Your biweekly UBports newsletter is here... again!

Hello community!

Welcome to the UBports Foundation email newsletter, August 6th, 2021

From your editor

Hi! I think today is going to be a short news letter. One of the reasons is that my father-in-law is turning 83 today and we will have a familiy gathering/lunch. And you know what they say; people who celebrate more of their birthdays tend to get older. All (bad) joking aside, our project is doing great! This monday, there will be an article about all things UBports in the Dutch news paper called Financieel Dagblad (sort of translates to Financial daily news). This news paper is the daily must read for many Dutch business people, so I am very, very happy with it. When officially published I'll see if I can get a translated version out for those not familiar with Dutch as, after all, it is 35th on the list of most used language in the world (yeah, I know, I was just as surprised it wasn't higher on the list :-) ).

Have I ever mentioned that we currently do small snippets of news every week on LinkedIn ( https://www.linkedin.com/company/18187364) ? The article is always both in Dutch and English. So if you have a LinkedIn account you can follow the UBports Foundation and you should see it every monday morning in your timeline (if all goes well of course).

Still hoping all is well on your end. Warm greetings and stay safe!

Jeroen "Quote" Baten

UBports Foundation elections coming up

Hi. With the upcoming elections I would like to point out that your vote matters.

If you have contributed to the project in any way, shape or form (programming, translating, testing, promoting) over the last 3 month, you can sign for the Board of Trustees. Those are the people who can vote on the new members for the Board of Directors.

Please apply to vote, it is a very simple process: https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-news-1/post/become-a-member-of-the-ubports-foundation-3766.

Every vote counts!

PDK and 20.04 progress, part 2

Have you already checked out the PDK repo or snap? (https://github.com/ubports/ubports-pdk). It will give you a running UT on your own desktop!

So, what to do after getting this running? Well there is the epic list of issues that needs fixing ( https://gitlab.com/groups/ubports/-/epics/10).

For those who are feeling some sort of gap between getting the PDK running and starting to work on issues, we got you covered. There are currently at least three projects running in parallel to get some sort of training or courseware so more people can learn how to help out. Stay tuned. When we know more, so will you!

In the mean time, see the first item in the "Help needed!"-section below how you can take your first steps in testing.

Help needed!

If you have some spare time, we can use some help in the following domains:

Do you want to help the UBports QA team with testing fixes and improvements in Ubuntu Touch? We have written a blog article that guides you through the process: https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-news-1/post/test-fixes-and-new-features-with-ubports-qa-3772
The design of the Clock and Notes apps need some love. Do you have graphical skills or a background in UX? Then find the UI/UX team in the Design part of the UBports forum.
If you have a PinePhone or PineTab, please test the newest changes in the Development channel. The more feedback we get from tests, the quicker you have a properly functional device.
Do you want to help port a device to Ubuntu Touch? Now's the best time to start! The porting documentation has just been greatly expanded and improved: https://docs.ubports.com/en/latest/porting/introduction/index.html

Ubuntu Touch in the media

Nothing to report, but there will be something this monday. We will talk about it more in the next edition. Did I miss anything? Did you see a mention somewhere? Tell me at jeroen@ubports.com!

Interview with Cibersheep

We had a little chat with Joan CiberSheep, the head of the UI/UX steering committee for Ubuntu Touch.

For each OTA release of Ubuntu Touch, Joan CiberSheep designs a new tangram mascot: "Each release has a main flavor or aspect of the operating system that's being worked on. I try to translate that aspect into the animal it reminds me of. OTA-18 was all about the huge efforts to move to an Ubuntu 20.04 base, with steady work and improving memory usage: therefore, an elephant."

Asked about how people with graphical skills or a background in UX can contribute to the design of Ubuntu Touch, he says: "Everyone has an interest in different aspects of the UX. You could check the whole system for accessibility issues: it's important that Ubuntu Touch is accessible to everyone. We're also open to discussions about improving the user experience. Some core apps need some love too (we're looking to you, Clock and Notes apps). The human interface guidelines are available in the UBports documentation and you can find the team in the Design part of the forum."

Read the full interview on our blog: https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-news-1/post/interview-with-cibersheep-3769

Ubuntu Touch Q&A 105

Florian and Dalton were the hosts of the Ubuntu Touch Q&A 105 session. Let's talk about two of the topics they discussed: some recent developments in Ubuntu Touch games and improvements for the PinePhone and PineTab.

The Godot game engine has seen a lot of progress recently on Ubuntu Touch. Pavel Prosto has published an app to test 3D graphics performance on your Ubuntu Touch device: Godot 3D Test. Some new Godot games for Ubuntu Touch are Bug Bounty! by Marquis Kurt and Liner and Circle Jump by Abdurrahmaan Iqbal. Another game, written in Qt/QML and JavaScript, is Mateo Salta's Dead Ascend. You can find them all on OpenStore.

Dalton has made some improvements for the PinePhone and PineTab: he has merged the 5.13 kernel for both devices and fixed rotation on the PineTab. Bluetooth is now working on the phone, but not on the tablet. The fix for notifications on wake is being reworked. If you have a PinePhone or PineTab, please test the newest changes in the Development channel. The more feedback we get from tests, the quicker you have a properly functional device.

You can watch the whole session or read our notes here: https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-news-1/post/ubuntu-touch-q-a-105-3770

Small addition to last weeks news letter

Hi. So, I told you last week about this little gem. I did a bit more research and found the origins of this news. So you can read more about it here ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27903630 ) and here (https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6820715919568961536/ ). I think hacker skills like these are pretty amazing. I could tell you also about this completely off-topic project (https://github.com/lowobservable/coax/tree/master/interface2) but, like I said, it is completely off-topic. Do you know of a completely off-topic project that you think is amazing? Drop me an email and I will see if we can do a small mention in one of the next episodes of this news letter. Why? Well, because we're all hackers, right?

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).