Being a porter myself, albeit not a very experienced one, but a porter none the less, I wanted to see UT on my device, nobody was working on it, so I took it apon myself to try and do it. I feel that was probably the hardest part of this whole thing for me. I have zero coding skills (unless you count BASIC) and I have been able to get a half working port so far, it took many hours spanned over 18 months to get where I am now, and so many questions I lost track, but if you show that you are trying to do it yourself, and say "I need help" the community will step up and help you as much as possible. I'd be glad to help you get started, just let me know if you would like to. I believe if I can get a half working port done, anyone with basic Linux skills could, asking questions like this generally only serve to frustrate some, annoy some, and overall negatively impact others that are involved. I understand the reasoning behind asking it, but at the end of the day if you want to know answers to things like this, look at the porting guide, that has a running list of ports for the people who have been doing the documentation for their ports, as well as the devices that have been ported, then if not sure asking on a public forum like this. I do apologize if I upset anyone, and I do encourage anyone reading this post to check the guide and try porting an old phone or tablet that may be laying in your desk drawer, cause while you may find that device to be "old and worthless" to you, someone else might still be using it and want to try UT on it, besides if you break an old device trying to port it, it just goes back into the drawer does it not?

@doniks I have News, I finally got the device to go past the spinner, it was a combo of my udev rules and the 32011 stuff, I now have a fully working GUI, working touchscreen, and working file access, thats about it though, the wifi is detected but it isnt finding the wifi network for some reason, Ill have to play with it in terminal I guess, as for the rest, any idea where I could start with getting the rest to work?

I actually brought a UT device to my cell carriers local store, they were very interested when I was just talking about it, and when I gave them a hands on experience, they were very receptive to it.

@sringgen as stated VoLTE is being worked on for ofono, the other side of the token is that Verizon uses CDMA and afaik CDMA does not currently work correctly, if at all, so there is also that.

@libremax at the time of this writing,

what works:
Audio
GPS
Status LED
Video Acceleration

what works with quirks:
BT (if disabled requires reboot to enable again)
SMS/MMS (seems to work overall, but sometimes there is no notifications for recieved SMS/MMS, Sometimes won't send SMS/MMS either)
Auto-Brightness (Sometimes has to be toggled off then on after a reboot)
Camera (GStreamer camera is needed for Camera to not crash the device, otherwise view finder shows then device crashes after a few seconds)

what doesn't work:
In Call Audio (Logs show it is working but it does not actually work, mic nor sound work)
S-Pen (detected by kernel, mir/unity does not handle styli input currently)
Sensors (they are detected, but no values are added)
Fingerprint Sensor (halium needs a repo for biometry services)

I think that's everything, if I missed anything I'm sure someone will chime in and ask, I also welcome anyone who'd like to try and help, to please do so.

So my Galaxy Note 4 port has come a long way with help from other community members, I can confidently say it would be ready for a daily device if I didn't have these last little bits that, while aren't important to UT use, are annoyances that I know I've seen a solution for before but can no longer find. I have managed to get everything but the sensors and the stylus to work on my device, the sensors show up with "test_sensors" and the stylus works with libinput but mir or unity do not handle those events yet, I tried to look into the code for mir, but it goes over my head honestly as I am not a coder. I know Marius has briefly talked about sensorfw for sensors coming down the pipeline (which I'd love to test and give feedback) but for now, I accept that both those things are beyond my capabilities so I will just have to wait till I can get there or till the code gets there on its own. I have yet to get a working recovery with my source, and to be honest, I haven't really played with it in a while. Now for the annoyances I know I've seen a solution for (whether it was for ubports 5.1 or another version), the list overall I think is manageable, but here it goes:

WiFi doesnt re-connect after a reboot

BT sometimes crashes device

Camera loads the viewfinder, sometimes takes a picture or two, and ultimately crashes the whole device

On CDMA networks (Sprint and Verizon) I have to downgrade ofono to get a cellular signal (not UT's fault as most of the world has moved on from CDMA and EVdO)

Charge indicator only works if device is plugged in to charger on boot

Audio works for everything that isn't Youtube, or sound from a app that stores sounds locally (D-Bus error)

I started this post in hopes of being able to have a centralized location for all the ports facing these issues, and possibly have a healthy discussion about things like D-Bus errors and how to fix them as there is not much info for D-Bus in regards to Ubuntu Touch. I know dbus-monitor works (how I found out I have a D-Bus error with localized audio vs audio from the web)

I also welcome constructive criticism as long as it remains respectful and family friendly.

I do apologize to mods if this is in wrong spot or anything of the like.

I look forward to the healthy discussion and hopefully solutions to some of the lesser known issues

So I have an update for anyone following this that isn't on telegram or IRC, there are now a couple people working with me on the Note 4 port, the devices are the Sprint, the T-Mobile, and the Trltexx. We have managed to get audio somewhat working, all the hardware as far as we can tell is seen by the kernel, and we are now just trying to get everything working on the GUI side. I have switched to telegram as the primary communication method so dont expect many updates on here, if you have a galaxy note 4 and would like to contribute, you can find me on telegram in the UBPorts group, the UBPorts porting group, and the halium group.

Your basic understanding is a little off, step 0 is right, after that you get source code following the docs, configure it with the docs (adjusting for any device specific items) then compile it and flash to your device and test. That is a very very generalized rundown of the process, if you attempt it, we are here to help, and there's no such thing as a stupid question, so good luck if you go for it.

@rvan that is a great question, my porting experience as of this writing is limited as I have a half finished port for a Samsung Galaxy Note 4. I saw you mention that unlocking the bootloader might be a requirement, that is purely based on a device to device basis cause not all android devices are created equal, my Note 4 doesn't have an unlocked bootloader (at least I never unlocked it) but my Asus tf201 tablet does cause I had to unlock it for installing Custom ROMs. I believe the realistic view would be (setup device for custom ROMs) cause as I said, each device is different. I do apologize for that but on to the main part of your question, what makes a device a good/great candidate for porting, I believe this may vary depending on who you ask, but for me a great candidate device is any device that can run Lineage OS14.1 with any reliability and speed, cause if its not reliable on LOS its likely not going to improve if you port UT to it, and if its slow as a tortoise, same thing, other than that if you have something that meets that criteria and you'd like to see UT then by all means, try porting it. My Note 4 runs both Lineage and UT in a somewhat manual dual boot method done with TWRP, let me know if you would like to discuss this further as this could be a great topic of discussion.

Since we are fresh out of FOSDEM are there plans to be attending a tech show like FOSDEM as vendors rather than guests? I think having some publicity for UTs features like convergence would generate some good interest for the project.

@m4l490n honestly I haven't had time to even touch the code in a year. There is documentation for making a port, just search for "ubports porting guide" and you will be able to find it. I happily accept any code contributions as long as they don't break the port.

@carlo afaik that command should work, granted my knowledge is mostly LOS 14.1 based porting on a Galaxy Note 4, if that command is not working, double check the documentation your following is for the correct version of your LOS source, as well as your source is complete and not lacking anything.

it is possible to run desktop apps in UT, I know this because I have done it, however the experience was unusable due to the apps not responding to any input/interaction attempts through either touch or KB/M use. it is also pretty involved to setup and will not survibe any OTAs, overall if your looking to run regular linux apps on a handheld device, UT is not going to be the solution you want for that.

@sringgen as stated VoLTE is being worked on for ofono, the other side of the token is that Verizon uses CDMA and afaik CDMA does not currently work correctly, if at all, so there is also that.

@unisuperbox is there anything stopping us from using OTA-16.x system? I understand the thought process behind the idea, however, if we are to switch to a system like this, maybe have it as OTA-x.16 to indicate which OTA it is and the LTS version after that? I feel that would allow easier distinction between the OTAs and not pose a potential issue with the current OTA system as it would work to make it think its a major version change, with the same minor version, just my $0.02

@flohack so if Im understanding correctly, the android side sees /android as /? if that is the case then how would I massage the lxc container to get the blobs to see the efs partition?

@doniks thats actually what made me think to check it, the difference is for my device efs is mounted and I can access it, but its mounted at /android/efs rather than /efs hence me asking if anyone knows if that matters, or how to fix it

so I found myself with about an hour of free time over the past couple days and decided to check into the wifi not re-connecting properly after a reboot, I suspect it is related to efs, I was able to verify it is mounted, but I have a suspicion its not mounted in the correct location, so that leads me to this question, is there a better way to force the correct location rather than putting a bind mount in init? Im not sure what else this will fix, or even if it will fix anything, but its a start since android mounts efs to /efs, and UT is mounting it to /android/efs, I suspect the stuff that is working is not fully working due to that.

Thanks for for your time.

@kyrylo welcome, however I would not advise getting a galaxy note 4 as my port is very incomplete, its missing call audio and has a few other issues I need to address, but I lack the time to do so

@kyrylo on my Galaxy Note 4 I can watch a full length movie from SD in a mp4 format, it takes a few minutes for it to load, but it does play and keeps the sync for about 90% of the video