So, as nobody jumped in, I did it and wrote them this email:

Hello FSF!

First of all, thank you very much for what you are doing, the world deeply need free and respectful software.

I read your call for suggestions for the HPP list and I saw the "Free phone operating system" category.

I'm a user of Ubuntu Touch for 2 years now as my primary device and I'm very happy with it, that's why I want to suggest to support that project.

I don't know what are the requierments to be accepted in the HPP list. I know (and agree with) the FSF philosophy of rejecting proprietary software. Ubuntu Touch is of course a free software project, distributed under the GPLv3. It is using Halium to be able to run on phones which requires proprietary firmwares, but is also able to run on plain GNU/Linux phones like the PinePhone, so without proprietary bits involved.

Do you think it is a good idea to include it in the list?

Freely,

Fla

We'll see what goes out of this.

Thank you very much @mariogrip for taking the time to write this. I am one of those users who are still fighting with daily bugs years after the official support of the Fairphone 2, and I tend to be critical about why aren't them getting fixed (god damn it! ).

But I fully agree with everything you say here, and to see it written black on white help me to be more patient. Thanks again.

/me go back improving Axolotl, as the whole UT ecosystem needs to be pushed forward.

@mrlen we don't need to implement a new service to do video chat. We just need to support the existing ones, which are already working well on other platforms and are widely used, for example Signal and Telegram. So, to add the videochat feature in Axolotl and Teleports, the unofficial UT clients for the two services. I am a contributor to Axolotl, and to be able to do video chat, this issue in Morph need to be solved first: https://github.com/ubports/morph-browser/issues/399

FYI the kernel source code of the FP3 just has been released, see https://code.fairphone.com/projects/fairphone-3-gpl.html

It has also been added to a git repo to be easily browsable: https://github.com/FairphoneMirrors/android_kernel_fairphone_sdm632

Okay so I found a proof (if needed) that I'm indeed running with the new Halium 7.1 base: the famous bug of toggling data after flight mode is gone! And that is great.

However, I found some regressions:

• The auto-brightness option isn't available anymore. Is the proximity sensor available?
• The phone can't be updated anymore (no release channel available). I guess that is expected as far as this build isn't available on the official servers?

I will continue to test and wrote my findings here.

Hi. To answer your questions, a new port for the Fairphone 2 is currently worked on. It is based on Android 7.1 (the current port is based on 5.1) and will allow to have the flashlight working. Unfortunately, the Fairphone developers aren't helping the UBPorts community, and there is no release date planed at the moment.

We are happy to announce that we have publicly released complete and updated GPL sources for the Fairphone 3.

https://forum.fairphone.com/t/fairphone-3-updated-gpl-source-packages/

Continuing my report, I installed GStream-droid (see that topic) and indeed, the camera app is now quicker to boot and the flashlight is working when taking a picture! Not alone though but that means it can be done and that is awesome.

It looks like there is an orientation problem however, the pictures aren't in the good orientation. I don't know if that's because of halium or GStream-droid.

@doniks we're already all using it but all other development channels are on Telegram so Axolotl one is there too. And it's especially useful when you have trouble with Signal and need help

Does that mean the UT images will be daily-driver ready soon? I own a braveheart edition and a few weeks ago, it was still far from usable as a primary device. I guess the factory has to have the image to be flashed at least a week before shipping the phones so... That would mean one month and a half to have the image ready? That feels pretty short.

I didn't expect to see any work on 22.04 right now, let alone 24.04. That would be amazing of course, but isn't it a bit too optimistic? I guess many problems will be found once 20.04 will be widely adopted, so you will have to work on that first.

And what about the stabilization on Lomiri on desktop, being fully included in Debian etc?

@cliffcoggin & others about why not only a forum. Yes obviously for exactly this kind of topic (debate, announcement etc) a forum is perfect. But there are other use cases when you need live chat, debugging together with a user, preparing a release... Just jump in the Dev group or the Axolotl one in telegram and you'll see what I mean. And Mattermost would make all this groups much more discoverable.

That being said, sorry I didn't remember that ubports wasn't hosting their own gitlab, in that case obviously there is a bit more work to be done to put it in place and that's maybe not worth it at the moment (because I think the advantage is also to be self hosted, not to use a sass solution)

@totalsonic exactly like the whole gitlab stack, it is there business model, core is free (and clearly complete enough for a project like UT), and you may pay for premium features. Mattermost is the communication tool built to integrate with gitlab and the standard for developers allowing launch ci, be warned about new issues and merge request etc without leaving the chat. That's what I use at work for years, also now what we use at CERN and I can tell you it's a nice tool which would require less than 15min to be activated by the ubports sysadmins. But I guess I presented it wrongly and I know it's hard to make people change. At least I tried
I would have liked to have opinions from the core team on that topic though.

Well Mattermost can be accessed with Morph even if it probably isn't as smooth as with Teleports.

Hello everyone.
The UBPorts community is actually using Telegram to discuss about Ubuntu Touch. There are dozens of groups, about the OS, apps, support, groups in specific languages or even some dedicated to an app like Axolotl, or Waydroid...

With the current events ongoing in Russia (where Telegram is hosted), I feel like we should switch to a solution which is resilient to internet cutoff between Russia and the rest of the world, preferably a self-hosted one. Mattermost is a powerful chat (like Slack) allowing to organize discussions by team and channels and would in my opinion nicely replace Telegram. It can be very easily put in place because it is integrated into gitlab, which is already self hosted by the UBPorts foundation.

What do you think?

Cheers.

@flohack unfortunately, I really need a working Signal, so the nice 2-years UT adventure is over for me (yet). So my FP2 is now running /e/ OS, but I'm still following progresses made as I hope to be able to come back on UT as soon as Signal can be used there.

@prog-amateur yep, sorry but you won't have that before months on UT...

@flohack it was working with the port made by @peat_psuwit, I guess this build is using it?
That port also had a very bad battery life when wifi was on. Is that fixed?

push notifications aren't the main problem of unofficial signal client. If you use UT Tweak Tool to keep Axolotl running, you will receive the notification when you have a new message. The real problem is to keep following upstream changes. See the massive work needed to support groupsv2.

@antidroid 6P is done by @Flohack I think?