News and Updates
AppLee presented.
24.04 is now on stable release for Ubuntu Touch, as version 1.0.
We are expecting a security fix shortly, so do make sure you look for an update regularly whether you are on Focal or Noble.
BraX3 phone updates
The other big news is the partner, Brax Technologies, has a working build on the device. There are still some issues with it to resolve so it is not ready for release at the moment, but this is a big milestone. The boot loader is not working yet and there is no connection to the OTA. These things will happen, though. There is no time scale, but we are hoping that we may be able to show the device working, not in the next show but in the one after that.
Fixing annoying issues
Marius has been listing all of the issues which although not particularly serious are annoying and likely to put people off using UT. He wants to get a project underway to systematically fix all those annoyances. We want to look at those issues whether they affect low end users or high-end users. that is why all feedback will be very helpful. Marius has written a blog post of this explaining what sort of information we need from you. We are very strongly committed to making UT phone a good choice for people who are not geeks. Maybe we will start a special group on Telegram to gather issues and suggestions. Developers are used to finding workarounds for problems which they come across and then they get so used to the workarounds that they forget there was a problem. They then need ‘normal’ people to remind them.
eSIM
Marius is still working on eSIM. The biggest problem at the moment is that it takes a long time to set up and it isn’t obvious why. There is already a user interface to help you through the set up process.There is even a QR code reader embedded into the set up app. It is great to use an eSIM for cheap data when travelling.
OpenStore apps
There are three new apps in the OpenStore. Each of them is a web app. One is a bookmark for Waze, the route map. The second is for accessing Google Maps (which many of us prefer not to do) and the last gives access to RoyalRoad, where users publish their online novels. Many thanks to ChromiumOS-Guy for these.
A new full app is AIchat by Thra Radi. Again, not something that all of us will want to use, but if you are interested in LLMs this app can provide a simple interface with around 20 different models.
Brenno has provided us with Sealed, which is a Bitwarden password manager client. It is great to have that for UT.
Translate is a native app powered by Lingva which we had lost but has been brought back to Focal by Weston. Akari Puzzle Game has been brought back by Mateo.
ToDoList, YouTube app and various others have also been brought across and hopefully will also function in Noble. Actually Mateo already has the YouTube interface working on Noble.
ContactBridge by Brenno allows you to use Nextcloud to sync your address books.
Martin has Transport (Czech and Slovak) working on Noble.
Daniel has updated CinnyUT which is a Matrix client. That provides us with a good alternative to Telegram.
Sponsors were thanked.
Marius was able to join.
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.
Application compatibilityPovoq asked whether anyone is working on steps to install other Linux mobile applications, for example with Flatpaks. Marius commented that our main focus is Snaps right now, though Flatpak wouldn’t be impossible. Actually in a way it should be a bit easier because although both are containers, Snaps use a kernel base and Flatpak doesn’t. As for greater sharing across mobile platforms that is more complicated because it requires a screen rendering mechanism like Lomiri UI toolkit or KDE’s Origami. The core of our system is the native apps though because they are lighter and work much better. Compatibility means bloat and compromise. Gnome and GTK are increasingly building on Canonical’s work on scalability though.
24.04 noble upgrade: apps and performance
CaptainFrank asked several questions. The first one was about the availability of apps on Noble. Is it true that most will not be available and how will we know? If you have Noble installed you will see apps under the noble heading and Focal heading. A lot of them will just work on both. Some will have library dependences which make them stop working on Noble but app developers are gradually working through that. There may be some apps which you rely a lot, which have not been brought over yet, but overall there should not be many problems. In the previous transition we used up channels but this time we are using app frameworks. The aim with that is to maintain as much continuity as possible. It is good practice for developers to recompile their apps against the new frameworks.
If there is a big problem is it possible to go back to Focal? Yes, there should be no problem with that.
Is Noble more resource intensive? No, it shouldn’t be and if you find any issues that suggests that there is a bug. We use profiling and tracing to check that out and we haven’t seen any issues. What problems will there be for people who stay on Focal? For the moment there will be no problems problems at all. You will be missing some new features and that gap will get wider. On top of that you will stop getting any upgrades. Over the longer term you will see things start to fade and probably the most noticeable thing will be some major issues with the browser. As usual, we would expect security issues to mount up slowly.
Porting new devices
Ban Jo in live chat whether porting to UT is realistic with limited technical knowledge? Well, there is a lot of documentation available and there is a support group to help you with details. How difficult it would be depends on the exact device and the android version you are working with. in some cases there is a generic build already which you then need to adapt, but that is a much more straightforward process. If something goes bad right at the beginning then you have a major challenge on your hands and it may not be worth continuing.
Amersfoort meeting
Verwega wanted to say a big thank you for the shout out for the Amersfoort meeting. That brought in some lovely people and we were able to share new things.
See you next time :-)