[padraic7a]

It's cool that he's writing his own shell but I think that Ubuntu Touch as maintained by Ubports is worth a mention as it's going to be one of the available options for the Pine Phone.

The UI is slick and well developed. The app ecosystem isn't amazing but you get a browser, choice of Telegram clients, Signal client etc. You can get an idea of the range of apps here https://open-store.io/?sort=-updated_date&type=app

HN readers might like to note that there is also an established developer community and resources like documentation.

Well worth a look if you're thinking of getting a Pinephone, and / or developing a anything for it.

[ColanR]

I keep thinking that we might take this opportunity of rebuilding an OS from the ground up to implement something like Plan 9. The usual adoption issue of drivers and apps seems irrelevant here.

Fundamentally, its distributed nature would allow far greater integration between desktop and mobile hardware. Mobile + laptop + NAS would be so deeply integrated that they would better be considered a single computer with multiple more-or-less accessible terminals - and if a mobile device was part of that integration, it would represent a sea change in the utility of smartphones. I'm personally a big fan of how a mobile device could 'automatically' use the processing power of a Plan 9 desktop whenever they're both on the home network.

(just a plan 9 newbie that is enamoured of the system design)

Edit: BTW, pretty sure this is what Google's project fuschia is based on.

[chc4]

You might be interested in https://youtube.com/watch?v=LYPBAckCEQo

[ColanR]

Yup, Inferno is one of the Plan 9 forks and that looks very close to what I'm imagining. Though it seems to be built on top of android.

[Tepix]

I think that too much fragmentation in this space can turn out to be a big problem for Linux phones.

Designing and implementing a user-friendly and fast GUI is a very big task. Ubuntu Touch has had a lot of work go into it.

[ekianjo]

Except that the browser on UBT is bare-bones, allows no extension and has virtually no useful option. Ubuntu Touch could be almost be a usable system if it has a good enough browser, a good enough email client and a good enough chat application. It has none of them.

[solarkraft]

Can't you just install desktop Firefox?