Hey porters,

we have just landed an overhaul of our devices page and would like to encourage you all to list your devices there more early to make upcoming ports easier to discover. Adding new entries can now be done by creating a merge request with a markdown file that contains a YAML metadata block.

We invite you all to help us complete and refine the entries, because the community probably knows best about all the different ports

Cheers,

Jan

"Explicit is better than Implicit" is a great principle for programming language design, but a user-friendly user-interface plays by different rules. In UX design, actions should be intuitive, and what could be more intuitive than tapping the background to get to the background?

If you think there needs to be a text or icon to hint for this action as well, ok, maybe. But it should be way more subtle than in the mockup. For me, the Application spread is one of the most distinctive and beautiful features of Unity 8, we can't f*** (mess) this one up.

A go-to-desktop-app in the spread... I don't know. Being able to just tap the background feels way more practical to me. Either the go-to-desktop-app would always be in the end of the spread, which would cost you time, or it would be somewhere in the list making it more difficult to find an application you want to switch to. Why add another UI element, if there's already a perfectly good option we can go with that doesn't bloat the UI nor reduce ease of use of the existing usecases?

On the topic of what is home, might i add:

Don't kill the desktop: A manifesto

In my opinion, Unity 8 should become a proper desktop environment, and that includes being able to put stuff on your desktop. Doesn't have to be applications (unless the user wants to, then let them do it), but it would also be incredibly useful for short-lived files. For example, i'm very often travelling by train in Germany, and since we don't have a ticketing app for Ubuntu Touch, i always put the ticket-pdf on my phone and open it in document viewer. That's something i would put on my desktop. Yes, i know, Gnome removed that feature a while back. But for many people that is a standard feature of Desktop Environments and it would be foolish to dismiss it as a legacy usecase. For me, it is clear. The desktop is my 127.0.0.1. And i'd love an easy way to get there.

Hey Alan,

thanks for the writeup, that is a great explanation, especially for our non-technical users.

I can confirm that the switch to xenial is on the horizon. After the release of OTA-3 (which still uses vivid), it's full steam ahead with xenial work. To quote what Marius' famous words: "We want to walk up the stairs, not jump up the stairs," so i don't know what mir version the initial stable release of ubuntu touch on xenial will use, but i've seen the Wayland tests already working on some phones, so who knows... In the long run, Ubuntu Touch will ideally just use the latest stable version of Mir, we should not allow for another big backlock like the current one to accumulate. I'll restrain myself from using the stairs quote again.

It's great to see support from Canonical(-employees) here, thanks a lot Alan! I hope it will be a fruitful collaboration, without your continued work on Mir our already big task would be a lot more difficult. I'm sure you will also profit from us as an active downstream project that uses Mir.

Cheers,

Jan

Here's the official GitHub Statement and a blog post from Nadella.

I wouldn't make this so much about feelings. Let's face it: Microsoft is not evil. But Microsoft isn't necessarily good, either. Microsoft is just a very big company doing what they think is best for their business, and that doesn't always mean it's what's best for everyone else. And yes, they're dabbling with some open-source stuff, but only where it's required or at least very difficult to justify not to have it open. Microsoft wants to stay in control. They already lost the windows-server market to the "foss revolution", so they understood that they have to join the winning team if they want to stay on top. That alone doesn't make them evil. In fact, most companies work that way (even GitHub always has, that's why the GitHub server is proprietary), but they could still change. So let's give them credit for embracing foss where they are and encourage them to abandon their proprietary projects and selfish business techniques. They're saying they aren't the enemy, let's believe them that. But that doesn't automatically make them our friends.

What's worrying to me about this potential acquisition is that it will concentrate too much power with one entity, and that can't be good. This is a development that has been going on for a while now, the FOSS community made the mistake to place too much trust in GitHub for a long time.

GitLab is different that way. It's still a for-profit company behind it, but the client is open-source. You can even host it yourself, and even though real federation is not there yet, it's a lot more likely to come.

The biggest problem GitLab has at the moment is that it's a lot smaller than GitHub. GitHub has 27 million users and 49 million repositories, [GitLab only has 100.000 users/groups (even though that number seems to be pretty old). When we moved UBports from Launchpad to GitHub a little more than a year ago, we discussed GitLab as an option as well, but dismissed it because of lack of adoption. Since then, Gnome has proven that it's possible to move a big open source project to GitLab, and it worked for them.

All in all, i have to say i'm in favor of moving, but i would not rush things. The migration itself is pretty straightforward thanks to great tools, but there's a lot of stuff around it that needs to be modified. Most work will probably be updating the documentation and workflows. Worth it, but no need to rush it. We could make some preparations now, really analyze what to look out for, and make the move after OTA-4.

And for the lack of users, build it and he will come i guess

I'm with @Flohack on this one. We should only have the real essentials as core apps preinstalled. In my opinion these are:

• Terminal
• Phone
• SMS
• Clock (with timer, alarm, etc)
• Camera and Gallery
• Weather
• Address-book (with carddav support)
• Calendar (with caldav support)
• Files (with Nextcloud integration, Document viewer and plain-text editor)
• Webbrowser
• E-Mail client
• Music (with the option to play from files, 7 Digital drm free store)
• Openstore (for downloading everything else)

@WLBI It's not set in stone how soon this will be available, but we will support Anbox (Native Andorid app compatibility), so you will be able to run DB Navigator and clever-tanken if you can get your hands on the apks. Anbox already works(-ish) on Ubuntu Touch and it might even (as soon as it's stable, but not in our first release) be pre-installed.

Hey all, just wanted to give you a heads up that UBports Installer 0.5.6-beta is now in prerelease stage and it includes some stuff i know some of you have been waiting for. If your port needs to flash files that we can't re-host or download automatically, you can use the new manual_download step to have the user download something for the installer to work with afterwards. If your fastboot flash needs some of the new-fangled cli flags like --disable-verity or --disable-verification, the new flags array on the files object has got you covered. Use caution with these, don't be lazy

You can find more information on the release page. Also see the call for testing.

Let me know if we need anything else to make your port work with the installer, or if you have any other thoughts how i could make your lives as porters more enjoyable.

Cheers, and happy hacking!

If you want to chat about Ubuntu Touch and its related projects, you've come to the right place!

Here are some tips to help you get the most of this forum:

1. If you're new to the community, please read our Meet the Community page. It will walk you through our various other community platforms, like the documentation (available in several languages), our Telegram group, or our Matrix room #ubports:matrix.org
2. We strive to be considerate, respectful and collaborative. All UBports members work for free in their spare time, so try to appreciate their work. The Ubuntu Code of Conduct applies in all areas of the UBports community.
3. Please tag your posts to make it easier for other users to navigate the forums in the future. For example, if your post concerns the Fairphone 2, just tag your post that way and it will show up in this list.
4. If you want, you can introduce yourself here.
5. Found a bug? Please report it on GitHub.
6. The right to free speech means the government can't arrest you for what you say. It doesn't mean that anyone else has to listen to your bullshit, or host you while you share it. The 1st amendment doesn't shield you from criticism or consequences. If you [...] get banned from [this] Internet community, your free speech right s aren't being violated. It's just that the people listening think you're an asshole, and they're showing you the door. - xkcd 1357
7. Use common sense
8. Have fun!

You're familiar with the process by now: UBports Installer 0.6.0-beta is in prerelease stage and needs your attention. The good news: The Installer now features a GUI for automatic reporting, to OPEN-CUTS, making automatic reporting even easier!

You can find all packages along with an extensive changelog on the release page.Take it for a spin with your favorite device and push that button to let us know how it went. Thank you for your help!

We don't have a booth or a scheduled talk, but I will be attending and annoy everyone with random Ubuntu Touch facts. I'll also bring a backpack full of UBports stickers and pens that I do not intend to take back home

Why does it have to be one or the other, when we can do both? The other selling points of Ubuntu Touch don't magically go away just because it can also run android apps.

Having Android app compatibility helps lower the entry bar for many users. I'm not talking about the general public and people without any interest in Linux and free software, i'm talking about Linux users that still need (not because they want to use them, because they have to) certain apps, like WhatsApp, Snapchat, etc. Even some UBports team member even carry an iPhone or Android phone additionally to their Ubuntu Touch device with them in order to use these (not pointing fingers here). That is ridiculous, and if we can avoid that, why wouldn't we? Sure, you can dislike these apps, but if you need WhatsApp for your work, what are you going to do about it?

Another thing that is disregarded in my opinion is the open nature of this project. A (imho) unique selling point of Ubuntu Touch is the fact, that it let's you use your phone like a real computer. I'm not talking about attaching a screen, mouse and keyboard here, i'm talking about the open nature of the OS. You should be allowed to run whatever weird-ass piece of software you find, just like on the Linux desktop. And Anbox already works on the Linux desktop (in fact, it already works more or less on the phone as well), so artificially breaking compatibility would seem really weird to me. If i want to run something on my phone, who the f*ck are you to tell me not to do so?

The argument that Android compatibility would discourage developers from creating native apps for Ubuntu Touch is only valid up to a certain point. Big for-profit companies don't care about Ubuntu Touch, the market is way too small for that. There won't be a native Whatsapp client, there won't be a Netfilx app, that's just how it is. Again, you can go all Stallman about it and say that you don't want to use these services anyways (and you are probably right), but until there are alternatives, it is kind of necessary for many people.

What's also disregarded in the discussion about the unavailability of Google Mobile Services is how many apps work perfectly fine without them. 2300+ free and open source apps from f-droid change the math a lot. Also, many of the Apps from Google Play are available as Apk downloads, and can be used without Google Mobile Services.

Last but not least, i want to remind you a) how hard it is to develop Apps for Ubuntu Touch at the moment (ask @DanChapman, he will sing you a song about it) and b) how much work it is to maintain the SDK. UBports only has a very small and busy team, so having Android compatibility just takes the pressure of for now. It is by far not an ideal solution, but it could help a lot of people using Ubuntu Touch as a daily driver, and that's what we're aiming at after all. We don't want (and we won't) make Ubuntu Touch just another Android rom, we have unique advantages that won't go away. We will still have native apps. But having Android compatibility is the right decision for now.

This one doesn't include as many exciting features, but lands a major refactoring effort of our core background library promise-android-tools. The library is responsible for adb, fastboot, and heimdall - the communication with the device. We touched almost every function in the library, so meticulous testing is needed. See the changelog for more information.

Please download a package of your choosing from the release page and take it for a spin on your favorite device. Use the built-in reporting feature to let us know how it went. You can find out what combinations are still missing on UBports OPEN-CUTS.

Thank you for your help!

Hey everybody, sorry about the late reply. I just had a report of a successful fix for this on Telegram. The user who had the exact same problem was coming from CyanogenMod 11, while our HAL-container for the Oneplus One is based on CyanogenMod 12. What you can do is flash the firmware of CyanogenMod 12. Download this zip file, extract it and open a terminal in the folder containing the files. Then, reboot your phone to fastboot/bootloader mode and connect your device with a usb cable. Run the following commands to flash the firmware:

fastboot flash modem NON-HLOS.bin
fastboot flash sbl1 sbl1.mbn
fastboot flash dbi sdi.mbn
fastboot flash aboot emmc_appsboot.mbn
fastboot flash rpm rpm.mbn
fastboot flash tz tz.mbn
fastboot flash LOGO logo.bin

Making a mistake at this stage can brick your device, so please make sure no of the commands return an error. Last but not least, reboot the device.

Hi!

I'm Jan Sprinz (you probably know me as NeoTheThird) and i help run the UBports community team. I'm 19 years old and I study Game Engineering and Computer Science in Germany.

I'm fairly new to Ubuntu Touch and the Linux Community in general. Last summer, as I was browsing the web as a traumatized macOS refugee that recently installed Ubuntu, i came across this weird piece of audio-visual something. And somehow I ended up here.

Take care and feel free to introduce yourself here,

Jan

@jobus

The checksums for the partition images are served by api.ubports.com. This sha256 hash is checked both in the manual install instructions and in the installer. You can find the json for your device here: https://api.ubports.com/v1/devices/vegetahd

I will add checksums for the executables and installation packages of the installer to the releases page, doing that automatically in ci has been on my list for a while. Wasn't my highest priority so far, because github defaults to https, so the only remaining attack vector i can see would be to switch the files hosted there, which is not very likely to happen unless we have a mole, the account of someone with access to the org gets pwned or someone hacks Microsoft. In all cases, there'd be more efficient ways to do much more severe damage, but since this has been requested some times now, who am i to stand in the way of progress.

The dream would be to have a vendor ship a device with UBports some time in the future, but the OS needs to be rock-solid for that. One of the major mistakes canonical made was getting an immature system in the hands of end-users: Many people got disappointed and walked away (well, except the crowd that's still there ;)).

We have of course our core devices that are the main development focus for us. Choosing only one device would be tricky, because it would piss off the community of the existing devices to no end and would result in a lot of perfectly fine devices to be thrown away or left to rot in some drawer. Not our vision.

Still, we need new and more powerful devices, i give you that. As you probably know, we are working on making hardware enablement and porting easier, and as soon as that's done we will of course also see new devices with powerful hardware that can really make both convergence and mobile computing shine. On the wish-list are a fast CPU with arm64 architecture, a lot of RAM, a decent battery, Good screen, HDMI our or HDMI over USB and LTE both worldwide and in the USA.

There are a couple of current or yet-to-be-released phones that meet these criteria, but first we have to finish Halium and a working prototype of the 16.04 rebased version of UBports working on top of it. But then it's going to be awesome!

+1 on all points. One thing i would also add to convergence is that i want the phone to behave similarly to a computer in general. I want to be allowed to use the terminal (with all the tools i love on the desktop) and file-browser the way i want. I want to use whatever programming language i want to create apps. I have a laptop and a desktop PC, so docking the phone is not my highest priority, but having Libreoffice, Gimp and Firefox (I'm talking full-blown linux desktop apps here, no stripped down mobile bs) sounds awesome!

Re: Git workflow

Here's something i wrote up for another installer user the other day, maybe that's helpful to you

you'll want to keep your master completely in sync with our master, so when you navigate to it on your machine, the first thing you'll do is git checkout master to make sure you're on your master, then git pull upstream master --rebase to fetch the latest version from our master, git push origin master to push our master to your master on github. Now if you want to implement a new feature, you will create a branch by going git checkout -b nameofbranch. Then you make your changes. If you want to create a commit, you git add path/to/files for all your files you want to commit and then go git commit -m "My Commit Message". As soon as you have all your commits created, go ahead and git push origin nameofbranch to push your branch to your own fork on github. Then go to the webinterface to create the pull request.

@Talkless The devices page is still under reconstruction to adopt new and shiny design of ubports.com. The content will be updated soon.

[Edit] Done.

Hey everyone, another Installer pre-release lined up for testing! We're using our new experimental user-testing platform OPEN-CUTS to test this release and keep track of everything that's going on.

what to test

To help us testing, just download any package from the releases page or get the snap by running snap install ubports-installer --beta. We need to test every package on every operating system, just use any Ubuntu Touch device supported by the Installer and and re-install it using the new installer version. Keep on reading to learn how to tell us the result, don't worry, it's easy!

automatic reporting

An important new features for testers is that the installer can now automatically report testing results to OPEN-CUTS. If the installer runs into an error, choose the "report a bug" option to make the Installer automatically report a FAIL run to UBports OPEN-CUTS and include a link to the run in the generated bug report on GitHub. If you have a problem that does not result in an error and you still choose to report a bug, the installer will automatically create a WONKY run and attach it to the report. This already lets us know what doesn't work, but we're also interested in learning what does! To enable success reports, set the OPENCUTS environment variable (eg. by starting the installer with OPENCUTS=true ubports-installer from the terminal). This will make the installer automatically report a PASS run, if the installation process completed without errors.

By default, the created runs will be reported anonymously. If you have an account, you can copy your API token and provide it to the UBports Installer using the OPENCUTS_API_KEY environment variable (eg. by starting the installer with OPENCUTS_API_KEY=<your-access-token> ubports-installer from the terminal). The installer will then report runs associated with your account. You can sign up for UBports OPEN-CUTS using your email address. Don't worry, it's easy!

• packages and changelog: https://github.com/ubports/ubports-installer/releases/tag/0.5.3-beta
• find out what packages still need testing: https://ubports.open-cuts.org/build/5f7d9d8f04d6b6000750aaac
• report a test manually: https://ubports.open-cuts.org/report?system=5e9d746c6346e112514cfec7&test=5e9d75406346e112514cfeca&build=5f7d9d8f04d6b6000750aaac

thank you

Testing the installer is always difficult, because of the many different cases and configurations to keep track of, so we depend on the community to help us out. Thank you for your help!

Hey,

I don't think that should be a priority now. Maybe when Mycroft is a little more mature and we have a little less to do, this could be an interesting project, but definitely not now.

On a more general note: Do people really use voice assistants? I know they are everywhere, but i never really made use of OK google on android or Siri back in my iOS days, Cortana on Windows 10 is the most useless piece of C, i don't own an Amazon Echo or Google Assistant. It would be an insane amount of work to make it usable, and then i think many people would just look at it as a fun (or not fun, depending on how good it is) toy rather than a useful tool...

I'm not sure if there's a chance of winning this one. Maybe just an app, that doesn't integrate with the phone? Might be a good project for someone in the community.