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I hope Ubuntu Touch can become the most viable alternative to Android for mobile devices.
It should be secure, respect privacy, and reject government censorship and surveillance.
In terms of system architecture, it should incorporate UI features from WebOS.
In terms of applications, I hope it supports web applications.
It should support unified communication.
I dislike Android because it's closed, increasingly sluggish, has a bloated design, a virtual machine mechanism, consumes a lot of power, has excessively high device requirements, pushes system junk, and isn't a true Linux distribution.
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C CiberSheep moved this topic from Design
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@ufoddos Interesting perspective. And is there anything we can help you with so you can contribute to the changes you want to see (ignoring the fact that most of what you mention is either already being worked on or already possible in certain ways)?
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@ufoddos said in Recommendations for Ubuntu Touch:
unified communication
Sorry, what does that mean? I'm not familiar with that term.
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@ufoddos said in Recommendations for Ubuntu Touch:
I hope Ubuntu Touch can become the most viable alternative to Android for mobile devices.
I do as well, as I think most of everyone who posts on this forum does too.
It should be secure,
That "should" is most certainly something the UBports core team and Ubuntu Touch community wants as well. In terms of online security, this is something that has been improved recently via the update to a 24.04 LTS Ubuntu base, which enables for upstream security updates to be easily shipped in the system OS. There is also ongoing work towards enabling encrypting user and other data for the OS, with initial basic support for this already implemented in the latest version. However one big downside for UT in terms of physical security is that the bootloader needs to remain unlocked for the OS to load. This is something that likely needs to cooperation of a device maker to fix for specific devices.
respect privacy, and reject government censorship and surveillance.
The UBports Foundation and the Ubuntu Touch itself already does all of these things. There is absolutely no data mining from either, and the uAdBlockNG app available from the Open Store allows one to avoid a significant amount of invasive trackers and ads.
In terms of system architecture, it should incorporate UI features from WebOS.
I will have to strongly disagree with you on this point, rather most of us using it, and certainly those developing it, think it should NOT be sublimating its own design aesthetics to one from another existing project. Ubuntu Touch was created in the first place to be exactly entwined with its own unique desktop environment (initially called Unity 8, now rebranded as "Lomiri"), as well as with a curated unified design ethic and theming, and what UT really needs is just more developers willing to contribute some PR's to shape this to improve and expand its capabilities, rather than simply replicate designs made in other projects.
In terms of applications, I hope it supports web applications.
It already does, and since it was started. Lots of apps available in the Open Store are in fact wrappers and containers for various webapps. And the "Webber" app allows one to easily create ones own webapp via making a launcher and container for a url. There are currently some compatibility issues with this due to the age of the Chromium supported by the current QtWebEngine 5.x used for the system wide Morph browser, but the core team is very busy now focusing on updating the webengine used by UT's Morph browser to QtWebEngine 6.x, and there is in fact a preview app in the Open Store alpha stage one can use, that can in fact access a good majority of services that are made available for general webapp use. Of course there is the challenge that there are a good number of online services that are only made available to Android and iOS apps currently (such as a number of banking apps), and sadly being able to create compatibility for many of these is beyond any control of UT's developers. But otherwise - yes, UT supports webapps.
It should support unified communication.
Dunno what you mean by "unified communication", but there is currently native app and/or webapp support in UT for: phone calls (via 2G, 3G, and now VoLTE for a growing number of devices) SMS & MMS (core Messenger app), email (both imap & pop3), Matrix, Telegram, Jitsi, Whatsapp, Signal, XMPP, IRC, and a few other protocols. Plus other services such as Session and Wire can be accessed via Android apps installed in Waydroid containers. While this might be the opposite from "unified" and certainly not totally complete, UT is certainly capable of being quite capable as far as messaging goes.
I dislike Android because it's closed, increasingly sluggish, has a bloated design, a virtual machine mechanism, consumes a lot of power, has excessively high device requirements, pushes system junk, and isn't a true Linux distribution.
Yes, I dislike Android for this as well, although there are some "degoogled" AOSP ROM's these days which do a good job of fixing some of those issues. However the future continuing development of those ROM's is increasingly threatened by Google's own recent moves towards even further centralizing control over the Android eco-system, which makes projects like Ubuntu Touch even more important going forward.
Best regards,
Steve Berson
