Hey guys, I just need a little help

I'm looking for mine, do you know which one it is?

source

In the Q&A Dalton and Florian talked about some of the difficulties with summarizing a "this week in news".

So why don't we crowd source the news?

We could have a centralized document, be it on a eitherpad, nextcloud, or even Hackdb, it needs to be something that anyone can edit, but saves every change so that if someone does anything malicious we can just role it back.

Eitherpad is well used in the UBports community for notes so I think it might be a good idea to do this here.

Ideally it'd be sectioned off with core system updates, app updates, etc, and any news you do have to update us with, ideally it would have a title, quick to read, a description, and then a link to the source, for verification, or in-case of a possible misunderstanding.

I made a pad to give an idea of how it could look, this is a community thing so please contribute and we can try to make it as good as possible and create a good standard!

https://pad.ubports.com/p/weekly

Personally I'm not a big fan of the idea, to me it seems far to android-y.

I like Ubuntu touch because it's Ubuntu touch, and I like it's personality.

I don't mind some ideas, but I do much prefer the style of homepage that I've seen before.

I'll try and find it, but it looked a bit like the today scope, except only had the weather and some apps.

Personally, I think the homescreen would be nice if it you could edit a bit more, if you could have your weather, your row of apps, your row of music or friends or what ever you want, but I think it needs to keep the unique feel, I think if it wants to, it can be a bit more KDE or gnome inspired.

There's a Android launcher which basically adds the windows 10 start button to your phone, I don't mind it, as it feels decent to me, but it's just windows 10 styled, I think we would be better imitating that, as it seems more like our kind of feeling than Android default.

Another problem I see, is that you swipe from the left to get your launcher, then you pull it all the way to get home, then you pull down from the bottom to access all apps.

The app draw means, you pull it from left to right slightly, you have your pinned apps, you pull it more and you have all your apps.

It's quicker and more responsive, it might not be editable at the moment, but my opinion is that, you've got the coding skills, I bet you could make the app draw look and feel amazing and add new ability's to it, and make it keep it in the feeling and style of Ubuntu touch.

That's just my opinion on the matter.

@olddh
Its okay to ask questions, its okay to voice concerns, but damn, try and run Ubuntu Touch on a Nexus 5 running Linux 5.10, and Wayland, and you'll be in a much worse state then Ubuntu Touch on the PinePhone.

Like, you would have a brick if you tried to do anything like the PinePhone with the Nexus 5 because its probably more than double the amount of work, but also, its very dismissive of all the actual work that people like Dalton have put into the project, like, maybe you have to have a good eye, but everyone works extremely hard on the Ubuntu Touch project, and UBports has put in a HUGE amount of effort to support the PinePhone, more effort has absolutely been put into the PinePhone than the Nexus 5 by the core team.

I dont know if you realize this, but its rare that the Nexus 5, OPO, FairPhone, even OP3 get device specific updates, a lot of the time, they get ported, and then left alone until something breaks them, or there's something that hasn't worked for a while and someones just decided to work on it for a bit.

Anyways the whole team needs a break, they all need time off, a good week or so time of rest, to do whatever be that bowling, going for walks, just sleeping, watching movies, or playing video games, they deserve a lot for what they do and have been able to do, and the amount of work thats gone into the PinePhone is, well, commendable!

@Lakotaubp said in "UbuntuTouch" name:

@tigerpro I'm afraid calling it “Ultimate Touch” might attract the wrong sort of attention : )

Super Smash Bros Ultimate Touch.

Now that we have arm64 builds in the ubports installer, it's a lot easier for people to install and test arm64 applications.

If anyone has any apps they'd like to be tested on arm64 please reply here with a file/link to a file.

This may also be a good place to talk about hurdles compiling apps for arm64.

Thanks you

What we have:

• Signal
  Theres a beta app called axolotl, which allows conversations over the signal protocal
  https://open-store.io/app/textsecure.nanuc

• Dekko
  Dekko does have multi-account support
  https://open-store.io/app/dekko2.dekkoproject

• GPS
  we have the feature, IDK how well it works, depends on device I guess, but wont be as accurate as Google.

• Nextcloud
  We have multiple apps for Nextcloud, we have a news app, notes app, calendar, and some others, however we have no full sync option, you cant for example sync your music folder to your nextcloud account.

• adblock
  We have a separate app for ad blocking, this means every ad in every app will be blocked however, it doesn't allow you to pick and choose which apps or websites get a free pass.
  https://open-store.io/app/uadblock.mariogrip

What doesnt work.

• Whatsapp
  There are only 3 ways to message people using whatsapp on Ubuntu Touch, but both require having whatsapp on a android or ios device. One way is by using a whatsapp webapp, which wont give you notifications, or you could set up a matrix bridge, which would give you notifications via fluffychat, but it'd cost you, and you'd have to set it up,

Theres also the option of anbox, but thats more of a future plan for android apps on Ubuntu Touch.
https://forums.ubports.com/topic/1676/development-testers-for-anbox

• Syncing
  we have no app that syncs/backups, this is partially due to background services and confinement not being flexible enough to allow for a syncing app in the OpenStore.

For device specifics, I couldn't tell you how well any of them work, I only have a OPO and OP3 running Ubuntu Touch.

There has been some more interest in Podbird and what we should do with it moving forward, it was suggested to make a forum post about it so thats what this forums about!

@AppLee said in PineTab Anyone?:

But people usually use the back camera more...

On a Tablet?

I don't think most people go around taking photos with there tablets, I think people want better front cameras, because on a tablet you're more likely to use it, when you're video calling family or friends, you know.

Did someone say pinephone?! How is the progress with the pinephone? What things will be fixed, or will still be broken when we move to the new kernel?

With qt 5.12 and the Lomiri work with manjaro, will we see more cross platform app development? Will we see more click apps on the manjaro base, will we see more plasma apps on Ubuntu Touch, etc, or will there still be to many differences, such as Ubuntus life cycle, and that some kde apps (neochat for example) and Manjaro using qt 5.15, and different package management on different platforms?

Are there efforts between different projects, to try and minimise fragmentation?

@Marathon2422 that should make lomiri look fine, but any apps should look GIGANTIC!

Welcome to the UBports forum, we have topics on OnePlus phones, Google Pixels, Sony Xperias, wayland, flutter apps, phone UI, Dr Who, Online Cloud Storage and Syncing.

The PinePhone doesn't show up in your file manager to back up your data or to move folders and files to your phone, however you can mount the file system by turning off the PinePhone and then turning it back on while holding the volume up button, you'll then see.

• scr
• persist
• boot_a
• recovery_a
• cache
• system
• userdata
• Removable Media (How this displays depends on a multitude of variables)

Backing up with Linux Bash

The mount point may be different depending on your system, or if you manually mount it elsewhere, so please note that my commands are based on where Manjaro automatically mounts the device.

cd /run/media/$USER/userdata/user-data/phablet/

Here's where all your files and folders are, for me these folders said they belonged to a number, so I just ran chown, this is a bad idea, but it works, if you chown your . files you'll need to chown them back to the old owner, I am not so sure if thats the case with basic files and folders.

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER *

ScreenShots and Photos Using Exiftool and Rsync

To move my ScreenShots I cd into the ScreenShot directory

exiftool -r -d /home/$USER/Images/ScreenShot/%Y/%m/ "-filename<filemodifydate" *

This uses exiftool to recursively (-r) look through your directory's which you shouldn't need unless you've already moved your screenshots around adding them to different folders, /home/$USER/Images/ScreenShot/ tells exiftool to move the screenshots to that directory, by default images and ScreenShots aren't default folders, many users put ScreenShots in the Pictures directory, so you may want to change that.

%Y/%m/ tells exiftool to make the directorys based on the Year and Month, you can also add day, but for me there would only be a screnshot or at max maybe 5 a day and would make it hard to look for those images, so Months are just fine.

"-filename<filemodifydate" this tells exiftool to base the %Y and %m on the date it was last modified, if you chose to do it by Created or Accessed it would give you the date and time that you mounted the directory.

For Photos I use a similar set of commands, however I want to move my photos to the SD card to free up storage as well as have a copy on my desktop, my SD card mounts as 79C1-218E please alter that to your SD card mount.

cd /run/media/$USER/userdata/user-data/phablet/Pictures/com.ubuntu.camera/
exiftool -r -d /run/media/$USER/79C1-218E/Pictures/%Y/%m/ "-filename<filemodifydate" *
rsync -av /run/media/$USER/79C1-218E/Pictures/ $HOME/Pictures/

Backup Your Dots.

your dot files also belong to phablet, and so you'll have to either use chmod or chown to be able to back them up.
please make sure you make note of the number that you're given for the user before you change it.

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER .*

This is uncomfortable but I'm not advanced enough to chmod without breakages or without worrying about making my device less secure, so please make sure you take note of the number it belongs to, as if you want your device to work afterwards you'll have to chown it back to that owner.

Backup ALL The Files (on user-data), With Tar.

If you only want to do a quick and easy archive backup, this isn't the most recommended organization wise and can waist storage, and just isn't the best for a system thats always changing, but it works using tar (you can also use rsync if you want them to be viewable and editable to you on your desktop)

I'm just gonna place it on my desktop for now.

tar -czvf $HOME/Desktop/PinePhoneBak.tar.gz /run/media/$USER/userdata/user-data/phablet/.* /run/media/$USER/userdata/user-data/phablet/*

Restoring With Tar

(please note, I have not restored a device using this command so something may go wrong, you may have to restore using a mounted archive OR use some other work around to make the restoration work if the command doesn't work as expected.)

tar -xzvf $HOME/Desktop/PinePhoneBak.tar.gz -C /run/media/$USER/userdata/user-data/phablet/*

Backup ALL The Files (on user-data) With Restic

Backup using restic, this is a fantastic way of backing up data, it allows for encrypted backups, that's easy to automate, and means you don't have to worry about data being lost, the problem with tar is that you either overwrite old back ups or add extra weight you don't need, rsync doesn't have that problem, but it just copy's the folders, rsync also doesn't let you revert to older versions of the backup, unlike restic.

restic is also a fast backup since it only backs up the new and updated files.

Create a folder for your restic backup, you'll want a folder because restic by default creates 5 directory's and a config

restic init --repo /home/$USER/Desktop/PineBackUp/

it'll ask you for a password, you'll need to enter one!

Then you'll want to make the backup

restic -r /home/$USER/Desktop/PineBackUp/ --verbose backup /run/media/$USER/userdata/user-data/phablet/

Restoring/Viewing Using Restic.

(please note, I have not restored a device using this command so something may go wrong, you may have to restore using a mounted restic snapshot OR use some other work around to make the restoration work if the command doesn't work as expected.)

To restore from the latest snapshot you would use.

restic -r /home/$USER/Desktop/PineBackUp/  restore latest --target /run/media/$USER/userdata/user-data/phablet/

to see whats in your snapshot without restoring you can mount your restic backup using a few commands. you'll have to make a directory for the snapshot and then mount it, however you cannot edit anything.

mkdir $USER/restic
restic -r  /home/$USER/Desktop/PineBackUp/ mount $USER/restic

Chmod your Dots (!IMPORTANT!)

This is very important, if you boot your phone now, you wont have any apps, your system will be broken in a few ways, this is because the wrong person owns the files, fix that using. (please note your number may be different)

cd /run/media/$USER/userdata/user-data/phablet/
sudo chown -R $32011:$32011 .*

I am planning to update this with some powershell commands, so that our windows users can also back up there files, if they wish, however I don't have a windows computer, so I'll be using powershell for linux some of the commands might not translate to windows properly so if a windows user would like to help with that, that would be a pleasure, if anyone would like to.

I would also like to make a backup tutorial for anything that is important in the configs, such as text message history, installed apps, and just basic lomiri config files, I'm aware of where text message history is, but other configs I'll need to find.

Thank you for your time, I hope this has been helpful!

@3arn0wl @andybleaden
The pinephone is very exciting in deed! I can't wait to actually try it out, its cheep enough for most people that they can grab one without worrying to much about their bottom line, as well which is great!

@andybleaden @Stefano
The OP3 port is looking amazing, cant wait to see it in the official installer, for anyone with a OP3 to easily install.
I think the OP5 is gonna be worked on after that, but I'm not sure since it's Vince's main device atm, and I believe that Treble is still an issue.

I'm a big fan of the OnePlus devices personally, and the more OnePlus devices with an ubuntu port, the better, I hope that Halium gets support for newer versions of android, so we can get a convergence OnePlus device with MHL out, but thats a distant future it seems.

@kugiigi Some of these are crazy cool, you should consider upstreaming some of them, things like the transparent indicator bar could be added to the settings, and would be useful to a lot of people, there may be questions of implementation, or stability, but some a lot of those features you've worked on, are incredible, and would make the core ubuntu touch system so much nicer.

This is absolutely amazing!

I know its not finished, but I do have a few suggestions.

• The weather widget asks for you to configure it, which is fine, however, some people wont want to have to sign up to get an API key, if someone wants the weather, they'll have to, but if they don't care about the weather app, it just looks a bit awkward, so it'd be nice to be able to remove it, which is part of my next suggestion.

• Customization, this launcher, makes me think of a more advanced version of the OnePlus swipe to the left launcher thing, you can move the widgets around to where ever you want, you can extend widgets, or make them smaller, you can add notes (For example the todo "scope" for lack of better term, could just be a widget on the home screen) you can even add media widgets for play and pausing media, its not necessary since you can do that in your indicator or notification menu, but some people do use widgets for this, so it'd be nice to be able to do that, so basically, the ability to have smaller versions of the "scopes" that have seperate pages" and more intractable widgets.

• Tapping on contacts faces, it flips over and quickly gives you a call or text option, depending on scale, this could be tricky to tap the right one accurately, in my opinion, I think tapping the contact should open the app its from, if the contact is from contacts, open that, if its from telegram, open the teleports app on that user, etc, and I think that if you long hold, it should then it should bring a pop up, like the one that you get from holding down on applications, with "Name" (which when tapped would take you to contacts) then select-able options (depending on what app they're from) would be SMS/Message, Call, Video Call, then another separator for removing from favorites.

• When you do hold down on a app, you get a pop up, which is good, but I think it'd be good to go with the same design as the one in the dock/launcher, which gives you options to unpin and the such.

• I personally am not a fan of the bottom bit of the UI, it's always there, and the pull up menu in my PO, doesn't look great, I think what would be nice, is if the menu with the little icons for scopes like home and the such, should auto hide, and then a small swipe up would bring it up, a longer swipe up would then bring up the "manage page" and the "configure launcher" icon/option would be in the top right of that page, right next to the + button.

• If you tap the title of a certain section such as "Favourite contacts" it would be nice if it expanded, this could be just to show all your favourite contacts on one screen, or to expand to show all of your contact, but your favourite are segregated to the top, like how the app scope used to, I think it's important from a UX standpoint that this is more of an expansion of the block then opening a new page, so for example, it could work like androids folders where you only see the first icon, you tap it, it expands outwards to show you the content of the folder.

Not quite a suggestion, but are there plans to try and bring more apps/sources in, like old scopes did? JW because I think the gallery scope where it had your pictures at the top, then pictures from your instagram feed, then under that was fb pictures, really helps customize your phone to you, and adds something new to look at every time you opened your phone.

This could be something that developers expand on with things like creating a reddit widget that will show you the latest few posts from your front page, or from a specific reddit sub-reddit, a homepage like this, would make it look uniquely Ubuntu Touch from a UI standpoint, but would make everyone's homescreen unique, interesting, and personal, which is something I loved about scopes.

Sorry if I'm going on to much, and overloading you guys with to many suggestions, I'm only giving so much feedback, because I love it, and am excited for this launchers future, because it looks so amazing, and I love it, and I'm really impressed with it!

This is some great work and you guys should be patting yourselves on the back, thank you for putting so much time and effort into it, its greatly appreciated!

P.S

I don't want ubuntu touch to mimic this UI/UX to much, however, it was a great launcher for Android, and you might get some inspiration for how to improve, or what features you could add to the launcher.

(I like the idea of a different background under the weather, date clock, and the idea of having a "profile picture" for your home screen even if it has little purpose other than personalization.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RperNarleYQ

On Telegram someone said that they'd put some time and effort in, if it was hosted on github or gitlab, if there hadn't been any update, for a very long time, I wouldn't mind the idea of rehosting it, but I'm hesident to rehost the code if the original people are still wanting to work on it.

It'd feel like stealing there project, but if its not them working on it, and people would much prefer to host on github or gitlab, then it'd be good if we could get in contact with either Michael Sheldon, or Nekhelesh Ramananthan, and see what they think.

They might give us the go ahead to just rehost and still use the name and logo, etc, etc, or they may require us to rename the app since it would be hosted by different people?

I think it'd be wise to get in contact with them before we do any heavy lifting if that's the road we wish to take.

Just wanted to second Kaidan, its not perfect, no group chats, quite a few bugs, but its native qt, works on ubuntu touch, android and plasma mobile, so hopefully it'll gain more contributes.

@Thatoo there are plenty of little niggles for everybody, no video calling application for example, thats important for a lot of people, especially during lockdown.

no notifications from signal, camera doesn't have a lot of advanced features, music playback skips around a bit, bluetooth can be hit or miss, and a million other bugs that you can see on github, many are before the UBports take over.

some issues are more important to others, personally, I use my phone for music all the time, and need it to work when I'm out and about, I can easily import my contacts from a file, and not touch it for months, so cardDav would be useful, it'd only be useful for me on a rare occasion, but music playback affects my daily life.

for you this maybe the other way around, where contacts are always changing , and you never listen to music on the go, and so the music fixes wont affect you.

you also talk about mir and lomiri, contact sync wouldn't matter without mirror and lomiri, because nore you or your mother would beable to get to your contacts even if they where there.

The pinephone and pinetab have a lot of OS porting issues currently to, the core developers focus should be getting the os running well with the hardware working nicely on the PinePhone and PineTab, and then theres focus on other big leaps like the move to Ubuntu 20.04 etc.

other devs can work on the code to fix syncing and bug those who have power to merge the changes, but the core developers have to much on there plate to worry about.

I'm not saying don't ask, and don't try, but ask on the next Q&A forum post and Dalton might be able to direct you to who you should ask, or what the best option for you is when it comes to syncing.

you wont get an answer if you don't ask.

iOS has full disc encryption by default, Ubuntu Touch has no easy way to activate encryption, there is a way to encrypt your home folder using the terminal, but its coversome, we dont have PGP support in Dekko, nore do we have any encrypted messaging app.

Its true that we don't have extra things to spy on you, which iOS and Android do have, but we also don't have extra things to protect you, so as much as I'd love Ubuntu Touch to be the best OS for security, it's not ready for that label yet, when we get easy home encryption, and the ability to either message or email with encryption, then it'll be much closer to that future.