@mattp

Hi!

A bunch of UT folks put this forum post in front of me today in our North American UT users telegram group. The idea we are tossing around as a possible plan (mainly to help callers in the USA who have now been shut down due to lacking Volte support) is to help give 'cell phone' capability to UT devices, without using a carrier - at least in the traditional way. I thought I would revive this thread as there seem to be a lot of people interested and it seems to be the seed of the topic.

I'm personally trying to get back into coding so this project here is needed badly it seems. I'd like to help but my skills are low still.

Here is the rough plan we were thinking, and not necessarily in this order:

• XMPP (I haven't heard why XMPP and not something like Matrix, but it seems more decentralized from my brief study)

• Review the new web app MOVIM (https://join.movim.eu/) - I started my first XMPP account here, btw, so feel free to message me with same user name)

• Perhaps model Mastadon app for Ubuntu Touch (https://github.com/bendingthemrules/ubtouch-mastodon) and then make Movim work and look like Mastadon app...

• My using jttps://jmp.chat/ you can create an account, get a phone number and text / phone with it

• Somehow make webpush notifications jmp.chat servers work with the new app

• If all this works, Ubuntu Touch would have a full 'cell phone like' experience but no carrier. You would be able to use your phone like a cell via wifi or, if you could get a data plan, via that.

Did I miss anything?

Call to action: we need a leader. And we need devs. At least I guess we do.

Hope this helps.

This topic is of high interest to myself and others. Definitely join our parents group on Telegram (also Matrix).

Currently, we have "Simple Dash" (Brian Douglass) app running over top of regular Ubuntu Touch. This stops any action without parent's password. It works very well, but it does have a back door. You can go around via the settings in the top drawer.

This with Jade Diamond they can only go to a website you authorize. You can also blacklist a website you don't want them to go to.

We are also discussing how the router can work for protecting the whole home in general before the traffic even comes into the device.

Further, we have discussed the topic above of logging in. We believe once Unity8 is working (apparently soon) we will be able to set up 'admin accounts' over top of 'child accounts'.

There are also many business reasons to have these features. Employees should not do illegal or dumb things on company phones.

It would be most excellent to build a thriving team to focus on these solutions. Definitely our kids are getting messed up at young age and we have a very good solution here.

Hope these comments help and inspire....

@dobey I want to argue with Dobey but I like what he's writing here.

Especially the part about software. I actually... never thought much about this because up until recently I didn't know anything about coding. Now that he mentions it how awesome would it be for a horrible programmer like me to sweat for 1 year on some simple app and then magically have it usable on every platform. That is, truly awesome. And the amount of dollars saved for a software company to be able to do that would be impossible to record. This is truly a significant consideration and definitely a worth cause with or without the hardware to consider.

Imagine even a 'tech support' environment where 99% of the learning was done and then you just have slight hardware related 'tweaks' to your base of understanding? This would be massive for any kind of IT support environment whether a third party company or an internal IT dept. Wow.

And then comes in snaps and flatpaks. Amazing. Deploy a flatpak/snap and have it roll out to phones, tablets too? Dang. Amazing.

So, I have to say 'thanks' to Mr. @dobey. This is huge eye opener thought for me and not sure how I didn't see this before ....

@PINE64 Hey sir. I understood above that it was some limitation in video out on hardware. My bad. IF it's just a software limitation than definitely Marius 'has it under control'. If he doesn't, we will gently speak to him har har

To me, if the video out will not work with Unity 8... this would be a deal-breaking disappointment I think.

The current selling point to me is this is a device we can take as a community and focus on and has an affordable price point for mass adoption.

To me, after listening to the linuxlads audiocast I felt 'The Pinephone is it'. It is affordable, freedom respecting and we can develop and test and experience the original convergence experience. To me this would be a massive disappointment if not possible. Just my opinion.

@3arn0wl right. Dobey is not the 90% of the population, but absolutely valid. In the Audiocast I mention 'anyone who is not gaming or doing 3D rendering or compiling code'. Those people. Those people can live on a pocket computer in my opinion.

I agree with @dobey about the 'big screens' though. I don't like them. I liked my HTC wildfire and convergence running on a super small screen would be awesome because it would allow me to have a 'phone sized phone' again instead of these 62" movie theatre phones! we used to mock those big screens and now that's all you can buy

You have a good point.
But I still want to fight with Joe, so please hide your post until later so we can have some more emotions and drama

Good. I can argue with @joe here, too! yay!

It's like this: if you could do this, why would you not:

1. walk up to your screen, keyboard, mouse
2. dock your 'phone'
3. start working / computing

Joe's argument is from our Audiocast "what if I needed to make a phonecall, do something else with my phone while working here?"

My thought is as long as the following items worked well, it's no problem:

1. smoothly make voice and video calls and even - phone calls!

2. have all your stuff backed up easily and regularly to prevent what @kugiigi said about losing all (obviously important)

If you had a 'docking station' at every location you went, this is all super convenient and way easier than packing a laptop... No?

Here is a great post by @Profetik777 on Linux Lads on the topic.

That should lube the conversation

The purpose of this thread is to find a home for the exciting, but also very opinion-filled topic of convergence in context of 'hardware' and 'lifestyle'. It is filed under 'Unity 8' because without Unity 8, none of this is possible.

Is it better to have just one device?

What kind of hardware is best?

Does the market want this?

What kind of creative set up environments can we dream up?

Oh, and we can share links and resources here as well.

Let's get this going!

Contact sync and calendar sync with Nextcloud have been a repeated conversation. There are some 'almost ready' apps like UBsync and the Nextcloud webapp. How much development effort would be required to have a nextcloud friendly calendar and contact sync?

should we dare publish 'the tutorial'? :-0 Let's see how it goes for Uncle Wayne with his new digitizer on N5!

@libremax nice. Joe and I used to run an online ESL business as well so we love languages. Most fun in life is the fact that we all suck at communicating...

EPISODE 39 - DOGFOODING

Looking for a place to agree or disagree with Wayne and Joe about what they said on the Audiocast? You've found it, friend! Let it all out (well... maybe not all)!

If you haven't listened UTA 39, or read its show notes already, follow this link

@libremax hey! people are talking! nice. Thanks for that. I like to talk, talk talk...

We all have the same mic. It's a audio-technica ATR-2100.
then we all record to audacity
then we use Mumble to connect real-time.
then... poor Joe deals with the pain after. But.. your compliments keep him motivated!

good work on that painful editing, Jobot...

i have some comments. first, very nice work on this. I'm now witnessing the 'familiar' feeling of 'push-hold-move' of apps.

however, i might not be properly understanding the functionality because in my opinion, all we need is to take exactly what we have now, and then add the 'push-hold-move' functionality so you can move the apps around the 'home' screen like other OS designs.

We have the launcher for 'favourites' and showing what is open and accessing quickly.

I think the problem is that currently it's operating as an 'app' but if it was built into core, then all of this would make more sense for me?

I see that even with "sprint" running now I can still access the launcher which is great.

In fact, it seems like this should work great. The only thing I feel is missing in this version is the ability to swipe to the right/left so you can access 'empty desktops'

Again, I think if this was built in as core OS operation this would all make sense?

Great discussion here!

Wayne: "hi, Wayne, how are you doing?"
Wayne; "Great thanks, and you?"
Wayne: Not bad, man. Not bad.
Wayne: "Cool....hmm... where is everyone else? Even Joe?"
Wayne: No idea. I think they don't like us. They think we suck.
Wayne: Well... we do..
Wayne: Right! That!

THE LINK: [https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-blog-1/post/ubuntu-touch-audiocast-036-gal-app-agos-islands-175](link url)

Hi. We are UTA.
We thought it might be nice to slap a post right here that is specifically to discuss this episode 36. Then, we could do a stand-alone entry for each episode so a historical chit-chat could exist.
We'll post a link to this post here into the shownotes each time (if you like the idea) and we can carry on ideas and stuff.
So... check back here later and see if anyone does anything.
And... I'm totally using markdown here and this forum supports it, yay me, yay forum!

here is a cool one. Check out this idea which could also be a '5 minute task' too
https://forums.ubports.com/topic/1687/have-you-told-your-local-national-paper-about-ubports

@doniks this seems really useful. are you part of the matrix bootcamp group? If not... probably you could be and should be since myself and a few others are trying to learn to become a developer there. I'm baby beginner but i'm trying with about 15 minutes a day. your list here could be really practical. I will post this to the group and see if it helps them. thanks for this practical one