I am amazed it is 2016 and people still are surprised by this. Ubuntu Touch started as a multitasking OS, but they had hard time with optimization of the system (and still do, according to user experiences here on TMO), so they killed the multitasking pretty early in the day.

This blogpost by one of the developers sums up their attitude and it was published all the way back in 2013. The title "Running, Stopped, Killed? A user shouldn’t care" says it all.

I don't get why people think that Ubuntu Phone could be a replacement for N900. Jolla or N9 are not even close to replacing the N900, but are still light years ahead of Ubuntu Phone as a Maemo replacement, as they at least feature full multitasking, have the same roots (and a sane UI, but that's subjective).

Even BB10 is closer to Maemo than Ubuntu Phone in this sense.

What about this hack?

http://askubuntu.com/questions/62937...p-ubuntu-would

However you can't drag the window around on the phone since the top bar of the window is hidden

Yes, you can switch to windowed mode and multi-task sensu-stricto.

BUT, there is no swap at the moment, so you might get the backgrounded process killed due to OOM management, unless you fiddle "nice"ly. I am part guessing here but I do not see how this would not be the case.

The "user shouldn't care" comment is about plain vanilla phone users. Indeed, they shouldn't care in principle, if the phone provides what they are looking for. By and large it does (lamentable lack of apps aside). BUT there are some notable shortfalls: for eg. you can only capture a GPS trail by keeping the screen active, otherwise the app goes to suspend. Canonical devs are WELL aware of criticisms of this and the issue is discussed.

Thing is - and I believe people generally underestimate this point - the official dev team is pretty small and they struggle with the balance of delivering new features and bug fixing. At present, convergence gets most love and there are some VERY frustrating issues on the back-burner (Meizu (and BQ?) battery levels, anyone?).

This point is crucial if one's expectations of UT are to be realistic. What I don't know, is if and how Canonical are going to get that point across to prospective purchasers in order to be fair to them. The hype behind the state of readiness somewhat exceeds reality. Not by much but IMO enough to piss some (many?) buyers off. At least, that is what I saw in the previous round of (first) releases.

Go here and read if you will, the general tenor of exchanges between devs and between devs and power-users and the topics covered. Keep in mind that it is not a support forum.

One other thing: the inputs on the ubuntu forums about Ubuntu Touch are rather sparse and lacking. The forums seem not to have captured much interest of phone users.

Guess i'll wait for the next jolla device...

You can pre-order during MWC if you like: http://www.meizu.com/en/products/pro...u/summary.html

Non-existent to pitiful.

Applications are freezed when they are not active. This includes when screensaver goes on.

I guess many people have the expectation it would behave like desktop Ubuntu. But it doesn't. The people responsible for this part of behavior have time and again used the "iOS does it like this and look how successfull it is" excuse. Ubuntu Touch is looking at copying iOS in many aspects because they see it as successfull and what users want and need, and there doesn't seem to be much room for trying to do some of these things better.

I've watched UT development from the start and participated in it. And many parts of it (not all, mind you) makes me feel like they're just content on copying iOS on many important aspects - an open-source version of iOS to simplify it.

Despite my seemingly scathing words I'd like to still empathize that it is still open-source - much more than SailfishOS for example. So even though they have made choices that I strongly detest, you could modify even those parts if you were determined enough.

So I do nevertheless support Ubuntu Touch and wish them well, even though at it's current state I see little reason to use it myself.

I expect there are thousands of people who do not know Ubuntu Touch does not multitask like Ubuntu Desktop, it's not like it is prominently advertised. You hear the name Ubuntu you think typical desktop or server Linux and expect multitasking. I would expect some buyers may be disappointed who expect multitasking. Average joe phone buyer without Linux background and not being a power user may see it as like any other phone and not be bothered at all. Average joe phone buyer would instead be disappointed by the number of apps

Yeah, their Phone looks OK nothing special. But have you seen the tablet. That is cool. You cant complain about the multitask...

Can only find spanish videos but go check it out...definitely got potential.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/02/b...hands-on-video

Why not? That video showed nothing about multitasking. The best case scenario is that when tablet is docked it allows multitasking (and that's not enough at least for me). But even that is not given in the video shown.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the convergence potential given that video, but it told nothing about multitasking.

So you don't think it's cool? What other tablets can do that, not that many. I think it's it's great first step and hope more OS and vendors will try the same or do it better.