I don’t know if this has already been discussed here but nothing came up in the search.
I just read an article in XDA about the up and coming release of the ubuntu phone. It looks exciting and eversince the fall of Maemo / Meego I’ve been looking forward to having a completely opensource operating system on a phone that’s no leaking personal info to Google, MS or Apple. The UI looks innovative (well some things are borrowed from Maemo/Meego). You can see a presentation about the phone here (skip to 6:20 if you want to skip all the ubuntu trumpet blowing).
I hope this project succeeds as well as the new Firefox OS and smart phone being released soon. It will be good to have a couple of pure opensource smartphone options that are not part of the 3 mega-corps.
I am all for it but who are you gonna buy the phone from? Unless things change pretty drastically you are still gonna be buying the hardware from a mega-corp and running all your data through there networks.
In the presentation they say that they are working on making it work on hardware that currently runs Android by using the Android drivers so hopefully we’ll be able to install ubuntu for phones on an existing android phone.
At least with being completely opensource it shouldn’t have the continuous phone home leaks that the other 3 main mobile OSs do. Obviously when you use services from Google or MS then data is going to be passed but a lot can be done to keep to a minimum. Any bloatware an operator installs can easily be removed.
This at least this gives us much more control over our privacy than we can currently get with the other mobile OSs currently available. I hope this develops well. It all depends on the model they choose to monetise this.
I would like to get back to this thread as it has interest for me and I think about this a bit, thanks for opening the topic.
I too would welcome a new phone OS, the more options the better in my humble opinion.
Couple of my personal observations:
Ubuntu for phones is not open sources type project. It looks like and reads like the next Ubuntu move is going to be into the general mobile phone/tablet OS market and this has nothing to due with privacy or open source or small company.
It looks to me like Ubuntu took advantage of the open source of WebOS from HP and have made a nice product out of it. It can now sell this to hardware vendors but who is going to buy it, everyone is now locked into Android or IOS and even some Windows 8 phones. Why would they move to the Ubuntu phone? This leads me to think that Ubuntu will start making there own hardware very soon.
This is basically the same model Google used or is using. First you come out with an OS, then you start making cool hardware with your OS, then you get other hardware vendors on your OS…
By the way, wispers are that Dell (USA) is in the market for a buyer for whatever reason. This would be a great purchase for Ubuntu to make so that they can fulfill there hardware and free software domination of the world. Seriously Ubuntu, buy Dell and move us in a new direction for a while.
It would be good if a large hardware manufacturer like Samsung got behind it to help push it perhaps replacing their bada OS with it. I think without a major hardware manufacturer behind the OS it may struggle to get any mainstream acceptance and will be confined to geeks much like the Nokia N900 was. It also depends on what ubuntu want to do regarding branding. Do they want to sell ubuntu branded hardware or are they happy just saying the hardware is running the ubuntu OS?
Their attemt at the mobile OS certainly does look promising and innovative. I hope they have some deep pockets to do some proper and clever marketing. I’m certainly watching how this plays out.
Dell has around 10 billion in cash. Which is how they’re going to go private. Dell will use much of that cash to take shares off the market, then Michael Dell and his fellow private investors will buy up the rest of the float.
I don’t know how much Mark Shuttleworth values Canonical, but if he were to sell out, Dell could easily afford it.
Personally, I think Sailfish OS by Jolla is much more interesting than Ubuntu phone…
On Fri, 01 Feb 2013 14:46:05 +0000, Mikeb85 wrote:
> Dell has around 10 billion in cash. Which is how they’re going to go
> private. Dell will use much of that cash to take shares off the market,
> then Michael Dell and his fellow private investors will buy up the rest
> of the float.
Except one of the equity firms involved is balking (or was last I heard).
