This week we’ve been playing virtual board games. We discuss the new generation of Linux phones, bring you some command line love and go over all your wonderful feedback.

It’s Season 13 Episode 04 of the Ubuntu Podcast! Alan Pope, Mark Johnson and Martin Wimpress are connected and speaking to your brain.

In this week’s show:

  • We discuss what we’ve been up to recently:
  • We discuss the new generation of Linux phones.
  • We share a Command Line Lurve:
    • systemctl --user restart pulseaudio – Restart PulseAudio, the right way.
  • And we go over all your amazing feedback – thanks for sending it – please keep sending it!
  • Image credit: Jordan McDonald

That’s all for this week! You can listen to the Ubuntu Podcast back catalogue on YouTube. If there’s a topic you’d like us to discuss, or you have any feedback on previous shows, please send your comments and suggestions to [email protected] or Tweet us or Toot us or Comment on our Facebook page or comment on our sub-Reddit.


5 Comments » for S13E04 – Indoor umbrellas
  1. Torin Doyle says:

    Hi guys.

    Here’s a command line love suggestion for a future show:

    This will reverse the letters in a word.

    Example:

    Input:
    echo linux | rev

    Output:
    xunil

  2. Matt says:

    During the feedback section, a user mentioned they were having an issue with their system freezing with a blank screen when gaming on an AMD graphics card. I had a very similar issue with my Vega 64 and was able to resolve the problem by disabling dynamic power management. I hope this helps!

    Documentation: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#Dynamic_power_management

  3. Cormac says:

    I recently used my old Ubuntu touch phone (BQ Aquaria E4.5) to dd a LibreElec image onto the micro SD card because I couldn’t find an SD card adapter.

  4. Stefan says:

    I agree with your assessment that there is probably a market, albeit small, for Linux phones aimed at developers who can make their own apps, if and when they need them.

    I’m a (part-time) web developer and my phone is a Meizu MX4 which came with Ubuntu Touch and is now running the current ubports version of UT. I use the email (web-)app, the browser, text messages and phone calls on a regular basis. I’ve occasionally used the camera app, terminal, public transport apps, maps and a few other apps. I don’t miss many apps, but there is one single app that I really need that isn’t available on UT, and that is the Swedish electronic ID app (‘Bank-ID’). For that, I keep an Android tablet which I use once a year (for the income tax return).

    I was planning to develop apps for UT, but found it a bit hard to get started. I installed a toolkit, but once I had managed to get it working, there was already a new version out, and then there was the uncertainty regarding what would happen with Unity 8, so I decided to let the platform stabilize a bit before making a serious effort. In the end I didn’t make it past the ‘Hello World’ stage before the platform was axed by Canonical.

    It was frustrating to see the platform go away almost before it had been made available. When I bought the MX4, it couldn’t just be ordered from Meizu. Instead they had set up some sort of ‘lottery’ to make it seem hard to get. I would have bought the MX5, and recommended it to some of my friends, but it seemed to sell out before I had a chance to get my hands on one.

    I do not have another phone in addition to the Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition and I will buy a least one of the new ‘Linux phones’ once they become readily available, because I don’t want and I almost don’t need a phone with a proprietary OS (for any other purpose than the electronic ID which, by the way, used to run on Ubuntu desktop).

  5. Stefan says:

    I might add that I do like the idea of ‘convergence’. The prospect of carrying a device that can be connected to a screen and a physical keyboard, and can run simple home made scripts seems very attractive. It would be much more useful (to me) than having access to lots of apps.