and do general sys admin type stuff on one of these things? Does it have wel
Re:So, what's the verdict? (Score:4, Informative)
There is a serious lack of features still. GSM data doesn't even work, and the only apps are the dialer, web browser, video player and camera.
Eye candy would be nice if it wasn't full of fake data and static images (see calculator and weather apps)
It's a chroot environment running on top of a bare-bones Android install (Cyanogen kernel, actually). It's based off 12.10 and actually includes the standard repo, so you can install anything that's been compiled for arm (or compile it yourself, godforbid) There's no terminal app, so you have to do all this remotely. You can try installing X11, but I wasn't able to get it to work. I think the Touch UI is locking the framebuffer. (if X even has support for it)
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No terminal!? Nice to know it still has the standard repositories though. I guess once you've logged in remotely (SSH presumably?) you could apt-get install a terminal application for local use?
I had a quick look at a few of the Youtube videos of it that have popped up over last few hours so see what you mean about fake data and static images for applications. Seems there's quite a bit missing at the moment.
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Development of the Terminal application is underway and open to anybody who wants to contribute to it: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/CoreApps/Terminal [ubuntu.com]
And yes, there is a lot that hasn't been implemented yet. This is a Developer Preview, meant to give app developers something to play with and deploy Ubuntu SDK apps on, and also to make the source code available to anybody who wants to hack on it (and we hope contribute those hacks back to us).
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The interface is pretty sluggish and the app selection is very minimal. I would recommend most people hold off for now unless you are a die hard Ubuntu fan or plan on developing apps for the OS. It's an interesting concept and I think the UI looks cool (people that like Unity may disagree with me here.) The whole idea of using swipe gestures as opposed to buttons that always remain on screen is also something that differentiates itself from Android and iOS.
I tried it on the Nexus 10 and I'm interested to se
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My device is missing! (Score:2)
HP Touchpad please!
Just let it die (Score:1)
No Thanks. Ubuntu is becoming the M$ of the Linux world, with recent moves selling out their users. I'm sticking with Android.