Ubuntu Touch Q&A 25 | March 17, 2018
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I have a few questions:
- Will 16.04 be released only in the dev channel prior to OTA-4?
- What is the state of Anbox? Haven't tried it on my Pro5 for a month, and back then it was not very functional.
- Is the GPS functional on any xenial device yet? What about bluetooth?
- I have installed quite a few apps on my Pro5, but not that many are usable yet. What is the status of apps being repackaged for xenial?
- What are the biggest hurdles to get xenial in a working (daily driver) state?
I am really looking forward to coming 16.04 updates. It is already very smooth on the Pro5 and with a few more bugs fixed, such as google calendar integration, GPS, Dekko, Telegram and some browser issues, I could start to test it as a daily driver.
Great work, guys!
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I am a daily user of the Signal app and would be interested in learning if anybody from the team has had any further contact with OpenWhisperSystems regarding support for making the Ubuntu Touch Signal app more stable and feature-complete. @Flohack mentioned something along those lines in https://forums.ubports.com/post/6379 .
for all of you contributors to UBPorts! -
@tomoqv said in Ubuntu Touch Q&A 25 | March 17, 2018:
What are the biggest hurdles to get xenial in a working (daily driver) state?
In addition to discussing the biggest hurdles to get xenial (16.04) working, I hope that the following questions will also be addressed:
- What are the biggest hurdles to get bionic (18.04) working?
- I realize that this topic has been discussed in the past, but with the release of 18.04 just around the corner, any new thoughts regarding the possibly of skipping 16.04, and moving directly to 18.04?
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@GizmoChicken: Walk up the stairs, don't jump up the stairs... (m.g.)
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@hummlbach said in Ubuntu Touch Q&A 25 | March 17, 2018:
Walk up the stairs, don't jump up the stairs... (m.g.)
Yep, I heard him say that.
And sure, if first walking up the stairs to 16.04 is the shortest route to 18.04 (or if they're already nearly at 16.04), then keep walking up the stairs to 16.04.
But if 18.04 and 16.04 are in different buildings (to extend the analogy), then in my view, better to walk over to the 18.04 building and start walking up the stairs to 18.04 as soon as possible.
Of course, I have no idea which better reflects the situation. So that's why I'd like to hear more about: (a) the biggest hurdles to get 16.04 working; (b) the biggest hurdles to get 18.04 working; and (c) whether the devs have any new thoughts regarding the possibly of skipping 16.04, and moving directly to 18.04.
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@gizmochicken What if 18.04 isn't going in the right direction for UT? I read a fair bit about how x has depreciated, or that there's no longer any development of y. 16.04 was the zenith for convergence and thus for UT, so surely it makes sense to make full use of the features developed there...?
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@3arn0wl said in Ubuntu Touch Q&A 25 | March 17, 2018:
What if 18.04 isn't going in the right direction for UT? I read a fair bit about how x has depreciated, or that there's no longer any development of y.
This thread is probably a better place to ask questions of the UBports devs than of me. But since you asked me . . .
I'd say say that, unless the UBports devs want to maintain their own fork of Mir indefinitely (they don't), or unless the UBports devs want to drop Mir entirely, and move to some other display server (I don't know if that's even feasible), UT must eventually move to the new Wayland-compliant Mir and 18.04.
If the quickest route to the new Wayland-compliant Mir and 18.04 is through a 16.04 intermediate, I'm all for that. But if completing 16.04 will significantly delay 18.04, then I'm not sure that I see any good reason for completing 16.04.
But again, I have no idea which better reflects the situation. These are issues better addressed by the UBports devs, and so that's why I'd like to hear more about: (a) the biggest hurdles to get 16.04 working; (b) the biggest hurdles to get 18.04 working; and (c) whether the devs have any new thoughts regarding the possibly of skipping 16.04, and moving directly to 18.04.
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@3arn0wl said in Ubuntu Touch Q&A 25 | March 17, 2018:
@gizmochicken What if 18.04 isn't going in the right direction for UT? I read a fair bit about how x has depreciated, or that there's no longer any development of y. 16.04 was the zenith for convergence and thus for UT, so surely it makes sense to make full use of the features developed there...?
The situation is a bit more nuanced.
16.04 is much more like 15.04 and has many of the packages Ubuntu Touch depends on, the things that work now will mostly work after recompiling. The recent breakage of the Unity8 desktop on 18.04 is just the tip of an iceberg of changes that make 18.04 difficult.
But there are also things that don't work now: Convergence needs better support for applications not developed for Ubuntu Touch. For the future, it is necessarily to adopt a newer version of Mir to get Wayland support and use applications that can use Wayland. Updating Mir is something that can be done on a 16.04 base, getting the applications needs 18.04.
So, for the phone, the right step is to get off 15.04 in the simplest way: 16.04. This provides a stable base on which to consolidate progress, support the phones and prepare the next step.
The Unity8 desktop is some way from being mature, and doesn't feed directly into the phone goals. Apart from some changes to get it working on 18.04 it needs things from Mir that have not yet been delivered (most significantly the support for X11 applications discussed recently). The work here should probably focus on 18.04 with the intention of preparing the way for the phone.
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@alan_g
Thanks for the clarification. -
Some of the reasons why Ubuntu Touch will first be ported to 16.04, and then later ported to 18.04, are discussed at about 24:06 in the Ubuntu Touch Q&A 25.
Also, some of the reasons for the delay in bringing Unity8 to the Ubuntu 18.04 desktop are discussed at about 21:22 in the Ubuntu Touch Q&A 25.
