09-18-2022, 11:15 AM
(09-18-2022, 09:04 AM)KNERD Wrote: Ubuntu Touch specifically on the PinePhone is abandoned at this point. Meaning it will never fuilly function on the PinePhone, and there has been nothing for the PinePhonePro.
While you will see generic updates to Ubuntu Touch OS, you will never see anything specific for the PinePhone. UBPorts folks are not driver developers. It seems they were waiting for others to make the drivers and were just waiting for others to fulfill that. It is how Ubuntu Touch came to being. They took the drivers from Android to use on supported devices to make their mobile OS around them. Since no drivers for the PinePhone will ever come, they have stopped working on the port for PinePhone.
And the reason no drivers will ever come? The hardware is very outdated.
This is not entirely true.
Current Ubuntu Touch is based on 16.04 Ubuntu and there is ongoing work to move things to 20.04 Ubuntu.
After the move to 20.04 is done Ubports foundation and the surrounding community decides where to focus next.
After the move Pinephone might be one road but that is not yet decided - but my point is Pinephone is NOT buried.
Why Ubuntu Touch and Pinephone developing stalled?
Best guess is that most of the users/developers/enthusiastics did not understand or did not like the way how Ubuntu Touch works.
Aka most Pinephone users wanted to write terminal "sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade" and install Thunderbird, Firefox etc. while Ubuntu Touch is built so that doesn't really make sense.
And as far as I understand there was basicly only one person working for Pinephone and Ubuntu Touch (legendary Dalton Durst). Hope was that if Pine64 community gets excited then maybe someone jumps in also but AFAIK that does not happened and Daltons workload was overwhelming.
Currently Ubuntu Touch is nowhere near ready as daily driver for Pinephone.
And as a reply for another message "Ubuntu Touch apps are made for mobile"
Most Ubuntu Touch apps are made with convergence in mind - it is hard to see it because there are so few devices where you can actually plug in display with Ubuntu Touch (Fairphone 4 will be game changer).
So as dummy user what I am wondering is why years and years of mobile-linux developement has been used reasonably little - but hey I am only dummy user so there must be reasons
