Ubuntu Q&A 25.08.2015.

Hello everyone.

I have decided to start a new miniseries on this blog. This is the third post I am making inside of this series and this time I will write about the Q&A that happened last week. This miniseries will be overviewing the regular weekly Q & A's held by the Canonical community team. I don't promise to do this miniseries regularly because of my own time constrictions. I also will not write about every question that was asked, I will only write about questions and answers which I consider interesting. And I will only indirectly report what was asked and how it was answered. You can find those details in the video of the sessions themselves. I will however put a link to the videos(if I forgot the link, please tell me so in the comments). So let's start with the first question.
Also due to circumstances, this time I was not able to find the exact time in the video wen the question was asked.

Note:If you have any questions yourself, after reading this, please don't ask me, instead join the Q&A sessions which happen every Tuesday on 15:00(UTC) on http://ubuntuonair.com/

Due to my other duties I will be unable to make a blog post for at least 2 weeks, so I will miss the next two Q&A's.

What was the problem with the delay of the recent OTA6?
We target about every 6 weeks but we are not strict on that, so if some important fixes pop up they will delay it.

Does canonical have a problem with integrating bountiesource into launchpad?
Launchpad development has become very active lately, git support and commit hooks were added, so you can propose your suggestion to launchpad developers.

Will unity8 support 4k resolutions?
Yes, all of the new elements are entirely scalable. Everything with grid units will work fine. Legacy apps however could be a problem.

Will Libre office be fully integrated into Ubuntu phone?
Yes and no, Libreoffice provides a small LibreOffice kit library, which will be used in the new LO viewer on Ubuntu phone. However the full LO suite will be supported in desktop mode.

Is LXD at a usable state for home users?
Certainly it is stable enough for home users who don't have anything mission critical, however there is no stable LTS release yet.

Will dekko support exchange?
Ask the Dekko developers, not soon, dekko is built on top of the trojita email app which is strongly imap based, they might however add pop 3 support. The better question is why does Exchange not support imap? 

What is happening with the software center,will the desktop and phone use the same service?
Eventually everything will be using the snappy store, except the deb desktop. The store is not going away

Will the phone be updated to 15.10?
Originally not, but lately there were signs that it might be updated.

Why is landcape the default orientation on large touchscreens?
Mostly because they want people to use both portrait and landscape.

How different is mir from wayland technically speaking?
Not very. Wayland is designed around a standard protocol. Mir was designed to not make you care about the protocol. It separates Mir from the interface. Both mir and Wayland use the same api for drivers.

When will the new thin line header land?
It has probably already landed.

Will another tablet be supported in the future?
As soon as an OEM comes along.

Is there any plan to integrate the stupendously hot charmander concept?
Someone from the community is doing it, there is a lot that would have to be reworked to implement it. He should work with the design team.
 
When reading the API documentation what does "obsolete member" mean?
It meanss that part is being deprecated. 

Will the convergence phone create a black-hole that will suck in my pet dog, called Rodney?
The convergence phone is a dog person.

There was something on Softpedia about switching to Android as base (idk the technical details) to support android apps. Is this being discussed at Canonical?
Look here:
http://thebluedrag.blogspot.com/2015/07/ubuntu-phoneandroid-app-support-is.html
We do not want to be Android copycats. Our goal is to make Ubuntu apps easy to write. The alternative is to become a second rate platform for Android applications and that is a secon rate Android platform. Plus has any platform that has Android application support ever been succesful enough to get a decent market share on the global worldwide market?(No it has not)

What feature in an app or the platform are you most looking forward to as we start converging?
Dekko on the desktop. All those applications on the desktop. He is also looking forward to content hub on the desktop.

Any secret innovations being worked on for the phone?
Pretty much everything is in the open.

When will we be able to package snaps from the SDK?
As soon as snaps become functional enough to replace click.

Is there a move to improve scopes i.e. to show content from youtube inside the scope?
Yes, they are working on it, it might even be in OTA6. They are working with gstreamer to get the videos into the scopes.

When will the Ubuntu SDK be repackaged into a snap so that we can develop from Ubuntu Personal?
Soon, it is one of the target apps.

With content hub and all that sandboxing, how does one make a file manager on Snappy/Click?
The file manager is an exception so the file manager and terminal are the exceptions outside the confinement.

The link to the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1N1ywLC7mM

Ubuntu Q&A 18.08.2015

Hello everyone.

I have decided to start a new miniseries on this blog. This is the third post I am making inside of this series and this time I will write about the Q&A that happened last week. This miniseries will be overviewing the regular weekly Q & A's held by the Canonical community team. I don't promise to do this miniseries regularly because of my own time constrictions. I also will not write about every question that was asked, I will only write about questions and answers which I consider interesting. And I will only indirectly report what was asked and how it was answered. You can find those details in the video of the sessions themselves. I will however put a link to the videos(if I forgot the link, please tell me so in the comments). So let's start with the first question.
Also due to circumstances, this time I was not able to find the exact time in the video wen the question was asked.

Note:If you have any questions yourself, after reading this, please don't ask me, instead join the Q&A sessions which happen every Tuesday on 15:00(UTC) on http://ubuntuonair.com/

Is there a page for new developers who want to help with cloud/server and a list of issues they can work on?
Not, there is not a formal program for that yet, ping the ubuntu engineers for what you are interested in.

What are charms?
Sets of code that execute in clouds to coordinate services with each other

What do you think of Canonical's extensive use of google's services for storing potentially confidential business information, eg in google drive, when they are now a direct competitor with Android vs Ubuntu? If a viable LibreOffice online cloud alternative existed would you prefer Canonical to move to such a service?
The engineers said that they preferred online services, however he did admit there were some concerns with them. They have said that they have contractual arrangements with them and that there is no spying going on. They also mentioned that they do understand the concerns.

When is the expected release of the 'Convergent' Ubuntu Phone ? i.e. if not specific date - what month ?
This year

What is the safest way to install debs on Ubuntu Phone?
Create a chroot on the phone and chroot into that.

I have a raspberry pi 2, is there already something available to install something like Ubuntu Next and a media server like Kodi on it ?
It is kind of difficult. But it would be nice to have a Kodi only image.

Is there a planned optimisation of Ubuntu phone for the Nexus 5?
That is a community maintained port.

Will we be able to make phone calls and SMS from the terminal? A use case for this would be i.e. your phone is docked to a screen and keyboard, and you are already working on your keyboard in a terminal but noy you need to make a phone call.
This already works, we just need to find out how, you can find it in the source code for the dialer app, it is a niche use case, it would be cool though, especially with ascii art.

What is the status of the Dekko Email client? Is it being moved into the core? Also, what is the best way to get involved in helping with testing? My email is self hosted so the webapps are not of much help.
Jump into the irc and ask, there is a plan for dekko to become the default email client, it is mostly there.

So this time around there were not many questions. Anyways here is the link to the video. The questions will start only after 10-20 minutes.
Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEOcInVqFVU

Ubuntu Q&A 11.08.2015

Hello everyone.

I have decided to start a new miniseries on this blog. This is the third post I am making inside of this series and this time I will write about the Q&A that happened last week. This miniseries will be overviewing the regular weekly Q & A's held by the Canonical community team. I don't promise to do this miniseries regularly because of my own time constrictions. I also will not write about every question that was asked, I will only write about questions and answers which I consider interesting. And I will only indirectly report what was asked and how it was answered. You can find those details in the video of the sessions themselves. I will however put a link to the videos(if I forgot the link, please tell me so in the comments). So let's start with the first question.

Note:If you have any questions yourself, after reading this, please don't ask me, instead join the Q&A sessions which happen every Tuesday on 15:00(UTC) on http://ubuntuonair.com/

15:00 When is ubuntu phone arriving in India?
Soon, BQ will launch there in about 2 weeks.

15:40 When ubuntu phone is supposed to be shipped worldwide, including the usa, that has limited bandwidth to choose from, how is it going to play with the duopoly of At&t and Verizon?
BQ will function in a way that it will not work with the fastest network, so it will be a bit limited. BQ is already shipping to many countries outside europe, You just have to make sure that your carrier supports 900mhz, 2100mhz and hspa+ mobile signals.

19:00 Is the Ubuntu phone still on road to full convergence where you hook up a keyboard or a mouse to it?
Yes, definitely, there were many demos, right now they have a walking desktop, major improvements will come in the next month.

21:05 If I bought David ice cream, would I get the content hub documentation sooner?
Yes, there are content hub tutorials being worked on, they will come quite soon, hopefully in a few weeks.

25:15 What is Canonicals plan to monetize Ubuntu on the desktop?
Canonical provides a lot of enterprise support, they also provide a lot of training and maintenance to paying customers. They also give custom engineering services and they get some money from affiliations.

35:00 with the way snappy separates the system and applications, is something like tripwire still important for file system integrity? 
With snappy you should be relatively certain that your file system has not been tampered with. Whatever you install on the phone, it should not be able to modify anything else on the phone(if you got it trough the official store).


38:00 How many supplies of ice cream do I need to get scopes in javascript officially supported?
The engineers have said that there is already a project like that with it's own ppa and clcik packages for it. However the project is still too young for official support, but hopeflly official support will come soon.

 40:00 Will we be able to install Ubuntu phone on non-Ubuntu phones?
There exists a porting guide. For some devices it was already done. It can be either easy or difficult depending on the device. But there are some very good ports out there( i.e for Nexus devices or the OPO).

44:40 Will snappy allow developers to just update  pre-determined parts of the package or will the users have to download everything again?
Snappy works in a way that special libraries and modules must be shipped in the package itself, a good tool to help with this is snapcraft,. It allows you to write very concise recipes. However there are still discussions going on about decoupling with the help of hashes, but it is not implemented yet.

47:30 There was recently a person that was unhappy that his published application in the software center was not released for 14.10 and 15.04 and that his emails were ignored for months, he is not the first to complain about this, I have been told that click and snappy will be the solution here, but snappy is not ready yet, and the deb based USC will be in 16.04 and supported for five years, if someone wants to sell software on the Ubuntu desktop what should he do until snappy is ready?
The problem with software shipped as .deb is that it needs a lot of care. Another problem is that it has root access during installation. For those and various other reasons, the queue in the USC was just piling up. Now the priorities have shifted to snappy. But there are still a number of ways to get your software into Ubuntu. One way is to put your software into the Debian archives, which has the added bonus that your software will be available for Debian as well. You can also contact employees from Canonical to get your software into Ubuntu. However those mentioned until now are only good for open source applications. A way that works for paid for applications is that you can sell and publish your .debs on your own or a third party website.
But snaps and click are just around the corner.

54:04 What do I do if I want to sell software on the ubuntu desktop? So the best approach ATM is 3rd party distribution, so through itch.io or the humble store?
Yes that is the best approach.

54:30 Recently MS has launched sway as an improvement over power point, will Linux developers make ther own alternative?
They would certainly love it. It is possible to generate html5 presentations. And there exists an Inkscape plugin for that as well as smaller applications for that.

Now I have finally catched up to the latest Q&A. Expect my next blog post about this the next week. :D
Remember, today is yet another session, so go ahead and ask your questions there.

The video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbiuM9pF5a4

Ubuntu Q&A 04.08.2015

Hello everyone.

I have decided to start a new miniseries on this blog. This is the third post I am making inside of this series and this time I will write about the Q&A that happened 2 weeks ago. This miniseries will be overviewing the regular weekly Q & A's held by the Canonical community team. I don't promise to do this miniseries regularly because of my own time constrictions. I also will not write about every question that was asked, I will only write about questions and answers which I consider interesting. And I will only indirectly report what was asked and how it was answered. You can find those details in the video of the sessions themselves. I will however put a link to the videos(if I forgot the link, please tell me so in the comments). So let's start with the first question.

 

 15:25 Any news on the north American phone yet?

 They are still working on it. It is a priority. 

15:58 When can we download the Ubuntu personal ISO with an installer?

No plans yet. You can download an image onto a USB and boot from the USB already.

18:00 Will Ubuntu touch support snapshots?

Not out of the box yet. Maybe some day.

 

19:00 Will Ubuntu run windows applications without wine? 

No. Can Windows run Linux applications?

19:50 How is the power consumption when compared between Unity8 and Unity7?

Because mobiles are very resource restrained unity8 roughly needs less resources. They don't have exact data yet.

21:00 Will the deb based Ubuntu be discontinued once Ubuntu personal gets stable?

No it won't. Even snappy is built on top of the archives which are Debian based.

 

22:50 At whom is the deb based and at whom is the snappy based Ubuntu targeted at?

Ubuntu-personal is for people who need their os to be less versatile, average users

Ubuntu-deb is more customizable 

 

26:20 In which part of Ubuntu would you like people to be involved?

On the phone, localisation, testing(there is a page on the wiki), core applications, feedback... 

32:20 In Ubuntu snappy will there be anything such as libraries that you will need to build statically?

Yes, there will be because they will have to be self contained, meaning a lot of it will have to be statically linked. But also there will be less dependency hells, if any.

34:00 What are the new features of 15.10?

It will have updated packages. an updated Ubuntu make. And also hidpi support will be very improved

36:00 Can unity 8 and mir be used on the deb based ubuntu since on the phone it uses click?

Yes, there is already an installable session for mir and unity8.

36:45 what is the difference between unity8, next, touch?
Unity8 is the next desktop shell.

Ubuntu touch is the not to be used project name for the Ubuntu phone project(Call it ubuntu phone from now on).

Desktop next was an image preview where they tried to incorporate phone technologies on the desktop and it will soon be replaced by personal.

 

38:40 Gnome has been working on its own application sandbox, has there or will there be any collaboration?

Nothing has happened yet, they could have conversations with them, however their system is very different from Ubuntu's sandboxing.

 

 40:45 When will Ubuntu personal land on Ubuntu phones?
Somewhere around 16.04.

 

42:40 What do you think the landscape will look like for 3rd party application developers by 16.04? 

They feel that it will look great because there will be so many new things. They are looking for general developers that will develop code and documentation. They also said that they already have many developers that just want to participate. They also said they want to make even better documentation and that Ubuntu make will be remade, also the SDK will be further improved. Also they have stated that Canonical is looking for engineer managers that will focus on the developer experience.

44:50 Are workspaces planned for unity8?

They want to reach feature parity with unity7, however they don't know yet.

45:35 On the market there are some mhl cables that connect the meizu with external screens, will that land in Ubuntu, or is there any other way to connect the phone to a screen,is there a problem or a lack of developers to do that?

They are limited by the hardware. They were so far only testing the nexus 4 with such features, so they think there are possible hardware limitations. Wifi and bluetooth have just a terrible experience with that.

47:20 Since sdl2 is used so much for gaming, are there any plans to officially support sdl2 in the ubuntu sdk?

An SDL template already exists on github, and there are example applications. It is though very buggy. It is possible to include it in the SDK, but then they would need to import huge chunks of SDL.

49:25 Canonical seems to have gotten rid of Ubuntu1 just when it was most needed, are there any plans to allow phone or laptop syncing?

Ubuntu1 was really bad with syncing. There are already other syncing applications in the mobile store including Dropbox.

50:30 Is there any communication with KDE over the shashlik approach by running android applications on a real Linux, does Ubuntu consider this?

They don't even know about the technology. It is not on the roadmap yet. They do acknowledge that the Application ecosystem is vital, however they do not want to add it because they are sceptic on how the applications would integrate into the system. They also do not want to be Android copycats. Also by supporting Android applications they would demotivate people from making native Ubuntu applications.

Also look here:
http://thebluedrag.blogspot.com/2015/07/ubuntu-phoneandroid-app-support-is.html

53:35 Will Ubuntu 16.04 be the last Unity7 and deb based version?

No, because everything, including snappy is based on the Debian archives. Unity7 though will eventually be discontinued.

55:24 With all the talk about the phones, where do the tablets stand right now? I.e. the Nexus 10?

Tablets are the stepping stone in their convergence vision. As for the nexus 10, they are not happy with it's GPU.

56:30 Any hope of running snap applications on the deb system for 16.04, it would make it a lot easier for developers to target us?

Technically they could run because Snappy is a very improved Debian packaging system. And they do agree it is important for the developer experience. However Snappy is heavily reliant on sandboxing which just does not exist on the Debian based image.

58:00 Is it possible to switch between standard and personal ubuntu from the login screen, if not will it be possible one day?

No, you will have to dual boot. However you can have both unity8 and 7 installed on the same system at the same time already.

59:30 Should I distribute applications as snapps or debs?

It depends on your target audience. However they do consider the new application store much better than the old one.

1:00:40 Does convergence also mean backwards compatibility with the applications already running on the ubuntu desktop, or should they be repackaged for Ubuntu phone?
It must be repackaged. They are thinking about some compatibilities, but it will have to be repackaged.

Phew, this was a long one.

And here is the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etWjZgLbDo0

Ubuntu Q&A 14.07.2015

Hello everyone.

I have decided to start a new miniseries on this blog. This is the second post I am making inside of this series and this time I will write about the Q&A that happened 3 weeks ago. This miniseries will be overviewing the regular weekly Q & A's held by the Canonical community team. I don't promise to do this miniseries regularly because of my own time constrictions. I also will not write about every question that was asked, I will only write about questions and answers which I consider interesting. And I will only indirectly report what was asked and how it was answered. You can find those details in the video of the sessions themselves. I will however put a link to the videos(if I forgot the link, please tell me so in the comments). So let's start with the first question.

 

13:44 Is there a forum or a website where members of the community can send their ideas for unity8 desktop?

Actually, yes there is: https://unity.ubuntu.com/getinvolved/design/
Also the developers have said that there exist Ubuntu dedicated groups on google+ as well that you can contact most developers directly on Google+.

15:45 What is the future of flash updates on Ubuntu?
It is a hard decision due to the many flash elements on old websites, however flash will die.

20:27 Will the phone software store replace the software center in the future?

Yes, but it will not happen in Unity7, meaning it will not happen very soon. However the technology for them is a bit similar.

22:34 Will there be a tweaking tool for unity8 to change the size of the icons, also will unity 8 support themes?

There already is such a tweaking tool on the open applcation store for ubuntu touch. It is called tweakgeek(I am not sure if I heard that right from the video though). But so far there are no plans to implement it in the OS itself.

As for themes, unity8 already supports application level themeing, OS level themeing is being worked on and it will come.

27:42 What is Ubuntu phone's goal on the global market in terms of marketshare?

The platform is just a few months old, and there are only 3 devices out yet. So it is still too early to talk about this, but the current market share is of course still low.(In previous statements they have said that market share is not something they are aiming for right now).

30:57 Aside from the scopes initiative, are there any other initiatives to fix the application gap on phones and tablets?

Yes, there was a huge hackathon in China. Work is being done together with universities. Something new will be announced very soon. They are constantly working on improving the SDK, API and other tools. They are communicating with 3rd party developers. However they have mentioned that none of this will come over night. They have also praised the Dekko email client application for being a great example of a good application for the platform.
Also they have mentioned that Linux itself has grown a long way even without binary compatibility with Windows or Mac applications.

34:00 Will we see the return of the 100 papercuts project?

The project actually still exists. You could however make a global jam to make another such initiative with a list of problems, and you could even try to solve them.

36:00 Is there an ETA on mir proprietary drivers?

None.However support is being made on many things, including the fact that GTK applications now work on mir.

41:27 Upuports project, is it good or bad?

It is great. The developers have stressed on how much harder it is to install Ubuntu on a random phone, than it is to install it on a random PC, mostly because some drivers can not be redistributed. They have also praised the OnePlus One port for Ubuntu touch. They have also reminded us that they still have the intent to run Ubuntu Linux on everything "From supercomputers to your toaster." (Libretoast, I am coming)

47:20 What advice can you give to non-programmers to contribute to ubuntu phone?

You can contribute in discussions, you can contribute with your own designs, you can contribute by translating You can test how the devel and proposed images work, you can suggest application ideas(even better if you write project documentation about them).
Also have a look at one of my other blog posts:
http://thebluedrag.blogspot.com/2015/05/what-you-can-do-to-help-linux.html

55:35 Is the hud and global search coming back?

They had nothing specific to say about the HUD, they did however say it would be great if they could implement it somehow, with voice search.

59:00 Will they add easter eggs?

Yes, they said it would be cool.

59:40 Will Firefox remain the default browser on the desktop? There was talk that it would be replaced by Chromium, or that it could be replaced with the phone Web browser?

They have said that they would not be surprised if Firefox was replaced as the default web browser on the desktop. However no such decision has been made. They also said that they would need many discussion and feedback rounds for that. So everything is open.

And here is the link to the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxo8T-Wdhsw

Ubuntu Q & A 28.07.2015 overview

Hello everyone.

I have decided to start a new miniseries on this blog. This miniseries will be overviewing the regular weekly Q & A's held by the Canonical community team. I don't promise to do this miniseries regularly because of my own time constrictions. I also will not write about every question that was asked, I will only write about questions and answers which I consider interesting. And I will only indirectly report what was asked and how it was answered. You can find those details in the video of the sessions themselves. I will however put a link to the videos(if I forgot the link, please tell me so in the comments). So let's start with the first question.

08:00 How many devices with ubuntu have been sold?

The Canonical community team members have said that they do not have the exact numbers of how many Ubuntu devices have been sold, they did however say that they are satisfied with the sales. They also said that sales are currently not their priority, their priority is to get customer feedback, and so far they are satisfied with the feedback.  Michael Hall did also add that he is excited about some of the numbers from the application store, he said that the number of applications and downloads doubles every 4-6 months and that the application store currently has over 1800 applications.

13:10 Voice commands on the phone?

The community team members have said that voice commands will come, however, they are not a priority right now. What little work was done so far is mostly based on pocketsphinx. They are hoping to make voice commands a completely local technology so that no data will be se3nt to servers on the internet, due to privacy concerns.

22:00 Wifi hotspot on Ubuntu mobile devices?

It will probably come with OTA-6

23:40 How long will the BQ e4.5 receive updates?

Their answer was: Indefinitely, or at least as long as it is technically possible. There is no planned EOL target date, however it is a tiny bit dependant on the manufacturer. They did also say that in terms of updates they definitely plan to handle that better than Android does. They have mentioned that this is possible because the system is now well layered into multiple layers, so they are able to update the base system layer without interfering with the OEM layer.

26:30 Will we be able to use KDE plasma mobile alongside Unity 8, the same way we can use KDE plasma 5 alongside unity 7 on the desktop?

The  Canonical engineers have not said a definite yes, but they did seem optimistic about it because, Plasma mobile is able to use the Ubuntu SDK applications,  it was built on top of a Ubuntu touch image, it was another proof that the separation of system layers worked and because current ubuntu touch images still run a upgraded LightDM login manager. However they are still in contact with KDE developers, and they hope that click packaging will work with it. They also said that many small details still have to be figured out, like modifications to LightDM on unity8.

34:10 Will we have a quick camera option and an option for emergency contacts on the lockscreen?

The design team is looking to make the lockscreen more customisable and interactive. Also emergency dialling will be improved. However so far there are no plans to implement a quick camera on the lock screen.

39:50 Will application launch times be improved?

Community team members have confirmed that Canonical is aware of the issue. They have also said that it is internally discussed and they are working on it. They have also said that in their case the issue is not one big issue why applications are launching so slowly, but rather they have many small issues. Some of thema re in apparmor, others in the launching script, the SDK, etc...

The link to the session:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47GczsHH9aI 

The end.