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    Is Ubuntu Touch OTA-2 Focal incompatible with the Fairphone 2?

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    fairphone 2fp2ota-2 focalcompatibility
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      • arubislanderA Online
        arubislander @Keneda
        last edited by

        @Keneda said in Is Ubuntu Touch OTA-2 Focal incompatible with the Fairphone 2?:

        Wich possibly means, if done, virtually no end of support for this device. Any future version of Ubuntu could run on it.

        There is no such thing as 'no end of support' for anything, even if it is mainlined. We now have a few mainlined devices running Ubuntu Touch: Raspberry Pi's, and the various Pine64 devices. And even though there is ample kernel support for these devices (not all of it mainline either at the moment, as a matter of fact, but at least the changes are being pushed upstream), continued support is not automatically guaranteed.
        The case will largely be similar to the halium devices: these mainline deviced will need maintainers to keep support current. When maintainers move on, and no others step up, support will inevitably suffer.

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        • KenedaK Offline
          Keneda @arubislander
          last edited by Keneda

          @arubislander
          You missed an important word here : virtually...

          My point is the FP4, wich is a promoted device, will, if mainlined, not suffer end of support due to deprecated kernel, like majority of the Xenial ones are suffuring now.

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          • D Offline
            domubpkm
            last edited by

            Smartphones 'maintained' / 'promoted' or not, it's always a race against time so that UT does not get left behind by the real world. UT is not in tune with the current technological world and is at least 2 years behind in my opinion and it's a race that must be very frustrating for all developers (without them no UT so a big thank you ) very difficult to catch up and even so that it does not widen more. Well despite that, I still really like UT but it has to be functional daily in today's real world.

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            • arubislanderA Online
              arubislander @Keneda
              last edited by

              @Keneda said in Is Ubuntu Touch OTA-2 Focal incompatible with the Fairphone 2?:

              My point is the FP4, wich is a promoted device, will, if mainlined, not suffer end of support due to deprecated kernel, like majority of the Xenial ones are suffuring now.

              The old kernels in the Android devices are a challenge, for sure. But not an insurmountable one, as has been shown in the effort to bring Focal the OP1. Sure it is a whole lot of work (a HUGE thank you to @TheVancedGamer for undertaking it!!), but what is slowing the effort the most is contributors, not kernel version.

              Continued support also is not necessarily easier for mainlined, as development on the PinePhone has shown. Newer kernels also introduce new bugs. Support for older or less common hardware deteriorates or gets dropped.

              As newer Fairphone models are introduced, hopefully also with UT support, choices will have to be made if, and how long, the limited resources will continue to be allocated to older models, mainlined or not.
              The only way continued support for any device can be guaranteed is a large enough maintainer base.

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              • KenedaK Offline
                Keneda @arubislander
                last edited by Keneda

                @arubislander said in Is Ubuntu Touch OTA-2 Focal incompatible with the Fairphone 2?:

                But not an insurmountable one, as has been shown in the effort to bring Focal the OP1

                Yes, like said in the link I gave in a previous post here, it is possible to bring focal to android 9 devices with a huge work.
                By the way, kernel is 3.4.113 on both OPO and FP2.

                Anyway, with the "good" kernel, it's simpler.

                Let's hope someone step on for doing this huge amount of work for the sake of FP2 UT users.

                Also, as I understood what makes Pinephones hard to port is because their ports are not built on halium, unlike any android device mainlined kernel or not.

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                • arubislanderA Online
                  arubislander @Keneda
                  last edited by

                  @Keneda said in Is Ubuntu Touch OTA-2 Focal incompatible with the Fairphone 2?:

                  Also, as I understood what makes Pinephones hard to port is because their ports are not built on halium, unlike any android device mainlined or not.

                  The whole point of a mainlined Android device would be exactly that Halium would no longer be needed, presenting it with the similar challenges as the Pine64 devices and RPi's, which are mainline devices.

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                  • KenedaK Offline
                    Keneda @arubislander
                    last edited by Keneda

                    @arubislander
                    Correct me if I'm wrong but mainlining and android device like FP4 is including vendor blobs drivers in a mainline branch of linux kernel, so that it's not needed to depend on vendor custom kernel right ?

                    Does that necessarily also mean you can't no longer use the halium way if Fairphone release some FPOS including this mainlined linux kernel ?

                    2015-2023 : Meizu MX4 ☠️⚰️✝️
                    2023-2024 : Nexus 5 ☠️⚰️✝️
                    2024-***** : FPOS Fairphone 5 waiting UT for freedom πŸ˜‰
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                    • arubislanderA Online
                      arubislander @Keneda
                      last edited by

                      @Keneda It probably doesn't mean you can't use Halium, but I am not sure what advantage it brings to continue using Halium, it being a hardware abstraction layer between the OS and the hardware drivers, if all the relevant drivers would already be supported by kernel itself.

                      Some relevant posts from the FP Forums:
                      https://forum.fairphone.com/t/official-mainline-kernel-support-for-fp4-planned/76741/10
                      https://forum.fairphone.com/t/official-mainline-kernel-support-for-fp4-planned/76741/19

                      Also note that mainlining drivers for the latest FP device is a multi year effort, and is being done part-time. Chances are good that it will not be completed before a new device is released, and then attention might shift to that device instead (as you see, another game of catch-up).

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                      • KenedaK Offline
                        Keneda @arubislander
                        last edited by

                        @arubislander said in Is Ubuntu Touch OTA-2 Focal incompatible with the Fairphone 2?:

                        but I am not sure what advantage it brings to continue using Halium

                        Like you said yourself, porting UT to pinephone is an uncharted challenge, still ongoing for years, whereas porting in the halium way is a known territory.

                        Some relevant posts from the FP Forums

                        Yes, I gave link to this topic in my previous post ^^

                        And as you can read from the FF employee that work on mainlining FP4, it'll help to maintain android rom on it also, so as one Fairphone goal is to make their device last the longer possible, we can hope the soon to be released Fairphone 5 not to kill mainlining effort for the 4.

                        Anyway, let's hope the port for Pinephone reach a 100% state and then it can be adapted quickly for any mainlined kernel android device, making halium irrelevant for those.

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                        • arubislanderA Online
                          arubislander @Keneda
                          last edited by

                          @Keneda said in Is Ubuntu Touch OTA-2 Focal incompatible with the Fairphone 2?:

                          what makes Pinephones hard to port is because their ports are not built on halium

                          What makes the Pinephones hard to port was mostly the lack of drivers for the hardware. As the hardware becomes better supported, then the port works better, see Focal on RPi 4, for instance. If drivers would be mainlined, then it would not be necessary to use Halium to communicate with them.

                          My point however, is that even such support is not 'free'. If a piece of hardware is not widely used, maintenance for it could potentially still fall on the shoulder of a team of one. And unless support is financed by the hardware vendor, that one could become none at any time unexpectedly.

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                          • LuksusL Offline
                            Luksus
                            last edited by

                            I started work on FP2 kernel for focal, multiple times, but never got it to a usable state. Iirc, I got it booting one time, but in this state, it was missing lots of needed configs, for getting UT up with UI and other needed stuff.

                            Devices: BQ e4.5, Fairphone 2, Fairphone 3, Lenovo X605F, Pinephone, Moto Z2 Force, OnePlus5T

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                            • KenedaK Offline
                              Keneda @Luksus
                              last edited by Keneda

                              @Luksus
                              Did you see @peat_psuwit post where he says he patched kernel to run plasma mobile, wich needs systemd, on a FP2 ?

                              Edit : https://forums.ubports.com/topic/8386/no-new-stuff-for-xenial-but-what-about-old-new-stuff/12?_=1691470274847

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                              • T Offline
                                TheVancedGamer
                                last edited by

                                y'all need focal for FP2?
                                08e52167-8d07-452e-a317-c0dfd46acef0-image.png
                                there

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                                • KenedaK Offline
                                  Keneda @TheVancedGamer
                                  last edited by Keneda

                                  @TheVancedGamer

                                  You mean you are actually doing the port ?
                                  This image is... You adapting the kernel ?
                                  πŸ™‚

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                                  • T Offline
                                    TheVancedGamer @Keneda
                                    last edited by

                                    @Keneda yes and yes

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                                    • KenedaK Offline
                                      Keneda @TheVancedGamer
                                      last edited by

                                      @TheVancedGamer
                                      Maybe you could get in touch with @Luksus and @peat_psuwit ?
                                      The more the crazies, the more the funny πŸ™ƒ

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                                      2023-2024 : Nexus 5 ☠️⚰️✝️
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                                      • OpolorkO Offline
                                        Opolork
                                        last edited by

                                        Am I correct to I presume my 16.04 version of UT is supported until Apr-2026? By then my FP2 will be about obsolete anyway and I'll likely need a newer smartphone.

                                        How can you trust that an app really won't send some company your location data, when you tell it not to? The only way you can trust a program not to do something it isn't supposed to do is if it is free software. ~ RMS

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                                        • arubislanderA Online
                                          arubislander @Opolork
                                          last edited by

                                          @Opolork no, 16.04 has already gone out of support. The ESR offering of Canonical sadly did not cover the ARM architecture for 16.04. It does for 20.04 on the other hand.

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                                          • OpolorkO Offline
                                            Opolork @arubislander
                                            last edited by Opolork

                                            @arubislander

                                            Damn. 😞

                                            So effectively, I'm using an unsecure OS on my FP2?

                                            How can you trust that an app really won't send some company your location data, when you tell it not to? The only way you can trust a program not to do something it isn't supposed to do is if it is free software. ~ RMS

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                                            • arubislanderA Online
                                              arubislander @Opolork
                                              last edited by

                                              @Opolork said in Is Ubuntu Touch OTA-2 Focal incompatible with the Fairphone 2?:

                                              So effectively, I'm using an unsecure OS on my FP2?

                                              No, you are using an unsupported OS. That does not mean it is insecure. It does mean it will not get any more security updates.
                                              But not all vulnerabilities are equally exploitable. Also, UT's read-only file system and confined application runtime environment go a long way into protecting you additionally. Add to that fact that there are no services running on the device out-of-the box that can be connected to remotely (if you are concerned with security, you should disable ssh on your device, even if on a supported OS), then I would say, realistically, you are probably as safe as you would be on 20.04.

                                              The main reason to stop using 16.04 would be lack of support for newer apps. But we haven't quite gotten there as yet.

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