Organic Maps on Ubuntu Touch
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Hello,
view weeks ago I started to switch from Android (Calyx OS) to Ubuntu Touch.
I use my smartphone also as a freelancer and need to relay on it.
I tried few Navigation Apps and Organic Maps works at its best for me. It is, in a good way, simple, to use.I wrote to them, if they like to adapted it to UT.
I have no idea in programming, but I wanted to share the answer:
"Hi O.....
We would love to support the development of OM for UT more actively, but our resources are very limited. With enough donations or active contributors/developers the situation may change.
There's already the cross-platform C++ core, only the good UI should be developed on top of it (although it's a lot of work…)
What are your thoughts/ideas on that?
With best regards,
Alexander Borsuk
Software Engineer & Co-Founder @ Organic MapsSupport the development of free, privacy-focused, open-source maps:"
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I see they have a desktop app that seems more or less responsive, maybe it could be possible to run it directly in Ubuntu Touch with Xmir. That's a shame they don't have a snap you could install it directly and try it.
Upcoming Mir2.0 with wayland should also improve the feasibility of using desktop apps, in Ubuntu Touch.
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Hallo again,
now Alexander Borsuk from Organic Maps seems to change his mint, and want to find a solution for UT.
Maybe is good to know, that this app is also avaible in F-Droid. So they seems (and write) to care about privacy.
He wrote: "Maybe we can start from building OM and distribute it via snap on all Ubuntu versions? Are you familiar with this process?"
I have now idea how to program apps, but it would be nice, if one of you support this progress and make the open store richer
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@bunt7 said in Organic Maps on Ubuntu Touch:
now Alexander Borsuk from Organic Maps seems to change his mint, and want to find a solution for UT.
Amazing! Congratulations!
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@bunt7 said in Organic Maps on Ubuntu Touch:
He wrote: "Maybe we can start from building OM and distribute it via snap on all Ubuntu versions? Are you familiar with this process?"
I'm not sure what is currently possible with snap for making a fully integrated app, maybe other people can reply this question.
From what I understand their app is based on Qt, which is a good thing for making easily a native package! Though I seem to see it is based on Qt6, so it might be worth waiting for the upcoming release of Qt6 in Ubuntu Touch, that would greatly help porting the app natively. Once done, what I would do is simply try to run a binary of their desktop app built for Ubuntu 24.04 arm64, and it could potentially just work, if all dependencies are met.
So the first thing to do might be to list all the dependencies of their Desktop app.
I willing to help, at least by replying questions from my experience in porting Signal-Desktop, if you want to give him my contact. But other people may have more knowledge than me!
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@pparent
Hey pparent, I am very happy to hear this(-: -
@pparent
I can imagine, that Alexander is quite experienced, and together you will find good solutions.If sombody else have ideas, I think is always good to hear and discuss them.
I will ask Alexander if I can give you his emailadress.
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P pparent referenced this topic
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Current status of Organic Maps on Ubuntu Touch
Resolds of the correspondence between Alexander from Organic Maps and pparent
Well we are exchanging, but it turns out that their desktop Interface based on Qt is quite different from the one of Android/iOS and is more geared towards development for now and not adapted at all to mobile, so that's not ideal. ( At first I thought the Android app itself was based on Qt )
The good news is someone proposed to work on making this interface more user-friendly at least on desktop https://github.com/orgs/organicmaps/discussions/11805 , although I'm not sure how responsive it will be.
We also discussed about making a snap and a deb package. But anyway I think the best for now might be to wait and see what comes out of this new interface development and wait for Qt6 to be released on Ubuntu Touch, which we need to be able to do a port to the openstore.
Also what I have just asked him is weather their Qt app supports navigation. Because I cannot find it in the Qt desktop app ( but I don't have any GPS sensor on my desktop ). Because if there is no navigation in the Qt app, the use of this ported app might be quite limited, until they possibly develop this feature in Qt.
Also it turns out their Android app is in Java, using the Android API, so this app itself is not easily portable to Ubuntu Touch, only their Qt/Desktop app is.
By the way sorry I realize I forgot to reply. You can post the infos. By the way they told me that for now the Qt application does not include navigation as the Adroid App does, but that it could be added easily because navigation exists within their core C++ app.
I agreed to try to find time to create a deb package and then maybe a snap package for their app, this would allow to have a first preview inside Ubuntu Touch as well, on top of giving visibility to their Qt app.