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".

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.

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 :).

(

@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.

@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.

@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.

Hello,
I've been trying to migrate an app previously created for vivid over to xenial and it seems to be bumping into the following issue:
** (process:5611): WARNING **: Unable to start app 'transport.zubozrout_Transport_1.1': Invalid app ID: transport.zubozrout_Transport_1.1

That is everything builds fine, the predecessor of this app even works fine, but for some reason I can't launch this app. If I build it with 15.04 it launches fine on xenial but doesn't work as it should afterwards.

So my question is, how is the app ID string generated so that I can change it to a valid string. And what is the issue? Is it the uppercase T, numbers or the dot?

(I am using clickable on 18.04 tu build my old Ubuntu SDK project)

Appreciate all your help.

@keneda I would, but the qml error might not be significant and the other one is probably not UT Tweak Tool related. I would expect that to be more a Lomiri issue TBH. Nonetheless I am not sure I have enough data for either, at least I don't see them

@kugiigi I am more than willing but it doesn't seem help on my end I am afraid. Not sure if the system would go without crashes for some time after a factory reset, but it would certainly re-appear soon. I did a factory reset less than a month ago and didn't notice any significant pause with these crashes. And I did many factory resets over the years, even switched from one MX4 to another a year ago as my original MX4 broke.

However HW wise you are correct MX4 is well past its lifetime, yet still survivable fortunately and much better than the PinePhone :). I guess Florian has mentioned somewhere there is a chance we might be getting some new phones later this year so perhaps I will finally find a replacement, can't wait TBH :).

Hello,
a recent thread opened on this forum: https://forums.ubports.com/topic/6497/os-crashed-with-ut-tweak-tool/7 has made me wonder about a more serious issue I am experiencing with my MX4.

I am getting system crashes upon receiving Telegram messages quite often. Sometimes it goes a few days without a single crash I would notice but there are days it can crash many times. I guess this mainly depends on how many messages I receive, but could also be different if my phone gets slower due to some heavier phone usage (having more apps open, web browsing).

So far I found a crash comes whenever it is the least suitable, like when you are trying to open up a PDF with a ticket to a bus for instance :). But even if I just have my phone laying on a desk the whole day I can clearly hear the vibration motor turning on from time to time whenever the phone restarts due to a crash, which still excludes instances in which Lomiri is able to reload without a system restart.

The very first Network/Telegram related error I could find I've logged was actually back in Canonical times here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/mir/+bug/1630230 but that no longer happens to my knowledge.

The error I am experiencing for years now (but not back at Canonical times to my knowledge) is this one: https://github.com/ubports/ubuntu-touch/issues/1164

I more or less just gave up on this issue by now but am wondering if there are really no other MX4 users out there experiencing this? Seems very weird for me to be the only one.

Thank you

Now I got this crash again @Keneda. Unity crashed upon closing the UT Tweak tool so was trying to restart itself and before it could load the whole system restarted seeing the bootloader logo. But no more again now.

I am also seeing these kind of logs in the app log:

qt.qpa.mirclient: Attempted to deliver an event to a non-existent window, ignoring.

and:

file:///opt/click.ubuntu.com/ut-tweak-tool.sverzegnassi/0.6.2/qml/main.qml:36: TypeError: Value is null and could not be converted to an object

where the first one could potentially kill Unity I guess but I am seeing both these errors even when it doesn't crash.

When looking at this file .cache/upstart/unity8.log.1.gz I can see some more details starting around 19:04:38 when the app was launched, then 19:04:41 when I closed it. Then there is a gap in between 19:04:42.094 and 19:05:29.635 when unity crashed, started loading itself up again after this gap. And then finally at 19:06:27.876 the whole system went down going all the way thorough the bootloader. Here is the log, though I am not sure if anything can actually be useful there to debug this: https://zubozrout.cz/data/logs/ut-tweak-tool-unity-crash.log

Seems similar to my phone crashing from time to time but usually at least few times a day upon receiving Telegram messages: https://github.com/ubports/ubuntu-touch/issues/1164 (a long standing issue I seem to be continually getting for ages now).

@keneda I am unable to get it crash today either :/. But it was constantly crashing for me yesterday evening even after multiple reboots and I've certainly seen these crashes before (in the last few months) too.

@sven Meizu MX4, latest devel. But I don't think this could be device or some OS version specific :(, so have no idea what could be causing NetworkManager to ignore these config file changes. After all it must be using them since it autoconnects to known networks listed in that /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections folder.

@mateo_salta I am getting the same and am on the dev channel, so that's not it: https://forums.ubports.com/topic/3188/morph-browser-not-possible-to-show-map-due-to-missing-webgl/9?_=1627584581816 ... Is the ubports-qa command even available on stable/staging? I thought it is not present at all there.

Weird, I've never experienced that. And even now it works just fine with my MX4. What does however crash the system for me is closing UT Tweak tool - even if not entering the password yet. It did miraculously not crash for me just one time in at least 10 attempts I gave it now. And it is not the first time I've noticed this as I've been experiencing that behaviour for at least a few months now (but fortunately I only launch UT Tweak tool very rarely).

@sven said in How to disable autoconnect for known Wi-Fi connections?:

autoconnect=false

Weird, I've just tried it and upon inserting autoconnect=false to the [connection] section in that file the respective WiFi network is not autoconnected on reboot and only if clicked on in the list of available WiFi networks with the UI. I am not sure if you need a different usecase and I misunderstood that but this config should definitely work as the network manager on the phone is basically the same thing as the one you can find on the desktop.

Perhaps a stupid question to ask but did you save the changes in the file before leaving the nano text editor? As I have no idea what else could cause the issue. Also for changes to this folder remounting / fs to read/write should not be necessary.

I don't think you can do that with the UT UI, but since there is a NetworkManager behind all this you should be able to configure things manually in a console.

e.g. like this:
sudo nano /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/MyNetorkSSID

and add autoconnect=false somewhere under [connection]. I haven't tested it but based on some sources like these config examples on the Gnome web it should be correct.

Not sure if there is a way to do that for all as well as new networks (maybe), but from what I've seen on various forums this may not be possible.