Signal UT: Signal-Desktop for Ubuntu Touch
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Anyway after all the investigations that I've made I'm extremely confident that we'll be able to have a fully responsive client based on Signal-Desktop landed in the openstore within few month. I see exactly how to make it perfectly adapted to the phone Interface like whatsweb. (Funny enough it is possible to use a modified version of the js script of whatsweb to make the interface responsive, because the interface has an extremely similar structure. )
It's not anymore a question of "if" but a question of "when". But there are few tedious tasks in the way, and I need to go little by little, because I can't dedicate all my time to this.
Of course I'm open to any offer for help and testing!
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I've noticed this battery problem that seems inherent to Xmir:
https://forums.ubports.com/topic/11538/xmir-lomiri-high-cpu-usage-battery-drain.
Hopefully Mir2.0 should solve this, and make the overall experience of desktop applications on UT way more integrated.
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I've succeeded to have the app run in a regular confined apparmor context. Although it brings the following limitations:
-No GPU
-No Microphone
-No Destkop Notfications (that are anyway unusable for now because of battery drain)I hope that the apparmor profiles will be updated in the system one day to allow desktop app to work the way they usually do.
So I've decided to build 2 variants of the app, one confined for the openstore, and one unconfined for advanced users.
I've also been able to adapt better scaling so that it's more usable.
The realeases 0.1.2 is available here with the 2 variants:
https://github.com/pparent76/SignalUT/releases/tag/0.1.2
See also:
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@pparent
Whau, cool that you made it.
I can't try it out yet, because I am one the road with no second smartphone.
Few days ago I wrote to Signal, if they adapt it to UT, but did not get an answer so far.
Because of your creation I don't know now, if I would like a positive answer from them. -
Actually what they could realistically do to offer us an official signal client is simply making Signal-Desktop interface responsive (Which I'm going to do by injecting a Js script in the program), and offer a build for Linux arm64 ( that second part seems possibly on the way). It Would already be kind of enough.
I don't see them giving you a positive answer for a specific port for Ubuntu Touch, any time soon. Because realize, that it's been years that many user ask them to simply provide an official build of Signal Desktop for Linux arm64, which is a pretty easy and straightforward task, and Linux arm64 is used by way more users than Ubuntu Touch, and to this day, they still haven't done it...
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@pparent This is, of course, incredible news!
I'm surprised you don't already have a lot of folks jumping up to test. I don't have Signal but will try to get it in order to test, maybe not til next week though. I had mixed luck in the past trying to set up an account on an Android emulator.I doubt there's anything that a non-dev can do to be particularly helpful, but if any tasks are THAT tedious, don't hesitate to send me a message.
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Thank's for your help,
Apart from tests, the next tedious task is to get Signal-Desktop to build inside my clickable project, instead of using pre-built binaries from https://snapcraft.io/ . (It's the first step needed to be able to modify the interface to make it responsive). I guess yes it requires developer skills.
I will try to work on it next week.
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@pparent
I liked to do something for UT and to maybe can use Signal soon, so why not!?
I am not a programmer, so this was one thing I cut do.
I formulated it in a positive and constructive way, so I am happy with it. -
Yes good point! Nice!


