10-14-2020, 10:19 PM
(10-13-2020, 09:20 PM)gamerminstrel Wrote: (Everything I say is a layman's viewpoint, so if I get anything wrong, someone please set me straight)
If anyone is calling UBPorts abandonware, it might be people just trash talking or working on outdated info because Canonical abandoned it. I've nothing but respect for the UBPorts team, they're a pretty small group and they're doing a lot of work.I think their stunted progress nowadays is not from a lack of effort, but because they're tackling a much bigger scale of project than Mobian right now.
Mobian-project supports 3 devices atm, whereas UBPorts took over a project that already supported a LOT more devices that are already "daily driver" ready. UBPorts has to split their attention so many ways even without the pinephone:
-They're constantly porting new devices
-They have to maintain an ever-growing library of devices that all have varying levels of BS(proprietary blobs, shoddy drivers, etc)
-I feel like on some level they have to focus on certain things like expanding hardware support because that's where their investors point? (That's just my gut feeling with zero research behind it.)
-The team is trying to replace all the broken and awkward parts of Ubuntu Touch with much more updated and functional parts (Mir is a whole weird thing that I'm not sure needs to exist).
Back when Ubuntu Touch was maintained by Canonical, they made a lot of questionable back-end software choices. Additionally, because it was neglected by Canonical for a good while before they officially abandoned it there's some pretty outdated components in there.
When I first got my pinephone UBPorts CE, I spent a few days trying to learn how to develop for Ubuntu Touch. It's kind of a fustercluck right now for a noob programmer like me. They're going through a huge shift to newer tools and almost half of their documentation is still for the older, abandoned Canonical tools that are no longer supported.
I would say that progress is definitely going to be slow for Ubuntu Touch as they iron out the backend and developer toolsets. I think this is already their gameplan, but If they can polish up the backend and make it easier to develop for while the rest of the community figures out decent hardware support for the pinephone, then in a couple years we might be looking at something great and way different than the other distros.
Mostly, I agree with this assessment.
@Cree When I stated in a previous post, that I would treat this distro like abandonware, I didn't mean that the distro is actually abandonware. Aside from slow progress it seems the team has a hard time keeping up with or grooming their issues board. Instead when I generate my reports I will no longer be submitting issues to their gitlab.
With all of this in mind. A lot of us are excited for the pinephone to be consumer ready. I get the frustration, and I want to stress, these developers are working to fix the problems with UBtouch, I'm certain that when they get there the os will be solid. Lets not be too critical folks. This is what happens when we buy a device that isn't even hardware complete let alone that has the thousands of dedicated hours that went into commercial/closed-source operating systems. These guys are working on this as a way to give back to the open source community, please be patient with them as they work through these issues.