Computed·Blg

Via TechCrunch

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A year after it revealed another attempt to muscle in on the smartphone market, Canonical’s first Ubuntu-based smartphone is due to go on sale in Europe in the “coming days”, it said today. The device will be sold for €169.90 (~$190) unlocked to any carrier network, although some regional European carriers will be offering SIM bundles at the point of purchase. The hardware is an existing mid-tier device, the Aquaris E4.5, made by Spain’s BQ — with the Ubuntu version of the device known as the ‘Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition’. So the only difference here is it will be pre-loaded with Ubuntu’s mobile software, rather than Google’s Android platform.

Canonical has been trying to get into the mobile space for a while now. Back in 2013, the open source software maker failed to crowdfund a high end converged smartphone-cum-desktop-computer, called the Ubuntu Edge — a smartphone-sized device that would been powerful enough to transform from a pocket computer into a fully fledged desktop when plugged into a keyboard and monitor, running Ubuntu’s full-fat desktop OS. Canonical had sought to raise a hefty $32 million in crowdfunds to make that project fly. Hence its more modest, mid-tier smartphone debut now.

On the hardware side, Ubuntu’s first smartphone offers pretty bog standard mid-range specs, with a 4.5 inch screen, 1GB RAM, a quad-core A7 chip running at “up to 1.3Ghz”, 8GB of on-board storage, 8MP rear camera and 5MP front-facing lens, plus a dual-SIM slot. But it’s the mobile software that’s the novelty here (demoed in action in Canonical’s walkthrough video, embedded below).

Canonical has created a gesture-based smartphone interface called Scopes, which puts the homescreen focus on on a series of themed cards that aggregate content and which the user swipes between to navigate around the functions of the phone, while app icons are tucked away to the side of the screen, or gathered together on a single Scope card. Examples include a contextual ‘Today’ card which contains info like weather and calendar, or a ‘Nearby’ card for location-specific local services, or a card for accessing ‘Music’ content on the device, or ‘News’ for accessing various articles in one place.

It’s certainly a different approach to the default grid of apps found on iOS and Android but has some overlap with other, alternative platforms such as Palm’s WebOS, or the rebooted BlackBerry OS, or Jolla’s Sailfish. The problem is, as with all such smaller OSes, it will be an uphill battle for Canonical to attract developers to build content for its platform to make it really live and breathe. (It’s got a few third parties offering content at launch — including Songkick, The Weather Channel and TimeOut.) And, crucially, a huge challenge to convince consumers to try something different which requires they learn new mobile tricks. Especially given that people can’t try before they buy — as the device will be sold online only.

Canonical said the Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition will be made available in a series of flash sales over the coming weeks, via BQ.com. Sales will be announced through Ubuntu and BQ’s social media channels — perhaps taking a leaf out of the retail strategy of Android smartphone maker Xiaomi, which uses online flash sales to hype device launches and shift inventory quickly. Building similar hype in a mature smartphone market like Europe — for mid-tier hardware — is going to a Sisyphean task. But Canonical claims to be in it for the long, uphill haul.

“We are going for the mass market,” Cristian Parrino, its VP of Mobile, told Engadget. “But that’s a gradual process and a thoughtful process. That’s something we’re going to be doing intelligently over time — but we’ll get there.”

Via LinuxInsider

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Bigger may be better if you're from Texas, but it's becoming increasingly clear to the rest of us that it really is a small world after all.

Case in point? None other than what one might reasonably call the invasion of tiny Linux PCs going on all around us.

We've got the Raspberry Pi, we've got the Cotton Candy. Add to those the Mele A1000, the VIA APC, the MK802 and more, and it's becoming increasingly difficult not to compute like a Lilliputian.

Where's it all going? That's what Linux bloggers have been pondering in recent days. Down at the seedy Broken Windows Lounge the other night, Linux Girl got an earful.

It's 'Fantastic'

"Linux has been heading towards one place for many years now: complete and total world domination!" quipped Thoughts on Technology blogger and Bodhi Linux lead developer Jeff Hoogland.

"All joking aside, these new devices simply further showcase Linux's unmatched ability to be flexible across an array of different devices of all sizes and power," Hoogland added.

"Having a slew of devices that are powerful enough for users to browse the web -- which, let's be honest, is all a good deal of people do these days -- for under 100 USD is fantastic," he concluded.

'It Only Gets More Exciting'

Similarly, "I believe that the medley of tiny Linux PCs we're seeing hitting the market lately is the true sign of the Post PC Era," suggested Google+ blogger Linux Rants.

"The smartphone started it, but the Post PC Era will begin in earnest when the functionality that we currently see in the home computer is replaced by numerous small appliance-type devices," Linux Rants explained. "These tiny Linux PCs are the harbinger of those appliances -- small, low-cost, programmable devices that can be made into virtually anything the owner desires."

Other devices we're already seeing include "the oven that you can turn on with a text message, the espresso machine that you can control with a text message, home security systems and cars that can be controlled from your smartphone," he added. "This is where the Post PC Era begins, and it only gets more exciting from here."

'There Is No Reason Not to Do It'

This is "definitely the wave of the future," agreed Google+ blogger Kevin O'Brien.

"Devices of all kinds are getting smaller and smaller, while simultaneously increasing their power," O'Brien explained. "Exponential growth does that over time.

"My phone in my pocket right now has more computing power than the rockets that went to the moon," he added. "And if you look ahead, a few more turns of exponential growth means we'll have the equivalent of a full desktop computer the size of an SD card within a few years."

At that point, "everything starts to be computerized, because adding a little intelligence is so cheap there is no reason not to do it," O'Brien concluded.

'We're Approaching That Future'

Indeed, "many including myself have long been harping on the fact that today's computers are orders of magnitude faster than early systems on which we ran graphic interfaces and got work done, and yet are dismissed as toys," Hyperlogos blogger Martin Espinoza told Linux Girl.

"A friend suggested to me once that eventually microwave ovens would contain little Unix servers 'on a chip' because that would be basically all you could get, because it would actually be cheaperto use such a system when given the cost of developing an alternative," he said. "Seeing the cost of these new products it looks to me like we're approaching that future rapidly.

"There has always been demand for low-cost computers, and the massive proliferation of low-cost, low-power cores has pushed their price down to the point where we can finally have them," Espinoza concluded.

"Even adjusted for inflation," he said, "many of these computers are an order of magnitude cheaper than the cheapest useful home computers from the time when personal computing began to gain popularity, and yet they are certainly powerful enough to serve many roles including many people's main or even only 'computer.'"

'It Gives Me Hope'

Consultant and Slashdot blogger Gerhard Mack was similarly enthusiastic.

"I love it," Mack told Linux Girl.

"When I was a child, my parents brought home all sorts of fun things to tinker with, and I learned while doing it," he explained. "But these last few years it seems like the learning electronics and their equivalents have disappeared into a mass of products that are only for what the manufacturer designed them for and nothing else.

"I am loving the return of my ability to tinker," Mack concluded. "It gives me hope that there can be a next generation of kids who can love the enjoyment of simply creating things."

'They Look a Bit Expensive'

Not everyone was thrilled, however.

"Okay, I am not all that excited about the invasion of the tiny PC," admitted Roberto Lim, a lawyer and blogger on Mobile Raptor.

"With 7-inch Android tablets with capacitive displays, running Android 4.0 and with access to Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Play's Android app market, 8 GB or storage expandable via a Micro SD card, 1080p video playback, a USB port and HDMI out and 3000 to 4000 mAh batteries starting at US$90, it is a bit hard to get excited about these tiny PCs," Lim explained.

"Despite the low prices of the tiny PCs, they all look a bit expensive when compared to what is already in the market," he opined.

'These Devices Have a Niche'

The category really isn't even all that new, Slashdot blogger hairyfeet opined.

"There have been mini ARM-based Linux boxes for several years now," he explained. "From portable media players to routers to set-top boxes, there are a ton of little bitty boxes running embedded Linux."

It's not even quite right to call such devices PCs "because PC has an already well-defined meaning: it was originally 'IBM PC compatible,'" hairyfeet added. "Even if you give them the benefit of the doubt, PCs have always been general use computers, and these things are FAR from general use."

Rather, "they are designed with a very specific and narrow job in mind," he said. "Trying to use them as general computers would just be painful."

So, "in the end these devices have a niche, just as routers and beagleboards and the pi does, but that niche is NOT general purpose in any way, shape, or form," hairyfeet concluded.

'Opportunities for Specialists'

Chris Travers, a Slashdot blogger who works on the Ledger SMB project, considered the question through the lens of evolutionary ecology.

"In any ecological system an expanding niche allows for differentiation, and a contracting niche requires specialization," Travers pointed out. 'So, for example, if a species of moth undergoes a population explosion, predators of that moth will often specialize and be more picky as to what prey they go after."

The same thing happens with markets, Travers suggested.

"When a market expands, it provides opportunities for specialists, but when it contracts, only the generalists can survive," he told Linux Girl.

'Niche Environments'

The tiny new devices are "replacements for desktop and laptop systems in niche environments," Travers opined.

"In many environments these may be far more capable than traditional systems," he added.

The bottom line, though, "is that the Linux market is growing at a healthy rate," Travers concluded.

'The Right Way to Do IT'

"Moore's Law allows the world to do more with less hardware and so does FLOSS," blogger Robert Pogson told Linux Girl. "It's the right way to do IT rather than paying a bunch for the privilege of running the hardware we own."

Last year was a turning point, Pogson added.

"More people bought small, cheap computers running Linux than that other OS, and the world saw that things were fine without Wintel," he explained. "2012 will bring more of the same." By the end of this year, in fact, "the use of GNU/Linux on small cheap computers doing what we used to do with huge hair-drying Wintel PCs will be mainstream in many places on Earth," Pogson predicted. "In 2012 we will see a major decline in the number of PCs running that other OS. We will see major shelf-space given to Linux PCs at retail."

Via ZDNet

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Android has always been Linux, but for years the Android project went its own way and its code wasn’t merged back into the main Linux tree. Now, much sooner than Linus Torvalds, Linux’s founder and lead developer, had expected, Android has officially merged back into Linux’s mainline.

The fork between Android and Linux all began in the fall of 2010, “Google engineer Patrick Brady stated that Android is not Linux” That was never actually the case.Android has always been Linux at heart.

At the same time though Google did take Android in a direction that wasn’t compatible with the mainstream Linux kernel. As Greg Kroah-Hartman, the maintainer of the stable Linux kernel for the Linux Foundation and head of the Linux Driver Project, wrote in Android and the Linux kernel community, “The Android kernel code is more than just the few weird drivers that were in the drivers/staging/androidsubdirectory in the kernel. In order to get a working Android system, you need the new lock type they have created, as well as hooks in the core system for their security model. In order to write a driver for hardware to work on Android, you need to properly integrate into this new lock, as well as sometimes the bizarre security model. Oh, and then there’s the totally-different framebuffer driver infrastructure as well.” That flew like a lead balloon in Android circles.

This disagreement sprang from several sources. One was that Google’s Android developers had adopted their own way to address power issues with WakeLocks. The other cause, as Google open source engineering manager Chris DiBona pointed out, was that Android’s programmers were so busy working on Android device specifics that they had done a poor job of co-coordinating with the Linux kernel developers.

The upshot was that developer circles have had many heated words over what’s the right way of handling Android specific code in Linux. The upshot of the dispute was that Torvalds dropped the Android drivers from the main Linux kernel in late 2009.

Despite these disagreements, there was never any danger as one claim had it in March 2011, that Android was somehow in danger of being sued by Linux because of Gnu General Public License, version 2 (GPLv2) violations. As Linus himself said at the time, claims that the Android violated the GPL were “totally bogus. We’ve always made it very clear that the kernel system call interfaces do not in any way result in a derived work as per the GPL, and the kernel details are exported through the kernel headers to all the normal glibc interfaces too.”

Over the last few months though, as Torvalds explained last fall, that while “there’s still a lot of merger to be done … eventually Android and Linux would come back to a common kernel, but it will probably not be for four to five years.” Kroah-Hartman added at the time that one problem is that “Google’s Android team is very small and over-subscribed to so they’re resource restrained It would be cheaper in the long run for them to work with us.” Torvalds then added that “We’re just going different directions for a while, but in the long run the sides will come together so I’m not worried.”

In the event the re-merger of the two went much faster than expected. At the 2011 Kernel Summit in Prague in late October, the Linux kernel developers “agreed that the bulk of theAndroid kernel code should probably be merged into the mainline.” To help this process along, theAndroid Mainlining Project was formed.

Things continued to go along much faster then anyone had foreseen. By December, Kroah-Hartman could write, “by the 3.3 kernel release, the majority of the Android code will be merged, but more work is still left to do to better integrate the kernel and userspace portions in ways that are more palatable to the rest of the kernel community. That will take longer, but I don’t foresee any major issues involved.” He was right.

Today, you can compile the Android code in Linux 3.3 and it will boot. Still, as Kroah-Hartman warned, WakeLocks, still aren’t in the main kernel, but even that’s getting worked on. For all essential purposes, Android and Linux are back together again.

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