Hello,
the feature was removed from the default installation but you can still get them working on any Ubuntu touch device.

So here is what you need to do:

1. Install "Desktop Apps Scope" so that you can browse your legacy (X11) apps and execute them.
   https://uappexplorer.com/app/libertine-scope.ubuntu

2. Now you should connect your phone to your computer as this is easier done on desktop rather than on the device itself. However, if you set your phone terminal not to suspend itself or you will supervise it all the time it is also possible to do this on your device.
   If you are going the desktop computer way you need to enable developer mode on your device (so have some kind of a pin or password set on your phone - it should tell you when enabling the developer mode). Then you need to execute "phablet-shell" or "adb shell" (without the quotes) on your PC.
   If you are doing this directly on your device, just open the terminal app (must be installed).

3. Either way you are now in your Ubuntu device shell. So execute this in order to create an Ubuntu container to hold your apps: libertine-container-manager create --id ubuntu --name 'ubuntu'
   Change the name and ID if you'd like.
   This is a lengthy process and will take some time on the device (about 10 minutes).

4. Now you have the container set up. In order to maintain it you can execute something like this:
   libertine-container-manager exec --command "/bin/bash" --id ubuntu
   Once executed you'll have the superuser shell of the inside container and you can do "apt install firefox" or whatever you want, just like on the desktop.
   You can also install apps like this: "libertine-container-manager install-package -p firefox -i ubuntu"

Once app or apps are installed just go to the scope installed in the first step (you must enable it by swiping from the bottom edge on the main screen). If it was already enabled refreshing the view may be necessary.

For more info about what you can do with the Ubuntu container see "libertine-container-manager --help".

@joe Well there are still apps you can't install from the Open Store like Extremetuxracer or Neverball/Neverputt. Someone should upload those to the Open Store and then it can go away :). Anyway, I believe that removing the icon would not hurt - people would still be able to enable the store scope and swipe to it if enabled.

Hi,
since Anbox is finally here and usable more than ever before, who wouldn't want to play with it.

Unfortunately only the most powered devices were selected for this right now - leaving MX4 behind. But thanks to Marius arale is now in too :).

So, either build it on your own or download a boot image for arale here:
https://gitlab.com/zubozrout/kernel_arale (kernel patched with anbox stuff)
https://iubuntu.cz/mx4/arale-boot-anbox-canonical.img
https://iubuntu.cz/mx4/arale-boot-anbox-ubports-old.img
https://iubuntu.cz/mx4/arale-boot-anbox-ubports-latest.img (I'd recommend this one as it has the latest initrd.img)

Then continue by installing the above images just as mentioned here:
https://forums.ubports.com/topic/1676/development-testers-for-anbox

If the image is flashed and your system booted up you should be able to check anbox binder is available eg. like this:

phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ file /dev/anbox-binder
/dev/anbox-binder: character special (511/0)

Installing Anbox may become a bit tricky since we have little space to operate with - so remount your / partition rw as mentioned in the original post, update and upgrade via apt, create some folder in your home, called e.g. "anbox" and do this:
apt -o Dir::Cache::Archives=/home/phablet/anbox install anbox-ubuntu-touch

Now we are almost there. You can now delete that new folder in home with all its content.

However in order for the last step: anbox-tool install to work you'll need to do this:

sudo nano /usr/bin/anbox-tool

and edit this line (it is one of the first lines of code, bellow the license comment):
DEVICES_URL = "https://iubuntu.cz/mx4/devices.json" (not leaving anything after it - on this line)

No we have swapped the json file which it checks against with our own containing arale in the list.

Now just do the mentioned anbox-tool install - it will take a while. And you are good to go :).

Enjoy

PS. Thank you very much Marius for your precious time and very valuable help with this :).

(

Some of you may find these demos usable:
https://gitlab.com/zub2/SDLDemo
https://gitlab.com/zub2/MirGLESDemo

However with the Mir upgrade things should become a bit easier as regular Wayland-compiled SDL stuff should start working there. That is if I understand it correctly.

@flohack You are of course right, but it is not just that. Look at the other side of the coin - Microsoft hurt Linux a lot in the past. Among well known examples I could even share a local example: In 2000 Microsoft almost destroyed a computer selling company named Mironet because they preferred Linux. They had their computers confiscated for almost 2 years based on Microsoft telling police they have illegal software on their PCs - which turned out not to be true. Before this all happened they were the biggest computer selling company in the Czech republic and because of this other company (Alza) took their place instead (czech source). And not much has changed now with things like this.

In any case I don't intend to spam here. Just wanted to say I don't trust Microsoft - but maybe they are better now than in the past. And I understand that GitHub had issues and had to act. Regarding myself I wasn't sure whether I should move my own projects over to GitLab or stay until I read this thread's first post. But it is of course much easier to move a few projects of mine not relying on anything than such a complex infrastructure UBports has. And therefore I agree with you the move should note be based solely on the fact Microsoft has taken over the service as it works well for the project now and would require quite a lot of resources to proceed with the move.

Who knows what Microsoft plans for GitHub. But it surely will no longer be what it used to be as so many people moved away in the last day or so. And I must say I miss the nice, simple and straightforward interface on GitLab.

Hello,
I am aware that Flo is trying to get in touch with NetworkManager guys to make networking on our Ubuntu devices way better. He also mentioned it on the last call. There is also this related bug report available: https://github.com/ubports/ubuntu-touch/issues/885

My question is however as follows as I was not able to understand this at all so far:
At least Ubuntu 18.04+ has NetworkManager that supports captive portal detection and ignores interfaces with no data flow. So in case you were passing by a WiFi with captive portal or in case the signal was too bad it would simply ignore that interface and could still use mobile data.

Why is it not possible to backport a newer version of NetworkManager and see what happens?

Related to that Connectivity api: https://docs.ubuntu.com/phone/en/apps/api-qml-development/Ubuntu.Connectivity.NetworkingStatus is also in need of a redesign/rewrite as it is not fully working so when attending to NetworkManager it would be great to bind this to the possibilities of the latest network manager.

Thank you very much for shedding some more light on this topic and as always I really appreciate all the work you guys are doing!

@jezek Well, you would need to find the partition table of you phone to find the correct partition to flash the image to.

Not sure what would happen if the boot logo image was incorrect, it would work nonetheless (with a black screen) or perhaps it would brick the phone and you would have to reflash the correct image using fastboot then ... something like fastboot flash logo splash.img (the command may not work at all or could be different depending on the device).

And if you flash it to a wrong partition there is a great chance of bricking the phone.

@Stefano Hm, this doesn't make sense then. If it works with Android sending to manufacturer is certainly not an option here. If that's the case then it would mean the EFS doesn't get destroyed but rather Ubuntu Touch has issues reading it.

@UniSuperBox Would there be a way for users to debug this somehow? It would be great if this thing could be solved as it seems to be recurring quite often in the forums/on github.

Hi,
you can always Google man pages for specific things when on the go, even narrow it down by distro and its version when searching.

But it doesn't make much sense to have them installed on phones. It would just occupy precious space while being very rarely useful - especially when there are other sources available.

Ok, so there is this ppa https://launchpad.net/~bhdouglass/+archive/ubuntu/clickable with the latest forked package that is even available for bionic :). And it has xenial app support. With that reviewing the packages should work correctly.

@dtarrant "BTW I noticed that the bottom of the forum menu is partially off the screen."
If you bump into any such issues it would be ideal if you could try to browse for them here: https://github.com/ubports/ubuntu-touch/issues (in case such report exists already)
and if found add your comment to that issue with any further information that may be helpful.

If you can't find such issue reported already then open up a new ticket, giving as much description as possible, adding your device info, channel + release in which the error occurs (or say any if it is not specific to a single release) and ideally attach a screenshot/photo. Only then these kind of issues can be addressed (if possible and easy to fix) as these are listed at a single specific place and forum is not the best place to report anything. Maybe asking others if they have the same issue - for that, this is a good place I'd guess.

But to be honest if this is a device-specific issue the fix will probably not come from the main development team but someone from the community would have to fix it. Though as mentioned, there is a higher chance of getting some traction on GitHub rather than here.

Well, yes. Unfortunately this map server is dead now: http://schreuderelectronics.com/osm/

As for maps I would suggest hoping for https://github.com/rinigus/pure-maps/ to get support for offline Maps on Ubuntu Touch (on SailfishOS this should work). It also uses a newer version of OSMScout while this old app is apparently useless now.

Feel free to use the click built from here if you have usage for it: https://www.iubuntu.cz/apps/osmscout.zubozrout_0.5.6_armhf.click
But for now I've taken the app down from the store

Also, if anyone would like to continue development on this app, feel free

It seems like this is a bit more difficult on MX4 (no space left in the respective filesystem) - but with a bit of persuading I was able to get the update installed following these steps:

1. sudo ubports-qa install xenial_-_edge_-_wayland (finished with error)
2. apt -o Dir::Cache::Archives=/home/phablet/Downloads full-upgrade (processing the updates using Downloads folder to save the packages to prior installing)

With the above modifications I can confirm the screen being black on startup :).
Unfortunately though I am still getting what(): SDL_Init failed: No available video device. And this could be an issue with my Wayland modifications in the code - which now seems more probable.

@dobey This one should be it: https://gitlab.com/zubozrout/sdl2-demo/tree/wayland

To build it it should hopefully be enough to follow these instructions: https://gitlab.com/zubozrout/sdl2-demo/tree/wayland#building-the-sdl2-demo-project

Ok, I am getting the same error even if I remove and install the app again or compile it with a higher version number.

@dobey Ha, good point. I'll try that when I can - and thank you very much for the info :).

I've tried this but it doesn't seem to be the way to go (It doesn't tell me more info):
WAYLAND_DEBUG=client ubuntu-app-launch zub.sdldemo_SDLDemo_0.2

And running just this doesn't tell me much more but I'd expect there would be something missing for the app to run without ubuntu-app-launch:

phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ WAYLAND_DEBUG=client /opt/click.ubuntu.com/zub.sdldemo/current/sdl_demo 
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'SDL2pp::Exception'
  what():  SDL_Init failed: No available video device
Aborted

@alan_g Seems ok to me:

phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ ls -al $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/wayland-0
srwxrwxr-x 1 phablet phablet 0 srp 14 17:01 /run/user/32011/wayland

Thank you all for your reply :).

phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ echo $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR
/run/user/32011
phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ ls /run/user/32011/
confined      mir_socket          upstart-dbus-bridge.1685.pid
dbus-session  mir_socket_trusted  upstart-file-bridge.1685.pid
dconf         pulse               upstart-udev-bridge.1685.pid
keyring       signond             wayland-0
libertine     upstart             wayland-0.lock

$WAYLAND_DISPLAY - I don't thinks it is set at all but maybe I am looking wrong.

I've also tried to make the app unconfined and there is no difference in the error at all.
https://www.iubuntu.cz/apps/zub.sdldemo_0.2_armhf.click (unconfined click with some binaries with it - I've built it from the zub's source, it is hosted on my server, but you should never trust random packages like that so this is only for those very adventurous)

Hi,
I've tried to compile an SDL demo with Wayland instead of Mir which should be a way to go now on edge (at least as far as I know) but the compiled app seems not to be able to start at all:

terminate called after throwing an instance of 'SDL2pp::Exception'
  what():  SDL_Init failed: No available video device

Except for the Mir/Wayland SDL part everything is the same as in this project: https://gitlab.com/zub2/SDLDemo

Do I need to modify anything in the .desktop file for instance to get it running or is it more difficult than that?