Here are the videos recorded about mobile:

https://video.fosdem.org/2026/ub4132/

UT is mentioned in the videos about state of Foss on mobile and the one about the apps store: the UT one is rather well placed, however Flatpak is coming for mobile and it has already a dominant position in general Linux apps.

The video about openHarmony is intriguing given the resources of the organisations behind it.

I have been interested by the one about push notifications, apparently more ready for prime time that I was thinking. It seems that the only real solution for Linux clients is the kde one, that would seem a good fit for UT since it uses QT.

@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.

@Sander said in Add "Tab" key to Ubuntu Touch keyboard?:

You can tap anywhere on the terminal area to mimick the behavior of the tab key

thanks for this hidden gem ! TIL

@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.

As an update, a draft MR was recently posted on Gitlab using the BeaconDB api (directly,not via Geoclue)

@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.

@sixwheeledbeast said:

Bluetooth can't be disabled or enabled from the battery menu. The toggle moves but it doesn't work and stays in the same state.

Yes I see that on my FP5.
I searched a bit and I think that the problem is not in the settings, it's in the Bluetooth stack itself.
Rationale: launching bluetoothctl, I can see that when activating the switch, there is this message:

[bluetooth]# hci0 new_settings: connectable bondable ssp br/edr le secure-conn 

the interface is made 'connectable' and 'bondable'.
When activating the bluetooth in the bluetooth page, these messages are displayed:

[bluetooth]# hci0 new_settings: powered connectable bondable ssp br/edr le secure-conn 

that is, in one case the interface is powered while it's not in the second case. The switch is changed but after a few seconds when the system realizes the discrepancy between the real state of the bluetooth interface and the switch, it switches back the indicator statute.
When going from the battery page to the bluetooth page, the state is checked immediately and the switch is going back to enabled almost instantly.

While it's the same action in both case ('bluetooth-enabled') it has 2 different effects!,
I'd need to check what are the messages passing at the Dbus level in both cases.

For now it's a bit late for me, logging off.

@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

@mihael

tested with dekko. I think it's a bug, it don't seem logical that silent mode mutes the rings but not the messages.

@Talkless

both projects are still maintained. UT has a lot more activity, but also a vastly bigger domain, so in both cases maintainers are spread thinly. That's not because what's interesting you is not moving fast enough for your taste that people are not active on these projects, they are just caring for other aspects of the projects.

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

dekko does it too.
IIRC every app that is installing a systemd service I have looked at don't remove it when uninstalled.

@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

@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.

@Kadafi

you don't. This is a known way to brick your phone.

@Averiz

Congrats ! this is a great idea !

I tested it on my FP5 (24.04-1.1 stable) and it installed and restored the system keyboard. Needed to restart the phone but that's not important. Tested it with the terminal and a few browsers.

Good points:

1. I find it more pleasing to the eye that the system one.
2. It worked as well with alternate browsers (uWolf, Min) who have special methods to handle the keyboard.
3. with the terminal it does not interfer with the special input methods (double clic on the screen, special area

Minor points:

1. opening Min (an alternate browser) and Morph both with a blank initial screen, entering 'https:' and clicking on the blank screen generated a mad flickering of the keyboard and a Js error in the browser code (I took a screenshot but for some reason it's unreadable).

2. when setting / unsetting it as system keyboard there is some delay after clicking the button with no apparent feedback.

3. I (and I think most people) expected it to respect the system preferences for the language, nope, it's necessary to setup the keyboard in its own config screen. Yes, it's actually a high expection This config screen is not totally obvious by the way. I managed after a few mistakes to select the French Azerty as the default and it displayed finally - in Qwerty . I clicked on the 'AZ' key and it was Azerty finally.

4. after restoring the system OSK I set it again as the default, and I got back the qwerty with the french Azerty left selected, and this time clicking on AZ did not change the disposition, it stayed Qwerty.

5. still with the French Azerty, the text 'Keyboard - French - French (AZER) spills over the key ',' at the left (see screenshot)

@Kadafi

cursor keys:

option 1: use the hamburger menu and select scr, then scroll to the right you'll find arrows
option 2: touch the screen, press and move gently your finger right/left

@Averiz

even with Min, it seems to happen only if prediction is turned off in fcitx-ub configuration.

@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.