Core Apps forked on Github
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Hi @Phil-UK,
I'm helping @Flohack with the Core Apps forks and the list he mentioned above is actually written using this other list as reference:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xzNGy4zh6c-nICsodnjMEdHCPA7DEfkS8cRkXbXE8P0It includes:
- Ubuntu Core Apps
- Ubuntu System Apps
- GNOME Apps
- Top ~60 apps according to uappexplorer.com
- Most relevant entries in the "App Wishlist", as featured on uappexplorer.com
The list I wrote is actually meant to be the "all-inclusive list of everything someone could ever need on a convergent phone", so it is no way an official reference to the work UBports is going to do (I'm not even involved in UBports - just helping a bit here and there in other projects).
You're welcome to give it a check and tell us if we're missing something we'd need.
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Hi @sverzegnassi,
Thanks for the links, I will for sure have a look at them and let you know what comes to mind. The one thought I do have though is the top uappexplorer apps list will not necessarily give any valid data. This is because it is a closed list and top as may not of been developed for Touch yet. The old chestnut 'Whatsapp', if that was there it would be towards the top. However, as apps are not there people have to pick others that they may not choose it others were there. In saying that though the data it gives can be useful in parts.
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@Phil-UK Yeah, we can't expect good data in absolute terms. However, we can still elaborate them a bit, in order to understand which is the current situation of the platform.
Whatsapp is not there but, in the "Most wanted" app list, it was the second choice overall, the first for social networks/web services.
Just to post some data, in order to have a bit of context.1st - Whatsapp - 100% (of WA votes)
2nd - Skype - 45% (of WA votes)
3rd - FB Messenger - 31%
4th - Google Hangouts - 22%
5th - Dropbox - 22%
6th - Telegram - 17% (but it's already available on the platform)
7th - Twitter - 17%
8th - Shazam - 16%
...You can still get a measure of what's requested from users, even if Telegram has been available since the launch of the first Ubuntu phone. (Does that 17% mean users want to see some improvement in the official app? Or is it just hard to find an app in the Ubuntu Store?)
An hilarious fact: what people required the most was a web browser. It has been up-voted 443 times: for a comparison, the second app - Whatsapp - has just 257 votes, about 58% less.
Those 443 votes were:
- 267/443 votes for having Firefox on UT
- 99/443 votes for AdBlocker features
- 58/443 votes for having Google Chrome on UT (which is closed-source, proprietary software - anyway)
- 19/443 votes for Opera
Here what I see is actually some form of "brand loyalty". While I can partially understand people asking for Firefox (its brand actually means "privacy" and "security" to many), it's a bit strange for me to see Google Chrome between the requests. However that could imply that users want a better UI, or online synchronization, and so on...
Even if we can't be sure of what voters actually wanted, we can still make ourselves some questions, and analyze which could be the weakness of the currently available apps, thanks to this dataset.
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Hi @sverzegnassi, there are sure some interesting facts in there and thanks for sharing them. I have never seen the interest with Whatsapp myself, but nearly lost friends over it as they point blank refused to install Telegram when I moved to Touch.
I see that Dropbox is on the list. This is another one that confuses me, why people use this so much. I use "Mega" myself. I went to is after the drop of Ubuntu One. I prefer the idea of 50gb of free space compared to what Dropbox gives you.
I did have a look at the list of apps on the Google Docs and it sure looks good. Hopefully, it will not take much to turn this list into reality, for all of them. Not too sure anout all the apps in the "Others" list though. With the camera app, one thing that I was crying out for in Touch was to have basic camera functionality developed, like date stamp and such like.
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@Phil-UK You got the answer yourself: Why Facebook, WhatsApp, Dropbox got so popular? Most people don't choose it, they have to follow, because other people use it. After you reach critical mass with such a service you will have constant influx, no matter what you do.
See your friends, who made a big pressure on you to use WhatsApp. Some people don´t want to withstand that, so they buy a crappy Chinese Android phone with provider lock just to be able to talk with their friends. They give a crap about everything else.
Another example: DriveNow, my car sharing provider in Austria, stopped accepting reservations for cars in the web page. I need to use their App now which I can´t. So I am locked out of their service effectively. Shall I buy an Android phone now?
The times of the open and universal PC are over, so to say. I am 42 and I already miss the time where people were following universal standards. Instead, everybody wants to lock you in and on top capture your data. Nobody actually wants to have universal data exchange, platform independency etc. It harms the way you can steer people´s interests.
This is why Ubuntu Touch will have a hard time. Probably it never reaches critical mass.
BR
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@Flohack said in Core Apps forked on Github:
I need to use their App now which I can´t. So I am locked out of their service effectively.
This is the reason why I hope for sth. like Anbox as core app. Not so much for running those ressource consuming apps like netzflix etc but for running small support apps like DriveNow or Phillips HUE.
It is the same thing with my ubuntu desktop. 98% of all work I can do within ubuntu but for some very special tasks I need a Windows in Virtual Machine. With this strategy I am able to run ubuntu in my daily work as entrepreneur and engineer since 10 years.
So here comes my thesis: If we can enable sth. like AnboxLIGHT as container only for all those small special apps, the chance reaching the "critical mass" will rise dramatically. -
@Bastos I agree 100%, but unfortunately I think the legacy phones are too limited to run an emulator on top of the main operating system, we may have to wait for something like that once we have the OS running on more powerful phones. Apart from the challenges that such an emulator would imply, which should not consume resources at this stage, IMHO.
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@wgarcia Well actually Anbox has a potential here: Its not an emulator, it will execute Android code natively, just in a container. So unless Dalvik sucks up the whole memory it will have nearly the same performance as Android on the same phone, at least thats what I understood..
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@Flohack That's great to hear, but a container needs some memory, right?, and it has to have the native OS behind it "containing" it. But if I see an Android app running on my phone, no matter how simple, I think it will be a huge step forward.
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@wgarcia Yes memory can be an issue, so Anbox might not work on the 1GB devices... regarding native OS, Android is not much more than kernel + drivers + Dalvik + surfaceflinger. So, we already got kernel & drivers running in Ubuntu, so we need only an LXC container for Dalvik probably
BR
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@Phil-UK That's the point. For each service you use, there are at least other five services an OS should support. For example, WhatsApp has been the reason why I never switched to an Ubuntu phone as main device.
About core apps: I agree, there's a lot to be improved yet, and my rational thinking says that we should focus only on a small set of core apps, on a specific type of device (i.e. phone) and forget the rest.
What we'd need then is to provide the best development framework we could offer, in order to allow third parties to support those services with the minor effort.I'm going a bit OT, but you can understand how I think that we should stop talking about convergence and focus on having something that really works first.
The biggest chance for me to switch to UT has been the BQ M10, as a replacement for my old netbook. I want convergence, but it needs to be something that really works, with no hackish stuff.
IMHO, if the BQ M10 was shipped with Ubuntu GNOME (and GNOME Shell), that would have been the best buy for everyone. UT was pretty far from offering such user experience.This is something that should be considered for future development.
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@sverzegnassi, I totally agree. There needs to be something that can be out there and really works and then build upon it. I did buy the BQ M10 and still find it to be a nice bit of kit. True there are a few issues with it that really need to be sorted out to make it more user friendly, but on the whole I use it every day. On it I use the browser, email and telegram. On my E5, I use all of that and more, however on the tablet that is it. With the small set of core apps per device, that is a good idea. Look at the basic things people want in a device and then provide a set of core apps for that. The phone core apps and the tablet ones will be different.
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So its about one week after publishing "our" Github repos for the Core Apps. So far little interest of people wanting to maintain or code. Guys, if we dont start getting this rolling, there will be no progress soon...
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@Flohack Can you provide the link?
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@wgarcia You find it here: https://github.com/ubports
GM
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I'm trying to configure the ubuntu sdk for the terminal app. But when I try to install dependencies from the ports.ubuntu.com repository, it tells me it can't find it. Is it related to the fact the Ubuntu Vivid is end of life or do I have something missconfigured in the SDK? I tried to update a kit that I had and it also told that it could not find the repositories. What type of SDK are you guys using?
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@wgarcia Vi xD => I am using the SDK only as a text editor ATM... For maintenance I hope this will be enough... xD
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@Flohack Can you summarize exactly what are the most common tasks to maintain a core app? I was looking into merging some of the pending patches and try them, but for that I need a SDK, and as I said I have trouble connecting to the repositories to update the SDK and download dependencies.
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Nevermind my message above, I could update finally the Ubuntu SDK and build the terminal-app. Now I have another issue that is the generated click package doesn't install properly in my device, but I will try to figure out that myself.
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I could build the terminal-app and package it as click. But when I install manually the click package in my phone to try it, it installs without error but it is not seen in the app scope, even after restarting the phone, so I can't start it. I don't get any errors neither in the build process nor installing it.
I tried launching it using "phablet-shell" with:
ubuntu-app-launch com.ubuntu.terminal_0.7.
but no matter how I write the name of the app I get:
** (process:12079): WARNING **: Unable to start app 'com.ubuntu.terminal_0.7.': AppID is empty
I've also tried with other combinations from the name of the click package:
com.ubuntu.terminal_0.7._armhf.click
like "com.ubuntu.terminal_0.7._armhf" or just "com.ubuntu.terminal" and similar, but always the same message. I also tried with "terminal-app" but same message.Then I checked in .local/share/applications and there I could find a desktop file and this line to launch the app:
Exec=aa-exec-click -p com.ubuntu.terminal_terminal_0.7. -- lib/arm-linux-gnueabi
hf/bin/terminal
I tried then:
aa-exec-click -p com.ubuntu.terminal_terminal_0.7. -- lib/arm-linux-gnueabi
hf/bin/terminal
and get:
aa-exec: ERROR: profile 'com.ubuntu.terminal_0.7.' does not exist
I also tried without the last option as I don't have the directory:
aa-exec-click -p com.ubuntu.terminal_terminal_0.7.
same message.Any tip to debug this, very welcome.
