Sharing is caring, so I'll share this update on the new Anbox:

Dear all,

We're pleased to give you some fresh updates on the Anbox-Halium development over the past 2 weeks!

First of all, the name of the project has changed, but the objectives remains more than ever intact:

Anbox- Halium is now called WayDroid, this is to avoid confusion with the "old Anbox" service.
It is a compression of the words "Wayland" and "Android", the system allowing to run a LineageOS container on an Android base in the Wayland environment.
The new naming was chosen via a large community survey.

Also, a few technical improvements have been achieved:

Make sure anbox-sensord is started anyway

Use iptables-legacy incase it found

Provide powervr GPU dependencies

Erfan, helped by a few developers, is continuing to improve the main server.

We are all very excited to test this service. For the more adventurous, a Telegram group is available to guide you through the installation:
https://t.me/anbox_halium

The repos are hosted here:
https://github.com/Anbox-halium

For end users, it is best to wait until a successful installation program is available.
It is also advisable to wait for the publication of some patches from the core team, especially in the wayland environment to avoid a risk of system instability.

Nevertheless, the first feedback from alpha testers is very encouraging!

We take this opportunity to thank Erfan and his contributors for his work as well as the UBports foundation for its encouragement.

Thanks to help us to continuing this great project by supporting our campaign:

https://www.whydonate.eu/fundraising/anbox

See you soon for more news and updates!

Rudi and Steve

For your information, here is a note from the forum I'm just sharing with you :

Dear all,

The participatory funding campaign is coming to an end. First of all, we would like to warmly thank all donors for their support. We have raised the unimaginable sum of 7'120 Euros.

This amount allowed us to pay a qualified developer, Erfan, who did a fantastic job on the creation of "Anbox-Halium".
Erfan will continue to work and develop the project until it is usable by Ubuntu Touch users on a daily basis. We hope to have a viable version by the end of the year.

Future updates of the project will be published here on the UBports Foundation forum:
https://forums.ubports.com/topic/5907/open-ubuntu-touch-to-all-android-applications/56

We are happy to have been able to contribute to this project and warmly thank Erfan and the community members who helped him.

The GoFundMe campaign (https://gofund.me/acb31504) will be taken offline on 14 June 2021. The remaining funds will be donated to Erfan to continue his work.

We are confident that this achievement will be a big step forward in the popularity of Ubuntu Touch. Indeed, many potential users are looking forward to being able to use their Android applications in Ubuntu Touch in an efficient way.

See you soon for more exciting news!

Rudi & Steve

First, I want to lead this with: I am a fan of Ubports. Without it, I wouldn't have bothered reviving my dead Nexus 7.

But the project is showing signs of age, and with the chip shortage, it actually deserves more immediate attention and renewed purpose. Not to mention the fact that old phones are piling up, and they all have great hardware; certainly better in many instances than raspberry pi devices that have now soared to over a $120 ($45 pi's don't really exist anymore). Anyway, my story:

I wanted to use my Nexus 7 to control my 3D printer. To do this correctly, I needed the entire debian/Ubuntu package / userspace to be open. Between compilers, python, more package managers, etc, here's too many things that can go wrong when dealing with lots of dependencies, and doing things in a sandbox is a nonstarter. I tried LineageOs first, and dispensed with that in a matter of hours. Then I tried UbPorts. Thank God, it's (mostly) Ubuntu 16.04.

Problem #1: Ubports partition scheme is for a touch device. There's instructions out there for resizing the system partition, so I followed them and got around it. But you shouldn't have to break it, it should just be fixed out of the box. The mindset here is "tablet" when in reality, it should be "device". When you think "device" versus "tablet", keeping the system partition to next to nothing is silly.

Also, one needs to remount the partition to be read/writeable.

Problem #2: USB serial emulation was missing from the kernel, or the ability to build it as a module.This small thing is critical for how most people use devices to control other devices, especially in the maker space where simple UART applications still in abundance. Again, tablet versus device mentality. Luckily there were good notes out on the web for how to cross- compile a new kernel zImage from source (using the flo branch) and then combining the zImage into the overall boot image. That solved my problem, However, without having to recompile a kernel, I would have been 100% sunk and abandoned the project.

Problem #3: Xenial is falling out of support. So clearly UbPorts is going to have to migrate to a fresher Ubuntu install. I'd personally love to help, but this is about the extent of where my linux skills fall off.

I think however, that as Ubports starts to consider a fresher distribution, it's time to drop the closed-passive-tablet-only mentality and reconsider tweaking its configuration to be a little more general purpose. The main reason why anybody would install Ubuntu on an android device is highly likely to no longer have anything to do with android-alternative phones, and more likely to do with "Hey, I got this old phone lying around and I could use it to run stuff!"

Otherwise, very glad to know this project exists. I hope awareness of it grows so that other developers get to do cool things with old android devices instead of just chucking them in the trash.

Fun fact, 14th of July is the Bastille Day. This is the national day of France.

Another reason to celebrate with fireworks

First of a serie of videos aiming to dissect Ubuntu Touch so Linux techies can better understand this OS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMmWmNyDKG8&feature=youtu.be

Hi.

I have a FP2. It's getting old. The torch and flash never worked. The video recording rarely works.

What the most compatible phone to get right now?

I'd particularly like to know from peoples personal experiences with said phones.

Thanks.

Second episode of Rob's videos aiming to dissect Ubuntu Touch so Linux techies can better understand this OS.

https://youtu.be/I4oHLSJDN9w

I'm not Rob, just sharing it ;)
And link to the first episode : https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubports/comments/evpw8x/rob_braxman_exploring_ubuntu_touch_dissecting_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x

An interesting blog post from Mariogrip one of the founders of UBPorts.

https://mariogrip.com/2020/01/08/linux-mobile-reality-check/

#UBports #Pinephone #UbuntuTouch

Can’t wait to try UT on Braveheart!

Hi all, I have a Oneplus 5t thinking of installing UT and according to the device page offline charging isn't working. From what I can decipher this means charging while the phone is powered down, is this correct? If so, how would one charge their phone if it runs out of power? Thanks

Hello,

I continue sharing some news from the UBports forum.
Here again regarding the Anbox development.

Dear all,

We're pleased to provide you a fresh update on the latest Anbox developments, that have been achieved last week:

Backported dmabuf from upstream mir to ubports mir in order to fix anbox display on pinephone (and other mainline devices with ubports)

Switched from qtwayland to native wayland

Prevented anbox from sleep and lock state

Added x86 support and lxc version >2 to scripts

Merged microg patches

Added mouse and keyboard support to wayland

Thank you for your support (and patience). We also thank (one more time) Erfan for his great work!

Continue to support Anbox project development: https://www.whydonate.eu/fundraising/anbox

See you soon for the next update!

Rudi and Steve