Exactly - it's worthless now (listening, Ubuntu?).
My recent experience with the Android 5 "upgrade" on my Nexus tablet, which broke things I was using, really drove home to me that I really just want a Linux, like Raspbian or something, that runs on a phone or small tablet. Entertainment apps are nice and all, but I really want a general purpose computer, which happens to have a keyboard emulation on screen when not docked via USB or Bluetooth with keyboards, monitors and such.
... aside: the Android 5 Lollipop experience really made me appreciate RMS's stance on proprietary software. My command line tool app? gone. My Quickoffice notes? gone. Easy access to frequent peripheral settings? not gone, but buried deeper in the menus. More advertising noise ("notices") on the home screen. Scroogled!
I want an open mobile device, even if I realize not everybody wants the power and responsibility to maintain and/or break their own device.
This is one of my disappointments with Jolla/Sailfish - they give the impression that they don't care one bit about allowing end-users be/become developers/hackers of the system (or help port it etc). No easy to access public repo, no build instructions...
It appears FirefoxOS is our last best hope (for open devices running open code). Unfortunately I'd be more interested in a system like the original Ubuntu vision than what I understand FOS to be (not that it's a problem that Moz makes the product they want - it's just not the product I want). Maybe the kernel/init/rootfs of FOS can provide a solid foundation for a fork, along with a supply of actual hw to run the thing on. Unlike ASOP/replicant which only works on a small subset of devices despite the GPL protection of the kernel.
On the Ubuntu side of things it is a full "Linux" stack. The code-base is public and available, and the community is open.
On the application front you can develop HTML5 or native (QML) apps. There's more info on developer.ubuntu.com. You can easily side-load applications etc.
The hardware thing is basically the same situation as with FirefoxOS. So that might be to your taste or not.
It's quite possible the ubuntu sw/hw will prove to be interesting to fork in order to make hybrid device as well (even if Canonical has abandoned that vision). But fos devices are already available. Either way I didn't mean to imply the ubuntu devices wouldn't be open (I fear they might lean that way, like Android and Jolla - I hope I'm wrong).
This is why I have high hopes for Windows, especially for the Surface line. I'm up for a new laptop in a year or so, and I'll very much be seeing what Win10 will be doing. Only MS seems to have a vision of a all-in-one device. Some of the Yoga-style Win8 machines are interesting and tempting, but I still think they're too thick and the price point isn't terribly appealing. To be fair, there are Yoga-style Dell inspirons at very cheap price points. My wife is interested in an 11" or 12" $349 one that folds back into a tablet form-factor with a touch-screen. Performance wasn't hot but I was pretty impressed that these kinds of things aren't $899 anymore.
I also have no idea what is going on in the mobile space right now. My N5 can barely handle Android 5 and the iPhones I've played with are not much better. My old ipad 3 can barely run iOS8 and Apple does not allow me to go back to 7. The specs on these devices are at the point where they exceed computers running XP and Office not too long ago. There's something very wrong with mobile today. The bloat is here to stay and Google and Apple just seem to be re-inventing PCs, but in the worst way imaginable - tacking on random crap every update and throwing more and more handware at the problem.
I'm more than willing to forgive a lot of the Win8 missteps if Win10 is good out of the gate. Especially if MS finally gets its security act together. I still dont understand why in this day and age my email or browser will deliver an unsigned exe to me, at least without explicitly allowing that. Or why my internet-facing apps aren't strictly sandboxed. Or why there isn't a built-in IPS system that can stop attacks as patches are pending.
>RMS's stance on proprietary software.
I think its unfair to peg this as a FOSS vs proprietary battle, especially considering AOSP is open source. I think the chasing of the mighty mobile buck is sending these systems into the toilet. When your main motivator is pushing out viral apps to low information and low attention users, then the product will of course be sub-par. MS has the incentive to produce a ecosystem that is more based on production than consumption and that's why I think they'll win in the end. Consumption devices really won't satifsy my use cases. Its a real shame Shuttleworth has moved towards the consumption model.
Windows might be okay if you're comfortable being part of the Windows ecosystems. I for one am not eager to get back into Microsoft's walled garden again. Their user-hostile baked-in DRM is not something I'm interested in supporting.
Agreed especially on the tablet front. My iPad 2 was far more usable before IOS8...really regret upgrading. Don't even think I've turned the thing on this year.
This is why projects like Cyanogen or Replicant or Paranoid Android are important, and why I always buy Android devices with unlocked bootloaders. Preferrably Qualcom ones, since freedreno is pretty much the only good Android reverse engineered GPU driver.
You simply do not control your Surface / iOS hardware. You have no power over it. You cannot run what you want on it, and you are stuck with the operating system given you, with any changes they make. You are completely at their mercy.
It is probably a nightmare world for Richard Stallman to know people eagerly line up to buy these things.
Well I bought the iPad back when there weren't really any good android tablets out, and now I can't really justify the purchase of a new tablet. I watch movies and game on my tv or pc, read on my kindle, and work on my laptop. The only thing I use the iPad for is to Facetime with my wife when I'm traveling for work, and only because it seems to work marginally better than skype on crappy hotel wifi.
As mobile CPU performance is getting into desktop territory, I see less and less reason to use some half-baked restricted OSes like iOS, Android or WP on a phone/tablet. What is however happening is that desktop OSes are being turned into mobile OSes, imposing ridiculous restrictions. It's all upside down now :-/
My recent experience with the Android 5 "upgrade" on my Nexus tablet, which broke things I was using, really drove home to me that I really just want a Linux, like Raspbian or something, that runs on a phone or small tablet. Entertainment apps are nice and all, but I really want a general purpose computer, which happens to have a keyboard emulation on screen when not docked via USB or Bluetooth with keyboards, monitors and such.
... aside: the Android 5 Lollipop experience really made me appreciate RMS's stance on proprietary software. My command line tool app? gone. My Quickoffice notes? gone. Easy access to frequent peripheral settings? not gone, but buried deeper in the menus. More advertising noise ("notices") on the home screen. Scroogled!
I want an open mobile device, even if I realize not everybody wants the power and responsibility to maintain and/or break their own device.