@grenudi said in We Drop Ubuntu Touch Entirely:

500+ device ports versus Ubuntu Touch's approximately 50

uh? I am currently evaluating my options on getting a so called 'smart' phone again without Google and of course Apple, and from what I see PostmarketOS has ONE (1) device that can (more or less) qualify as 'daily driver': the Pinephone. Not sure if it's even compatible with the carriers in MY country.
My understanding is that UT has about 10.
From this point of view, UT has more coverage but if you have lot of credible stories of people using Volla or Google or Fairphone or Samsung devices under PostmarketOS as their daily drivers, I am all ears.
By the way your expletives about the forum are making you seem like a troll. Sorry but that's very much what it looks. This forum is working really well and I'm favourably impressed by NodeBB.

@shano said in Why is Wayland compositor and Lomiri so far in terms of functionality compared to Compiz and Unity7 released some 20 years ago?:

Compiz was released in 2006 and is still maintained. Unity7 was released in 2010 and is still maintained. My question is why Wayland and Lomiri are so far away in terms of functionality, plugins etc. compared to tech made 20 years ago.

Are we building on top or reinventing the wheel?

From what I see, Lomiri is not reinventing Unity 8, it is Unity 8.
I downloaded the Lomiri source code and counted roughly 18000 commits between 2013 and 2017 (end of Ubuntu involvement) and 1400 commits between 2018 and 2025. The main reason is probably that Unity was a business project with serious resources behind it, while Lomiri (the new name for Unity 8 since 2020) is an open source project with a few part time volunteers. Also, it may be that there was so much work in Unity that there is not a lot of new development necessary, the bulk of new work being in other parts of the full (and huge) smart phone stack. I did not count but I think that a large part of these 1400 commits are just translations.

I don't know Compiz but I tracked the project in its last hideout on Gitlab and counted about 30 commits in last 5 years, 20 of them in 2020. It's maintained in the most limited sense, there is almost no development.

@poVoq

hello, not the dev here - but the links are not broken for me. The app is supposed to be based on

https://github.com/luigi311/ConverseJS-ubports

the links are a bit strange though (why not a software forge ? if the author don't like Github, there are other such as codeberg...). It's not stated in the original repo that the author has given up. Personally I'd not use this software without more information.

@kristatos said in Smooth Edges (name pending) - Let's Fix the Bugs That Drive You Mad:

if the input is to slow?

FIY I have noticed that disabling haptic feedback was leading to me typing faster. I don't know if it's psychological or if the buzz is really slowing the keyboard. Give it a test if you don't have disabled it yet.

@Moem said in Status of the Location Service (GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo) ?:

I don't know what any of that means

it's a service provided by Qualcomm

https://calyxos.org/docs/guide/security/network-activity/

http://izatcloud.net/

See an analysis here:

https://ti.qianxin.com/blog/articles/Analysis-of-the-Hidden-Backdoor-Event-in-Qualcomm-GPS-Service-EN/

TLDR: backdoor is too strong a word, but there are privacies issues. If the software is rewritten as open source, this could be less problematic.

Duh ! I will close this stoopid post, I had not used seriously a smartphone since several years and did not realize anymore how sensitive to location Gps services are. I tried only in 2 places in my home and both where unsuitable. When I got out in the air, Gps started to work. So it is working, really. I did a stroll this morning and it updated its position. I have still to get my hands to another brand of smartphone on Android to compare with the Fairphone 5 under UT to see how well it is working.

@uxes said in Enabling MAC randomization:

shipped on our system by default

I am not sure that any phone is doing that by default.
It has also a downside for anyone using this phone with ssh, that is, the IP address affected by the Dhcp server (the wifi access point) will change often.
It's not a big deal but it can be annoying.

@GooglyBear said in GPS don't seem to work on FP5 UT 24.04 stable:

a GitLab issue to follow progress for Fairphone 5

AGPS is not really linked to a specific port (even if it can work on some devices it seems, but it's mostly unintended). It's tracked here

@Charly

I have seen one post seeming to say that it was restored in the most bleeding edge version, I can't vouch for it as I use stable, however if you install crackle you can use nix immediately and you can get the nix version of rsync (more up-to-date than the Ubuntu 24.04 version).

https://gitlab.com/tuxecure/crackle-apt/crackle
https://gitlab.com/EricHeintzmann/ubuntu-touch/xiaomi-surya/-/wikis/Install-with-crackle

Once you have crackle running, run 'crackle install rsync' and you are there

@pparent

Maybe their goal is only to target phones and desktop was a non-goal for the people giving orders (that's the one who are supposed to represent citizens eh), and at a first approximation on phones there are only 2 operating systems, and there are several cross-platforms framework targeting Android and IOS that may be more efficient - or known - for this limited target.

Also behind the facade of openness, there are still quite a lot of love of secret in the French administration. Having a GPL licensed framework like QT is a negative point in this perspective since there is some additional weight to have to share the source. I don't have proof of this speculation and possibly the deciding persons don't even know what is a software license.

@t12392n

thanks for the explanation.
I wonder how disabled people (the ones that may have trouble using a terminal as small as a phone) fares in this scheme.

Also, unfortunately for Linux devices such as Ubuntu Touch, betting all on a device that has a gigantic attack surface - the smartphone has typically 3 open connections (radio, wifi, bluetooth) and connects to typically one software store with many apps, with automatic update turned on for everything - pretty well ensures that only systems provided by big Daddy Google or big Daddy Apple will be considered secure enough for general use by a population not especially well versed in security. I am going to get a device that will get UT next week but I'm not keen on doing banking on it. Using old kernel and old binary drivers don't seem to be a good thing with so dangerously exposed devices.

@ozzy03 said in Fingerprint:

I downgraded to android 13 and then installed UT

thanks for the info
to make things absolutely clear, I asked specifically about the possibility of installing without downgrading to 13 - as current Fairphone 5 are (for now) produced with 14, so when you say you 'downgraded to 13', did you did that because

1)you followed dutifully the official procedure and never had a working fingerprint sensor (as I did), or

2. you did a 'naive' installation based on 14, had a working fingerprint sensor, and just tried to install again after downgrading the android base version and then have a not working fingerprint sensor ?

asking because I still have the idea to try to install again over 14, but I always have something else to try on my new toy :-). If 2) is the correct answer, I'd be more motivated to wipe everything and install again. I'm still curious to experiment myself if manufacturers like Fairphone being given the possibility to install different versions of Android while keeping the same Vndk still applies.

@Linuxlite76 said in calls and internet:

my mobile date will not work at all

I assume that you wanted to write 'my mobile data', so your meaning is that you can't for example surf on the net with Morph right ? if yes, is cellular data disabled in the settings ? and if you open a shell, can you ping for example 1.1.1.1 and if not is there any change in the output of 'ip a' and 'route -n' before and after the problem ?

@Maik said in Does the forum platform support voting anonymously?:

This kind of forum is new to me so i don't know if such a feature is available

NodeBB has a plugin for polling, it's apparently not installed (installing plugins has a maintenance cost as any plugin can break when updating the forum software, and a voting plugin is probably a bit more concerning than a simpler plugin since users could start polls that may be deemed unsuitable that the forum maintainer would have to cleanup), it does not support voting anonymously.

@RapidRotator said in Why does UT not have assisted GPS?:

I'll look into it then

you can begin with this issue
You'll note that there is a privacy concern too; if UT devs were ready to trample it, it would be easier.

@sixwheeledbeast said in Fingerprint:

Is it not also true you shouldn't downgrade a A14 to A13 as the bootloader will lock?

Not sure I get your double negation assertion (always confusing), but it's not true, I got recently a FP5 with A14, I dutifully downgraded it to A13 and (after some mishandling by my self) have a running FP5 under 24.04. The Fairphone site even gives a procedure for that (linked to from the UT installer), so it's a totally acceptable practice.

@nparafe said in Problem installing snap:

Anyway, it is shown in https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/ so maybe it should be removed?

Well, it works up to a point, it's not shown with a star, that means it's not as well supported

@projectmoon said in Problem installing snap:

the snap does not fully integrate with the system due to scaling

Note that these kinds of problems can be sometimes mitigated by env variables settings, for exemple some settings like:

• with Gtk apps
  export GDK_SCALE=2

• with QT apps
  export QT_FONT_DPI=320

with snaps, there can be problems with setting env variables though, as these apps are supposed to be isolated from their environment. I don't know if this would work with your app.

Hello

following a recent discussion where I have argued that using a phone with one hand was not a generally useful feature, I'll make a little exception here

Since most people talk to a correspondant on their phone using one hand, it could be nice to call with one hand too. Unfortunately, this is not an easy thing to do because most of the time, calling is really calling a known correspondant where the number is not memorized, hence the use of the contacts application: and it's very difficult to press the very small icon amid 2 other small icons in the upper right of the screen while holding the phone with the left hand. Using first the contacts application is not a good workaround since selection of a correspondant displays it and it's then necessary to press the small button at the opposite side of the screen to go to the phone app.

Here is the trick (maybe everyone knows it already ) !
There ie a secret way to open the contacts application from the phone:

touching the area to the left of the main phone green button starts the contacts app, this area is a lot more easier to thumb while holding the phone with only the left hand. It's then possible to swipe the list with the thumb, press the appropriate contact and then the phone app comes back to focus with the right number ready to call.

Honestly this looks like a bug, but it's handy once it's known.

@t12392n said in We Drop Ubuntu Touch Entirely:

atm I cannot use it as a daily...

hmm, is it about Volte or your bank don't like Waydroid ? if the latter, it's not quite entirely the OS fault's.

@Escain

I have exactly this when enabling wifi; see this issue
As the fix is supposed to be in a branch more advanced than the stable one I (and you) use, my solution for now is try to not disable wifi until the software is updated.