Your biweekly UBports newsletter is here!

Hello community!

Welcome to the UBports Foundation email newsletter, November 12th, 2021

From your editor

Yesterday was, from a global perspective, an uneventful day. But yesterday was the twice-yearly NLUUG conference. NLUUG (www.nluug.nl) is the Dutch (nl) Unix User Group. Lots of talks, with subjects ranging from very technical to digital awareness.

One of the speakers was mrs Sjoera Nas, who, while working for the Privacy Company, conducts and writes DPIA reports. Probably not a daily subject for our readers, but DPIA stands for "Data Protection Impact Assessment".

Basically what she does is take the fine print in all those consent forms from organizations like Google and Microsoft, and analyze them on a privacy level. And compare them to the terms of the European GDPR privacy law. Turns out she is the first to do this at this level and her findings are valid for the rest of the EU as well!

A very nice intro is this blog post with links to several of these DPIA reports: https://www.privacycompany.eu/blogpost-en/new-dpia-on-microsoft-office-and-windows-software-still-privacy-risks-remaining-short-blog. Another link to these reports is this one: https://slmmicrosoftrijk.nl/downloads-dpias/.

Ant, although some of these web pages are in Dutch, all these reports are in English!

I think this is a very nice development and I can't wait for her to start analyzing Android and iOS. I think we would all benefit greatly from the results.

This time a shorter edition than usual due to, well, stuff. But we hope you'll still find it a useful read.

With Covid19 numbers again on the rise, all I can say is: stay safe and keep on hacking!

Greets, Jeroen Baten

Apps in the spotlight

Here are some new Ubuntu Touch apps to try out:

UT Zipper (https://open-store.io/app/utzip.lduboeuf) by Lionel Duboeuf lets you read and create archive files (zip, gzip, bzip, xz, tar, 7z).
Dino (https://open-store.io/app/dino.collaproductions) by Nicolás Colla is a reimplementation of the hidden game from Google Chrome's offline mode. Let your T-Rex run!
Steps (https://open-store.io/app/steps.jranaraki) by Javad Rahimipour Anaraki counts your steps based on accelerometer data and calculates your travelled distance based on computed stride length using your demographic information.
The Costumemaster: Reloaded (https://open-store.io/app/costumemaster.marquiskurt) by Marquis Kurt is a modern reimagining of the original game The Costumemaster released on the Mac App Store. Can you solve the puzzles?

You can find these apps on the OpenStore (https://open-store.io/).

Please remember that OpenStore has a built-in option to donate to app creators. We urge you to use that button, so that we'll get more great apps on Ubuntu Touch.

Help needed!

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

The OTA-20 release has been prepared in the Release candidate channel. We need your help to test it so we can release it on November 19. Have a look at https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-news-1/post/ubuntu-touch-ota-20-call-for-testing-3789 for more information.
Florian Leeber has ported Ubuntu Touch to the Google Pixel 2, and it's installable with the UBports Installer. Do you own this device and want to help with testing? You can find the supported features on https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/device/taimen/.

Test Clickable 7 beta

Clickable 7 comes with a bunch of new features. It also has some changes that might introduce regressions. We would like to ask app developers to test the Clickable 7 beta on their apps and let us know about any struggles or problems they're facing, so we can optimize this major update before releasing it.

You're not left alone for these changes. There's a migration guide that helps you to migrate your Clickable 6 projects to Clickable 7. And many of the suggestions are even applied automatically by the clickable-migration tool. Documentation for Clickable 7 can be found on https://clickable-ut.dev/en/dev/.

If you want to try the Clickable 7 beta, read the instructions here: https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-news-1/post/clickable-7-call-for-testing-3787

How UBports collaborates with other projects

The UBports Foundation is not only overseeing development of Ubuntu Touch. We’re also collaborating with developers of other mobile operating systems, because we all have a common goal: more freedom of choice for phones. By working together, we avoid duplication and fragmentation.

This collaboration happens in a couple of projects used by Ubuntu Touch

Halium gives various mobile platforms a common Linux base. This allows each project to focus on the development of the higher layers, where they differ from each other in their user interfaces.
Lomiri is best known as the user interface of Ubuntu Touch, but we've also worked on getting it available in Manjaro and Debian.
The UBports Installer is not only a useful tool to flash Ubuntu Touch to your phone, but also lets you flash other operating systems, such as VollaOS, Sailfish OS and Droidian.
The VoLTE implementation that the UBports Foundation is funding is being developed as an open source project. This allows other mobile operating systems to add VoLTE support to their own telephony stack.

Read the full blog article here with more information about how we're collaborating with other mobile platforms in these projects: https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-news-1/post/how-ubports-collaborates-with-other-projects-3788