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Hi,
I just wrote a PDF reader based on Chromium PDF engine.
It's pretty dummy, written in 30 minutes. But quite useful (at least for me) given the limitations of Document viewer, and that sturmreader is currently broken on noble.
I think it will greatly benefit from Qt6 upgrade, when it comes, because of improvement of the engine in chromium.
It is published in the openstore:
https://github.com/pparent76/chromiumpdf
Regards,
Pierre.
Hello everyone,
I figured I would make videos about Ubuntu Touch, to contribute spreading the word.
I'm thinking about making videos to present my applications, reviews/demonstration/tests of the system in general, and possibly videos where I explain why I'm using Ubuntu Touch, and how I got to it.
Here is my first video presenting the application Maps exporter:
English version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR0eqz7wpyM
French version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOJkiSa28Ss
This is still quite experimental so if you have feedback on how to improve the videos for the next time feel free to do so! 
I've succeeded in opening the keyboard when editing text in signal-desktop !!!! 
I could do it reusing the work of @ChromiumOS-Guy in uWolf!
I can officially send signal messages from a native Ubuntu Touch app, without Waydroid! 
Even though for now it's not convenient , since keyboard hides the text area, and the enter button of the keyboard somehow does not trigger sending the message, and the "send" button in signal is hidden until you expend the editing area. But still very usable.
For now everything is messy, but I will try to make it available soon (I think it should be possible to do a click package, but I'm not sure yet)
Ps: Note that I could do it with Mobian version only for now.
Hi,
Just wanted to share that VLC 4 (not yet released) has an interface very close to VLC for Android.
I will be a very good candidate to port to Ubuntu Touch. The interface would probably be usable as such, but with few minimal patches to the interface it could probably be near perfect on the phone screen.
I don't have time to do that now, but probably later (possibly when release officially)
Hi,
Just wanted to mention that I contacted the in-development French identity mobile app, to ask them for interoperability, and remind them their duty to make sure public service is available for everybody, and that their role was not to enforce the choice of mobile OS of their citizens.
https://france-identite.gouv.fr/
Surprisingly I got a pretty open and positive reply, apologizing that their app was not compatible with my OS (Ubuntu Touch), and saying they shared the goal of interoperability, and would study that with the development team what was possible. I did not expect such a positive answer, although I don't know if anything concrete will get out of this.
As a side note I wonder why for this kind of app, with a real need of interoperability, they don't use more Qt, because from what I understand Qt allows to develop apps for Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Linux desktop, Linux mobile (Ubuntu Touch, Sailfishos, Mobian, postMarketOs, pureOs, ect...), all at once, with only few custom things to go for each platform. Any thoughts on that?
Anyway after all the investigations that I've made I'm extremely confident that we'll be able to have a fully responsive client based on Signal-Desktop landed in the openstore within few month. I see exactly how to make it perfectly adapted to the phone Interface like whatsweb. (Funny enough it is possible to use a modified version of the js script of whatsweb to make the interface responsive, because the interface has an extremely similar structure. )
It's not anymore a question of "if" but a question of "when". But there are few tedious tasks in the way, and I need to go little by little, because I can't dedicate all my time to this.
Of course I'm open to any offer for help and testing!
Hi,
Today I just figured why not try:
sudo snap install signal-desktop
And I realize it just works! This is crazy. With this simple command I can link my device and see my chats. Well it is certainly not a responsive interface (but not terrible either, there's just the left menu coming in the way) and the keyboard does not show for now. But I can consult messages, and this is major.
It means:
1°) We can certainly create quite easily a version of Signal-Desktop that is adapted to mobile display (with few patches to the interface to make it responsive), and that we can get a full-fledge signal client on Ubtunu touch, that way.
2°) That Mir2.0 will certainly help with that.
Ps: I guess the first easy thing to make it usable as a consul-only stuff is adapt the scale, which I guess must be easily doable.
I've been able to recompile Signal-Desktop from source and apply my responsive script.
It is available in the Openstore alongside these other improvements:
-Fix startup from OpenStore
-Fix open url externaly
-Fix battery problem
-Fix double window problem
There still are some keyboard issues, it's probably the next thing I will work on.
First of, thank you so much for the development on Ubuntu Touch, it is becoming amazing!
I have a question about Wayland/Xmir apps (e.g uWolf, Signal-desktop, Snap apps) in the context of the upcoming Mir2.0
Will you consider implementing any of the following, to polish experience with Wayland apps:
Would you need/accept some help to do that?
They have not reached out to me again, but I would say every french citizen that use UT is entitled to contact them about this concern and the more they receive requests about that, the more they are likely to take it seriously. And I guess it is also possible to send them a message in the name of the fundation with an offer for assistance on the technical side.
https://france-identite.gouv.fr/contact/
Ps: By the way an argument that seems efficient to draw their attention lately, in the current context, is stressing that by not being inter-operable (as they are legally obliged) they are effectively offering a duopoly to 2 American companies, and preventing any potential alternative from emerging.
Would you have any way to try on another wifi network (public wifi, at a friend) with another provider?
Did you try to install over Wifi vs Mobile data?
You can ignore this link safely! ( the one you quoted, in your previous message, it's spam )
This is strange that you cannot install apps. What happens when you open the openstore or try to install an app?
@grenudi Thank you!
the rest is history on the forum.
Can you re-explain briefly what turned you off about Ubuntu Touch as a user? Because in your messages I feel it's more development philosophy concerns.
Personally I don't pretend that Ubuntu Touch is ideal. The fact that it is using Halium and proprietary blob is clearly a tradeoff, and I would prefer 10 times running a mainline Linux with 100% Foss ( I think everyone would ). And Mir1.x does not seem to me the best compositor in the world, we'll see about Mir2.x.
The thing is that when you are really committed to not using Android-based or IOS mobile OS, and use a Foss-Oriented OS, well Ubuntu Touch saves the show. If I had to use postmarketOS or Mobian as a daily driver it would greatly handicap my personal and social life. And sailfishOS is partiality proprietary so I don't see the point to prefer a locked-down environment to another. So for me your concerns are of secondary importance in comparison to what UT provides: a Linux mobile experience that does not handicap me too much in my daily life and social life, and that has served me for years.
Ps: I'm surprised that you don't seem concerned that your Android-based phones are running the same kind of vendor non-mainline kernel that are not the latest versions, and that get outdated in the exact same way as UT kernels.
high-yield collective investment.
For the record the two Android devices currently supported by Mobian ( Mainline linux ) are "OnePlus 6/6T" and "Pocophone F1". Both are NOT compatible with 5G (hardware-side). While I'm clearly not in favor of constantly pushing new telephony standards, and I think it is very sad that it happens, we have to acknoledge that the industry is pushing for it, making it hard to use phones that are not compatible with the latest standards on the long run. So I really wonder how those mainline linux phone can be considered as a future-proof long-term investment with an expected high-yield, susceptible to attract new users to daily-drive a mobile Linux phone. It is to be added that Mobian does not fully support yet all the hardware on those devices including the most important one to daily drive a phone (like camera), 8 years after the release of the phone.
PostmarketOS (which is a project I contributed to a bit few years ago) offers only one device compatible with both calls and camera (very basic feature to daily drive a phone), and it is the ... Librem 5 (sold with another Linux OS).
https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices
@grenudi I'm reiterating my question: what phone OS are you using and have you been using in your daily life?
In a few years, those dozens of devices will surely run the mainline kernel and have the daily driver base needed,
I would like to add the following about the mainstream vs. halium topic:
We have to work with an industry that produces devices and chipsets that are not standardised as would be a PC, that are made for Android with closed-source drivers, and are made to be obsolete after only a few years (at least are for sell only for a few years). Also the constantly evolving telephony standards are making devices rapidly obsolete and unusable. For example, some parts of the US are already dropping 4G, making some devices that are only few years old completely unusable. I really hope this logic can change.
But until then we have to work with it and it requires a lot of effort to port a new device to the point where it is fully usable, while the device has only a short period of availability. Given that it takes a lot of time to port the devices the interval between the time when the devices is ported and the time it's removed from market or not compatible with latest telephony standards may be short.
Then in this context the practical difference is that porting a device to mainstream Linux takes a lot more time and effort to achieve the same level of functionalities as porting it with Halium.
I think what would really be good is that the manufacturers start to make things meant to work with mainline linux in the first place: devices and CPUs adapted to phones. And this would certainly happen if we started to have a decent adoption of Mobile Linux and some traction.
But other than that, I wonder whether porting mainline Linux to a constantly evolving hardware base, is not just too much work for the community, that has to be endlessly renewed like the myth of sisyphus.
Therefore I think a strategy can be: first attract a decent userbase with Halium, then use it as a leverage to have manufacturer produce hardware really designed for Linux on smartphone.
Would you like to share more about your own mobile experience? I.e what mobile OS are you currently daily-driving and have you been using those last 8 years? Would you recommend using it? It might allow to understand more your stance! Thank you!
Feel free to ask about that in the next Q&A. I think folders in contentHub could be a thing.
In the mean time I think you can add access to a folder in your apparmor profile (like the Documents folder). Your apps will have to be revised before publishing in the openStore but I guess it should be ok, if everything is transparent.
I doubt general access to folders will be granted to all apps, as it would break the whole isolation model that currently exists.
I think a nice feature that could be useful in your case is sharing folders with contentHub. I don't think it currently exists, and it would allow you to move folders in and out your writable application space.
It has probably nothing to do with the Android uprade, there is currently a know random crash when uploading files specifically a Picture. I've investigated and found where the bug comes from, I will try to fix it next week.
Try again several times and you will probably observe that sometimes it crashes sometimes not.