Nah. I was thinking about it and got a better solution: f**k smartphones for a while. I'm gonna buy a SSD drive for my old laptop (running Linux, of course) and travel with it. And a dumbphone as 3G modem.

I don't want to start a flame war here, but you always forget Linux ain't business nor company. So "success" and "fail" cannot be measured in terms of number or percentage of users.

Switching to Android or iOS simply because there aren't many GNU/Linux mobile devices to choose from is like listening to Whitesnake because Led Zeppelin disbanded. It's better to just do without and remember the good times.

Not sure if your analogy applies here.

I'd say its more akin to may be cars.
Imagine if Linux is a muscle-car that's got a unique engine (runs on diesel/just bare with me).
Now those cars weren't sold for sometime. Availability is low. Aftermarket solutions are scarce. And breakdowns are occurring with rare/expensive rebuilds. But to the owners, this is it... the way things should be all tyres and motor oil, getting your hands dirty!

Meanwhile, there's a European alternative. Its a work of art and glides on the road like its floating among the clouds. It doesn't do much, but its easy to get to where you need to go and it looks good doing it. Servicing it is second to none. Its expensive to buy and you can't tinker with the performance because its tied down by proprietary parts, but there are heaps of aftermarket bodykits and sound systems.

Along comes Japan (Android) and takes some of the concepts from this European brand, and invents some of its own, and merges them on the blueprints of one of those classic muscle cars. However it adds a lot of weight (bloat) and is a bit of eyesore on the outside and the inside. But progressively they add more and more gadgets inside. And there's heaps of aftermarket solutions to the engine, the looks, and everything in between. Servicing is usually fine, can be a headache but its not as "hopeless" as rebuilding an old classic. Its one major company (Toyota) but many make similar (Honda, Mazda, Subaru, Suzuki, Nissan, Mitsubishi) and clone cars (Chinese) to the point where its almost a mono/duo-poly.

...that took a while :P

You're mixing up embedded Linux with desktop Linux. Embedded Linux is in everything from refrigerators to DVR's to watches to televisions.

You mean desktops. Servers, they're more deployed than most anything else out there - Windows is declining and no longer the majority like it used to be. The "Year of Desktop Linux" will never happen. Luckily enough, desktops are in a sharp decline, so it doesn't even need to happen now.

Ubuntu alone has something to say about that. So does Dell.

Disagree. Tizen, Sailfish, Android (argue all you want, it's a flavor of Linux) are what's out there. All have something to do with Linux in one way or another.

Disagree here too. Samsung used a custom RTOS (invariably based off embedded Linux) just for the Gear Fit. Tablets - Android is picking up. Plenty of chances? First tablets, PDA's, et al were really based off of WinCE, Psion and other custom flavors. Once the dust settles, embedded Linux will end up the best choice.

Watch.

I'm about as pessimistic and pragmatic as you can get. Don't forget Jolla, FirefoxOS and other options. Buckle down, join their public endeavors, add code to their public GitHub repositories if you code, spread the word if you do not, design alternatives to their UI choices, assist in ways that opensource projects need.

Blame the politics surrounding Symbian. It was their cash cow, so they pumped more money into it instead of Maemo/MeeGo. That made it easy for Elop to kill it. Blame the folks that thought Symbian was the future.

It wasn't.

And the community's sense of self-entitlement was worse. Bunch of critiques from armchair programmers that gave nothing, expected everything. Myself included.

Jolla is the spiritual successor. Help them. They're listening.

Fun to read analogy
The classic, that is N900, right.

But where do you put Jolla on that map?

- better visibility screen in sunshine
- always on standby screen, billboard style (means OLED?)
- "slightly" better speaker
- better camera (quality that makes me take photos, even when I don't have to)

- other HW specs don't matter to me, but if the screen can be larger with the same frame, I don't hold it against it.

My expedition is that IT Will be announced pretty soon.

This http://oneplus.net/uk/one plus Sailfish ftw?

no microsd