Posts made by nontrivial

Folks, does anybody have any meaning thoughts on the coming 3G voice apocalypse? For those of you blissfully unaware, all the major phone carriers are shutting down their 2G/3G LTE voice networks (but not data networks) by the end of 2021. CDMA voice networks (Sprint) gets another year or so, but they are also getting the axe eventually. I have a Nexus 5 (hammerhead) and the specs say that it supports 4G, so hopefully it will still work after the apocalypse. If not I'm hoping the Pine Phone works and support for it has improved. And on a personal note, I have a whole box of old phones I'm going to have to toss.

But I'm wondering if at some point folks using UT on phones that don't support 4G will wake up one morning not being able to make or receive voice calls and wonder why.

You have to dig a bit but the link is:

https://software.opensuse.org/download.html?project=home:stevenpusser&package=palemoon

So just to recap, running desktop apps with libertine is not optimal but I would really like an alternative to Morph when it does not meet my needs. I have several issues with Firefox running under libertine, and one of them is where any GUI elements to the right of the address field is in a bermuda triangle alternate reality and you can't interact with them. In other words, you can't click on anything to the right of the address field, even using a keyboard and mouse. That includes bookmarks, hamburger menu, and any add-on indicators you might install. All that to say I fought through getting two more desktop browsers (midori and epiphany-browser) working under libertine and ALL THREE browsers suffer from the same issue. So I don't know what's going on but it's annoying as heck. And yes, the Libertine Tweak took is pretty much required when using libertine on UT.

And for anybody reading this that migh want to try midori or epiphany browsers out, they install fine but to get them to run you have to execute the following in a container shell one time:

ln -s /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/mesa-egl/libGLESv2.so.2 /usr/lib
ln -s /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/mesa-egl/libEGL.so.1 /usr/lib

Yeah, digging a little deeper they only have arm packages available for ubuntu 20.04. So I'll ask them if packages are available for older versions of ubuntu, but at this point it looks like I've hit a dead end.

I'm poking around the PPA and I'm seeing references to i386 and amd64, but not arm. So maybe I'm doing it right, but there simply aren't any packages compiled for my architecture?

@dobey Acutally, I suspect I will like it better on UT than Firefox. The main reason is compared to regular Firefox it is a lot faster. The UI is old and clunky, but in this case that is a good thing. For example, the scroll bars and other UI elements are big and chunky by today's standards, but on a small screen I think they will be much easier to actually use. Also, since I assume it reports itself as Firefox, I've visited a few sites on my desktop and it lays out the pages better than Morph. Also I have a site that I really want desktop notifications to work, they work on my desktop, and I hope they work on UT. If they do it will save me a lot of work getting around that. There are a few other reasons too, but the last big one is even though the selection isn't the best, it does have some add-ons/extensions.

So yeah, I still want to give it a shot, so if anybody could tell me what I'm doing wrong setting up the PPA it would be greatly appreciated. Or I guess I could try installing the deb with dpkg? I would really like to get the PPA working though, just on general principals and because if I end up using it palemoon is updated frequently.

If it's any help, most packages are listed as name/xenial for apt search but palemoon is listed as palemoon/unknown. Also other packages show up under apt-cache search but palemoon does not. I don't know if any of that is important tracking down the issue.

OK, so I'm making progress. Apparently putting the contents of Release.key is not the right thing, but I did notice that in the shell container the GUI just appears to be updating the files in /etc/apt so I was able to use CLI commands to install the repository key and update apt. However, even though "apt search palemoon" in the container returns results now, it is not an option when searching for packages using the UT GUI. When I try to install by package name it appears to install but really doesn't. So I guess I'm stuck until more knowledgeable folks can tell me what I'm doing wrong.

After playing with anbox a while I've come to the conclusion that it currently doesn't fit my needs. I'm really excited about it's potential but it just seems too experimental right now. So I'm moved on to exploring libertine.

I think Morph is fulfills it's stated goals well, but I would still like to find a better option. I tried installing firefox under libertine and it works fairly well, but obviously it's a desktop application and doesn't excel on the phone. I ran across the PaleMoon browser (https://www.palemoon.org/), it looks like it might work well, and I would like to try it. To install it there is a PPA provided and there is an option under libertine to add a PPA, but 1) that's a lot of typing on the phone, and 2) I'm not sure what to put in the key section.

So my questions are:

• What do you put in the key section for the libertine PPA section? I'm assuming the contents of Release.key on the PPA?
• It seems sudo isn't even installed in the container, so what's up with that? Can you not even do anything in the container that requires root access?
• If I launch a bash shell in the container can I use standard apt commands?
• Can I just edit files under /etc/apt in the container?

Thanks in advance!

After using Anbox on Ubuntu Touch for a bit I have some more questions and issues. Is this the best place to talk about them, or do the Ubuntu Touch Anbox folks have a preferred way to talk about that? Like maybe a Telegram channel maybe?

Yes, those are the instructions I followed, and it just never completed the "anbox-tool install" step. The only think I can think of is that I might have ran "sudo anbox-tool install" by mistake. However I completely wiped my phone, reinstalled, and it worked the second time. So other than having to completely set my phone up again and reinstall all my apps, I guess it's a solution.

According to the other thread, it's only built in if you choose the devel channel, and I was running on stable. As I suggested in the other thread it would probably cut down on posts like this if somebody that knew the complete answer would update the official UBPorts page on Anbox. If I get one I'll submit a change myself but I would hate to submit the wrong information.

Also, I have run into a second problem after reflashing to devel as documented in the other thread. Basically Anbox throws an "start: Unknown job: anbox-session" error and won't run.

I just ran into this issue as well. Perhaps it's time to update the official UBPorts documentation to mention the problem and solution? I would be happy to submit a change for the documentation, but I don't think I'm the best qualified person to do it.

However, now that I have reflashed to devel and installed the software, I have a new problem. When I run anbox-tool install it throws out a warning "start: Unknown job: anbox-session" and seems to hang. If I break out the trace says it is in a loop waiting for anbox to start. Then when I run anbox-tool status it says it is enabled but not running.

So any suggestions on how to resolve the issue? If not, is uninstalling the packages sufficient to uninstall anbox?

I'm interested in getting Anbox working on my Nexus/hammerhead. The official docs mention that some phones need to be flashed with a special boot image but hammerhead isn't one of the phones listed that need it even though it is listed as having an image. I went ahead and followed the instructions but my wifi stopped working after flashing, so I had to reinstall UT. Then I though maybe you really didn't have to flash a new boot image so I tried to continue with the instructions and was unable to install anbox-ubuntu-touch because it said there was not enough space on the partition. So now I'm stuck and my questions are:

• Does hammerhead need to be flashed with the special boot image for anbox to work?
• If so has anybody tried recently to see if it still works?
• Has anybody had the issue I had where the wifi stopped working, and if so any suggestions on how to fix it.
• Do I assume correctly that flashing the special boot image gives you more space to install anbox or something?

Thanks in advance for any help.

@dobey Bummer that it's not currently possible to use the Open Store with mainline Ubuntu. I understand it isn't a priority, but is it on the todo list at all?

@AppLee Actually I've been messing around with clickable and have created a couple webapps with it, so I can create clicks for amd64. Once I have a click how would I install it on my desktop? Is there an equivalent to "dpkg -i" ?

This is more of a question to help me try to understand more about Ubuntu Touch than it is me actually asking how to do it:

How would one run UT apps from the app store on regular old Ubuntu? In other words, I am currently running Ubuntu 18.04 on my desktop (and probably 20.04 here in a few months) and if there is a way to run the Open Store on my desktop and install apps and webapps how would you do that?

If you can't do that what are the main reasons that you can't?

Bump. I really need my CTRL/ALT keys please.

@cela Oh wow, thank you, that helped so much. I went down a rabbit hole of information on native verses web apps because that was mentioned before clickable and by the time I figured out I was on the wrong track I was completely lost. I proposed some changes in the Getting Started section to make that more clear.

@arubislander

Well, yeah, my ultimate goal was to try and use UT apps as my "daily driver" desktop environment. I never got far enough getting Lomiri running to see if that was possible, but hopefully it will get to that point eventually. I just assumed that to get the apps running I needed full UT running on the hardware.

I found that page on developing first, and that page has a lot of details but I was hoping for an (updated) overview. For example, the page that explains the Web App explains the webapp-container command, but nothing on where to run it or how to submit an app to the store. Various other documents mention clickable, the Ubuntu SDK, and some places mentions that some tools work on different Ubuntu versions and some aren't supported. I'm still not sure where clickable fits in. It all kind of assumes you know what all the tools are for, their history, how they fit together, and that you just need basically the man page of a tool instead of telling you what tool you need use in the first place. I did come across the UT programming course, but it mentions a lot of things that I think are out of date, so I'm not sure it is the best source. But I'm making progress and hope to be productive soon. My current best guess is it looks like you need to be running UBuntu 16.04 and use the Ubuntu SDK.

The current Discord app in the store isn't working. I have figured out a way to get the actual Discord website working in the Morph browser (use the URL "https://www.discord.com/channels/@me" instead of "https://www.discord.com/") and I am currently working my way through the documentation in order to figure out how to create a web app to submit to the app store. I know there is an app to create a webapp, but 1) I am a developer and I want to figure out the process and 2) I want to play with the webapp options to hopefully make it work better and the webapp app doesn't have a way to play with all the options.

So my question is: is there a way to remove the existing broken Discord app from the store, or am I going to have to name my app something similar which will be confusing?

So just to follow up, I wanted to get the amd64 port working for several reasons:

• I really like Ubuntu, I really like Unity/UT/Lomiri, and I really like running the same OS on as many devices as possible.
• I have a couple i386 netbooks that I still use occasionally and with Ubuntu 20.04 ending support for i386 I thought UT would greatly extend their usable life.
• For the first time in a long time I have some spare time, I was thinking of spending at least some of that contributing, and I figured the easiest way to develop apps would be run UT in virtual machine.

After a bit of research it looks like even though amd64 is listed as a supported platform that just needs a config file to be contributed in order for it to be run, in reality it really isn't supported and there isn't much interest in supporting it. So the first two reasons are toast but I still plan on spending some time contributing to the project. I'm a pretty seasoned devop but I'm having trouble finding enough information to get started so it might take me a while to become productive.

@C0n57an71n Thanks, good to know, but I don't expect to be a heavy user.