Big-ass Disclaimer: What follows is purely personal opinion as a geek, technophile, and free and open source software (FOSS) and Linux user. It does not, in any way, reflect the opinions of my employer.
As a geek writing about gadgets and technology, I often find myself drooling over the latest innovations and insanity in the industry. But as an open source and Linux user, I lament over how majority, if not all of those are pretty but caged gardens. There are, of course, existing “open” systems, but each one represents a compromise for me. Android is basically an open source code dump, with development happening behind closed doors. And it is so far removed from the Linux that we’ve grown to know and love that it’s barely recognizable as Linux. Sailfish OS has technology closer to my heart (like Qt) and is indeed closer to a traditional Linux system, but its availability on actual commercial devices with modern, decent specs leave much to be desired. Mer/Nemo is far from being something usable even if you install it on, say, a Nexus device.
So when Ubuntu and Canonical revealed they were partnering with actual, big manufacturers for Ubuntu mobile devices, a spark of hope was rekindled in my heart. Let it be clear, I am by no means an Ubuntu user, not even a fan. I left the fold nearly a decade ago, after having spent quite some time using and contributing to Kubuntu (to the point of becoming a certified “member” even, though I never ascended to the Council). In terms of loyalties and usage, I am a KDE user (and “helper”) foremost. I use Fedora because it just works for me, for now. So, yes, an Ubuntu Touch device would be another compromise for me, but it would be the smallest one. Or so I hoped.
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When opportunity knocked offering the chance to review two of the latest commercial Ubuntu Touch devices, well, let’s just say it didn’t have to knock twice. To be specific, I got my hands on a bq Aquaris M10 first, and then a Meizu PRO 5. I’ve already written thousands of words on both (not exaggerating on the numbers), so I’m not going to regurgitate them here. For the curious, here are the links to those reviews:
- bq Aquaris M10 Review Part 1: The Hardware
- bq Aquaris M10 Review Part 2: The Software
- bq Aquaris M10 Review Part 3: The Verdict
- Meizu PRO 5 Review
In terms of design and hardware, the two couldn’t be more different. The bq Aquaris M10 tablet is plastic, mid-range, and, at a glance, quite plain. The Meizu PRO 5 is metal and boasted of 2015 flagship hardware. It also looked nice to boot. But surprisingly, the Aquaris M10 was able to perform admirably, despite choking a few times on more resource intensive work. Hardware-wise, I really have no complaints, as they work as advertised. And those happen to also be the least interesting aspects of the devices.
The App Situation
I’m here to write more about the software experience, the Ubuntu Touch experience. The defining feature of these two otherwise fully Android devices. I wish it were otherwise, but I have been sorely disappointed with the end result of my tour. Perhaps I set my expectations to high, or perhaps I put too much faith in the marketing spiel. The good news is that the journey isn’t over yet and the story might very well still change.
While Ubuntu Touch might look and feel like a regular Linux system on top, albeit with the new, more touch-friendly version of Unity 8, beneath has a few things in common with Android, apart from using Android drivers. For better or for worse, Ubuntu Touch adopts the Android convention of a read-only system partition. In a nutshell, even while you can actually gain root, or sudo rather, far easier than on an Android system, you cannot effect permanent changes. In short, you can’t really install software via the age-old apt-get (just apt now) method. Actually you can, but only by explicitly making the system partition read-write. But if you do that, you will no longer be able to receive OTA updates, which, based on experience, are very, very desirable. For example, the most recent OTA-11 added Miracast support, which meant that the Meizu PRO 5, whose USB-C port doesn’t support HDMI out, can finally use Convergence. The next OTA will even add fingerprint scanner support.
So you have a choice between hacking your way to be able to install regular package the regular way (as long as they are built for ARM) and depriving yourself of OTAs, or sticking to the default settings and only the apps available from the Ubuntu Store. Neither is ideal and both are unacceptable.
The selection of apps in the Store is dismal, to be blunt. Of the few that are there, around 80% of them are simply wrappers around web apps or web pages. And while there are some who would rally behind web apps, and in this case they do actually save Ubuntu Touch some space, the ugliness of their unoptimized experiences is easily seen and painfully felt. On the Meizu PRO 5, the situation is a bit worse. In regular mobile/phone mode, the browser’s user agent is fixed as an Android device, which means web services will try to force you to use the Android app instead and will not go further. Yes, those web services are partly to blame, but the default browser app has no easy feature to change the user agent. Conversely, if you switch to desktop mode, it identifies itself as a desktop browser and things work as intended. To cut to the chase, there is a severe lack of usable native apps, written in Ubuntu Touch’s preferred QML style, that would make even Windows 8’s store seem like a jam packed party.
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Convergence
But wait, there’s light at the end of the tunnel, right? There’s that Convergence that Ubuntu, Canonical, and Mark Shulttleworth has been singing about, right? Well, yes and no. For the unfamiliar, Convergence is a nifty concept that, in a nutshell, means that you can use your phone as your desktop if you give it the proper peripherals, which, in this case, means an external display, a keyboard, and a mouse. Microsoft later revealed a similar concept called Continuum (for Mobile), but the difference between the two is that Convergence doesn’t limit you in what type of software you can run. On Microsoft’s Continuum, only blessed “Universal” apps can run when in desktop mode. On Convergence, it’s a free for all. In fact, you can even run those conventional desktop apps while in mobile mode. At least that’s the theory.
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In practice, Convergence has a few gaping holes that all sum up to one thing: it blocks the very productivity it promises to enable by turning your smartphone into a desktop.
First, there is the fact that you can’t even install those desktop apps in the first place. There is Firefox, LibreOffice, GIMP, and Gedit preinstalled on the bq Aquaris M10 and only those. The Meizu PRO 5 is worse off, as it doesn’t even have those. Those are coming, I was told, in a future update. Perhaps the reasoning was that the Meizu PRO 5 initially didn’t support Convergence anyway, but now that it does, the apps should be installed. But good luck installing any other desktop app. Remember the above? You can’t. At least not directly and not easily. It’s possible, but you’ll have to work for it and even then you will be sacrificing some things to gain other things.
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And then there’s my pet peeve: copy and paste. Those don’t work. Or rather, it only works between native Ubuntu Touch apps. It doesn’t work between Ubuntu Touch and desktop apps. Heck, it doesn’t even work between desktop apps. I’m not completely 100% sure of the rationale, but I have a hunch that it all ultimately boils down to the fact that Ubuntu Touch uses Mir for its windowing system, not X11. Those two, especially their clipboards, just don’t mix well. In order to allow desktop apps to run in a Mir environment, Ubuntu had to implement a sandboxing environment, which also has a nasty side effect. Each sandbox, therefore each desktop app, has its own “view” of the file system, its own “view” of the user’s home directories. Saving a file in one app is no assurance you’ll see the file in a different app. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
So yes, I blame Mir, both for the clipboard and the necessity to sandbox desktop apps. To be fair, Wayland has a similar clipboard interoperability problem with X11, but probably a saner solution. I have more confidence, at least, that the Plasma developers, particular Kwin, already have this problem in mind.
A Never Ending Story
I am, fortunately, not going to end it on a sad note, because I still have hope. Somewhat. Ubuntu Touch practically has rolling releases and, from what I’ve gathered, the next OTA will bring quite a few goodies. Libertine (Convergence) apps, fingerprint scanner, etc. I have no idea if the copy/paste problem will also be resolved by then. Suffice it to say, I’ve never been excited over an Ubuntu release since 2008.
That said, it’s not going to fix all my gripes. There will still be a great lack in native apps, web apps will still work terribly, if at all, and you still can’t install apps through apt-get. The latter probably isn’t going to happen unless Ubuntu and Canonical change directions a bit. I’m not that averse at doing the work needed to actually get a somewhat regular Linux system working underneath Ubuntu Touch. As long as I can be assured I can go back to a pristine copy should I want to get OTA updates again. I’ll figure it out soon enough, but only after OTA 12!
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Dreaming of Kogs and Gears
That adventure in Ubuntu Touch land has had me once again pining for a KDE-made solution (KDE being the community now, not the desktop software). There has been and still continues to be efforts in that area, but not yet to the same extent as Ubuntu Touch. The community, or even some of the companies supporting its development, just doesn’t have the same resources as Canonical to have a commercial device as well. Until that happens, which has disadvantages, we’ll have to rely on sheer community power.
Sadly, my experience with even the latest Plasma Mobile project has been rather depressing. Not because of the state of the software but because how I seem to hit corner cases of things not working when it works for others. I guess I just have terrible luck. I do want to try again, and maybe I’ll have a different and better experience this time. But that will be another story for another time.
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