The Post-Fosdem Newsletter edition!

Dearest Community,

February has been an unusual month so far.

The Ubports team traveled to Brussels for FOSDEM ‘23. To give you an impression, we collected some pictures and wrote a little report on it. It would be nice if we could have more opportunities to meet one another offline!

We also want to inform you about the development planning for ‘23 which follows the vision of Marius (which has something to do with taking over the world…).

Anyway, enjoy this new edition of the newsletter. You can always reach out to us at socials@ubports.com.

Have a nice read!

Greetings from the UBports Newsletter Team

The First Stable Release 20.04 OTA 1 is (nearly) out!

As you can see on our Gitlab board only a few issues need to be solved for the stable release.

From this point on we hope to have a continuous release flow with a Development Release, Release Candidate and Stable Release. As you may have noticed, the 20.04 RC has been waiting due some call audio regression (that is solved in the time of writing).

Development Planning 2023: Let’s take over the world…

Following Marius’ vision, we made a rough development planning with the core development team (you can see the list in the link below). Since we are an open-source community, transparency is key. Please give your feedback and let us know where you want to help out!

https://forums.ubports.com/topic/8670/development-planning-2023-lets-take-over-the-world

Events

FOSDEM 23 was a blast!

From Moem sitting crammed between two tall developers in the back of the car “hearing debugging happening on the spot, literally over my head as they were taller than I am was my personal highlight”, to Raoul who said that he drove up to event site with a car filled with merchandise and stuff for the stands and that within seconds everything was unloaded. Everyone was so eager to get started! This sums up the energy and atmosphere of being at Fosdem in Brussels.

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We found that Fosdem ‘23 was a big success! The stands were busy all the time with visitors. People asking all sorts of smart questions or trying out the devices or even buy merchandise to support the project. Moem remembered that at some point, there was a British fellow who was super eager to be a supporter and ambassador and bought two pieces of every item of merch there was!

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Of course, there was also Alfred who gave a talk and demo. This time about convergence and the myth of the ‘pocket size’ desktop computer leaving the public in awe when he demoed live Lomiri in desktop mode… You can check out his talk here: https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/speaker/alfred_neumayer/

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There was a special Fosdem Q&A organized which many of you might have been part of. But for those who’d like to check again what was discussed in the Fosdem Live Q&A 122, you can find the information here https://ubports.com/nl/blog/ubports-blogs-nieuws-1/post/ubuntu-touch-q-a-122-3877

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Debian 12 Soft Freeze Notes

Lomiri is being packaged for Debian so that it will end up in all Debian derivatives (like Ubuntu) that we use as base for Ubuntu Touch. Why is that? Debian has a social contract, which means that all derivatives will contribute to Debian and upstream projects. In the end they want everyone to benefit from their improvements. That’s the spirit!

This means that on the 12th February the Soft Freeze window closed. Currently Lomiri in Debian Bookworm feels too immature to ship in Debian 12. The Goal for Debian Bookworm (codename for Debian 12) is to:

• Run it as desktop environment
• Integrate well with Debian's base OS

Ongoing efforts for Lomiri in Debian 12 (to be resolved soon):

• Lomiri uses Ubuntu font will be replaced by Noto font
• Ayatana indicators need more love
◦ power indicator should be hidden if no battery attached to the system
◦ keyboard indicator shows wrong icon and is at wrong location
◦ network indicator does not seem to know about cable networks
◦ bluetooth indicator should be hidden if no bluetooth interface is available

So here comes a major call for help with testing and fixing issues specific to use cases of a Debian system for mainly Lomiri on desktop computers.

Lomiri Issues:

- - - No malit keyboard / No sensorFW -> so right now it is not usable for tablet
    - Tablet support probably needs to be made available via Debian 12 backports at some later point of time.
    - Lomiri crashes on devices with USB keyboard whenever you unplug the keyboard.
    - Various app integrations need more love (camera not working, media-player/music-player apps need better testing, etc. pp.)
    - X11 app integration, "other Wayland apps" integration need more testing
    - When switching to a tty (text console), the displaymanager Lomiri kicks in after a while and launches a new session…

We need you help to fix the issues we outlined above. When you would like to help you can visit the Lomiri Telegram group

Telegram Group

News from the Community

Lina Castro attended GDG DevFest 2022 in Cali

Lina Castro attended this year’s Google Developer Groups DevFest 2022 at Cali, Colombia on 17th December and wrote a short report about it.

“It was an amazing experience, and I was thrilled to have an opportunity to present at my hometown. This year's GDG DevFest was held at "Universidad Autonoma de Occidente" in Cali, Colombia”.

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“I was invited by the organization team and that felt incredible to me. I decided to present about Ubuntu Touch because as a topic that not google related, it is relatively new for everyone at the event, university and for GDG groups”.

“Being a woman, it was awesome to have this space and opportunity to talk about Ubuntu Touch as a different technology for a different audience. I chose to talk about the development of native apps on Ubuntu Touch (Introducción a el desarrollo de apps nativas en Ubuntu Touch)”.

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“It was absolutely a great experience to talk on DevFest Cali. The public was so receptive, and they understood everything about Ubuntu Touch topics and even though it was a "NEW" topic for them, it was very much accepted. They asked me questions about how Ubuntu Touch works and the app store? How can I get a device? How can I install Ubuntu Touch if my device is supported? All good questions which were all resolved in the end. It was the energy from the people that was so special and I'm so grateful about”!

“The organization was so great also I met many people and communities there and I got a new t-shirt from DevFest Cali also I spent time my everyone there sharing knowledge and conversations about Ubuntu Touch in a stand. I will hope see more people in the next year or at least received another invitation for create a workshop about development apps for Ubuntu Touch”.

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The pictures above say it all. Way to go Lina, let us know when you give another talk!

At Chat with the EU

Dr. Jorg Wurzer, founder of the Volla Phone, had an interview with the EU about open-source mobile operating systems. Nice fact: He says that UT is selected as primary operating system by 30% of the Volla customers!

Read the full interview here