Ubuntu Touch Working On Better PinePhone, PineTab Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu Touch Working On Better PinePhone, PineTab Support

The UBports' Ubuntu Touch crew has been focusing a lot lately on improving their support for the popular, budget-friendly PineTab tablet and PinePhone smartphone. The next OTA release will bring more improvements for fans of these PINE Allwinner-powered devices...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-Touch-Better-PINE

[Alexmitter]

Just sad that ubports is a dead end. Stuck with canonicals legacy trying to create a separate special linux phone platform whos best feature is that it isnt android. It is also stuck with the legacy toolkit Qt and had a hard time to maintain itself due to that.

Support phosh and the mobile distros based on it, I can for example strongly recommend Mobian. Bringing the desktop to the phone in a modern way, not creating a phone platform that kind of also maybe works like a desktop.

I used ubport already since a lot of time on a old nexus 5. It always impressed me how slow and sluggish a UI can be just due to a bad toolkit choice.

[Numeric]

@Alexmitter

While the Ubuntu Touch base might not be what some Linux users are looking for in their mobile device, I can safely say that the Lomiri shell is the best performing (speed and stability) on my Braveheart edition. For me, having Lomiri on top of stock linux base would be the best. Looks like the Manjaro ARM Team is working towards that! (Link: https://twitter.com/fkardame/status/1293681887572107264)

[edwaleni]

I vetted Ubuntu Touch with several SME's in both iOS & Android. No one criticized the quality of the performance, just the disjointed functional metaphor. And because it blatantly advertise themselves as Linux, those fans expect to be able to run/do anything that Linux does (it doesn't).

So when you can't get the consistency of iOS/Android and not the level of access of desktop Linux, it ends up being a double whammy of disinterest.

[Vistaus]

I have UBPorts Ubuntu Touch running on a Poco F1 and it's a lot faster than my Android phone with similar hardware. I liked Canonical's Ubuntu Touch back then, but I didn't love it. However, I do love it now with all of the improvements UBPorts made
I will definitely buy a PinePhone with the upcoming PKB accessory soon

[peterdk]

Interesting, I bought a pinephone for ubports testing and it was very very slow. Hoping that the OpenGL rendering will fix it. Now I have it unused laying here.

[Baguy]

Michael, the opengl rendering is in reference to the browser getting GPU acceleration, not the whole lomiri shell. Lomiri itself is already pretty zippy. Though there is room for improvements, such as shader optimizations, and lima driver optimizations.

[GizmoChicken]

Also worth noting from the summary of Ubuntu Touch Q&A 82:

WLBI? Asked about the progress on Anbox. Since the last time this was raised there have been no commits at all, so the answer is none. We are still waiting on developers with the necessary skill set to step forward. Unusually, we are even able to offer payment for core work on Anbox. Just get in touch with Florian.

Emphasis added. The discussion of Anbox begins at about 40m51s of Q&A 82.

[tzui]

Just sad that ubports is a dead end. Stuck with canonicals legacy trying to create a separate special linux phone platform whos best feature is that it isnt android. It is also stuck with the legacy toolkit Qt and had a hard time to maintain itself due to that.

I don't know what you're talking about, but Ubuntu Touch has been shipped with the upstream version of Qt since the switch to Wayland. Soon they will switch to Ubuntu 20.04, then there will also be an updated Qt version. I think Ubuntu Touch is a very important project and the guys at ubports are doing an amazing job!

In my experience with the Raspberry Pi, Qt is much faster than GTK+3

[GizmoChicken]

While the Ubuntu Touch base might not be what some Linux users are looking for in their mobile device, I can safely say that the Lomiri shell is the best performing (speed and stability) on my Braveheart edition. For me, having Lomiri on top of stock linux base would be the best. Looks like the Manjaro ARM Team is working towards that! (Link: https://twitter.com/fkardame/status/1293681887572107264)

Exactly my thoughts!

I'll just expand a bit on this to reiterate that Lomiri on the UT stack vs Lomiri on a more traditional Linux base (such as Manjaro) is not an either/or situation: those who see value in running Lomiri on the UT stack can use the UT stack; and those who would prefer running Lomiri on something like Manjaro will (eventually) be able to do so. I can't fathom why some people oppose being offered choices.

Personally, I'd like to see Lomiri running on stock Ubuntu LTS, with mobile apps installed as Snaps (and/or as Flatpaks) rather then as Clicks. And who knows, maybe someday that will happen. But for the time being, I'm grateful that UBports is focusing on their current projects.