Ubuntu Touch Q&A 172 Call for Questions

UBportsNews

Ubuntu Touch Q&A 172 will be live this Saturday 23rd August, if you can please join us at the usual time of 19:00 UTC.
Before then though, if you have any questions on or about UBports and Ubuntu Touch please post them below and we will do our best to answer them in the Q&A.

Remember that questions on porting to device **** or its status, and questions on bugs, will not be answered.

RJDan

Could you add a segment to the 'show' where you give an example of how to get things done on UT?

I think many people need to figure out ways to work in UT since it is quite different from android but many of these ideas don't make their way to the 'general UT public'.

For example, there was a discussion about getting uwolf or firefox to sync passwords. This is a great alternative to the non-functioning password manager apps and makes life a lot easier.
Or maybe demo how to use ghostcloud.

I think these 'FYI' segments can help ease the transition for many people.

arubislander

@RJDan I think here's were the 'general UT public', also known as the community, could get involved. The presenters can't be expected to know everything. So if a community member, like yourself, has a useful, cool, or otherwise interesting workflow to solve a particular problem or meet a particular need, they could send in a video demoing the workflow and it could be shown during the proposed segment.

theprivacydad

For newcomers like myself, could you share tips on best practices with browsers in UT for beginners?

I have discovered the Webber application, but several sites I normally use, including music streaming and my own Nextcloud server page, don't work or give warnings of being out-of-date.

libremax

@theprivacydad Currently Morph browser is "out to date". Fortunately, an update is planned for the first quarter of 2026 : https://ubports.com/lomiri-roadmap

theprivacydad

@libremax Thanks. I have just learned about Libertine and am downloading that. Taking a while!

RJDan

@arubislander if I ever get so proficient with UT I will definitly contribute. Right now I am still learning.

arubislander

@RJDan Which is exactly the right time to make such a contribution. Discovering something as a new user and sharing that discovery, while probably not news to long time users, will be exactly what other new users would find helpful.

domubpkm

@libremax It therefore means if I understand correctly, that Morph-Browser will be outdated for a long time on the first stable versions of noble ... and that fortunately the super complementary work of @ChromiumOS-Guy on Uwolf should remedy this situation while waiting

johndoe

@theprivacydad Haha, Libertine is maybe not the best choice for installing a web browser. Please take a look at "uWolf" and "Mimi Browser" in the Open Store, before trying to install a web browser over Libertine. Graphical programs did not work great on Libertine, last time I tried it.
I think uWolf is currently the most versatile webbrowser for UT, but it maybe does not fit correctly on the screen of your device.

As libremax said, the standard browser for UT (Morph) is outdated right now and it will take some time to fix this.

johndoe

Question about the future of Libertine in noble: Some time ago, it was discussed that Libertine will maybe not exist in a future version of UT, because most desktop programs could be installed as a snap package (and even terminal programs that are not available as a snap could maybe be installed with LXD). But I noticed that Libertine still seems to be in noble (24.04-X.X).

Was it just less work to not remove it for now (I totally understand if there are more important things right now) or has the strategy changed?

Some idea if Libertine will be removed in the future: Maybe it would be good to not directly remove the the settings menu for Libertine, but replace it with something like "Libertine is not supported anymore. Please try to install traditional desktop apps over snap [link to snap store] or click here to automatically set up a LXD container for you". Because there are still a lot of old forum discussions and documentations about installing desktop apps over Libertine. So people will maybe get confused, when they can not find Libertine on their device.

Thank you very much for all your work

theprivacydad

@johndoe Thanks, I have downloaded uWolf and will check out Mimi.

So snap packages can be installed directly into UT?

johndoe

@theprivacydad Snap packages are still work in progress and they will hopefully get better support in the next version (noble 24.04). I think upgrading to Mir 2.x in Q2 2026, could maybe fix a lot of graphical bugs.

Under the current stable version (focal 20.04) you can already try snap packages out with Snapz0r from the Open Store, but a lot of them will probably not work. I think it is more a proof of concept for now.