| Hello community!Welcome to the UBports Foundation email newsletter, July 23rd, 2021 |
From your editorOh, men. There is sooo much to talk about, soo much to share with you people. It is absolutely amazing. I can not begin to tell you how enthusiastic I am because of all these developments. So, let me shut up and talk about the actual stuff, right? So, small but important, we just past the 2000 subscribers to this news letter. Can you believe it? CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? I was convinced that after my first few episodes I would get a lot of unsubscribes, but no, you stayed around for more! Thank you so much!
Major topic 1: We have elections coming up. And that is your chance to become a member of the small group of people that steer our community. It is not so much hardware hacking as it is talking about how to steer our Ubuntu Touch ship. More on that in one of the next sections. Major topic 2: The results of our VoLTE research project have arrived. We will share all we currently know about this with you, down to the report with the technical stuff. Major topic 3: We send out an actual press release. One through a Dutch press release agency and after translating that also to all the addresses you people supplied me with over the last few months.
And of course we talk a bit about the latest Q&A 104 and we did an interview with a community member. So sit down, grab a cup of your favourite beverage and read on.
I hope all is well on your end. Warm greetings and stay safe! Jeroen "Quote" Baten | UBports Foundation elections coming up
First of, the UBports Foundation is a democratic
organization. And, after the last 2 years of getting it all started and
on its feet, its time for active members of the community to elect a new
Board of Directors, or BoD for short.
The current BoD consists of the following people: Marius Gripsgard, the guy who started the UBports project Jan Sprinz, of UBports-installer fame. Ricardo Mendoza, all-round phone and marketing expert and wizz
Ewald Pierre, the financial wizz in the BoD Florian Leeber, the person trying to manage a can of worms, err... a group of developers. :-)
Although it's a voluntary job, it's not without obligation. Becoming a member of the board is a very democratic process but it starts with people that want to help guide the project. For those people who are interested, please read this nice blog post, follow the process it describes and sign up. We need you!
PDK and 20.04 progress
Two weeks ago I did a git clone of the PDK repo (https://github.com/ubports/ubports-pdk), a pull and a run on my Ubuntu 20.04 desktop and got a nice but boring black screen. This week I did a git pull of the same repo, again a pull and run and I got this on my desktop:
And I thank that's amazing. Still there's a lot to do. So if you feel like trying to fix something, head on over to https://gitlab.com/groups/ubports/-/epics/10, look at the issues, pick one and start hacking! |
Help needed!If you have some spare time, we can use some help in the following domains: A lot of people want more news about apps and device ports in the Q&As. If you want to help collect this news and tidy it up into a script that Dalton can read from, please contact him. If you understand something of the inner workings of oFono, please contact Dalton to help him implement a proper fix for the PinePhone modem that disconnects and reconnects sometimes.
Ubuntu Touch in the mediaWell, believe it or not, but we got an article on The Register! Personally I would have liked a more optimistic tone, but as you know, I don't care how they talk about us, as long as they DO talk about us! Anyway, I did write a small tweet about it. If you love our project a retweet would be fine, but I'm really not one of those "please retweet me, give my stars on platform X and while you're at it, subscribe to all my stuff"-kinda-guy :-). Talking about Tweets and media, I stumbled upon this little gem. If ever I wanted to donate a full blown PC (or even a refurbished one) to a young and aspiring hacker, than this guy would deserve one (with Ubuntu of course) I think. Anyway, we also send out an official (Dutch) press release using an actual press agency and got published a number of sites: And, due to this press release, next Wednesday I will be interviewed by a major financial news paper in the Netherlands. To describe how that makes me feel I would like to point to this 12 years old Heineken ad on YouTube. Interview with MoemMoem has become quite an active UBports community member. We asked her what her drive is to help others on the UBports forums.
"As a newcomer, I'm naturally enthusiastic," Moem says. "And since it's great to share newfound knowledge, I do my best to answer questions that others ask. It's just something I enjoy. I'm active in the Dutch hacker scene, and sharing knowledge is a big part of that. Learning together, and facilitating each other in learning. In my view it all fits together."
Her advice to community members who want to help others, is simple: "Hang out on the forums, read along. Maybe try the Telegram group. You'll learn a lot. Soon you will be able to answer some of the questions that others ask. Or you will be able to ask a good and relevant question, and when others answer, that will add information to the forum too. Questions are a contribution, too! And when you struggle with something and then manage to solve it (or not!), post about it on the forum."
Read the full interview on our blog: https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-blogs-nieuws-1/post/interview-with-moem-3765
Anbox, err... Waydroid project progressThe amazing Anbox project (running Android apps in a container on UT) has done a rename and is now known as "Waydroid"! All latest project updates are mentioned on their fund-raising page so head over and have a read to see what's new! | Ubuntu Touch Q&A 104Florian and Dalton were the hosts of the Ubuntu Touch Q&A 104 session. Let’s talk about two of the topics they discussed: the benefits of the migration to Ubuntu 20.04 and the direction the Q&A should take.
Under the hood a lot of work is happening to migrate the core of Ubuntu Touch to Ubuntu 20.04. Although this isn’t expected until after OTA-20, the work is already paying off for the current releases based on Ubuntu 16.04. Because every time the developers find something in the 20.04 base that needs tweaking for Ubuntu Touch, they investigate whether the current 16.04 base could benefit from the change too. These aren’t user-visible changes, but they improve the operating system’s stability and performance.
As a meta-topic, Dalton asked for feedback about the direction the Q&A should take. A lot of people want to see more news about Ubuntu Touch apps, and another regular question is about news on ports to various devices. Dalton doesn’t have time to follow all this news, but he is happy to present it in the Q&A if someone else collects this information and tidies it up into a script that he can read from.
You can watch the whole session or read our notes here: https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-news-1/post/ubuntu-touch-q-a-104-3767
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A mention, a blog, a report and a project. All about VoLTE
Because 2G and 3G networks are phased out in various regions, VoLTE support (mobile calls over 4G) is quite important. Basically we need this in UT. That is why German cellular network specialist Sysmocom was asked to write a plan for us to add VoLTE support to Ubuntu Touch. The plan was recently released (external link) and the funding for the actual first build phase (of 2 phases) have been obtained! So work will start on that shortly.
The goal is to have functional VoLTE calls on the Volla Phone, which is known to have the required hardware. Sysmocom will implement a simple command-line client for VoLTE calls on the phone. The UBports developers will pick it up there and work on integrating VoLTE functionality into the dialer application of Ubuntu Touch.
When this first implementation for the Volla Phone's MediaTek modem is ready, it's likely to work for other MediaTek devices too with no or only a few adjustments. Afterwards, the implementation could be extended to work with other modem vendors.
Sysmocom will work on this as a true open source project, welcoming contributions from the wider community. All development will happen in public Git repositories and any needed changes in other open source projects will be contributed upstream.
Read more about this exciting project on our blog: https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-news-1/post/first-steps-in-volte-support-for-ubuntu-touch-3768
| 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! |
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