Ubuntu Touch OTA-8 Won't Move To Mir 1.1 + Unity 8 Due To Qualcomm Binary Blob Issues

Written by Michael Larabel in Ubuntu on 26 February 2019 at 11:04 AM EST. 7 Comments
UBUNTU
The Ubuntu Touch community team has put out their latest questions/answers about this effort continuing to let the Ubuntu effort live on for mobile devices like the Nexus and other hardware as well as looking ahead to get this mobile operating system running on the likes of Librem 5 and Pine64 phones.

The latest updates on the Ubuntu Touch project include:

- For their OTA-8 update, they had been hoping to migrate to Mir 1.1 as well as the Unity 8 environment. Unfortunately, this isn't coming as planned. Their principal blocker for rolling out the newer Unity and Mir come down to Qualcomm's binary graphics drivers causing issues with graphical glitches and application stat-up problems. "The problem is the binary blobs in qualcomm devices. It would be easier if it were open source." There's no word though if they have recently evaluated Freedreno+MSM for the viability of that unofficial open-source Qualcomm graphics support.

- They've had some communication with the Pine64 crew about bringing Ubuntu Touch to their upcoming Linux smartphone.

- They still are waiting on Purism to supply the Librem 5 developer kits for porting Ubuntu Touch, but the kits have been in short supply as well as troubles with the hardware. At least recently Purism overcame the issue with the initial batch of screens being problematic/defective.

- Efforts around Anbox as the Android compatibility layer has been put on hold until other low-level efforts are ironed out.

The latest Ubuntu Touch details can be found via UBports.com.
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