Commercial smartphones running the mobile version of the Ubuntu Linux distro probably won't be available through carriers until 2015 at the earliest, a Canonical spokesman has revealed. When Canonical CEO Jane Silber first announced plans to port Ubuntu to phones last year, she said the goal was to ship the first handsets with …

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Thursday 16th January 2014 02:35 GMT Zola

Glad I bought my Jolla phone instead of waiting for Canonical

Sailfish OS may be beta and far from perfect, but it shows a lot of promise, is a full Linux distro (including ssh, rsync and even git clients as standard!) and more importantly it's available today.

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1. Thursday 16th January 2014 03:29 GMT UnauthorisedAccess
  
  Re: Glad I bought my Jolla phone instead of waiting for Canonical
  
  My ideal phone would be something like the Ubuntu phone.
  
  I want my phone to look like a phone (~5" screen) and, amazingly these days, take phone calls and send/receive SMS/MMS messages. I don't care if it isn't thin. I don't care if it doesn't look sexy. So long as it fits into my pocket I'm happy.
  
  I also want to have full control of the phone as if it was something like a Raspberry Pi. I want to have root terminal access out of the box. I want to be able to easily load new OS images to the phone. I want to (but probably rarely) be able to write non-sandboxed software for the phone and run a large variety of 'full distro' applications (such as VLC, LibreOffice, TuxPaint for the kids) just like they were running on my Raspberry Pi. I want to (but probably only do rarely) connect to a monitor via a mini-HDMI output and use a bluetooth keyboard and use it as a normal PC / media consumption device.
  
  I also don't want to pay big bucks. That last one probably means I'll be waiting a long time.
  
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  1. Thursday 16th January 2014 06:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
    
    Re: Glad I bought my Jolla phone instead of waiting for Canonical
    
    I love your statement.
    
    so you want to be able to load new OS imanges AND be able to make calls and send text messages.
    
    I guess you will be a very unhappy bunny if when you load the new Beta image that your device stops receiving calls and you are totally unaware of it. You miss your date/deal/house purchase/whatever....
    
    I guess that is the mentality that Ubuntu has generated over the years. I prefer to the stability of Debian or RHEL.
    
    Just like you I want a phone that works as a phone. I don't want to risk bricking it or making it unusable. Stability is the key to my needs.
    
    You will have to pry my Nokia 6310i out of my cold dead hands because at the moment it satisfies all my needs.
    
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    1. Thursday 16th January 2014 21:51 GMT UnauthorisedAccess
      
      Re: Glad I bought my Jolla phone instead of waiting for Canonical
      
      > so you want to be able to load new OS imanges AND be able to make calls and send text messages
      
      Yes, just like people have been doing for ages via xda-developers.com. This isn't new stuff.
      
      If this was my main phone then no, I wouldn't be installing alphas, betas or even RCs on it. If you're going to load a beta and expect everything to work perfectly you're going to have a bad time.
      
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Thursday 16th January 2014 05:35 GMT Anonymous Coward

as long as the gui isn't burnt orange

or is it just me?

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1. Thursday 16th January 2014 14:09 GMT Julian Taylor
  
  Re: as long as the gui isn't burnt orange
  
  If the battery is made by the same people who do the 787 batteries then the whole phone will be burnt orange :)
  
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2. Thursday 16th January 2014 16:05 GMT andreas koch
  
  @ theodore - Re: as long as the gui isn't burnt orange
  
  No. Nopedinopenono.
  
  Totally get rid of that attitude right now please. The GUI isn't orange if you don't want it to be. This is an open source OS: CHANGE IT. This is not a "can't-let-you-do-that- OS"
  
  I find it really confusing that people dismiss certain OSs/ distributions on the grounds of a changeable attribute. KDE is too metallic. Mint is soo XP. Ubuntu is much too orange.
  
  Bah.
  
  /rant
  
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Thursday 16th January 2014 08:28 GMT Bill the Sys Admin

Lots of choices now!

Just have to wait and see what these OS's are actually like, looking forward to more choice. I enjoy the idea of Firefox OS but really right now as far as im aware its pretty poor. Lots of great alternatives to Android and iOS coming they just need to mature.

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Thursday 16th January 2014 10:02 GMT James 51

The solar panel other half on the jolla looks good. Am probably going to get a 1020 or Z30 as my next phone but Jolla does look tempting.

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Thursday 16th January 2014 11:44 GMT Anonymous Coward

Target existing hardware...

Instead of waiting for some no-name OEM to make some suitable hardware they should focus on getting it working perfectly on some existing platform, old Samsung S3 or Note (with S-Pen support) platform would be great, and if they allowed dual boot to Android and Ubuntu even better...

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