@libremax Thanks for posting! I'm still at Bornhack, and beside the talk, there are so many folks here who are interested in Ubuntu Touch. Now that people know that I'm using it, lots of people want to talk to me about it and ask me questions, and I answer as many as I can.
My show-and-tell device (BQ Aquaris E4.5) goes from hand to hand (yes, we use sanitizer) and people are amazed by the smooth operation, and more when I tell them how old it is.

I'm hoping to be causing a small influx of interest in our OS and community. I'm certainly doing my best to do so!

I was one of the volunteers humanning the stand, and it was great. We were able to answer a lot of questions, we showed many different devices on our stand, and people were quite enthousiastic about what we had to show and say. It was an inspiring day and we helped promote UT and make contact with organisations for possible collaboration. Time well spent!

Unfortunately, there is currently no native, working Signal client for UT and this is unlikely to change soon. But if that's a problem that impacts you, read on! I found a solution that works well for me and maybe it will work for you, too.

My solution consists of several parts:

• Signal for Android, running in Waydroid. You can download it from their webpage or from F-Droid or Aurora Store.
• Signal Desktop running on several computers, and linked to the first Signal, which is the primary device. All others are secondary devices. You can have only one primary.
• Cinny, running on UT, using a Matrix bridge to connect to Signal. This is very new to me and yet it was easy.

I followed these instructions given by Danfro:

For everyone here who is looking for an alternative to use Signal on Ubuntu Touch.
There is a matrix signal bridge hosted here: https://tchncs.de/matrix.
This can be used with Cinny or any other Matrix client. Instructions are given on the website there.
Note: Some things do still not work. Image download is fine, but right now no other file types. I am working on it...

• Open Cinny (or another matrix client)
• create a new room
• invite the bridge bot @signalbot:tchncs.de
• open your primary signal device and head for settings, linked devices
• add new device
• got to chat with bridge bot and type "login" as message
• scan the qr code with your primary device, it should now link them
  Done.

I had an extra step because my primary is running in Waydroid and it's a pain generating and scanning a QR code on one and the same device, plus it refused to work. So I installed the latest Cinny on a spare phone and used that to link Cinny to Signal. It worked fine.

I hope this is useful to anyone else!

YESSS
It's working! I have zoom, autofocus and flash! This is the last thing that was missing for me to be able to say that the phone is fully functional under UT!

Excuse me while I dance the happy dance...

Some of their applications can run on Waydroid. But most people who are using Ubuntu Touch wish to get away from Google. Personally I want to avoid Android applications and the Google Playstore.

If we are going to do everything that Android does, what would make us special? Why would we even bother?

This was a lot of fun. We had a really simple stand because we didn't bring a lot of equipment, but it was enough: we got plenty of interest, had some good conversations, and answered many questions. It's definitely worth planning for T-Dose 2026 (June 6 and 7)!

Greetings from all the creatures of T-Dose!

Ubuntu Touch:
It's in your hands.

@cliffcoggin said in Ushby have released an official Review on UT.:

I suggest the review is removed until a more objective one can be written.

Let's cut the author a little slack. They're allowed to voice their opinions, even if their opinions are based on a misunderstanding; as for feeling ill, the world would in my view be a better place if everyone was this open and honest about what influenced their mood at a certain time.

@domubpkm said in How are the projects doing?:

we have never been used to such silence

It just shows how much Dalton did, and that he's being missed. I'm sure we will adjust, but it takes a little time.

@messayisto Thank you, it was fun! We were a decent sized group and there was plenty to talk about. I saw lots of animated conversations occur and lots of good questions and answers. It was a lovely little event and I'm glad that I helped facilitate it. And our thanks go out to our friends at Bitlair, who hosted us for no cost at all!
We left them some nice cookies. It was the least we could do.

@bunt7 said in Signal-CLI on Ubuntu touch?:

this is, what I reed about waydroid

That is interesting, can you tell us where you read that?

@Keneda said in Desperate guy Here:

Why wouldn't you advice to update to 24.04 ?

I don't know how good that currently is on Volla22. I'm not advising against it, mind you. I simply don't know.

@Lorenzo said in A few questions on redmi note 9:

Are they treated as two separate devices or will they be rolled into one?

Xiaomi devices are often wildly different from one another even if the model name and number are very close. Not sure about this one, but if they are separate devices now, they probably need to be and will stay that way.

@XPran You're on a very old version of UT! We are now on 24.04 at the latest; 20.04 also still works well.
I would recommend to run the installer and upgrade to 20.04 that way. Make sure to leave the "wipe user data" box unticked.

Also, avoid using any commands that contain apt. It's not supported.

@adri99 said in logseq on ubuntu touch:

I would rather put my energy and resources into an open platform

That's a great attitude. Maybe you'll be able to port the app to Ubuntu Touch? I'm sure it would be welcomed!

Let's see. For Telegram, we have a decent native solution called TELEports.
For WhatsApp, WhatsWeb has recently been updated and it's now getting good reviews, so maybe it's time to try again? Alternatively, I hear some folks use a Matrix bridge to use the Matrix app Cinny for WhatsApp.
For PDFs, Document Viewer does the job for me but maybe you prefer Annotate or Sturm Reader.

I hope this is helpful!

Furthermore, the Ubuntu Touch package manager doesn't seem to work like a normal Linux distribution in the terminal.

Well, yeah, it's not another Linux distro. Please don't try to use apt, you'll probably break something.

@pparent said in Taking the plunge:

Three niggles remain: You loose end-to-end encryption

Yes, that's a fair point. For that reason alone, a direct method would be preferrable.

@O.o. said in Taking the plunge:

You'd think the Signal Foundation would offer a version of Signal for Linux phones

They don't seem to be interested. But also, there is no universal packaging format for all Linux phones. Ubuntu Touch uses click and I think we are the only ones.

The Cinny option works rather well I must say. Two niggles remain:

• Notifications do not contain the text of the message.
• If I send an image, the recipient has to download it in order to see it.

I can live with that for now. But who knows what the future may hold. See for exmple this topic or this one.

@O.o. said in Taking the plunge:

one of the apps I really, REALLY need is Signal,

You and me both! This is how I tackled that problem.
https://forums.ubports.com/topic/10819/

@O.o. Thankd for the write-up and congratulations on a sucessful installation!
I would recommend you to install the app UT Tweak Tool. Among other useful stuff, it also contains a text scaling setting. Just 'large' and 'normal', but it sounds like that will do the job here.