Ubuntu Touch OTA-1 Focal Released For Ubuntu 20.04 LTS On Smartphones

Ubuntu Touch as the community maintained version of Ubuntu Linux for smartphones and tablets has for years been frustratingly limited to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS as its base operating system for when Canonical had abandoned their smartphone ambitions. Today though that has finally changed with Ubuntu Touch OTA-1 Focal having been released that moves things forward to an Ubuntu 20.04 LTS base.

Ubuntu Touch is now powered by Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, the current three year old Ubuntu Long-Term Support release with not yet moving straight-away to the current Ubuntu 22.04 LTS series. With this move to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS as its base, the smartphone models officially supported with this first OTA-1 Focal release are the Fairphone 4, Google Pixel 3a, Vollaphone, Vollaphone 22, and Vollaphone X. Aside from these devices, the Focal experience on other Ubuntu Touch devices may vary with some features potentially not working at this time.

Ubuntu Touch efforts began a decade ago already.

Today's release is opt-in for Ubuntu Touch users while already an Ubuntu Touch OTA-2 Focal release is being worked on for ironing out bugs and ensuring greater stability. In addition to re-basing to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, the new Ubuntu Touch release is aiming for Android 9+-based device support, has forked Unity 8 as Lomiri, switched from Upstart to systemd for its init system, shifted development from GitHub to GitLab, moved from Anbox to Waydroid, and has adapted many of its components to be able to build properly under GCC 12 and Qt 5.15. With the GCC 12 and Qt 5.15 work is for more future-proofing to prepare Ubuntu Touch to move toward future Ubuntu LTS versions.

More details on today's Ubuntu Touch OTA-1 Focal release via UBports.com.