Originally Posted by
ajGoes
My Android 4.4.2 People app is the same as yours. I think the designers' thought is that People is where you go for complete contact information; you go to the dialer when you want to make a call. If you follow that path you'll find it doesn't matter how your contacts display in People: only contacts with phone numbers display when you search for a contact within the dialer.
Thanks for pointing it to me; in my frustration I was overlooking this. I will settle (for now, absent better options) for it, while I look at the Ubuntu viability suggested by
gfunkdave.