News and Update
Alfred and Florian presented.
Fixes
There have ben some CI fixes and the volume control for the Vollaphone x23 has been repaired. Libhybris has been modified so that it works better with the UI and knows whether it is running with Wayland or not. A problem with Lomiri online account plugins has been fixed. Progress towards Noble continues.
Mimi browser experiment
Alfred has been looking at his Mimi browser experiment again. He is planning a very early and rough release to the OpenStore so that users can have a look at it. It will be confined because it could be flaky still. The browser is based on Webkit, which is an Apple project. It is designed to work with modern website protocols. It will be shipped as a Click, outside the operating system. That makes it easier to play around with than the embedded QtWebengine browser that we ship with the OS. The UI looks very familiar and up-to-date. We have not been able to update QtWebengine because we are stuck on an old version of Qt. There is no reason why webapps should not use this Webkit model in future.A reminder that this release will not be so much for ‘use’. It will be for testing and your feedback to Alfred will help to shape the next steps and show where there are errors. Don’t expect proper video playback or hardware acceleration at this stage. It will certainly be useable with some websites that Morph browser struggles with.
Alfred would very much like to have a team working on this browser so please volunteer if you have the skills.
Apps news
KnownDict is an app which can connect to or download various online dictionaries. Hisacro has updated it to a new version which works on Focal.
Nymaea is a professionally made app for home automation which is frequently updated. Many thanks to the company which provides it. We hope that Michael Zanetti will join us again on the Q&A soon.
Odoo Timesheet has been updated again.
There is an EarTrainer application for musical intervals. Andrej has brought a very important fix. If you are part way through a session when the app closes it will remember where you finished when it starts up again.
DeltaChat, an application which turns email into a messenger has seen continuing development. Lothar is doing a lot of work on it. (Alan Pope, one of the creators of UT, popped by to say that DeltaChat works quite well. It is always good to hear from him!)
Rockwork has seen some tweaks. It enables pairing with a Pebble watch. Thanks to Muhammad for that.
Iquit is to help with stopping smoking. The updates from Mick will not be very obvious but it will be more solid and run better.
Amazfish is another smartwatch controller but aimed at various fitness devices but it also works with Asteroid OS. Very interesting from Josef.
Upiano is a mini piano, especially fun for children. Thank you Andrej.
Sponsors were thanked. We are truly grateful for every donation and making a donation is very easy to do. Select one of our options.
We have a much larger number of Patreons than those whose names are read out. There are around a hundred in total, but we highlight those who pay a relatively large sum each month.
Questions
The News section of our forum is the best place to post questions for the Q&A. YouTube live chat, Telegram and Matrix are other places to post a question.
If you didn't know, the Forum questions get priority.
A reminder that it is okay also to donate to specific projects within Ubports.
X11 apps
JohnDoe asked about X11 apps on UT and whether it is correct that Snap has transformed this? Yes, the use of Snaps goes way beyond what Libertine was able to offer and it does provide an environment for running native Ubuntu apps in a desktop setting. Because of this it is expected that interest in Libertine will diminish so it will probably not attract the developer support that would allow it even to provide a niche role in future.
GT mentioned that GNOME apps are seeing a lot of development for mobile right now. Could they be modified for UT and would that be a good idea?
There is certainly no technical barrier to porting them over but it does mean a fair amount of work and that means people to do it. There is no indication of anyone volunteering for that at the moment but they would be very welcome.
Next version surprises?
Kimo asked whether we are expecting any big surprises in the next version? From a user point of view, not so much. We expect Noble to bring a more comprehensive implementation of Wayland so that will improve the creation of the UI. Mainly we are looking to increase stability. Some UI tweaks are in a very early stage of preparation but those will not be in the early Noble build. We want to transition safely to the same level and when we are satisfied that everything is solid, we can start to apply changes. A simple UI for configuration settings would be great to see and a lot of people would like that.
VoLTE
From the live chat, StuDoesLinux asked whether there are any updates on VoLTE? NotKit and others have spent a lot of time looking at MediaTek chips to try to find a way forward. Their idea is to create a plugin for ofono. Some good progress is being made with that and there is an expectation that MediaTek devices will be ‘rescued’. It isn’t just UT affected by the change. Some Lineage devices and just devices running older versions of Android will be rendered useless.
It appears that more of the VoLTE stack runs soft with MediaTek, whereas with Qualcomm it is mostly hardware mediated.
Ubuntu Touch brand name
Con Spy asked about the name Ubuntu Touch. Search results bring masses of Ubuntu links. Could we change the name? We have been given the right to use the name by Canonical and it is quite nice to be linked by association with a large, respected brand. Our use of the label even allows us to put it on the side of packages shipped by Pine or Volla, so it is quite a big deal. The real limiting factor is algorithms and those work against us whatever the name. What would make a change to that would be mentions in leading Linux media, podcasts etc. so that we become a news item. Brand name changes are often a bad idea and they start rumours.
See you next time :-)