I understand that, and to be clear, this isn't meant as a complaint or even an expression of frustration. In fact, I recently chose to buy a Fairphone 5 specifically because of its longer support horizon and the active development around it.

My question is more about how the UBports Foundation views this challenge in the long term. Are there already discussions about future approaches that could help address the growing complexity of hardware support? Or perhaps ideas within the community that could lead to a more sustainable solution while we preserve a unified experience across different devices?

I'm not so much interested in the current limitations, we all know those exist... but rather in the broader vision. How does the foundation see the path forward when it comes to maintaining convergence and a consistent user experience across all devices.

@sixwheeledbeast
ahh i get what yoy mean, yes
that is possible in ambots settings,

@ChromiumOS-Guy also so fast compared to the other apps. he obviously is doing great work

@RJDan i would say some sort of competition for a new app, and i would gladly donate a few bucks. because its win win, developer gets rewarded, community gets rewarded with new contributions that people have to like to get the reward, means thoughtfull and usefull apps

@Zer0 Pleas keep sharing, i don't want buttons on my home screen, but i am glad you build it...
i know there is a lot of people out there that do want exactly that.

i like Kugi's attempt more to organize the launcher, that works like a charm for me.
That is the beauty of Ubuntu Touch, if you can dream it you can build it.

@pparent interesting concept, i hope it will help you build a healthy income while we enjoy your content

@developerbayman i know it is dangerous to talk in behalf of others, but from my understanding the normal "users" are looking for a easy understandable no techy solution for installing ubuntu touch locally without any knowledge of terminal commands. either a good instructed guide, either a ubports kinda installer that manages to make grandma install ubuntu touch locally during her process of making her Russian salad for the family dinner.

to add, this seems to become more and more relevant due restrictions and rules that are slowly being pushed by our gouverments worldwide.

@CiberSheep Great respect towards you owning your hiccup.

To me, the guy just seemed enthusiastic. You see the same thing with a few others on this forum... a bit of cross-posting here and there, sometimes even on topics that aren't directly related. But he's actually building things, and we're in a position where people who have the ability time and willingness to build something are in short supply.

but mistakes are made, and will be made again.
We are all Human after all
wel except for a few Robots that are working to build UBports 24/7 (meant to say this as with great respect )

@CiberSheep Great respect towards you owning your hiccup.

To me, the guy just seemed enthusiastic. You see the same thing with a few others on this forum... a bit of cross-posting here and there, sometimes even on topics that aren't directly related. But he's actually building things, and we're in a position where people who have the ability time and willingness to build something are in short supply.

but mistakes are made, and will be made again.
We are all Human after all
wel except for a few Robots that are working to build UBports 24/7 (meant to say this as with great respect )

@pparent Agreed, and i will follow your attempt closely

@Lazarus2026 Holy... there is a whole ubuntu touch network outside of ubuntu touch?
https://vimeo.com/1030727484?fl=pl&fe=cm#t=1m59s

interesting at the least... someone with that device in hand has to make the port... (or in this case finish and maintain it)
If i see what effort and time you are already putting in this project, you might be just the guy to do so?

https://docs.ubports.com/en/latest/porting/introduction/index.html
If you read the documents, it not only leads you to information on how to do so, but also to how members of ubuntu touch can help you with problems that arise when you are finishing there work.

So if i read there forum, they are the biggest crowd fund in recent years, and dropped the "direct" support of ubuntu touch for there degoogled android project?

Well, yes, that is what i mean. However, it could also apply to desktop convergence, and even software convergence, if that's what you're referring to. I don't think this feature is broadly relevant yet, since only a limited number of devices currently support display output.

That said, I've seen some recent discussions about DisplayLink, and we already have an SSH client in the OpenStore, so I suppose we could try to improve that particular aspect of convergence in the long run as well.

I understand that, and to be clear, this isn't meant as a complaint or even an expression of frustration. In fact, I recently chose to buy a Fairphone 5 specifically because of its longer support horizon and the active development around it.

My question is more about how the UBports Foundation views this challenge in the long term. Are there already discussions about future approaches that could help address the growing complexity of hardware support? Or perhaps ideas within the community that could lead to a more sustainable solution while we preserve a unified experience across different devices?

I'm not so much interested in the current limitations, we all know those exist... but rather in the broader vision. How does the foundation see the path forward when it comes to maintaining convergence and a consistent user experience across all devices.

Well, that's exactly the issue: it differs from port to port.

This merge request is an example of the same problem being solved for Surya devices, while it still remains unresolved on Joyeuse:

https://gitlab.com/ubports/porting/community-ports/android10/xiaomi-poco-x3/xiaomi-surya/-/merge_requests/15

My last merge request, which was for something unrelated, never received a response from the person maintaining this port. That makes me think they may be busy, inactive, or have moved on to another device.

What makes this difficult is that building a port already requires a significant amount of effort, and maintaining it over time is another challenge entirely. Relying on volunteer porters to continuously maintain, improve, and enable new features is difficult and probably not something that can always be expected.

The same applies to Snap, Libertine, and Docker support. Not every device supports these features out of the box.

This is not meant as criticism of the porter. From a user perspective, though, I would have liked to know these limitations before purchasing my device. If I had known, I probably would have increased my budget and chosen a different device from the start.

One possible solution would be to rethink how port maintenance is organized. Many of these settings and features are simply Linux kernel options that have been disabled and could potentially be enabled across multiple devices. As it stands, if a porter or device community doesn't enable a feature, it remains unavailable on that device, while the exact same feature may be available to users of another device.

@marlboro50 Hello,

First to understand what Jami is, i watched a video about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Wi99K33qrw&t=9s

So in general, apps like Fluffy, Element, and even Jitsi (for the starter) still need a user account.
Delta chat can be run on your own email server (without notifications).
This on the other hand is peer to peer encrypted without a platform in between.
Meaning when offline, no messages are send to anyone.

Does it sound interesting, yea, but just from this video alone i cant say i investigated it ;-).

So then the question "a native, system-level solution for real-time voice and video communication."

Do we need something like this system wide? and why? why is adding this to the store not enough? like if i have to convince friends to stay off Whatsapp, i kinda have to settle for what the majority of my people use right?
so either signal, delta chat, element, Session, Threema, Jitsi Meet and so on offer tools to chat with friends and family. But if no one in my network downloads the application,
it is kinda useless to have this in my system image.

What is your idea behind integrating it into the system? and what are we going to say to the developers that are building "secure" messaging apps already on our platform?

@pparent no one knows if this will work if you dont try right.

I am kinda against "money" in general, but no fool that we all still need it until the world changes xD

Paying you to help build what actually matters is kinda interesting as a concept. I do have some concerns, but time will tell.

@UBportsNews Thanks for all the work again guys. 24.04.2 and 26.04 already are in great shape. porting to Qt6 seems to pay off already.

I have a question about porting, we have a page dedicated to what is working on a device.
But having 2 devices i notice that there is a big difference in usability.

for example, the redmi note 9 pro does not completely support video features and voice calling.
and the fairphone 5 has issues with bluetooth connections for keyboards and mouse.

what is the organisations plan to future proof user experience across all supported devices,
and how can we as "users" help you guys?

@pparent interesting concept, i hope it will help you build a healthy income while we enjoy your content