Hi everyone!

I know it can be hard to grasp what UBports does.
It's hard for people to buy a device (often very expensive), install Ubuntu Touch on it and realize it's not what they expected.

Many people are disappointed because some things are taken for granted, considered: "normal" or "basic".
Also people come with "needs" related to their phone usage.

I'm lucky because what I consider "needs" are very simple:
Shelter, food, oxygen and friends
The rest is nice to have and I consider it privileges.

This intro is to put things into perspective and to explain what is done at UBports.
When considering Ubuntu Touch at the moment, it is important to make the distinction between:

• The device ; produced and sold by a manufacturer,
• The port ; made and supported by the maintainer(s),
• Ubuntu Touch ; initiated by Canonical and now maintained by a tiny subset of our community,
• Apps ; built by developers within this community.

The foundation UBports encourages porting to new devices and is set to promote the best ports or at least to give a clear picture of the features you can expect.
The foundation also depends on app developers to build and grow a catalog of apps that users might expect.
This is a difficult task as most app developers are focusing on iOS and Android in order to earn money and very few are willing to give their time to bring killer apps to Ubuntu Touch.
Currently, the foundation's efforts are focused on the maintenance of Ubuntu Touch ; rebasing on 24.04, bringing support for VoLTE and 5G which are critical tasks.

With this in mind, it's easy to understand that, with a skeleton crew, it's very hard to fight all those battles at once.

We are also facing a "battle" within. This one is related to our users and is about "support".
This aspect of things has been brought up lately and some community members start to get fed up with it.
My understanding of the origins of the problem is that we needed to bring more people onboard with us to help:

• porting to new devices
• maintaining the OS
• developing or maintaining apps

This effort to widen the community attracted also people that did not help with those tasks and generated support.
Ideally newcomers would learn from the elders and then help back newer users.
In reality it mostly falls back on the same highly motivated people which for some are also helping in porting, developing apps or maintaining the OS (sometimes all of the above).

So first of all I would like to thank all the people helping this amazing community.

But my goal today is to ask people to understand the situation we are in and to encourage them to help us out.

Ubuntu Touch and the UBports community have a lot to fight for and it will be really hard in the coming months.
So if you feel you can help us out a bit more, then please do.

We need skills to port or maintain current ports.
We need skills to maintain the OS, test it out and fix issues.
We need developers to maintain and create new apps.
We need money to keep paying the bills for infrastructure.
We need sponsors or crowdfunding to invest on some targeted features and give some money to people who already invest so much in this community.
We need volunteers to give back a bit of what they got from this community: support, moderation, communication, organization, management, lobbying... anything you think we lack of...

Complaining is natural and understandable but it's not helping... and we are in desperate need for help.

People are often enthusiastic about the project and want to help it grow but sometimes we don't know how to help.

Let's start with some definitions because it never hurts:

Ubuntu Touch: Is the name of the OS
UBports: Is the foundation maintaining Ubuntu Touch. That's also the name of our community.
Lomiri: Is the DE of Ubuntu Touch
Ofono: Is the module that handles the telephony for Ubuntu Touch
Halium: Is an abstraction layer used by Ubuntu Touch to communicate with proprietary firmwares on ported devices.
Anbox: Is an option to run android apps (highly experimental and not currently maintained)
Waydroid: Is the new name for a new approach to replace Anbox, it only works for devices based on Halium 9 (and 10 IIRC) and is still in early stage of development.

Now I'll try to give some tips on how to help/get involved:

First you can head over to https://gitlab.com/groups/ubports/-/epics
There you'll find the roadmap for the UBports foundation.
At the moment, this is mainly about the work necessary to get Ubuntu Touch to work based on Ubuntu 20.04.

You got a rough idea on what is going on and want to help? Great!
Helping is possible in many places. You can work on translations, documentation, testing, reporting or developing.
Also shop infrastructure like moderating, sorting and prioritizing issues, ... also require some (wo)manpower.
Please check our documentation where some instructions are already provided: https://docs.ubports.com/en/latest/contribute/index.html

Eager to help developing? A good starting point are open issues:
https://gitlab.com/groups/ubports/-/issues
https://github.com/ubports/ubuntu-touch/issues
You want make an impact? Some core apps do still need a maintainer (https://github.com/ubports/ubuntu-touch/blob/master/CORE_APPS.md).

Issues, bugs or feature requests need developers to tackle them, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. There are certainly more of them. And not only developers are needed. Browse through issues and see if you can help by

• confirming issues
• testing
• providing ideas on how to solve something

When testing and reporting, please follow some general rules:

• report any bug you encounter
• check the list before reporting to make sure there is no already existing report
• provide information on how to reproduce and hopefully fix
  comment on existing reports if you have helpful information

If you have a broad idea of something that would help to improve Ubuntu Touch, please consider these steps:

• be specific, no "let's save the world" attempts
• draw a mockup or write something up with your ideas
• depending on your idea find the right spot to place it (github/gitlab, forum, telegram, ...)
• maybe build something to provide it for tests
• find others to team up, ask for help

If you cannot act on your own and need endorsement from the foundation, for example to create new partnerships, then

1. Draft an email for any contact you may have in an organization
2. Submit the idea and explain how you think it might help each party to the UBports foundation (use the social media, Telegram or the forum to get redirected to the right people)

(Be patient. Tweaking is a luxury we can't afford right now. 20.04 is the absolute priority. That means that many other things are not a priority. No harm in storing up feature requests somewhere, but don't expect short term actions by the core team at the moment.)

To sum it up, I would say, you don't need to ask, feel free to act.
Action proves your interest.
Acting on an idea is a good way to test it out and see the possible flaws in our thinking (i.e. does it require money, connections, skills, etc.).

Oh and if, like myself, you are willing to help but don't have much time to give, you can always give money: https://ubports.com/fr/donate

I hope some of you might find this helpful.
Cheers

Sorry in advance for the long answer

First of all and to answer the question : I'm willing to pay for Ubuntu Touch

Now to address the deeper issue at play here, I see various topics and feelings associated with them.
First of all, I don't like the feeling I have that the community is passive and "asking" the foundation.

1. It should be clear what the foundation do and can do. For example, hosting, notification system, updates, etc.
2. I agree with @Alter displaying the financial need of the foundation is an incentive so we know when to donate and how much and what it is used for.
3. Maybe showing off the sub-communities of UBports like Open-Store, Waydroid and some key apps like Teleports, uNav or Pure Maps, uAdBlock, UT Tweak Tool, ... (to only name a few)

My idea is to take the opportunity to make a change to the UBports Q&A format.

1. Invite various actors of the community to pitch in and show other aspect of the UBports community than the foundation.
2. Show the financial aspect and thanks the sponsors and explain the target once a year.
3. "Drive" the community by setting the focus on various topics (where the UBports foundation show was saying we cannot do much because our resources are full, the UBports community show could say there is this interesting topic that needs our attention, this will require this kind or resources, who's up to it?)

I appreciate Dalton's work and I think the visible part (the show) of his work should be his legacy and as such could be a reminder that we (the community) should be caring for each other and sharing the weight so together we can achieve a better Ubuntu Touch.
The UBports foundation is a central component of this community and will hold an important seat at the table but the UBports Show can be widen to the community so we feel more involve and less acting like customers.

Also a note on what mentionned @Flohack in another thread.
The "voice" of the show could be a native English speaker for ease of communication, but they do not have to hold all the burden.
Other people can write scripts, a bit similar to what Matteo does for the highlighted apps, so it is not so much of what Alphred, Dalton, Florian or Marius (in alphabetical order and for the recurrent hosts) did during the last couple of weeks, but really a what happens within the community and what should be its future.

Thanks for reading and if you like this idea maybe we can start to draft something in a dedicated thread.

My philosophy is that I have to make something positive from a tragedy.
So let's make Dalton proud of us and of what came from the ashes of his burn out.

@domubpkm
News is still fresh but going viral : https://ubports.com/blog/1/post/271

Hi @jojumaxx

As I often write and now say, you can come and express that something is annoying for the end user.
That's fine, but it doesn't help in any way.

We are all aware of the issue, and there are many ways to react when facing a problem:

• My favorite is to take the matter in my own hands
• Second is to ask how I can help

People get angry, some demand, some others are menacing, ...
IMHO either you have patience and hope for the best or you can try one of the constructive ways I shared.

Moem mentioned work done by Alfred on an alternative browser.
You can try donating to keep him motivated on this matter that is important and useful to you.
You can propose your help in testing (or developing if you have the skills).
You can help us bring Morph to a more recent version of Qt (meaning moving from V5 to V6)
You can also help out people working on uFirefox or other alternatives you tried.

If I had a magic wand, there would be no post just stating things.
There would be statement + question on how one can act with the skills they have.
Or statement + a tangible and actionable proposal (PR always welcome)

We are a community. When one is on the forum they are one of us.
So questions like: what is being done about X?
Those are not helpful if asked to oneself.
Can I do X or Y for us? OR Is it better to do J or K?
Those are useful even if you direct the question to yourself...

I'll make a T-Shirt about this and save the world
Sorry for the rant, but people indulge me when I do that from time to time.

May Yumi be with you all.

@domubpkm
As you understood, that's just an opinion.
And on certain circumstances I could make an exception for app X or Y.

But I prefer to live without the convenience than becoming slave of it.
It's a personal choice and I understand that people make another one.
That's the beauty of freedom.

A huge thank you @Capsia for your work.
Thanks to all contributors as well for their various contributions (content, illustration, review, etc.)

Hi, I'd like to take the opportunity of this thread to point out several things.

The first one is the list given by Dalton is not a decision made or something definitive for other phones.

This leads to my next point, what the UBports foundation can do and what the UBports community can do.

The UBports foundation is maintaining Ubuntu Touch (the OS).
And the move to 20.04 is necessary as 16.04 is not maintained anymore.
But 20.04 has some constraints regarding the kernel.

On the port side of things, updating the kernel for a given phone is not easy or even impossible...
If a version of android 9 or 10 was made for the device, then a port based on halium is possible.
But in case of old phone abandoned by manufacturers a long time ago building a recent enough kernel for the device and using the existing firmware is almost impossible or very expensive and difficult.

The foundation does not have the ressources to make a 20.04 compatible port for older, marginally used phones.
Maintainers might not have the required time, resources and knowledge to do it either.
So some devices will be left over on 16.04 without updates because maintaining the 16.04 branch is to expensive for the UBports foundation.

So if you want a specific device to survive, you'll need to get in touch with the porter for this device and ask them if they are still willing to do the job or to assist.
Then you'll have to gather people willing to help to bring create a port compatible with 20.04 requirements.
This is a community matter and effort to save a specific device.

For the BQ4.5, I do not know what can be done but it seems a very difficult task.
As @CiberSheep wrote, you have several options but overall it's a good thing this device was available for that long.

I think the main message for the survival of your individual device is to take action.

• Gather a group of people interested in savekeeping this device
• If you gather enough people and knowledge maybe your device team will be able to successfully port 20.04.

I think the foundation and core team will help as much as they can.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
As a reminder, UBports foundation is not a company. Driving a living community of beings is not as easy as leading a company.
We are no customer but members and contributors.

A company answers to money and customer depending on how much they spend have an impact on it.
Loosing a member has a different impact on a community depending wether or not this member was contributing a lot or less...

Acting like a company would mean stop listenning to members whose contribution is considered not important enough.
I think we can all agree it won't be a good thing.
So keep that in mind when pondering the decision made by those who contribute a lot, listens to others and try to satisfy the most people.

I think everyone in the core team, the members of the foundation and major contributors are doing a fantastic job.
They explain what they do, why they do it. They try to federate people and ask for contributions because UBports depends on it. The people paid to work on Ubuntu Touch cannot maintain the OS and port it to devices by themselves.

Money and talents are required, that's true, but UBports is not a company.

@domubpkm
In fact there are 6 of them.

This is a picture I took of my BH. The label on the left describes what they are for.
Sorry for the blur macro is bad with the phone's camera.

Many don't know how to do this task.
It's really useful for people searching for the same problem.

So here is a little tutorial I made for this:

First you need to locate the menu buttons for the whole topic it's always on top of the screen on desktop.
Then use the cog wheel menu (labelled "Topic Tools")
Then choose "Ask a question"
Now your post is "unsolved"
Use the previous menu
And then choose "Mark as solved"

And for those who are lucky to be able to see there are the steps in picture:

Hope it will be helpful.
Enjoy

@nexus5
Hi, you just opened 4 threads in a row just with complains about the OS.

We are a community and everyone can contribute. But simply asking for stability, customization or anything that is convenient to you does not help.
I don't say your ideas are bad, just that if you take the time to read a bit more and learn about what is currently done you'll know that anything you ask here is far from being a priority.

Ubuntu Touch is very stable and it is one of the top priorities despite what you wrote here: https://forums.ubports.com/topic/4905/stability
That's why OTA13 has been postponed.

As I said, we're a community and here to help each other.
Opening a bunch of thread just to complain about UT not being Android is considered like SPAM.

So please ask yourself how you can help. Or if you have a specific issue you can ask for help or open an issue in gitlab if you found a bug.
But you'll have to be specific.

Thanks.

@nero355
Not being a developer is not an excuse
I'm not an electrician, but I installer new heaters in my flat.
I'm not an electronician but I managed to solder a board for a simple circuit I needed.
I'm not a baker but I can make delicious cakes.

Nowadays with resources available on youtube and on websites like open classroom you can learn about anything if you put in time and effort.

So not being a developer is not an excuse so one can simply ask for things to be done and do nothing.
As part of a community and as a general rule do not ask what your country the community can do for you, but what you can bring to the community.

I have the skills, but no time, so I understand if one does not have the time to learn but just "not being a developer" is not a real excuse...

Nothing against you.
You just brought this up and I try to make people around here realize that they can be valuable for this community even if not developers.

Hello and welcome @slyvan

I understand your point of view, but personnally I prefer the UX with Ubuntu Touch to both iOS and Android for the same reasons you described.
I found it easier to use my phone single handed with Ubuntu Touch than with Android or iOS.
I'm right handed but I usually prefer to use my phone with the left hand, so I can perform other actions...

So I'm totally for customization but I guess it'll have to respect few constraints like:

• Not impose one pov against another
• Avoid to crown the parameters settings (which is a nightmare in Android and iOS)
• Be easy to use for average user

If you want to propose a mockup or an architecture to build on your ideas it would be great.

@PINE64 Yeah \o/
I refreshed my browser all morning until could place an order

Hi @lduboeuf

Thanks for the work you're doing Lionel
I would use the same UX as for password/passphrase with an empty text field.
At each strike you add a dot to give the user feedback on what they typed.

Also the OK/Enter button is fine for me.

Addendum:
Thoughts for the future
For security reasons I would also merge password UI and PIN UI.
I would add a screen asking the user to swipe left or right to get to the alphanum keyboard or the numerical pad...

Thank you very much for all your work @alan_g

@dalharmony

Hi, as well as I understand your need, I will tell you that as a customer surrendering to this logic is not a good idea.
I try to promote IoT as much as can but as a privacy and security oriented guy I will tell you to never trust a solution offering only an app.

To clarify the following is true if there is no alternative to an app:
First, the product is you as all apps use a cloud base system to benefit from your personal data.
Second, security is often (always?) lacking and it renders inefficient any said "security cam" that is a threat that can and will be used to determine if you are out and allow robbers to evaluate your belongings beforehand.
Three you should promote what you believe in and put your money where your heart is, I choose open source solutions, hackable gadgets and to secure them myself.

If you want to ditch android and their world, you should also ditch any privacy offenders and promote open source as a way to have privacy and security by design.
It is not easy, but freedom comes at a cost and it's not cheap.

Being a slave is easy and you're fed (barely but still).

Sorry for this rant but yeah when you think about it everyone should be more careful what they buy and what they have to sacrifice for this "thing"

@makeixo
Stating fact is not the problem here. We are all aware of what could be better.

You came here and wrote this and this. What people trying to actually DO something hear is:
I don't understand why such basic think is not done yet.

Even if you came just asking question this is not the way to do it.
In community like this one, what is appreciated is:

• Being thankful for the job already done
• People who want to contribute by trying/doing

Stating the obvious doesn't help anyone.
Criticism is not banished. But it should be a productive one.

When you see something that doesn't work the way you want, you can come here and ask what can I do.
Personally I use UT for 2 years now on my daily driver (a Nexus 5). There are some issue, battery leaks, ... but I'm glad to have an alternative to Android which drove me crazy years ago.

I couldn't control my domotic, so I created an app. Some people use it and I'm glad I'm able to give a little back to the community.

This message is not condescending, I expect it to be something that will help you (and others) understand the philosophy of open source communities. Do not simply come and ask ; come and ask what you can do to help.
Everyone is welcome to contribute with what they can offer.

Nice opportunity for me to say a big thanks to every contributor. I'm a happy user of UBPorts !

A workaround for using Spotify is to use the native app Futify.
Only problem is that it requires a paid account because the app leverage the ability to download music files to play offline and this feature is only available for paid members.

Media streaming is quite a wild topic and it's not because it works on one website that similar feature works on another website.

<rant mode: on>
Many complaints against Ubuntu Touch are really a complaints about internet and how it works nowadays.
Websites should provide a service to people in return, people pay a fee or trade personal information for the service.
It is sad to notice that web developers often assume that everyone browse the web in a similar fashion.
Also web developers often use framework to help them out.
Hopefully internet has standards to provide a similar experience to all user.
But those standard are often broken (some will argue improved) by either a framework, a browser or even poor choices from a web developer.
This renders the service unusable for people without compatible plugins/browser/computer and that because giant tech companies want to twist internet freedom in order to lock people in and squeeze out revenue from the people they imprisoned.

When a bank assume everyone owns either an Android or iOS smartphone, they intentionally ignore people without smartphone and us Ubuntu Touch user.
When a website assume everyone uses Chrome on Windows or Safari on Mac, they also deliberately ignore other users.
As a user I do not tolerate this kind of behavior and will do my best to report that, so free people can continue to be. If they want everyone to be on the same page, they should use only standards and no fall for the shinny new "features" that on "must" have.
Freedom is about keeping the power to choose what "should" we do.
<rant mode: off>