News and Update
Marius, Alfred and AppLee presented.
Core apps update and Noble news
Music and Calendar core apps have had an update along with Weather and Clock and behind the scenes there has been more work getting ready for Noble.
Marius said that we could expect quite a nice version of 24.04 to be ready early next year but a reasonably functioning build might be released as soon as just before Christmas. Anyone who can is urged to come forward to help with the packaging and compiling work. If you can’t get in touch via Telegram you can use the forum. Our new approach will be to announce set launch dates (subject to any delay for safety reasons) and run with what we have by then. Previously we have waited around until we felt that we had ‘enough’.
Alfred mentioned that plug-and-play for displays is now working in Mir2. (Actually Mir 1.8) It has been merged for Focal too so will patch the display dropping bug.
Another fix allows printer settings to show, including with app-mediated CUPS on Ubuntu desktop, but also with Snap mediated CUPS – for example in UT.
Another modification allows the system to understand calls for 25.3 resources.
The Greeter for Lomiri has been simplified.
OpenStore apps news
There are no new applications in the OpenStore.
Launcher Modular has had some interesting improvements and more are on the way.
OSM Scout Server has been modified but an important warning has been added. If you had the version 3.1.5 and updated from there, you will have a bug which causes the background service to fail. Disable automatic start in settings, re-enable automatic start and it will be back to working normally. Thank you Jonatan for this.
Gwado has been busy. They have contributed to Radio Nova, Nextcloud Music and an unofficial Deezer app called Uteezer.
ImageComposer has had some work and the export function now works seamlessly with Gallery, without needing an intermediate step.
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.
New browser progress
Domubpkm asked Alfred about progress with his browser. There have been more dependencies added and more libraries will have to ship with the Snap. At the moment the work in progress is no longer functional and Alfred has not had time to catch up, let alone cope with all the future library changes. He has made some improvements in the current build and is reluctant to reverse those just to allow a an upgrade on the existing app. The underlying problem is that the webkit base is evolving much faster than our ability to keep up. There is still some room for some UI tweaks on the first build, for example to store favourites. Building against 24.04 will involve an easier approach to using Snaps, without some of the library problems. That might allow us to sidestep some of the webkit issues. As ever, Alfred would be in a much easier position if others came forward to help him out.
Focal outstanding issues
Charly commented that a necessary downside of all the attention on 24.04 means that some outstanding issues with Focal are not getting fixed because the resources are not available to address both. Often, those issues are device specific and have to be fixed by the porter. Work on the system will not help with that situation. OTA6 was released as a bonus a little while ago, so it is not the case that Focal is being neglected. It is true that we are not developing any new features for Focal. For that, you will have to wait for Noble. With this and in general, we are unable to take any action unless we can see what the problem is in a bug tracker, so it is very important to document and report the bugs.
Halium
Salah referred to a block on Android versions but was not quite correct. If a device is capped at Android 9, it is true that it is never going to get a higher Halium version. If it is open to upgrade to Android 13, then we do indeed have a Halium 13 version which may be suitable. We are not stuck on 9 across the board. A device maintainer does not have to jump to the highest possible Halium version in order for their port to be considered complete. Actually Halium 9 is more complete, for example in media encoding. The case for the move to 24.04 is quite different. It brings new libraries and features and connects us to upstream resources.Focal updates
Domubpkm also asked whether we will see any more updates for Focal? Actually, yes. It will not bring anything new though and will just consist of minor tidying. There is still a possibility that Focal will get VoLTE but we will see how that goes. Certainly no promises on that. Device page alert banner
Jean-Luc asked about the presentation of device comparisons on the Devices page. The Redmi 9 Pro has a banner alerting to the fact that it is entirely reliant on the porter and there is no guarantee that all features will work. Nevertheless he has been using the device for years and is pretty happy with it, so why be negative? Stanwood backed up that view. The answer is that a Gitlab page is maintained where porters can update the capabilities of the device they are working on. The best thing is to check the detailed functionality checklist which all devices are measured against. The banner warning is just a statement of fact. If you buy a device and the porter drops out, you lose your support. It matters that you make your choice with your eyes open and it makes sense for Ubports to issue a disclaimer. If there have been no updates for a year that will flag a warning that the device appears to be no longer supported. There is no automation for the device checkmarks so there is no guarantee that the information will be fully up-to-date.
Firefox
With reference to the discussion about Firefox in the live chat, Firefox requires the addition of a module for scrolling on a mobile device. The same applies to the integration of an on screen keyboard. That is a general feature of Wayland and X11 applications. So Firefox as a Snap is really not useful on a UT phone at present. X11 through mallit would likely work but that could not be done with confinement.
See you next time :-)