Focal/20.04 is out for quite a while now. You still use Xenial/16.04? I would like to know what stops you from upgrading?

danfro

@wilfridd said in Focal/20.04 is out for quite a while now. You still use Xenial/16.04? I would like to know what stops you from upgrading?:

About mid January, after I could compile a successful version of "Indicator Weather" and my MR for it has been approved.

Thanks a lot for bringing "Indicator Weather" to focal. Really useful app.

Regarding ActivityTracker, I can't see a MR/PR in the repos.
But I did a lot of development for that app. It simply hasn't been released for focal by the maintainers. I have some more code kind of ready, but never pushed it to the PR since there was no feedback. I already thought about taking over maintainership, but would need to ask permission of the old maintainers first. Also I am currently quite busy with tedit development. So I wouldn't mind of someone else steps up. But in theory ActivityTracker is ready to go out for focal.

danfro

@magnargj said in Focal/20.04 is out for quite a while now. You still use Xenial/16.04? I would like to know what stops you from upgrading?:

Also that focal doesn't have the tweak tool in order to keep apps awake, I miss.

The TweakTool development was doing some progress recently thanks to Jami. You could try the latest pipeline from the development branch: https://gitlab.com/myii/ut-tweak-tool/-/pipelines.

To simply keep the screen awake, you could use https://open-store.io/app/activescreen.mateo-salta. Also it might be worth opening a feature request for those apps so they can include the "keep screen on" function.

danfro

@GT said in Focal/20.04 is out for quite a while now. You still use Xenial/16.04? I would like to know what stops you from upgrading?:

Hi, thanks for the question. I am still using Xenial on Volla 22. I have not yet upgraded to Focal, because I use the phone as a daily driver and I am lacking information what will be not working anymore after the upgrade. Lack of information is the main problem for me.

I am afraid no one will be able to tell you for sure if your setup will work or not since there are so many options, apps and ways to use a phone. But of course I understand your concerns. One wants the daily phone to simply work.
Do you run UT as primary OS on the volla phone?

On dual sim devices like my OP5T currently mobile data seems to work only on the first sim card. That issue persists as far as I know.

Since Telegram/Teleports store all messages on their server, I don't see how that can pose a problem. Or are you talking about private chats?

danfro

@MrT10001 said in Focal/20.04 is out for quite a while now. You still use Xenial/16.04? I would like to know what stops you from upgrading?:

The devices I have are:

Your amazing long list sound like you are a phone shop.
Thanks a lot for sharing your info and details for all those devices.

Yes, quite some old devices will not get focal since it simply isn't worth the effort and only very few people do actually have a working device of their kind. I heard some rumor maybe the N5 might find someone looking into it. But we will see. Don't take my word as a promise. Get a new device if you get the option.

danfro

@Moem said in Focal/20.04 is out for quite a while now. You still use Xenial/16.04? I would like to know what stops you from upgrading?:

So am I, and I upgraded to Focal through the updater; unfortunately, all is not well. The system is buggy and unstable. I will probably need to do a clean installation to fix that and I'm slowly gathering courage to bite the bullet and reinstall. The current lack of a good and GUI based backup method is my main issue here.

So sad yours is misbehaving a lot. But yeah, I guess a clean install might help. I fully agree a good GUI backup software would be very helpful.

Keneda

@domubpkm
I'd like to see Fairphone 4 or 5 sold with UT.

@MrT10001
You really have too many devices

MrT10001

@danfro @Keneda , yes, too many devices as I have others running other Android ROM's (no not a phone shop, just hobbying, but did do stuff for a Computer Shop, PC's and laptops seemed to have died a death these days, even tablets unless it's an iPad aren't so popular). A lot, I hope I have saved from landfill and I do repair and sell on.

I would like to see older devices bought onto Focal, but I can see why they aren't and a they do have a life before things fail. Batteries and eMMC's do not last for ever and screens get smashed (finding quality replacements is not easy) and of course 3G is/has gone in a lot of areas.

My favourite device has to be the Nexus 4. Easy to repair, small, quality screen and rarely bootloops...

danfro

@Keneda said in Focal/20.04 is out for quite a while now. You still use Xenial/16.04? I would like to know what stops you from upgrading?:

I'd like to see Fairphone 4 or 5 sold with UT.

This has been discussed. But if they would be sold with UT preinstalled, we would need to provide professional customer care. We can't do that because we don't have the manpower. So this will likely not happen soon.

danfro

@MrT10001 said in Focal/20.04 is out for quite a while now. You still use Xenial/16.04? I would like to know what stops you from upgrading?:

A lot, I hope I have saved from landfill and I do repair and sell on.

A good thing to do keeping old devices working and bring them to use.

Thats one thing I like about Fairphone. They also have a "send your old device in" service (https://shop.fairphone.com/recycle). They try to recycle and reuse components if possible. You may even get a discount voucher.

matteo

@danfro what I miss the most is my own app dataMonitor, which is only available for xenial. My plan is that when I'll be moved to focal, I'll port its funtionality directly into System settings. Then other apps such as CloudMusic (albeit recently stopped to work for some reason...) and Wordle.

matteo

@kugiigi thank you for the detailed feedback, it encourages me a lot to move forward. I don't exacly use many apps on UT but the ones that I use I would like to keep, starting from the app I developed, which is dataMonitor. I think, when I'll be ready for the move, I'll first minimize as much as I can the apps that I have installed so that I'll reduce the risk of any glitches during and after the installation.

arubislander

@danfro said in Focal/20.04 is out for quite a while now. You still use Xenial/16.04? I would like to know what stops you from upgrading?:

But if they would be sold with UT preinstalled, we would need to provide professional customer care. We can't do that because we don't have the manpower.

I don't thinkwe would be expected to do the customer care, that would be on FairPhone. What we would need to do is get the quality of the port up to their standards. That is what is keeping us back at the moment.

Keneda

@danfro said in Focal/20.04 is out for quite a while now. You still use Xenial/16.04? I would like to know what stops you from upgrading?:

But if they would be sold with UT preinstalled, we would need to provide professional customer care

Do you provide professional customer care for volla devices ?

danfro

@Keneda said in Focal/20.04 is out for quite a while now. You still use Xenial/16.04? I would like to know what stops you from upgrading?:

Do you provide professional customer care for volla devices ?

Volla does support us by paying devs and team to provide support. They also develop on their own.

Lakotaubp

@arubislander is correct FairPhone require a certain standard in some key areas to sell devices pre installed but that is getting OT for here.

danfro

@arubislander said in Focal/20.04 is out for quite a while now. You still use Xenial/16.04? I would like to know what stops you from upgrading?:

I don't thinkwe would be expected to do the customer care, that would be on FairPhone.

You are wrong here. I talked to Fairphone people in Riga. They would expect us to do support since they can't do it. They do hardware, not software. Understandable. The quality of the OS is also a thing. And not sure if there are other reasons I am not aware of.

domubpkm

@danfro Personally, I am very satisfied with Focal on the Volla 1st generation. This is very good work done by the UBports and Volla teams. The only thing that annoys me is the reloading of pages when you open for example morph and a web-app at the same time and when you switch from morph to the web-app. The web-app reloads. Same problems when you open two web-apps and when you switch from the first to the second. Already known problem with Xenial. Maybe some memory leaks somewhere.

wilfridd

@danfro , my pleasure I also think that Indicator Weather is a must have !
Ah, you're right concerning Activity Tracker... I didn't MR because i'd like to try fix the "Api key reqiured" first... And maybee try to enable other map providers as uNav or Pure Maps do or why not put our efforts together...?
But atm, I'm stuck with Wifiscanner...

danfro

@wilfridd said in Focal/20.04 is out for quite a while now. You still use Xenial/16.04? I would like to know what stops you from upgrading?:

But atm, I'm stuck with Wifiscanner...

Just saw a messag in main telegram group, the wifiscanner MR has been made. Also got permission to become maintainer of ActivityTracker, so will try to get that out soon to OpenStore. So once I got that up, feel free to help and contribute (like "API key...").

But lets stop talking about app development here (although interesting ). This is getting off topic for this post.

danfro

So to sum up what has been written here so far (what got stuck in my head), the main reasons for not moving to focal are is order of seriousness (and lack of workarounds):

stability of focal and
too many troubles when migrating from xenial to focal. Either taken from own experience with another device or from discussions.
A clean install is the best way to do that, BUT we don't have a good backup solution.
This is followed with devices not supporting focal, sure no workaround for that.
Apps missing is an issue, but that is sorted easiest and also is due to developers not having moved to focal yet with their devices.

[edit, I forgot one big reason:]

people are just happy on xenial, no need to move on

With 24.04 knocking at the door (middle of this year planned currently) this is valuable information. I will pass that on to the core dev team.

Of course this doesn't close this post. Its more a summary for others joining new and for myself .