Looking for Testers: Ubuntu Touch 26.04-1.x (Early version)

mariogrip

Hey everyone,

Looking for people willing to test an early build of Ubuntu Touch based on Ubuntu 26.04. This is a hidden channel, so you'll need to switch to it manually using system-image-cli or enable hidden channels in the installer.

Fair warning: this is an early release, bugs are expected and very much part of the deal. That said, I'm running it as my daily driver, so it's functional enough for real-world use.

What's New (some of them, there are many)

This is a proper Ubuntu 26.04 base, not just a package bump. The big changes compared to the current stable channel:

Qt6 + QtWebEngine 6.10 — The browser stack is fully upgraded to Qt6. This is a significant change that affects Morph browser and anything using the web engine. Better web compatibility, better performance. This is probably the most impactful change for daily use.

Qt5 also updated — Qt 5.15.13 → 5.15.18 across the board.

Core system updated — glibc 2.39 → 2.43, Python 3.12 → 3.14, GCC 14 → 16, LLVM 17 → 21, GStreamer 1.24 → 1.28, PulseAudio 16.1 → 17.0, Boost 1.83 → 1.90, OpenSSL 3.0 → 3.5, systemd patched for 26.04, and more.

New packages — Qt6 variants of many Lomiri components are now shipping alongside Qt5 (content-hub, download-manager, online-accounts, action-api, ui-toolkit, etc.), which is the groundwork for a full Qt6 UI transition down the road. Morph browser now ships as morph-browser-qt6 / morph-webapp-container-qt6.

Maliit now has a Qt6 inputcontext alongside Qt5.

How to Switch

Run the following on your device:

sudo system-image-cli --switch 26.04-1.x/arm64/android9plus/daily

Currently Available Devices

Codename	Device
FP5	Fairphone 5
Q25	Zinwa Q25 (BlackBerry Classic restomod)
Spacewar	Nothing Phone (1)
algiz	Volla Phone Quintus
ansuz	Volla Phone Plinius
jingpad_a1	JingLing JingPad A1/C1
mimameid_h12	Volla Phone 22 (Halium 12)
mimir	Volla Tablet
vidofnir_esim	Volla Phone X23 (eSIM)
yggdrasil	Volla Phone
yggdrasilx	Volla Phone X

If your device isn't listed, it's not on this channel yet or not gotten the image enlargement yet.

Reporting Bugs

Report them right here in this thread. Include:

Your device model
What you were doing when it happened
Any error messages or logs if you have them
Whether it's reproducible

Given the Qt6 browser switch, pay particular attention to anything web-related, sites that break (or start working ), performance issues, crashes in Morph, webapp containers not loading, that kind of thing. That's where the most interesting bugs are likely to be right now.

Also please report broken apps.

Every report helps. Even "everything works fine" is useful data.

Keneda

@mariogrip
Thanks to everyone involved in this tremendous work !

nbdynl

@mariogrip Thanks for the work done Mario,

Audio seems to work video playback, internet itself works fine, Teleports/Firefox/Greenline work fine. gps seems to work, first connection on bluetooth works.

For some weird cause i cant seem to hold click the "kde connect" app in the drawer to open it in openstore, seems to work for other apps, so not sure if its this update...

But uhm which version of Morph browser am i supposed to open now? the normal one keeps loading, and the Qt6 beta crashes it seems to miss some files

QT6 browser: libxml2.so.2 (no file or directory)
Morph: missing EGLConfig, QRhiGles2, context is lost.
.qml:417 cannot ready property 'count' of undefined

Other then maybee the biggest 'daily driver upgrade' all works fine xD?

alagirialagiri

@mariogrip . Most users may be using xiaomi devices ,why not include poco X3(surya,karna) , Redmi note 9(merlin),9pro(miatoll,curtana,joyuse,excalibre) for this testing.

Vlad Nirky

@mariogrip said:

sudo system-image-cli --switch 26.04-1.x/arm64/android9plus/daily

Hello Marius.
I give it a try on my spare Nothing Phone 1.
I had to go through the installer to install 26.04.
It looks fine.I know my coding isn’t great, but it seems to me that the rendering of my Gisforecast app isn’t quite the same as it was in 24.04.
It’s almost the same, but I’ll need to tweak the layout a bit to avoid overlapping areas.
No big deal, just a bit surprising.
Actually, I think the UI looks nicer this way.
The other apps seams OK. I'll let you know.

gpatel-fr

@mariogrip

very preliminary; given that according to the saying on UT radio, your device is the same as mine (Fairphone 5) it may be a total surprise that it works.
Preliminary remarks;

I launched the switch from ssh as is usual for me, when I realized that it was not merely doing a switch but really downloading the thing, I promptly aborted and restarted from the terminal
after the download was complete, I got an error message and an invitation to look at the 'log'. I have no idea where is this wonderful log, though.
I restarted the phone then restarted the system-image-cli with full logging this time, however tt has already downloaded everything and restarted the phone after a few seconds as it was probably supposed to do the first time.

From there it was the usual install phase, for my sufferings I got a magnificent intro page that I skipped immediately, and the normal UT shell appeared.

First impression: feels a bit snappier.

Don't work: the 'advanced' browsers other than Morph don't work well, Min from @pparent crahsed immediately, and uWolf started and displayed a page, but no OSK. This is not very surprising. The piano from @pparent don't start anymore, not surprising - but what will say my niece when she will ask for my phone next time I'll see her ? This is a priority

Constation: the kernel is the same as before, and (correlatively) systemd is the same version as Ubuntu 24.04 (255 while Ubuntu 26.04 as 259). This was expected as well since systemd 259 is not compatible anymore with 'old' kernels like the FP5 one.

Was not working with 24.04-1.3 and works with 26.04: Bluetooth pairing. Sadly my Bluetooth keyboard now connects, but don't seem able to actually provide any key input to the terminal.

Dekko works, wifi works, phone calls, installing a click from the store work as before.

That's all for now, I'll go out now and it will be an occasion to test GPS a bit

gpatel-fr

gpatel-fr said:

to test GPS a bi

tested now, no obvious difference.

Mind, under 24.04-1.x, FP5 GPS has been hit and miss for me; sometimes refusing to work at all, sometimes working flawlessly for some time and crashing until next phone restart, sometimes working for half a day without problem.

This time I got GPS for all the time I was on the move, about 2 hours. It don't prove that all problems are solved, but at least there don't seem to be any new ones.