Ubuntu Touch OTA-1 Focal brings Ubuntu 20.04 LTS to smartphones | Hacker News Reader

Ubuntu Touch OTA-1 Focal brings Ubuntu 20.04 LTS to smartphones

liliputing.com

54 pointsanderspitman15 comments

Remember the Ubuntu phone kickstarter? I pledged for it back in the day and was relieved it fell through... maybe some day they will try again.

Even with such a big ask, 32 million I think, it almost made it. I was disappointed it fell through.

Out of curiosity what would you want from an Ubuntu phone - that you won't find in pine phone/volla phone/librem 5/fair phone etc?

Am I missing something obvious, or are there no screenshots on the Ubuntu Touch website? (https://ubuntu-touch.io/)

Does anyone know where I could find some? Curious to see what this looks like.

This YouTube video shows the changes in the latest Ubuntu Touch release:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=s39skT5KeUc

A demo of Waydroid (Android container) on the latest Ubuntu Touch release:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=4Zr7543P8dU

Some very basic mock-up images on this seemingly related page: https://ubports.com/supported-products

Why not target 22.04?

I love the focal fossa desktop wallpaper though :)

IIRC the work to target 20.04 has been going on since 2020, and just now finished. Still an incredible milestone for the team who took over when canonical abandoned the project completely! The UI is also super nice and in some respects was way ahead of its time.

They've also indicated that the work being done to migrate from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS to 20.04 LTS should pave the way for much quicker updates in the future.

Wish I could try this on my pine. Most of the current offerings are rather lacking.

Soon...

I was under the impression it was available at least for pinephone pro via pmOS already but haven't checked

How easy is it to flash Ubuntu onto an existing Android phone?

Is there any potential to dual boot between it and Android?

Has anyone tried it out? How usable is it? Does it have actual calling support?

Depends on your Android phone.

They officially support like 50 or so Android devices: https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/ at various compatibility levels. On some, everything works - including calls etc . On some, it's mostly a proof of concept.

They offer a GUI installer that mostly just works once you unlock your device.

Some devices like the ones from Volla, implement a basic support for Android multi boot: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kXJ7a_lebkU

Now the team says it’s stable enough to release as an official update for a handful of supported devices:

Fairphone 4

Google Pixel 3a

Vollaphone

Vollaphone X

Vollaphone 22

Builds for the PinePhone, PinePhone Pro, and PineTab are also in the works… but since these devices are designed to run a mainline Linux kernel, they’re not part of the OTA update schedule that applies to most Ubuntu Touch-compatible devices.

So far, there are builds of Ubuntu Touch Focal Fossa for the PinePhone and PinePhone Pro, but there’s currently no support for auto-rotate, camera or flashlight capabilities, GPS, or OTA updates. And the PinePhone modem is said to be unstable.

While Ubuntu 20.04 is a few years old at this point, it’s an operating system that will be officially supported at least until 2027.

In addition to the updated base operating system, OTA-1 Focal also brings a number of other improvements, including backported versions of the Ubuntu 22.04 Network Manager and Bluetooth stack and updates and improvements for a number of apps.

Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35332005 ?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com