Libertine tweak tool, how to install on Focal?

grumpyoldbloke

@doniks Just tried another couple of apps: Firefox worked correctly but Kpatience didn't..

I would be quite interested in helping to solve this problem, happy enough to poke at things with a little bit of guidance.

TotalSonic

@doniks - thank you so much for this! In my tests on Volla Phone running Focal it works
The only issue I saw is that the default container id shown by it on launch is "xenial" - please change this so it defaults to "focal" so users do not have to enter this for each new install.

Beat regards,
Steve Berson

doniks

@totalsonic said in Libertine tweak tool, how to install on Focal?:

@doniks - thank you so much for this! In my tests on Volla Phone running Focal it works
The only issue I saw is that the default container id shown by it on launch is "xenial" - please change this so it defaults to "focal" so users do not have to enter this for each new install.

Beat regards,
Steve Berson

done feel free to retest from gitlab

doniks

@grumpyoldbloke said in Libertine tweak tool, how to install on Focal?:

@doniks Just tried another couple of apps: Firefox worked correctly but Kpatience didn't..

I would be quite interested in helping to solve this problem, happy enough to poke at things with a little bit of guidance.

Awesome!

So, the first thing to understand (at least for me that was a revelation) is that libertine isn't all that magical. There are a few layers of magic (to me) like mir, wayland, xmir, xwayland, android drivers, chroot, proot, lxd, but we can ignore all of those.

For our discussion here, Libertine is basically just a folder with a regular old linux installation inside. And what you want to do is shoehorn the X configuration and X based apps inside that regular old linux installation into ... mostly just make things larger on the screen. Sometimes maybe also hide some parts or maybe arrange things in a more touch friendly way. That means that there actually is already a large part of information out there in the internet where people are trying to force X into small screens or fighting with high dpi screens stuff like this. The challenge here is to find this information. Many of those things have been reinvented a few times over the decades. However, often this information also rots away, since, well it is not a future proof solution. The future proof solution is stuff like wayland and (new) apps that are built with touch and small screens in mind. But, alas, here we are playing Libertine and trying yet again to carry the non-touchfriendly oldschool apps over to UT.

As with many advanced linuxy topics, a great place to start is arch documentation: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/HiDPI Next to X things there are now also quite a few gtk/gnome or kde specific tricks that one can play. Also there are for practically every desktop environment some appearance, theme tweaking tools. a few loose notes I collected are here: https://gitlab.com/doniks/libertine-tweak-tool/-/blob/xenial/TODO Once we know how to tweak some app this boils down to changing some config file inside ~/.config or ~/.gtkblahdiblub or so. Libertine-Tweak-Tool is even less magically, it just performs some specific changes in some of these config files.

rough and quick and dirty. give it a read and let me know what you think

idj

Excuse me, but I bet if we can set a certain display resolution, the DPI settings would be surpassed.
In the same device as I now use with UT, I used to have Android and Termux/Andronix+Ubuntu XFCE.
It used to work (graphically) very well by setting a 1280x720 display resolution for VNC (the X Server is actually deployed with VNC in Termux and the like systems).
Why then don't I stick with Termux? Hardware support = none!

By the way, forcing a customized resolution instead of DPI could be a game changer.

AppLee

@doniks said in Libertine tweak tool, how to install on Focal?:

The future proof solution is stuff like wayland and (new) apps that are built with touch and small screens in mind. But, alas, here we are playing Libertine and trying yet again to carry the non-touchfriendly oldschool apps over to UT.

Emphasis on this part
Yeah basically convergence is the future.
In my opinion Ubuntu Touch is the best OS for it and if enough effort is made towards convergence we won't need what are distractions to me: Libertine, Waydroid, Anbox, ... Android, iOS

Native and convergence is the way.

doniks

@applee said in Libertine tweak tool, how to install on Focal?:

@doniks said in Libertine tweak tool, how to install on Focal?:

The future proof solution is stuff like wayland and (new) apps that are built with touch and small screens in mind. But, alas, here we are playing Libertine and trying yet again to carry the non-touchfriendly oldschool apps over to UT.

Emphasis on this part
Yeah basically convergence is the future.
In my opinion Ubuntu Touch is the best OS for it and if enough effort is made towards convergence we won't need what are distractions to me: Libertine, Waydroid, Anbox, ... Android, iOS

Native and convergence is the way.

Well, I agree it is the future. But it has been the future for quite a while and it still hasn't turned into the present. While I'm waiting for the future I still see the need for a (multiple-years .. decades?) stopgap ...

AppLee

@doniks

For UBports

Help us make a brighter future and fight the oppression and human standardization.

doniks

@applee I wanted to leave it at that, but the topic keeps spinning around in my head.

I understand future proof, capacity, priorities, etc, etc, as well as scratching ones own itch, opinions being allowed to differ and above all else meritocracy. But I'll put these disclaimers aside for one more sec and look at this more strategically/architecturally.

Let's say someone writes (or updates) a solitaire game. Built with gtk/gnome, all newest best of breed, responsive design, wayland, sandbox ready, younameit. Also super standalone, wouldn't really need any platform integration to speak of as it has no notifications, doesn't read or write user files. But even if it needs any platform integration it is fully flatpak portal ready. You know, as state of the art and future proof as it gets. If we take Libertine out of the gui equation then the only way this application could come over to UT is if someone did the work to use UT's packaging format "click" to bring it in. In the previous/original vision of Libertine I would assume it to be sufficient to apt install the package from upstream ubuntu and then letting wayland be wayland.

So despite of what I said before of Libertine being basically a place to install "legacy" applications, it might be more appropriate to say upstream (apt) applications. Some of which might be "legacy" (non-responsive, X, dated stuff), but others might perfectly well be "modern" (response, wayland, etc).

But, of course, climbing down from my strategic vision horse back into reality, a lot of parts are moving: mir/wayland, upstart/systemd and if Libertine got (more) broken along the way and no one is fixing/rewriting it, then that's how it is.

arubislander

@doniks The main issue with Libertine has always been how well the apps behave running under XMir (xenial) or XWayland (focal). No more work is being done on XMir, bit XWayland is under active development, and we should see things improving on that front.

doniks

@arubislander said in Libertine tweak tool, how to install on Focal?:

@doniks The main issue with Libertine has always been how well the apps behave running under XMir (xenial) or XWayland (focal). No more work is being done on XMir, bit XWayland is under active development, and we should see things improving on that front.

Ah. Awesome. Happy to hear that!