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!

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!

@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!

@grenudi said in We Drop Ubuntu Touch Entirely:

I did. No one even replied to my post about a year ago

I saw your post and I did not understand it, it was clearly above my level of understanding.

I don't think anyone is patting each other on the back here. This is a project that's mostly run by volunteers and it's smaller than you may think. Our (barely a handful of) core devs are mostly busy getting VoLTE to run and fixing bugs in the new Noble release.

Most of the apps are made by volunteers who don't know enough about OS development to help with that, but still want to help. I'm grateful for their time.

I'm not sure what could be done better here. On a personal level, I enjoy the OS and it works for me.

In the end, we should all be using the OS that we like best. It's fine that you are choosing to use something else than UT. But why the whole song and dance?

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...

@grenudi said in We Drop Ubuntu Touch Entirely:

at the same time, the OS doesn't even ship a decent resource monitor. htop isn't even available by default, and users have to ask why it's not included.

You know, I've never ever even realised there wasn't one. This shows you that we are very different users. I'm a rather average user with a small dash of power user. You sound the other way around.

And clearly you seem to know a lot. It makes me wonder whether or not there really isn't a way you could help. You seem generally motivated to make things better, there is an energy present in your frustration and maybe that energy could find a constructive outlet.

I'm wondering about something else. Who is the 'we' in "We Drop Ubuntu Touch Entirely"? You're making it sound as if we should care deeply, when the reality is that people stop and start using mobile OSses all the time. Just this week I helped two users switch to UT and they both like it.

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.

@Alain Well, there is a description in a pinned topic. But t seems few people read it.
https://forums.ubports.com/topic/9907/read-this-before-posting-here-new-contributors-category-description

@Alain said in Where is the Desktop?:

Maybe I should try, then

I love your attitude!

@Keneda Interestingly, I'd say this is one of the first times I've seen something posted to New Contributors that was actually suited for that category... Alain is new, and wants to learn about contributing to UT's app ecosystem. Isn't that what New Contributors is for?

@pparent Amazing improvements, thank you very much!

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

TLDR: backdoor is too strong a word, but there are privacies issues.

Well, then I was only mistaken about Google being the culprit here. Thank you.

@Vlad-Nirky No evidence, and it may be a misunderstanding on my end. As for what you posted, I don't know what any of that means.

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

As these applocations can leverage the A-GPS system, could it be possible to do the same in Ubuntu Touch applications and/or system ?

Waydroid applications probably get their A-GPS from Google; if that's the case, that's a privacy issue which we want to avoid in UT. But I've heard that a Googlefree version of A-GPS is being worked on.

I fiddled and it started working! That's the good news. The bad news is that I don't know which part of my fiddling made it work. But back to the good news: it works!

@pparent said in Signal UT: Signal-Desktop for Ubuntu Touch:

everything that you type must me sent as "Backspace" is the only way to erase.

Yes, that's what I found out. Luckily I could edit the unwanted message in Signal Desktop on my laptop.

I'll see if I can find a way; if so, I will post it... and if not, I can just wait. Not a problem. I'm just happy that you're doing this.

@pparent Ah, that works! I was able to send my first message with your app.