Ubuntu Maker Canonical Announces New Collaboration With Qualcomm
Ubuntu Maker Canonical Announces New Collaboration With Qualcomm
Overall, probably a positive thing as the improvements made here will flow downstream. I'm actually looking forward to seeing the performance of these new Qualcomm chips in laptops.
Could this mean Linux phones?
(Very green Linux user here)
They tried that already. We raised more money than any other project but it wasn't enough
It was moved out the official company and now is maintained by a few hard working people. I would personally not recommend Ubuntu Touch as it simply is getting behind.
Postmarket OS does fascinate me though
Unlikely. Linux phones are held back by the lack of proper app store integration. No matter how hard they try, these two companies will not be able to get a play store license and they can't really create their own ecosystem. My bet would rather be servers, edge devices, laptops.
Give it a decade, I reckon. As traditional SMS and phone calling die to platforms like WhatsApp/Telegram/etc., and those platforms become available cross-platform, the idea of a Linux phone might become possible. It’s just a matter of decentralizing the distribution of that software, at that point (like how GrapheneOS and others current have the problem of needing the Google store for installing proprietary apps).
@gramgan @cosmicrookie Yeah... flathub for phones, baby!
Would be really cool to see these new Snapdragon X Elite laptops shipping with Linux.
I believe that is the plan here.
I just hope they can run free software and a stock kernel.
On Android mainlining is really hard if not impossible
Why... is Canonical so good with business connections and spreading desktop Linux around the world? While they use fu**ing Snaps and break GNOME as "their desktop"?
Opinionated development is rarely popular with wider audiences. Canonical is a business geared towards providing Enterprise products and support. That's how they make money. They do what they think is best for their Enterprise customers first to keep functioning.
They "think" that, but it's definitely not the case.
Apart from the obvious vendor lock-in, their solutions were never the better approach from a technical or usability standpoint. Snaps aren't that great, their Wayland competitor wasn't particularly good, Unity was divisive. So they put tons of work into bad solutions for problems that have been solved elsewhere and better. Not the smartest business move.
break GNOME as “their desktop”
you mean make it tolerable :)
We all have our preferences, I personally don't really care for stock gnome
I think their concept is just as flawed as "dash to dock". Desperately trying to "not be Windows" (while mimicking mac lol)...
You have a huge top bar that is mainly unused space. You have no hitbox at the top right edge, because of the bad GNOME decorations (also in Firefox) and because of that stupid top bar.
Then having a dock with empty space around it, where you could easily fit clock, quicksettings and menu, why??
Dash to panel fixes most, just not the bad hitboxes to the top edge. And luckily it is very actively maintained.
Ubuntu meanwhile keeps that useless top bar and also places a bar at the edge. This is good for regular screens. But it is annoying when tiling in half.
And they dont fix it, as they still keep the silly top bar.
And the main issue is their theming, which breaks apps.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Following yesterday's news of Canonical launching Ubuntu Pro For Devices, the latest mobile/embedded news in the Ubuntu space this week is Canonical partnering with Qualcomm.
Qualcomm will become part of Canonical's silicon partner program, which can lead to optimized flavors of Ubuntu tailored for their platforms.
In today's announcement they talk up this strategic collaboration as speeding up time to market, security-first focus, and more.
Particularly with the forthcoming Snapdragon X Elite laptop processor, hopefully we'll be seeing timely support for Ubuntu Linux on these new ARM laptops that are rumored to compete with and potentially outperform Apple Silicon devices.
Snapdragon X ELite with 12 Oryon cores clocking up to 3.8GHz (4.3GHz boost), Adreno graphics, Hegagon NPU, and other updates this is quite an interesting ARM laptop processor to look forward to this year.
Qualcomm has shown (Debian) Linux on some Snapdragon X Elite hardware already and hopefully today's collaboration between Qualcomm and Canonical will lead to good Ubuntu support for these upcoming laptops.
The original article contains 209 words, the summary contains 164 words. Saved 22%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Hopefully with no exclusivity nonsense like the Microsoft+Qualcomm deal from the ARM surface era.
Eh, I kinda doubt too much will come of it. There is already strong incentive for ARM support because of servers and for Qualcomm-specific hardware because of Android. That is unless they plan to use completely different architectures and drivers for their new, laptop-focused stuff (and only that).
If there’s actual upstream support, it would be a massive shift for Qualcomm
Red Hat has been trying to get them to support their processors for years now with no luck
Google gave up on Qualcomm supporting their processors and told them that they aren’t allowed to modify the kernel