I hate to say it - but I have to disagree with @dobey here - my primary reason for using Ubuntu Touch as my daily driver phone is how the fabulously intuitive native Terminal made using emacs and org-mode on UT an absolute breeze! I have an almost identical replica of emacs on UT to the one on my laptop (running Arch Linux) - and incrementally sync all of my .org files back and forth between UT and my laptop using unison (and a home server).

Install emacs on UT using apt - and then edit your .emacs file in home/phablet/ as you would usually do

As for emacs navigation, as @dobey says, you simply edit and customise one of Terminal's .json files to your liking - and then all of your classic emacs commands are on the command bar below the terminal screen. I've modified mine quite logically so that the most used emacs shortcuts appear first - in my case, CTRL+C, CTRL+X, CTRL+A etc.

To get around the missing ALT key, simply change keymappings in your .emacs file - for example, I use wanderlust in emacs for reading and writing mail and the original command to open wanderlust in emacs is "M-x wl" - so on UT, in my .emacs file, I have added:

(define-key global-map "\C-xw" 'wl)

and now "CTRL-X w" opens wanderlust

Many native emacs packages also use CTRL commands as alternatives for ALT - Dired for example (emacs built-in file browser and manager) also uses "CTRL-X d"

I have even installed texlive-full and auctex (in a chroot) on UT and used it to draft manuscripts and export to PDF - all in emacs on my phone.

So @cpb, a fully-functioning and buttery-smooth emacs experience on UT is the reason I feel like I'm carrying a fully-fledged workstation in my pocket!

Hey guys

I'm Bry Wilson, a marine biologist and bioinformatician, started as a SUSE user in 2005, moved on to Ubuntu Warty Warthog soon after (ah, the joy of compiling my own ndiswrapper for wifi-access), stuck with Ubuntu until 2014 and then migrated to Arch. For s**ts and giggles, I made the jump to FreeBSD two months ago

I bought a second hand Nexus4 in late February 2013 just to install the first hilariously unuseable Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview install. I've been using Ubuntu Touch as my only and everyday phone for two years nows (my worthwhile friends installing Telegram on their Android and iOS phones just to stay in touch with me...). I picked up a secondhand Meizu Pro5 in January in anticipation of the move to 64-bit snaps - and then of course Canonical pulled the plug

For me, the absolute number-one defining advantage of UT (not counting the relative security of being free of the locked-down Android and iOS ecosystems) is the native terminal - and the power of customisation that gives me. I've briefly flirted with Android and installing a terminal on there but it is a pale almost powerless shadow of the UT's native one.

I've been using the Meizu Pro5 in full convergence mode (with a Microsoft Wireless Display Adapter v2, Dell 24" monitor, Logitech K810 bluetooth keyboard and Logitech M555b bluetooth mouse) as my everyday production machine since February. Essentially all of my work involves running analyses on high-performance computers over ssh and so I'm just leaping between tabbed terminals on UT, my Rockwork linked Pebble Steel notifying when my jobs have completed. I'd also call myself an emacs "power user" (essentially living within the emacs environment) and have a full setup installed in my UT root directory, with my org-mode terminal constantly running on my phone. I write my publications in LaTeX and so have also installed a xenial chroot with emacs again, a full TeXLive installation and R statistics software.

There's still a number of crucial bugs in UT convergence and I've spent a lot of time in recent months scripting workarounds for those - I'm a fairly passionate believer in UT and will try to support UBports in any way I can - I think it's a fabulous community!

For the record as well, I'm installing the UBports updates over adb in recovery mode (pushing over the files to the sdcard and untar-ing them on the phone) and keeping all of my data intact with each upgrade. A simple bash script then reinstalls all of my emacs packages back into the root directory afterwards.

I'm very much hoping that UBports might still give us 64-bit M10 and Pro5 owners the Xenial snap update!

Cheers and thanks for all the hard work guys

Bry

Well, I've had a wee play around - thanks @zubozrout for the Google Play tips. Whilst I love the idea of Anbox - having your Ubuntu Touch cake and eating it - my major use for it (as a 16.04/devel daily user!) was to install Android apps until UT ones became fully functional again. Primarily, this was to try and install Android browsers (using FDroid) until the UT stock browser or browser next were upgraded such that I could access some of my more frequently browsed websites. However, I couldn't get any of the Android browsers to work - they installed but then hung whilst trying to access a URL.

However, I did install DAVDroid (a CalDav sync tool) and successfully sync'd (or is it sunk?) my nextCloud calendar to the Anbox Calendar! I then I hilariously noticed that a recent upgrade (was it today's?) actually fixed the UT stock calendar - so, I of course immediately deleted the now unnecessary DAVDroid app Point in case!

I also installed the nextCloud Notes app from FDroid - and it worked perfectly with my nextCloud server!

Which got me thinking as to whether we might have a page somewhere on the UBports website, dedicated to those Anbox apps which successfully install or not. I'm thinking it might be a little like the WINE-software compatibility pages, where apps get bronze, silver and gold ratings depending upon the app's useability. Just a thought.

I was also thinking - slightly snobbishly - that the presence of those Android icons in my Apps Scope made me feel a little unclean. I know UT is lagging slightly(!) behind iOS and Android for apps - and Anbox fills an apparently necessary gap - but that doesn't mean I want them right there on my UT Apps Scope Any chance - and this may already be in the pipeline - we might be able to have a dedicated Anbox Scope?

Finally - and for completeness' sake (and not that I'm considering it now) - but how do I go about totally removing Anbox from UT?

Hey Milan @mk73,

I would absolutely love to share my experiences with the UBports users and give something back! Although will honestly admit that I consider myself more a "curator of assembled knowledge" (akin to standing on the shoulders of giants!) than an original fount of that knowledge. The internet and all its wonderful contributors have been my inspiration - but I do also realise the importance and use of actually having all of these titbits and tweaks in a single place.

So, yep, consider me sold on writing an "emacs on UT" blog. It'll probably be quite useful for me to write some of this stuff down too

Long ago I was utterly overwhelmed by the idea of convergence and that I could carry a fully-fledged desktop in my pocket - several years down the line and we've inched (to be fair to Canonical and UBports, leapt!) closer but it's still not ideal. I originally tried this with the first Nexus4 over Slimport but of course the Nexus was a little too slow to be considered a "desktop replacement"...and then came the beast that is the Meizu Pro 5! With aethercast!

So, I picked myself up a Microsoft Wireless Display adapter and wham, there you have it.

Well, almost.

Two issues that still seem to be plagueing my dream of convergence and I just wanted to throw them out there to see if there were any forthcoming answers...

First off, aethercast - the version that ships with 16.04/devel still suffers from the problem of a fuzzy resolution, if I remember rightly, this was to do with aethercast having a maximum resolution below 1920x1080 and therefore upsampling the lower resolution to fit a full HD screen. There was a patch that worked beautifully on modifying the aethercast to allow this and give a crystal clear Full HD display over aethercast - but it seems that the patched version (admittedly generated from the Vivid aethercast) no longer works on Xenial. Does anyone have the patched Xenial aethercast?

Secondly, bluetooth-wifi coexistence - as soon as the wireless display is engaged, my otherwise speedy bluetooth mouse and keyboard grind to a stuttering halt. I've tried modifying iwlwifi.conf to a disable coexistence (which seems to work on laptops) but to no avail.

I've slowly but surely been finding workarounds and scripts for other issues - but these two have evaded me so far

Any tips?

Nice work indeed @mariogrip - wonderful to see Anbox development continues!

I just tested on a Meizu Pro 5 (running 16.04/devel, Version 162) and when the phone is fastboot rebooted after the anbox-kernel flash, neither of the SIMs is detected.

I simply fastboot flashed the previous boot.img back - and my dual SIMs are detected once more, no apparent harm done

So, it seems that Anbox is not quite ready for those users requiring a Meizu Pro 5 that still also makes and receives phone calls...

Hey @tartanspartan, I totally agree with you regarding freeing up the wireless traffic for the aethercast video stream - it seems the logical solution - but as far as I'm aware (and I could of course be utterly mistaken), there are no USB OTG mice or keyboards that can be used with the Meizu Pro 5's single USB-C connection

However, if you (or anybody!) know of any, then please please let me know!

Re: adb shell not working Meizu Pro 5

Hey guys, as the topic title suggests, I'm on a Meizu Pro 5 running the UBports 15.04 Devel channel r37 - and for some time now, I haven't been able to connect to my phone with my Arch Linux laptop using adb. I plug the phone in - it charges - but when I run "adb devices", no devices are listed. "lsusb" sees the phone too.

I've:

a) killed and restarted the adb server and tried connecting again
b) checked that my adb key in ~/.android on the laptop is there
c) plugged in an android phone to the laptop - which is successfully listed by "adb devices"
d) tried the Meizu Pro 5 on other Linux and FreeBSD machines with adb
e) Checked and unchecked Developer Mode and changed logon security from fingerprint to code

No joy with any of the above! I'm quite happy to copy smaller files over by scp - but 2GB HD movies are a chore without a cable and ADB

Interestingly, when I plugged the phone into a new Linux machine, there was no popup on the phone about accepting the new connection...

I've started a new topic, as my issue is not quite the same as the one "adb shell not working Meizu Pro 5" - I'm not even detecting a device!

Cheers

Bry