Ubuntu touch as PC?

[Yumi]

Am using Linux Mint since many years. Now the idea grows to purchase an advanced mobile phone, load Ubuntu touch and use it as a mobile PC. My usage is not too heavy!
Any recommendations to hard-/software combinations that might work?

[kugiigi]

@Yumi It can be done but unfortunately there are still issues that would make it not a good experience. One of it is mouse scrolling. It doesn't work properly in all browser tabs in the default browser. It's also a bit too fast in native apps. It's just finicky in general which ruins the experience.

Also, support for traditional desktop apps is not complete yet. They mostly run in Xwayland which isn't hardware accelerated and has a few things not working properly.

But if you just want to try it and maybe one day use it when it's actually usable, Fairphone 4 and Fairphone 5 are the popular ones that support external diaplay via the type-c port.

[DJac]

@Yumi I understand what you mean.
But actualy, i found lomiri is not ready to be used as a PC (no desktop...). And UT don't already have some basics computers apps (libre office, vlc, firefox, scribus, gimp...). But in fact, phosh or kde mobile are not realy better.
i made a try with kde desktop (on postmarketOS) : more customizable, but pmOS is unstable on oneplus6.
So, the quest continue ! (why not mobian + kde desktop if possible?)

[developerbayman]

this is good news regarding lomri https://linuxiac.com/rhino-linux-2025-4-brings-lomiri-packages-and-updated-kernels/

[rowanfields]

Based on current state, Ubuntu Touch works better as a tech experiment than a daily PC replacement, mainly due to app support and desktop limitations. If you want to try anyway, Fairphone with external display support seems the least frustrating option for now.

[oldbutndy]

@Yumi
installed UT 2 days ago on 1+ Nord N10 (BE2026). [Note VoLTE worked, but NOT WiFi calling].
UT mentions 'Desktop Convergence', so I tried to see if my phone could reproduce my Linux Mint LibreOffice 'desktop experience'.
Easy to connect to WIRELESS external display (limited to 1080P), as long as that display runs Miracast (my LG TV's do).
Then I connected Acasis multiport USB-C hub, with PD charging, a wired keyboard, wired mouse, Gigabit ethernet adapter and USB-A Flash drive.
I installed LibreOffice via snap. (direct, no libertine required).
I opened a spreadsheet that had been created on main PC.
not as quick as main PC, but workable.
Image on TV was a bit 'wavy', moving top to bottom, as it refreshed, or something. (maybe 2.4Ghz WiFi interference also)
A phone model with WIRED external display capability probably fixes the 'wavy'.
I did NOT exhaustively test this (meaning the usability for lengthy spreadsheet changes).
It was just to see if it would work.
If you have a specific thing to try, let me know. I might be able to give a quick test.

[mango]

@oldbutndy and anyone:

• Email, such as Thunderbird, with GPG-encryption, anyone tried that?
• Firefox with addons? Anyone tried it?
• Brave browser?
• Linphone?

[oldbutndy]

@mango
I did find & install snap for Thunderbird a couple days ago. Installs, but not open (actually, a 'fuzzy box with a text bar at top appears, but nothing in fuzzy box). Then tried series of questions on Google AI 'reasoning model' via browser. It had a series of troubleshooting commands to type in to terminal. I did not follow through yet due to sharing the same display between UT phone and main PC doing the AI thread. Summary was AI estimate of required spending approximately 10 hours on configuration, IF using UT on a phone that had WIRED external monitor, USB Keyboard, mouse, etc. AI thought MANY more hours required if using a wireless external display.
I gave up on Thunderbird at that point.

Searched for snap for Linphone. found none.

Found snap for Signal. Installed. No account so it shows "failed to connect to server". So, it might work.

Firefox snap install process gave error: bad plugs or slots: kerberos-tickets (unknown interface "kerberos-tickets"). No icon installed on main screen.

Just installed Brave browser via snap. Installed with no errors, opens on wireless external display, and performs a web search, & display correctly. (5 second test. NOT comprehensive. but it opened & looked OK)

[arubislander]

@oldbutndy said in Ubuntu touch as PC?:

I did find & install snap for Thunderbird a couple days ago. Installs, but not open (actually, a 'fuzzy box with a text bar at top appears, but nothing in fuzzy box). Then tried series of questions on Google AI 'reasoning model' via browser. It had a series of troubleshooting commands to type in to terminal. I did not follow through yet due to sharing the same display between UT phone and main PC doing the AI thread. Summary was AI estimate of required spending approximately 10 hours on configuration, IF using UT on a phone that had WIRED external monitor, USB Keyboard, mouse, etc. AI thought MANY more hours required if using a wireless external display.
I gave up on Thunderbird at that point.

Please don't ask any AI how to get software to work on UT. Their training data does not contain the required info, and the correct steps cannot be extrapolated from whatever they were trained on, since sometimes the correct steps are either unknown, unfeasible for an end user, or simply don't exist yet.

Regarding the snaps from Mozilla (Firefox and Thunderbird, both) they are known not to work on UT as they are trying to use Wayland. They could be forced to use XWayland, but by then one might as well just install the click or the deb.

[mango]

Out of curiosity, I tried to get Thunderbird to behave properly on a Fairphone 4. Maybe it would be an idea to make a one-click-install that does all this for a newbie. openSUSE software catalogue has a one-click yaml installer script which sets everything up. Just an idea to make it user friendlier to get common software working out of the box so to say for a newbie to make it easier to adopt Ubuntu Touch.

Step 1: Installing Thunderbird inside a Libertine container

For those of you newbies wondering how to get Thunderbird Mail client working in desktop mode on Ubuntu Touch, this is one way that seems to work well. Thunderbird has so far not crashed a single time. However the Ubuntu Terminal app and nano crashed several times during this test. This markup was written in nano and copied to this forum spot to test the interoperability between different windows in desktop mode. Copy-paste functionality between windows seems to be a bit glitchy at the time of writing.

I messed around with settings until I got something that would work in desktop mode for Fairphone 4 running channel 24.04/daily.

Installing Thunderbird as DEB

Install Libertine Tweak Tool from Openstore.

Activate lirsh command with Libertine Tweak Tool.

Open a terminal window and type:

lirsh                                                                                  
fakeroot                                                                               

We need command add-apt-repository command from package software-properties-common.

apt-get update                                                                         
apt-get upgrade                                                                        
apt-get install software-properties-common                                             

On my Fairphone 4 I was also obliged to install package apt-utils that for some reason
did not install correctly by itself.

apt-get install apt-utils

At this point it was possible to issue terminal command:

add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa

cat <<EOF | tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/thunderbird-ppa
Package: thunderbird
Pin: release o=LP-PPA-mozillateam
Pin-Priority: 1001
Package: thunderbird
Pin: release o=Ubuntu
Pin-Priority: -1
EOF

apt-get update

apt-cache policy thunderbird

# apt install thunderbird
DEBIAN_FRONTEND="noninteractive" apt install thunderbird

exit # jump out of fakeroot

thunderbird --version

Now you can test if terminal command thunderbird launches something.

On my Fairphone 4, I saw a shaddow window but nothing more.
I remembered reading that you have to force Xwayland in some way.

# lirsh
GDK_BACKEND=x11 thunderbird

On my Fairphone 4, the zoom factor is quite big. Let's try to lower the zoom.

One way to lower the zoom is to edit Libertine container noble file ~/.Xdefaults
and adjust Xft.dpi: 120 from default value Xft.dpi: 197.

Exiting lirsh and re-entering lirsh should activate the new DPI setting.

Then re-launch thunderbird from command line and see if the zoom factor is better.

# lirsh
GDK_BACKEND=x11 thunderbird

Now the window looks a bit better with not such a large zoom factor in desktop mode.

The other way is to use a scaling factor directly before launching thunderbird.

Try this and see if the zoom factor is lower with standard setting Xft.dpi: 197.

# lirsh
GDK_DPI_SCALE=0.6 GDK_BACKEND=x11 thunderbird

Once the scaling is okay for your eyes you can create a thunderbird-launcher.

# lirsh
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
echo "GDK_DPI_SCALE=0.6 GDK_BACKEND=x11 thunderbird" > ~/.local/bin/thunderbird-launcher
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/thunderbird-launcher

On my Fairphone 4, Libertine container noble folder ~/.local/bin
was not in my Libertine container variable $PATH:

# lirsh
echo $PATH

Editing Libertine container noble file .bashrc should do the trick.

Added the following lines at the end of .bashrc:

if [ -d ~/.local/bin ]; then
  export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"
fi

if [ -d ~/bin ]; then
  export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

Exiting lirsh and re-entering lirsh should activate the new setting.

exit # jump out of lirsh
lirsh
echo $PATH

thunderbird-launcher

This command should open thunderbird inside lirsh with desired zoom.

Step 2: Making a Thunderbird Mail main menu item shortcut

Now that this is working, let's try to create an Ubuntu Touch shortcut
in the main menu. This can be done manually of course. In this example,
I will piggy-back on what is already available.

Open another terminal tab (without lirsh environment).

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/applications

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps

wget -O ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/thunderbird.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Thunderbird_2023_icon.svg                                                                  

wget -O ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/index.theme https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spk121/hicolor-icon-theme/refs/heads/master/index.theme 

sed -i "s|^Comment=.*$|Comment=Ubuntu Touch Icon Theme|g" ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/index.theme

echo "Update icon caches (maybe obsolete)"

touch ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor

update-icon-caches ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor

# or

touch ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor

gtk-update-icon-cache ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor

echo
echo "We can re-use the thunderbird.desktop file that is in the Libertine container"

cp -v /userdata/user-data/phablet/.cache/libertine-container/noble/rootfs/usr/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop

echo
echo "Using scaling factor GDK_DPI_SCALE=1.2"
echo "to achieve similar scaling as with"
echo "Libertine container 'noble' GDK_DPI_SCALE=0.6"

sed -i "s|^Exec=.*$|Exec=bash -c \'GDK_DPI_SCALE=1.2 GDK_BACKEND=x11 /userdata/user-data/phablet/.cache/libertine-container/noble/rootfs/usr/bin/thunderbird\' %u|g" ~/.local/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop

echo
echo "Ubuntu Touch does not seem to find the thunderbird icon"
echo "by itself."
echo "    Icon=thunderbird"
echo "Icon has to be specified exactly with path to show in main menu."
echo "    Icon=/path/to/scalable/svg"

sed -i "s|^Icon=.*$|Icon=/home/phablet/.local/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/thunderbird.svg|g" ~/.local/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop

echo
echo "Trigger main menu update"

mv ~/.local/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/tmp.desktop

mv ~/.local/share/applications/tmp.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/thunderbird.desktop

echo
echo "You should now see Thunderbird Mail"
echo "in Ubuntu Touch main menu."
echo
echo "Done."

Now there should be a visible "Thunderbird Mail" launcher in Ubuntu Touch main menu.

Try hitting the "Super-key" (sometimes this key has four windows left of the space bar, sometimes it can have an apple design or command key) on your external wired PS-2 keyboard (or wireless keyboard)
and type thund which should be enough to make Thunderbird Mail laucher visible.

If all went well, you should now be able to set up any mail account and optionally
create an OpenPGP encryption key to be used when sending encrypted email to somebody else
whatever email provider they use, given that the recipient has a mail reader that can use your public OpenPGP key to decrypt the email message you sent them. If they also use Thunderbird Mail client, OpenPGP encryption will work in the same way on their system. Several other mail clients, such as Evolution Mail client support OpenPGP encryption in a similar way but it might require more to configure it than in Thunderbird, which is more user friendly in this particular aspect. Of course, the email meta data will most probably not be encrypted. If you wish to avoid email metadata you might want to use tuta-mail or proton-mail or any other mail that never leaves the email provider. If somebody knows how to get a mail reader for tuta-mail or proton-mail to Ubuntu Touch, I am sure some users would appreciate that.

Having Morph browser open with several tabs and Thunderbird Mail open at the same time uses 5.9Gi RAM memory, reports terminal command free -h.