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 :).

(

@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.

@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.

@fungie said in Miatoll devices UT Focal support:

So each time i do a clean install of ubuntu touch i have to flash (in this case) the stock firmware.

I doubt it. You can use the installer to reinstall UT with a wipe option to make it a clean install. If you go from a non Android 10-based system then yes, you need Android 10 firmware to be able to use UT because it is at least currently based on Halium 10 which expects Android 10 drivers ...

Just FYI, the credit is not mine but goes to my brother - his nick is zub, mine is not :). Unfortunately I lack the deeper knowledge necessary for such things. All I did was that I upgraded it to work with clickable (already on the original repo) and to run on 16.04 (apparently the apparmor framework update is still not there, but whatever).

Regarding the SDL2 clickable template it doesn't sound as a bad idea though. However I really can't spend the time on it now :(. And the second thing is that SDL is no longer supporting Mir and new stuff may require newer SDL. So the question is whether this is useful. With Unity 8 and Mir upgrades (now on Edge) Wayland-enabled stuff should start working. So it would probably be better to start from scratch and take a look at how to compile SDL apps with Wayland. And I suspect that will be much more documented and a more streamlined experience.

Sadly Mir didn't turned out the way I was hoping it would ... it is a nicely written code on par with the latest standards as that's how Canonical rolls but that's probably not what the general Linux community wants :(.

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.

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.

@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.

I've noticed overall there are a lot of logs (and the Logviewer is flooded). It might be good for debugging but how good is it for the ssd's on the phone actually?

Ah, I was finally able to look at it. So for some reason only 2 milestones are visible for the default group using the api, but the OS updates themselves are present here under the development subgroup: https://gitlab.com/api/v4/groups/53986711/milestones
... which means that is probably what I can use as an info source then.

@beyolf No at all. But interesting that options is there :). But it is great it can be disabled at least ... Thank you for the info!

@fungie

-Halium is based on the stock ROM for these devices

Only the Firmware part (drivers communicating with the hardware), which is the base of the stock ROM and something that gets installed on your phone if you install the full stock ROM, yes.

-and in the case of Xiaomi this means you have to unlock the boot loader again then

I don't think so, but we seem to differ here. Never happened to me, though I was only ever installing the stock ROM via recovery, never through MIflash tool mentioned by @beyolf. Might be the difference, IDK.

if dirty flashing Ubuntu touch on a broken Ubuntu touch installation without installing the stock rom is possible

Of course it is. UT is using the base firmware it needs, but if you break the UT installation somehow the firmware will be intact and you can always just use the UBports installer to make a new clean install, as mentioned already.

@fungie as I said, I never had to go down the road. Whenever I wanted to flash a different firmware I just installed the respective Xiaomi system using the recovery flashable zip archive. Then I didn't even have to let it boot, rebooted directly to fastboot and let UBports Installer to take care of it. And as mentioned above^ this time, once 20.04 is available, I am going to ignore the full system installation and just going to try to install the firmware also available on the same xiaomifirmwareupdater site, because that needs to suffice.

Of course in case you experience a bootloader relock just like @beyolf you might need to go down that route of booting the Xiaomi system and unlocking it again in system settings.

@fungie said in Miatoll devices UT Focal support:

So each time i do a clean install of ubuntu touch i have to flash (in this case) the stock firmware.

I doubt it. You can use the installer to reinstall UT with a wipe option to make it a clean install. If you go from a non Android 10-based system then yes, you need Android 10 firmware to be able to use UT because it is at least currently based on Halium 10 which expects Android 10 drivers ...

@fungie said in Miatoll devices UT Focal support:

I even removed some lines from the sh file for device verification

You never want to do that. It is there for a very good reason to indicate you are doing something wrong, as you now unfortunately know :(.

@beyolf Weird. I think I've done that many times and never had to unlock it again. You need to wait 7 days for each unlock or is it just the thing you can then quickly change (unlock the bootloader) in the stock image Android settings?

@domubpkm Interesting it has moved. Thank you for opening this thread as I was using that source for a webpage, so will need to change that.

Edit. Sorry for hijacking this thread :(, but any idea why only 2 closed milestones can be seen here (which is the new space to get them)?
https://gitlab.com/api/v4/groups/2966343/milestones

If I didn't have access I would expect to see none. Of course that link only works if you are already logged in to GitLab or send it with a personal token as explained here: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/api/group_milestones.html

@beyolf Are you sure? I think, once the bootloader is unlocked it stays unlocked forever - I've never experienced a relock with any of the Xiaomi devices I had or managed. You can use some of the available recovery builds and install a fastboot version of available firmware (or even the whole system). This time I plan to use this shortcut and downgrade from LineageOS 20 I now have to the Android 10 FW using just a FW image, for joyeuse that would be this link: https://xiaomifirmwareupdater.com/archive/firmware/joyeuse/

It worked just fine for a friend with a different Xiaomi device when upgrading to LineageOS 20 and afterall the firmware is what we are after so that the Halium 10 build of UT works.

It is way easier and faster than having to install the whole system + might also be a potential solution for a situation in which there would be an upgrade in between Halium versions, so e.g. if moving to Halium 11 or higher - which might even let people keep the data and installed apps rather than doing a full reinstall.