Ubuntu Touch Q&A 85 This Saturday 26th Of Sept At 19:00 UTC

GizmoChicken · 22 Sept 2020, 05:30

Under the question "How will Ubuntu Touch work with the new SNAP packages?" found on the UBports FAQ page, the answer states, in part, that a "goal is to support Snap packages" and that "this is still a work in progress."

I fully appreciate that the UBports devs are currently working on a great many urgent projects that have higher priorities than supporting Snaps. Even so, I can't help but asking the following questions:

Q1: Keeping in mind the above regarding priorities, is supporting Snap packages on UT still among the goals for UBports?

Q2: And if so, could Snap packages be supported on the PinePhone while UT remains based on 16.04, or would rebasing UT on 20.04 (and/or replacing upstart with systemd) be a prerequisite for supporting Snaps on the PinePhone?

Note: To state the obvious, Snap support could foster cross-platform support of confined apps on the PinePhone, which I believe would be a good thing.

alan_g · 24 Sept 2020, 14:05

Trusted Prompt Sessions

One of the problems with moving to Wayland is that the Mir implementation of the latter lacks some of the features that were provided by the mirclient API. One such feature missing when using Wayland on the PinePhone and PineTab is "Trusted Prompt Sessions", this seems significant.

To what extent can the missing "Trusted Prompt Sessions" feature be replaced using, for example, wlr_foreign_toplevel_management_unstable_v1 and xdg-desktop-portal?
What needs to be done for that to happen?
And what will that then leave to be done?

wsha1 · 24 Sept 2020, 17:11

What is the best way to keep up with development of Ubuntu Touch for the PinePhone? What I do now is use the development channel and just poke around after updating to see if anything changed. I keep an eye on https://gitlab.com/ubports/community-ports/pinephone but that repo doesn't update too often. Are there other places to watch? I also follow the Pine64 blog for general updates about the PinePhone.

Regarding PinePhone development, I don't want to ask "when" because I know the answer is "whenever it is ready" but can you describe what is involved in getting the 30 fps video that was demonstrated by Marius recently into the PinePhone image?

wsha1 · 24 Sept 2020, 17:13

Also, one bit of feedback on the Q&A -- there have been several times when I have thought of a question to post but it was outside of the window between when this post goes up and when the Q&A takes place. Then I forget until the window has opened and closed again. Do you not open the post for the next Q&A earlier because you are trying to avoid stale questions?

GizmoChicken · 24 Sept 2020, 18:39

Not a question, but I just want to express my excitement and gratitude to see progress being made in the "Upgrade your Qt" project.

Also, I'm amazed by the huge volume of CI jobs related to Qt 5.12 that have been submitted. Awesome work!

GizmoChicken · 25 Sept 2020, 00:10

@wsha1 said in Ubuntu Touch Q&A 85 This Saturday 26th Of Sept At 19:00 UTC:

one bit of feedback on the Q&A -- there have been several times when I have thought of a question to post but it was outside of the window between when this post goes up and when the Q&A takes place. Then I forget until the window has opened and closed again.

@wsha1 A new "announcement" thread inviting questions is usually posted about 5 days before the Q&A. And then a follow-up "reminder" thread (like the one linked here) is usually posted a little closer to the date of the Q&A. But, yes, like you, I often lose track of which weeks are Q&A weeks, probably because the Q&As occur in alternating weeks. Maybe what I propose below to @UBportsNews would help us both?

@UBportsNews I like the way that the initial announcement threads (like this thread) are posted (a) about 5 days before the Q&A, and (b) as a new thread for each Q&A. But with regard to the follow-up "reminder" threads (like the one linked here), I hope that you'll instead use an approach that's more compatible with the "watching" function. For example, instead of (or perhaps in addition to) posting each "reminder" into newly created threads, how about creating one "UBports Q&A Reminder" thread (a) to which only admins could post, and (b) that's always "pinned" to the top of the News section? That way, those with a poor memory (such as me) could mark the pinned "UBports Q&A Reminder" thread as "watching" so that we're more likely to see the "reminder" update before each Q&A.

UBportsNews · 25 Sept 2020, 04:29

@GizmoChicken Leave that with us to think on, It's a nice idea will let you know.You can also can already subscribe to the UBports News Channel https://t.me/ubports_news (plug, plug) to get all Q&A and other news and update items as they are announced.

edit: Why not just mark the News thread on the Forum as Watching to get notifications on new items in Recent.

GizmoChicken · 25 Sept 2020, 05:42

@UBportsNews said in Ubuntu Touch Q&A 85 This Saturday 26th Of Sept At 19:00 UTC:

Leave that with us to think on, It's a nice idea will let you know.You can also can already subscribe to the UBports News Channel https://t.me/ubports_news (plug, plug) to get all Q&A and other news and update items as they are announced.

Thanks much for the reply. Yep, I know that I have other options (including adding a recurring reminder to my Thunderbird calendar). But as for Telegram, although I'm sure it's a great app and a great service, here in the North American colonies, Telegram isn't widely used.

edit: Why not just mark the News thread on the Forum as Watching to get notifications on new items in Recent.

Well, I could. But I suspect that if I did, I'd receive more notifications than I want.

To be candid, as you may have noticed, I don't lose track of the Q&A dates very often. But I've lost track of Q&A dates on a few occasions, so I can relate to @wsha1's frustration. And that's why I posted my proposal.

Fla · 25 Sept 2020, 07:30

Can we have a status about Halium 7.1 core work still needed before Halium 7.1 ports like the one for the FP2 can become the official port?

domubpkm · 25 Sept 2020, 08:27

Is there collaboration between the different communities to solve issues that might be common regarding the Pinephone?

joancipria · 25 Sept 2020, 09:08

Recently Marius reported that He was going to use the pinephone as a daily driver in order to detect and work on some problems. Can you tell us how was the experience? (Issues, stability ...)
Are there any collaboration plans to port some Open Store apps to Manjaro Lomiri?

GizmoChicken · 26 Sept 2020, 06:31

I'm itching to purchase the latest PinePhone Community Edition w/ Manjaro preinstalled

But if given the choice, I'd prefer to purchase a next generation PinePhone Community Edition w/ UBports UT preinstalled, especially if it were to ship with the full Yumi mascot printed on the back cover and some (maybe about $10) of the proceeds were to benefit UBports.

Question: Can you share any info regarding if/when a next generation PinePhone Community Edition w/ UBports UT preinstalled will be available for purchase?

Keneda · 26 Sept 2020, 06:33

Could you make update for core apps separate from OS?

For exemple the messaging app had some bugs corrected long time ago, and we had to wait for OTA 13 to have it updated.

arubislander · 26 Sept 2020, 07:06

@Keneda, Certain core apps, like Phone, Messaging and Morph Browser, are highly integrated with the system in a way that is difficult to decouple.

Morph, for instance, provides system components, that are made available to other apps.
Phone and Messaging access parts of the system that are not made available for click apps to access.

There might also be some security concerns at play. Handling calls and text medsages are privacy sensitive operations that you might only want trusted applications to handle.

A Former User · 26 Sept 2020, 07:31

In terms of resource allocation, how much does UBports splits the tasks between Pinephone and Android kernel based phones?

Keneda · 26 Sept 2020, 08:33

@arubislander
I assumed some updates could be made "alone" because of this :
https://github.com/ubports/messaging-app/issues/183

As you can see @lduboeuf provided a click separate messaging app on a "standelone" basis. So i wondered what can or cannot be done that way.

farkasdvd · 26 Sept 2020, 09:42

I have the Pinephone convergence package but I am not able to make UT work with an external monitor. I tried manually switching between staged and windowed mode, too. What is the status of this feature?

dobey · 26 Sept 2020, 14:52

@arubislander said in Ubuntu Touch Q&A 85 This Saturday 26th Of Sept At 19:00 UTC:

Phone and Messaging access parts of the system that are not made available for click apps to access.

We could probably migrate dlaler-app and messaging-app to being shipped as unconfined clicks, as we control the source, and they aren't providing any system components themselves; though they do depend on some "private" components provided by address-book-app.

There might also be some security concerns at play. Handling calls and text medsages are privacy sensitive operations that you might only want trusted applications to handle.

The apps would still be "trusted" as clicks, because we maintain the source, even though they would be unconfined (as they currently are anyway). We wouldn't need to add new apparmor rules or such for this.

Keneda · 26 Sept 2020, 15:30

@dobey
That would be very great that you (ubport) make standalone all possible "core" apps

danfro · 26 Sept 2020, 15:37

Call for maintainers!

There are quite some core apps without a maintainer for a long time. Camera app and clock app joined that list this week.

Core apps need your help! Is there anyone with coding experience willing to take up the task? Please use the Q&A to ask around.