From what I've seen, Ubuntu Touch is the best mobile "Linux" distributions. Other, purely Linux operating systems lack common apps, have janky UIs and are barely functional on most hardware.
Ubuntu Touch runs on whatever the manufacturer or Qualcom have put down as a basis, instead of relying on a standard, open Linux kernel with open drivers. This has all the downsides of the Android kernel, but at least it's functional.
The point of having it run Ubuntu Touch is to show that the phone is not locked down like nearly every other (usable) phone in the market today. If pmOS or KDE Plasma get ported to the device, those systems will probably have the preference of most die-hard Linux users. Doing so requires a lot of work, though, and I wouldn't be surprised if improving or even just using the reverse-engineered drivers for many kinds of smartphone hardware would violate the NDA manufacturers sign with Qualcom.
To me, this device looks like what the Oneplus One looked like when it was first announced: an Android phone that doesn't lock its users out of the system. Getting any non-Android OS to run on the device underlines that without going through the effort to make everything nice and open.
> Other, purely Linux operating systems lack common apps, have janky UIs and are barely functional on most hardware.
You should probably take a look at Sailfish OS, they had about 5 years of head start to other mobile interfaces on top of vanilla linux. Jolla is one of the few companies that tried to innovate in the mobile UX space over this time in my opinion.
Ubuntu Touch runs on whatever the manufacturer or Qualcom have put down as a basis, instead of relying on a standard, open Linux kernel with open drivers. This has all the downsides of the Android kernel, but at least it's functional.
The point of having it run Ubuntu Touch is to show that the phone is not locked down like nearly every other (usable) phone in the market today. If pmOS or KDE Plasma get ported to the device, those systems will probably have the preference of most die-hard Linux users. Doing so requires a lot of work, though, and I wouldn't be surprised if improving or even just using the reverse-engineered drivers for many kinds of smartphone hardware would violate the NDA manufacturers sign with Qualcom.
To me, this device looks like what the Oneplus One looked like when it was first announced: an Android phone that doesn't lock its users out of the system. Getting any non-Android OS to run on the device underlines that without going through the effort to make everything nice and open.