| Hello community!Welcome to the UBports Foundation email newsletter, August 20th, 2021 |
From your editorSometimes you just need a bit of luck. And finding the right people is also a
matter of luck. Some time ago I reached out to long time open source writer
and journalist Koen Vervloesem to join our UBports marketing team as a writer.
And he has done this very nicely since.
Why am I telling you this? Well, next week I will be going on a short vacation.
And dead smack in the middle of that vacation is the scheduled publication of
another news letter! Well, I guess you guessed it. I asked Koen to take over
for a while as head of Publication and News letters. Not that we officially
have such a position, but for the fun of it, let's assume we do.
So, to help Koen get his feet wet in this News Letter stuff I asked him to do
this edition while I am still readily available for any support. Personally I
don't think he will need it, but you never know. So, without furthur ado, take
it away Koen!
Jeroen "Quote" Baten |
News, hot from the press
Sysmocom has won the official order to build phase 1 of VoLTE support in Ubuntu Touch and they will start working on that shortly. We hope to see the results somewhere at the end of September.
Apps in the spotlightHere are some new Ubuntu Touch apps to try out, presented in the latest Q&A session:Radio by Patrick Fial allows you to play radio streams using MediaHub. This means that the app does not have to be in focus while it's playing, so it will still work when the screen is off.Scooter by Patrick Fial allows you to access Bird's electric scooters. Just log into your existing Bird account and you can find scooter locations, ring a scooter, start a ride by scanning the QR code on the scooter, and more.
MiTubo by Alberto Mardegan plays internet video streams, for instance from YouTube. This is very useful because videos play pretty badly in Morph browser. In the app you can either enter a URL or search terms.Corona App by arnef scans and displays EU digital COVID certificates. Vaccination certificates, test certificates and recovery certificates are supported.
| You can find all these apps on the OpenStore.
|
Help needed!If you have some spare time, we can use some help in the following domains: Ubuntu Touch in the mediaHet Financieele Dagblad, a daily Dutch newspaper focused on business and financial matters, has published an interview with your editor about the ambitions of the UBports Foundation. You can read the article here (in Dutch, free registration required): https://fd.nl/futures/1407327/uitdager-apple-en-google-zoekt-slechts-1-mln-wij-hebben-de-privacy-op-orde
Did you see Ubuntu Touch mentioned somewhere? Tell me at jeroen@ubports.com!
Interview with Jeroen Baten
Koen had a little chat with your editor. Jeroen started as operational marketing manager for the UBports Foundation in January 2021, but he has already built quite a career in the open source world. Asked about what's so special about the UBports community, he answers:
"The one thing that makes our project special is the width of it all. It is an embedded operating system, it runs on many devices, it supports many languages, there are numerous apps for it and it has a very high bar set on user-friendliness. That is totally different from, say, an open source web server or database that only runs on a few different Linux distros and supports a few languages. And where user-friendliness is only a distant goal. And I absolutely think we’re doing something amazing."
Jeroen also talks about his work as operational marketing manager of the UBports Foundation, his plans and his vision about the future of Ubuntu Touch.
Read the full interview on our blog: https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-blogs-news-1/post/interview-with-jeroen-baten-3773 | Ubuntu Touch Q&A 106Florian and Alfred were the hosts of the Ubuntu Touch Q&A 106 session. Let's talk about two of the topics they discussed: the Halium build for Android 10 devices and the ongoing work on the migration to Ubuntu 20.04.
The Halium build for Android 10 devices is making some good progress, thanks to Nikita who added a lot of patches from upstream and Sailfish OS. Florian was amazed that this made it possible to switch over to his SHIFT6mq as a daily driver. This required a lot of manual fixes, and there's no build yet you can try for general use, so you'll need to have some patience. This is the first Halium 10 device that runs Ubuntu Touch, but eventually there will be a lot of them.
As for the work on migrating Ubuntu Touch to an Ubuntu 20.04 base: Ratchanan has updated the system image client to eventually enable on-phone system updates. This should make it possible to switch your Ubuntu Touch phone later from 16.04 to 20.04 without having to use the UBports installer. Meanwhile, the Gallery app has been tested successfully inside the Platform Development Kit, and similar tests are now happening with Morph browser. Florian also made a request to the community. If every active member of our community donates the equivalent of $10 a month, at least until delivery of 20.04 at the end of this year, it would give a major boost to that work. The core developers are working at their full capacity now, and the only way to achieve more would be to hire some extra developers, which requires money.
You can watch the whole session and read our notes here: https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-blogs-news-1/post/ubuntu-touch-q-a-106-3774
| Visualize package dependencies with debtree
The debtree command shows relationships between packages in a visual way. It generates a dependency graph in dot syntax, which you can process with the graphviz command to create a nice visualization. A picture is worth a thousand words, so debtree allows you to see at a glance which other packages a specific package needs.
This is especially interesting in the current migration from the Ubuntu 16.04 to 20.04 base for Ubuntu Touch. You can use debtree to visualize the dependency graph of a package on your 16.04-based Ubuntu Touch phone and do the same on the 20.04-based Ubuntu Touch Platform Development Kit and compare the two to find the differences in dependencies. Read on our blog how to explore the dependencies between packages in Ubuntu Touch with debtree: https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-blogs-news-1/post/visualize-package-dependencies-with-debtree-3775 |
And... it's a wrap! Stay tuned for our next episode in two weeks. If you want to let me know what you think, write me an email (jeroen@ubports.com). |
Thank you for joining us! |
|
|
