@grenudi In a community project, everyone only does what he or she is interested in and wants to spend some freetime on. If you think, that something is important to have, but can not find anyone wanting to work on it for free, you will either have to do it yourself or pay someone to do it for you.
If you later want to merge your work into the project, you also need to do some documentation and explain, why you think this benefits the project.

For the ubports community, there are different main channels to communicate on: this forum, the Q&A, GitLab and Telegram groups

The Q&A is good for getting general answers to questions around the OS, if you did not get an answer on the forum. But you will maybe need to ask a short and easy to understand question in a nice way, some days before the Q&A, when you want, that anyone looks into it: "Have you concidered...? Do you think it would be a good idea, if I start working on this?"

Packaging a GTK app as an click package is possible, but I could only manage to do so by giving the app special permissions (so this is a workaround and will most likely not be excepted in the official app store). Here is an example that worked on my Nexus 4 with Mir as the display manager and will maybe also work on other devices:
Video of working app (a simple image editor):
https://libre.video/videos/watch/2f2c5304-d278-4b43-84e0-3c463d3a6432
Source Code:
https://gitlab.com/AdamSchrey/image_and_buttons

Some of the things done here will maybe not be necessary on some devices or in future versions of Ubuntu Touch.

I had to add this lines to the .desktop file:
X-Ubuntu-Touch=true
X-Ubuntu-XMir-Enable=true

I had to add this line to the .apparmor file:
"template": "unconfined",

Otherwise I would get this error:
** (process:26446): WARNING **: Unable to exec '/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/ubuntu-app-launch/xmir-helper image-and-buttons_0.9.0 ut_session.sh' in '/opt/click.ubuntu.com/.click/users/phablet/image-and-buttons': Permission denied

I had to export this variable to get bigger buttons/text/entries...:
export GDK_SCALE=2

To get an on screen keyboard I installed this packages on my device:
maliit-inputcontext-gtk3 maliit-inputcontext-gtk2

...and exported this variable:
export GTK_IM_MODULE=maliitphablet

I reply to this old post, because when I searched for a solution, this was one of the first things that came up and I could not find any working examples my self.
Maybe someone will find this helpful or will tell me if my app and my solution also work on other devices.

Some of the things I did, were taken from this website:
http://kriscode.blogspot.com/2016/09/x-applications-on-ubuntu-phone.html

Update:
I removed the proof of concept web app from the OpenStore, because I have no time right now to regularly restart the server or to fix the stability problems. It would also not make much sense to improve something, that will not be used.

It is all available under GNU GPL3 at: https://gitlab.com/AdamSchrey/open-store-payment-poc
So if anyone wants to revisit the idea, he/she can do so.
I am also happy to answer any questions about it.

Thank you all for the feedback

Hello @Opolork , as Bolly already pointed out, you can contact the developers over their gitlab (or github) accounts.
For the spelling error, you could open an issue like this:
1)

2)

3)

Please describe what the issue is ("Hello, I saw following spelling error at the description of the app in the open store...") and when the developer has time for it, he will maybe correct it. You do not need to set up an SSH key for this.

For directly suggesting a change to the source code, you can start a merge request. The description of the app in the open store is not part of the source code, so it can not be changed with a merge request. But should you see any spelling errors inside an app, you can most likely correct them with a merge request.
For a merge request you need to fork (make a copy with your own changes) the project first. Should you click on a file (for example po/es.po to change the Spanish translation) in the gitlab repository and than click on Edit > Edit single file at the top right, gitlab will automatically ask you, if you want to fork the project. Than you can edit your fork and make a merge request to the original repository. I will not explain it further, because I do not think that this is what you want to do here.

Please be aware that the translation for the core apps is done over a translation dashboard, so you should not make translation merge requests for them (https://docs.ubports.com/no/latest/contribute/translations.html#how-to).

For using SSH functionalities of git, you can add an SSH key to your gitlab profile. I will also not explain it further, because I do not think that this is what you want to do here. I think it is not even necessary for making a merge request. And I think you should even be able to push and pull your own projects without an SSH key. Here is some gitlab specific documentation about it, should you be interested: https://docs.gitlab.com/user/ssh/

TL;DR: Just open an issue. You do not need to make a merge request or to set up an SSH key.

Hello,
I wrote an app to compare the performance of different devices and released it on the OpenStore: https://open-store.io/app/ut-sysbench-qt-gui
I hope the arm64 version works, because I can only test the armhf version.
It would be nice, if some of you could share your device's name together with the results you get, after clicking on "Multiple Benchmarks".
"Export and Compare" will copy the results to your clipboard and show you a bar chart with the performace of other devices.

Multiple results from different persons for the same model are also useful.

You are also free to share problems with my app. I know that the memory (RAM) test does not work on all devices.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Results of my LG Nexus 4 with Ubuntu 16.04 OTA-19:

sysbench --test=cpu --num-threads=2 --cpu-max-prime=20000 run
57 events per second

sysbench --test=cpu --num-threads=8 --cpu-max-prime=20000 run
113 events per second

sysbench --test=memory --num-threads=4 run
Operations performed: 0 ( 0.00 ops/sec)
0.00 MB transferred (0.00 MB/sec)

sysbench --test=mutex --num-threads=64 run
total time: 2.4057s

@theprivacydad said in Trying out UT on Pixel 3a XL for review article:

one question I have is that I see a terminal but don't know how far I should attempt to go with installing software the way I am used to

I think one of the most important things to understand for new UT users is, that the root file system is mounted read only and therefor it is not supported that the user just installs programs in the terminal with "sudo apt install ..." or makes changes to the system.
This restriction allows for OTA updates, so that everyone uses the same system packpackages. The individual applications on top of the system are not deeply integrated in the system and there are similar permission rules to android (for example camera and position permission). This should allow for more security.

If you still want to use classic terminal programs like htop or vim, you can use Libertine for this or use Snapz0r or experiment with installing LXD with Snapz0r. Some people were also experimenting with NIX packages for Ubuntu Touch, but I do not know, if this is still in development.

With Waydroid you are also able to install many Android apps and in my experience it works very well for things like Signal or Whatsapp, but it needs some time to start and I advice for WayFreezr from the OpenStore to save some battery.

@doniks I thought the icon could be improved and created a different icon:

This is a png file. The original file is a svg file. It seems like the forum does not like svg files, so I made a merge request.
I did not like the low resolution of the current icon, this should not be a problem with a svg file.
If you still prefer the current icon, that is no problem.

@MV I don't have a Volla X23, but the scaling probably works similar on most devices.
The steps in the question are maybe already the solution for you:

https://forums.ubports.com/topic/9317/how-can-i-change-scaling-on-20-04-focal-without-ut-tweak-tool-and-without-reboot

... These devices (and maybe other devices) set the scaling in /etc/deviceinfo/devices/halium.yaml.

In this file I changed "GridUnit" to a more convenient value (i.e. 28 on FP3 and 18 on Lenovo).

To make these changes take effect it is not sufficient to just restart Lomiri with systemctl --user restart lomiri-full-greeter.service. You'll have to reboot the device...

@Appointed
About UT and desktop apps:
The goal of Ubuntu Touch is to be an secure and open source mobile OS, that can optionally also turn into a Desktop OS, when you connect the mobile device to a bigger screen, mouse and keyboard.
When the user is in the desktop mode of UT, he maybe wants to use classic Desktop apps and this is what Libertine is for.
So it is not the goal of UT to make any desktop app work on a smaller formfactor and without a keyboard and mouse. Of cause you can still try to do so, but that it is not scaling correctly is no surprise. The real issue are the other errors (some programs not opening or not working correctly).

@Appointed said in Usable phone display:

responsible

Libertine is not working perfectly, but UT is a community driven project. You and me are as responsible to make things better as everyone else. The code is all on GitLab and GitHub. The UT core team is happy for everyone who can help.

For a lot of people it was way more important to get Android apps working on UT and move to focal and this was accomplished. So Libertine not working perfectly is a result of prioritizement and lack of contributors and not because of responsibility.

@derbaertigefrytz I do not think, that you are missing anything. Libertine and Snaps do not work great for many graphical programs right now (this will probably improve in the future with changes to the desktop environment and underlying software). They are maybe more useful for terminal programs right now. You can often improve things by tinkering around a little bit, but it is certainly not ideal.

For a FireFox like browser, you could check out uWolf in the OpenStore.

@Alain Tedit only shows up under "Open with another app", when the file ends with ".txt". So a work around would be to temporary rename the file:

1. file.conf -> file.conf.txt
2. edit with tedit
3. file.conf.txt -> file.conf

Another method would be to use nano in the terminal.

@Linuxlite76 no problem

@gpatel-fr I just want to mention it (because I think this is often misunderstood): The stable channel is usually the one you want as the end user. "daily" stands for "daily build" and not "daily use".
This should maybe be displayed differently in the installer.

@Linuxlite76 Maybe I do not understand the question, but there is already a ubports forum app in the OpenStore and it works quite good for me:
https://open-store.io/app/myutforum.josele13

For reporting a bug for a specific app, you can look at what is linked under "Source Code" or "Get support for this app" at the app page in the OpenStore. It usually points you to a gitlab page, where you can report an issue to the developer.

@sap Probably hard to tell, because nobody tried it jet. But Lomiri is in the official Debian 13 package repos, so you should be able to install it with apt (but I have only tried it out on x86/amd64 machines jet).

@kari I just wanting to point out that "daily" is the experimental channel and "stable" is usually the channel for the end user.

@Ernst-Jan15 You have to open the app first and than hold the app icon on the sidebar to pin it. I think it already was this way in the previous version. But I also think it would be more intuitive to have this dialog at the app menu.
I think, the same dialog at the sidebar and in the app menu with the option to open the open store side of the app would be optimal. But I or someone else would need to find the time to implement this and make a merge request.

@Futura said in Potentially turning a negative of Google's tightening restrictions into a positave:

I am sure that porting an android application to run on UT is not a simple switch that can be toggled.
However is there a guide, roadmap, or toolkit in any capacity to do so at this point?

There is general documentation for developing an application for Ubuntu Touch, but nothing specifically for "How to make your Android app a Ubuntu Touch app.".
This is probably already complicated to do, because there is not a 1 to 1 replacement for many Android frameworks. So most of the code will maybe need to be rewritten.

As far as I know most Android apps are written in Java, but there is not a Java template for the standard packaging format of Ubuntu Touch:
https://clickable-ut.dev/en/latest/app-templates.html#app-templates

On the upsite: When snap packages become a real alternative to click packages on Ubuntu Touch (currently they are a little bit clunky), it would maybe make it more interesting to port Java Android apps to Ubuntu Touch.
The snap packaging format would also allow the developer to easily port the app for desktop Ubuntu and Ubuntu Touch at the same time.

@mihael It is probably for the other features of the app. But you could also open the python script with a texteditor before running it. So you can see what it actually does and do not have to blidly trust it.

Personally, I connect my phone with an USB cable to the PC, if I want to exchange files. But than you access your phone with your PC.

@mihael For getting Files of your desktop PC from your phone to your phone, you could try out "Linux Desktop Monitor" from the Open Store. I have not tried it out myself, but it is maybe what you are looking for.
For getting files of your phone or putting files to your phone from your desktop PC, you could probably just use an USB cable. Should the PC not see your phone, you maybe need to enable the Developer Mode under System Settings > System information.