According to an article posted on xda-developers.com, developer Erfan Abdi, has "successfully created a GSI-esque, platform-agnostic Ubuntu Touch image that can be installed on any Project Treble compliant device."
Would you please talk briefly about the UBports Generic System Image (GSI) project and what the project may mean for the future of UT on modern (Android 9+) Android devices?
Not a question, but I just want to say...
Congratulations on your progress toward completing OTA-12! Amazing work!!
Mir 0.32 release candidate discussed here. Note the logind support is nearly complete.
I suggest waiting a few months (preferably at least six months) to gauge whether GitHub will change for the worse in any way. If you notice changes for the worse, then plan an orderly exit at that time. But if you don’t notice any changes for the worse, no need to divert precious time from development.
@nexus5 said in future ubuntu touch:
Please do 3 versions of Ubuntu touch: lite, normal, maximum.
To be direct, I do NOT support your proposals. Even so, I want to THANK YOU for taking time to express your thoughts here. Again, THANK YOU!!
Also, I’m very SORRY to see that a few have “down-voted” your post, especially given that “down-votes” are anonymous on this site. Please don’t let them deter you from expressing you thoughts here. 
As for those of you who (anonymously) down-voted this post, WTF? If you don’t like a post, take a few minutes to explain what you don’t like.
As an aside, I think this site should rethink allowing anonymous down-votes. Either show who down-votes, or eliminate the option to down-vote. Just my opinion, for which I suspect that I’ll receive at least at few anonymous down-votes for expressing.
@poVoq said in The road(map) explained:
And I would like to add this related discussion/rant to it:
https://forums.ubports.com/topic/4648/what-do-you-think-use-only-lomiri-as-poweruser
@mariogrip and/or @UniSuperBox and/or @dobey and/or @Flohack and/or @NeoTheThird (and/or others):
I fully support UT and appreciate the many benefits that it brings. Even so, I'd like to propose that the UBports devs consider an approach similar to what @poVoq proposes, namely:
Please consider offering a highly experimental (extra-edgy?) "Ubuntu Lomiri" build for the PinePhone that's based on nearly stock Ubuntu 20.04, but otherwise highly similar to "Manjaro Lomiri" build.
Although I agree with @poVoq's notion that many "power users" would appreciate such a build, that's not among my top reasons for requesting one. Rather, my top reasons reasons for requesting such a build for the PinePhone include the following:
Creating such an "extra-edgy" build based on nearly stock Ubuntu 20.04 would necessitate (and hopefully facilitate) a move from upstart to systemd.
Once the move to systemd is complete, snapd could be supported.
Having official snapd support for a PinePhone build would benefit those who wish to repackage clicks as snaps, and then test those snaps on a PinePhone, thereby likely accelerating efforts to repackage clicks for future “cross-platform” use.
Being based on nearly stock Ubuntu 20.04, such an "extra-edgy" build could be used as a platform onto which various aspects of UT (including aspects that must change before upgrading to Mir 2.1) could be tested individually (before being tested on a full "edge" build), which could be helpful when attempting to "walk up the stairs" associated with rebasing the full UT stack to 20.04.
For the adventurous it would be reasonable to take Ubuntu 18.04 and...
- install the Mir from the Release Candidate PPA and Unity8 from UBports;
- recompile and install QtMir locally; and,
- try logging into a Unity8 desktop session.
Reportedly, the UBports repo has been updated, and Unity8 can again be installed using the instructions found here.
Unity8 on 18.04 is discussed in Ubuntu Touch Q&A 31 starting at about 61m49s.
I have thought that you can boot a system from the SD Card as well.
Yes, you can boot the PinePhone from an SD card. But SD cards are typically slower, and less reliable, than internal storage.
Looks like the Mir team is making progress with the logind tweak.
@Marathon2422 said in PinePhone:
PostmarketOS gets "screen of death" very fast. UBports is a little bit more usable but there is a bug with onscreen keyboard that does not appear after several screen locks. Will test it with different desktop oses (debian, kali etc) until situation will change.
Given that there will soon an influx of PinePhone users who want to run UT on their shiny new Linux phones, I hope that UBports will focus like a laser on PinePhone development for the next few months, even if that means other priorities are delayed for a short time. Otherwise, if disappointed with UT on first impression, the potential users may become forever lost to one of the competing alternatives.
More progress has been reported. See "This week in Mir (25th May, 2018)" for details.
A UBports blog post from Jun 14, 2017 includes the following Q&A:
What does Google’s Project Treble do for UBports and Halium?
Google recently announced “a modular base for Android” to solve the problem of having to backport Android updates to every device seperately. While Treble does sound similar to Haliums approach, it doesn’t eliminate the need for Libhybris, the translation library for Android’s bionic drivers. It remains to be seen if this project will change our life for the better, but since it’s just been announced, we can just continue what we’re doing at the moment for now.
Now that a few phones support Project Treble, has UBports revisited whether Project Treble will be of any help to UBports and Halium? And if so, in brief, what are the current thoughts on this?
Once you've brought the latest versions of Unity8 and Mir to mobile devices, will you allocate more resources to bringing a usable version of Unity8 to desktops/laptops?
I ask because I suspect that offering a version of Unity8 usable on desktops/laptops will appeal to a large audience, which may ultimately attract more interest in your mobile project.
From the Q&A 66 Blog:
Marius wanted to have some fun over the holidays so he played around with Focal – what will become 20.04 of Ubuntu. He wanted to see what had been added and removed. Lots has gone, so will need to be put back before we can use it. We will be basing on 20.04, so although fun it is part of our preparation for the future. At this stage we are just scoping out what will need doing.
Gizmochicken, PhoenixLandPirate and others asked a series of inter-related questions – for example, what will you focus after OTA-12? Is there a road-map? What about Nextcloud? Maybe we could create a few project areas and call for contributors around them? For example around the work needed to upgrade from 16.04 to 20.04?
@UniSuperBox and @mariogrip , I want to thank you both for discussing the above questions/suggestions at length during Q&A 66. Speaking for myself, I'm amazed with how much you've accomplished in such a short time, and I see lots of potential in the UBports team.
I understand what you're saying regarding the seemingly never ending need to change priorities, and not wanting to promise more than you can deliver. Even so, having worked in fields related to technology development (albeit not software development) for over thirty years, I continue to recommend that you, at the very least, publish your top priorities for the coming year, along with approximately when you want to achieve each of those priorities (with caveats, if needed). If for no other reason, doing so will help you to think through the most efficient path from A to B.
Sure, you'll almost certainly need to amend your timeline multiple times throughout the coming year. (And I, for one, won't fault you when you do.) But having your priorities written down (and published to community) will help you to keep yourselves on track.
So, once you get past OTA-12, I hope that, even if not a full roadmap, you'll at least publish a list of your top priorities for the coming year. And who knows, maybe a "unicorn" will find something on the list into which he might want to poke his horn.
Not a question, but I just want to say...
Congratulations on completing and marking closed the Unity8+Mir upgrade project!
@erlend said in Ubuntu Touch Q&A 67 Saturday 11th Of January At 19:00 UTC:
I hear last time that.. Mir is going to be replaced with Wayland....
The devs can clear this up better than I can, and so I defer to the devs for a more complete explanation.
But in the meantime, suffice to say that it's not quite correct to say that "Mir is going to be replaced with Wayland." (Mir is a display server, and Wayland is a protocol.) Rather, UBports is replacing the "old" Mir display server with the "new" Mir display server.
The "old" MIr display server used its own (non-Wayland compliant) protocol, while the "new" Mir display server is now Wayland compliant. As of about Mir 1.6, in addition to being Wayland compliant, "new" also supports the legacy protocol that was used by the "old" Mir display server. However, that legacy support will eventually be removed from Mir (probably starting from about Mir 1.7), hence the need to "Waylandify" Ubuntu Touch.
Questions for Q&A: Regarding your efforts to "Waylandify" Ubuntu Touch, have you had a chance to experiment much with moving libertine to use xwayland? And if so, what are your initial impressions regarding the difficulty of the project?
I'm not at all clear what Canonical is planning for their "Anbox Cloud" project. But if the project aims to offer a way to run some Android apps in the cloud (rather than directly on a Linux device), the project seems like a good thing for Ubuntu Touch.
Your initial thoughts on "Anbox Cloud" project?
@rik said in Ubuntu Touch Q&A 86 Saturday 10th Of October AT 19:00 UTC:
Is there any consideration in having a separate build that is not a read-only filesystem, e.g. more of a standard Ubuntu install? If there were something like that, I would think it could stand as the main development branch that would allow faster upgrade to 20.04 / wayland / systemd / etc. Then it could be a testing ground that new releases of the "stable" or "consumer" read-only system would come from.
It would also not frustrate any potential developers who want "standard Linux on a phone" (mobian, manjaro, fedora, etc.).
In summary, I understand a lot of the reasons behind the read-only system for stability, for security, for end users, etc. but I fear it keeps away possible developer interest that would benefit Ubuntu Touch in the long run if it were more "traditional Ubuntu" on a phone?
Based on the reactions to comments that I recently posted in the "The road(map) explained" thread, what you (and I) suggested doesn't seem likely, or at least not likely in the near future. However, Manjaro Lomiri may fit your needs.
@totalsonic said in Ubuntu Touch Q&A 90 Saturday 5th December At 19:00 UTC:
Seems to me Volla Phone, PinePhone, OnePlus 3/3T, Sony Xperia X series, PineTab, perhaps Google Pixel 3A, and whatever Xiaomi/Redmi device is looking to be easiest to fully support, would all make sense
Agreed that the focus should move toward newer phones. But I think that your list may be a bit too ambitious for the near term. Sometimes less can be more.
I realize that most won't agree with me on this, but in my opinion, in the near term, UBports should focus on making the upgrades needed for rebasing UT to 20.04 (and also moving to a more recent version of Mir).
Then, once UT has been rebased on 20.04, UBports should focus on (1) the PinePhone, and (2) working the kinks out of the UBports Generic System Image (GSI) project on just a few modern Android devices, with the goal of eventually supporting many more modern Android devices using the GSI approach.
Oh, and Lomiri on x86-64 devices. Don't forget Lomiri on x86-64 devices.
QUESTION for Q&A: Honest question (and not an attempt to troll), but why is UBports devoting valuable resources to bringing Halium 7.1 to old devices when those resources could, instead, be devoted to working the kinks out of the UBports Generic System Image (GSI) project, which has the potential to, eventually, bring UT to a great many modern Android devices?
@fredldotme said in Google Pixel 3a (sargo):
- Flash Erfan's GSI image with Ubuntu Touch using TWRP:
https://build.lolinet.com/file/haliu...staller_v9.zip
Your link seems to have been inadvertently truncated. I think you are referring to one of Erfan's GSI images that are found here:
https://build.lolinet.com/file/halium/GSI/
Also, I realize you're still working out the kinks for the Halium-9/GSI/Treble approach. But even at this early stage, it seems to me that, given that quality (yet budget friendly) Android 9+ devices are becoming more widely available, it's hard to justify anyone investing much additional time/effort into porting older devices that rely on Halium-5/Halium-7.1.
If that's the case, I hope you and your colleagues will announce that the age of UT on Halium-5/Halium-7.1 devices is nigh, and that the future of UT belongs to Halium-9+ devices (and, of course, to pure Linux phones, such as the PinePhone, that don't need Halium ).