Good, so it's already the evening of the first day of our system, about 6pm and now we
hear for something that's, I've basically done two years ago already, so it's mostly
update. It's about the Linux phone app ecosystem, so it's not really super technical,
so I don't want to go into Conrad Reversor, or how to enable hardware on boot, you know,
you boot and bottom, it's just basic apps and stuff. Good, so what do we have in the agenda?
First of all, about me, then goals and what science scope, apps on SurfaceOS, apps on Ubuntu
touch, apps on Plasma Mobile and Flash on Mobile, and then a call to action, because I mean,
why not. And then hopefully room for Q&A. So about me, I'm Peter, I'm 40 years old, and I do
stupid stuff like a while ago, I did some videos, I had this badly hand drawn logo on Windows
phones, so mostly pine front videos and so on. And also, because I like the open internet,
I'm not just YouTube, I have a blog, and there I collect basically the weekly news, so what
happened across all these mentioned things, trying my best, never catching all of it, but yeah,
at least I'm pretty consistent, so I've been doing this since mid 2020, and I've skipped a few
weeks, because but never more than one, right? So at worst or two gaps, a gap of two weeks.
Then I've got a project that's really a time sink, it's called the F1 F1 arc, to basically
which the last part of what are the accounts for the OS's will be based on that data,
and then I've been also contributing to mobile comfort Firefox, which has been great fun,
and today I've been talking to people about Linux Mobile, and will be there tomorrow too,
and UG level two, it may be, went through there when you came here. Good, gold for this talk.
Well, let's have a look at the changes for the past few years. Let's see where there is
collaboration already happening, so where apps work on multiple OS's and not just on one,
because, I mean, why do it twice, basically, and then also trying to encourage more collaboration
and showing some avenues for that, and then those boilers, that's the context, and later.
So, not in scope, but we're just figuring out who are these projects. We had to talk about
the nearer today, it's totally different thing. Memo Lester is all the end goal, the
Nemo Mobile is also still kicking, and Essex and Mal is kind of in scope, but sorry,
I'm not going to talk about CLIO to terminal UI apps. Sorry, no.
Yeah, so in 2024, I did a very similar talk, and big then I had the time to do some assumptions,
and here they are, so I thought, well, open standards, so I don't know, email, XMPP,
that's totally impermanible, we have that, right, and it's solid. And then of course,
services for the API API access, that should exist too, right? No, why not? And then,
also, is that do have an API for your unofficial whatnot, that should also be doable,
and then trying to out, no, no. I mean, this is free software, so people see something,
have something, do something, and then something is there, and then maybe it takes off,
and maybe it gets abandoned, or it becomes a thing like my stupid blog post, that I started
in 2020, but having the goal of, well, I was actually super proud when I had continued that
to the end of the year, right, like doing this weekly, weekly, and now that's, I'm not six years later,
I'm still doing it. So, same stuff there, and then, these assumptions, looking at the
API, because there's some still going through, so, no need for different assumptions here.
Let's start with, say, for sure, with the in-depth look, and, say, for sure, as, yeah, it has this
one history. It was really, really technically impressive in 2013, but he's seeing, using, then,
really used technology, like valent, system to E, BTRF, you know, we may or may not use all of these
today, you know, machines, mobile or not, but big then it was really, really, really new.
And then, yeah, it's still going, basically, it's November, big then, they basically didn't sell
devices, but you could buy, licensed for some Sony devices, and these days, they make devices,
again, signature as a famous for the Android app support, which is basically a pretty neat integration
to run all those great Android apps, right? Or also apps from Google Play, and they have three
sources for native apps, and that's what this is about, right? So, let's start with the yellow score,
it requires a really elegant, and it has no for pay apps, despite being back by all,
has no equipment first, so I didn't count then, and it didn't count now. And, yeah,
here's a little bit of highlighting one specialty about San Francisco, it's pulled down many
that they do, then open repost on that, it's more, yeah, some kind of open source, community resource,
people upload the apps, you can access the mobile phone with the storeman front end,
again, no payment methods or something, and it also lists apps rather projects like those
Nokia operating systems, I've mentioned initially, and looking at the count, so that's not just
apps that also pack into this, like FFM pack and stuff, I think they're doing pretty well,
that's notable increase, that's not just circumstances, so yeah, looking good,
and this is what the storeman front end looks like, then charm, which is, was it back then,
really new in 2024? These days, yeah, it's still the news one of these, and it didn't grow as much
as open repost on that. So, well, I would, back then, have expected it to maybe replace open repost,
but that apparently did definitely not happen. But the cool thing about promise, it also includes
Kirigami apps, so these days, Q5, Kirigami, so you can, basically use, for example, if you
don't have to be with the Gecko browser on surface rest, can use an older version of Kirigami
angle first, and run that, but also, are there a few other Kirigami apps?
Yeah, oh well, I would say it's looking really good, there is some technical depth,
and there's also an unfortunate circumstance that you can't basically run anything GDK based,
which makes it really difficult. Like, you would think, hey, it's just a screen, so let me run
more well-confident, which there's some Firefox, which just have to package it, but you can't,
because that would, in both some kind of stuff, that wouldn't work on that competitor.
Good, next up, you won't touch Mark Shuttle, that's Dream Shild.
Yeah, it was in vision in 2011, and it came with a bunch of technologies that
canonical invented, like, mirror, absurd, unity aid, and they wanted to bring them at those
everywhere, and they actually released the device, or multiple device, the first one in 2015,
but then two years later, canonical had basically dropped that plan and went back to GNOME,
and the UV ports project that have previously just ported some devices, took over.
And they really have done an amazing job since.
They renamed Unit8 to make it more equitable and avoid the confusion with the game engine,
and other things called unity. Unity appears to be very popular, so it's commonly used name,
and then near support railing, and all of that rest, they are using system D, they have
very early to run some Android apps, and they also are the OGs of imutable, basically,
so non-vitable hardware, they have some sandboxing, which is not always count great.
But yeah, let's try to get to some counts here. This is the open store, it's basically separate
project from Ubiquartz, and they have these, but they are the pre-assault app store that comes to
and in 2024, we had separate counts, I'm not going through the numbers to try to make a metal note.
Those, and these days, there's just a unified count, so I can't really compare this, but at least
they total numbers are increasing, and if you, they, so the Ubiquartz team does some bi-weekly
video, Q&A is on YouTube, and they always mention you apps, so stuff is happening, they are very
much alive. Now with Ubiquartz being based on Ubuntu 4, Ubuntu 2444, they've really
caught up with the LTS, and I think they are going to continue that route, and given that they were
still on 16 or 4, in 2023 or 2023, that's an amazing feed, that had just left eight years
and basically bail as time. Also, there are other basic install apps,
limiting content, which used to be not useful at all, or tablets, these days, it could be more useful,
and then there are snaps, which is another canonical technology, and it's natively supported now,
but the issue is that you have to bring your own environment, basically, or you have to define
certain scaling factors, because this is a fushet snap, and you can see everything is tiny,
and yeah, you can't use it like that, you have to somehow make it find the way to scale with that screen.
Yeah, and let's have one of too many tensions, maybe, and that is Lumiri on distros,
so Lumiri this day, so you need to use the UI for Ubuntu touch, it's available in more and more
distros, obviously in Debian, because Debian is in a way Ubuntu's upstream, or whatever, you
don't know if it's not a clear option with relationship, but they do put stuff in Debian to let
it in Ubuntu, right? Then in Elpine, it's available these days, so you can use Lumiri on post-micro,
as if you're so inclined. I've seen the package in NYXOS, and that also includes the core apps,
but as you can see there, they may not work with your shell, like if you use fush,
plus a mobile mobile, which has scroll, where that flick up from the bottom is basically entering
the multitasking menu, you're going to have a hard time switching tabs in off-process, so
there are these avenues where you're like, oh, I can just install that and use it, but no,
not always, right? And the paradigms don't, then the paradigms collide basically your circle.
And again, I think they have done impressive work in the past two years, and they are now
technically six, and there's one thing that I really would wish to see elsewhere, and that's this
little donation hack that comes up when you try to install an app in Ubuntu Touch, and the
developers put in some information that makes basically a link, a donate link, and
I think this is pretty nice to encourage people to give something back, right?
Now, the stuff that I know most about, I have actually somewhat competent,
plus my mobile, no mobile first. If you've been here in this room, I think you know, when this
all maybe started around 2020, it became more of a thing, and then Fostem was,
yeah, online only for a while, and since then we've had this room at every Fostem, and
there's multiple UI, multiple distributions quite confusing, and worst of all there's no proper
app so solution is for a long time, and so back in 2020 I went switching the internet and I found this
thing, and I contributed, and then I contributed too much, and I know it's a maintainer a little bit,
and I forked it, I extended it, and then eventually extended it too much, too much content,
basically, so it wouldn't load any more on a Python, it was too slow, it would really be like
a minute, and Firefox would probably probably have a little warning. Yeah, and then I turned that into
this steaming mess, let's find it a rock, a nice website, but yeah, don't look under the sheets.
You should not, you should not base an app directory on a static site generating internet for blocks,
but yeah, that's just advice, but hey, it's listing 760 apps, most of those, not all, but over
700 of those, I've evaluated at least once, so that's been a bit of work, that's why I'm
really happy that there's a competitor these days, and that's the flat-up mobile collection,
which is based on something that's now the most boring part, maybe XML metadata,
so to really, it's a thing, right, it's a standard, and it makes listings and gnomes offer
in such look nice, and you can take a form for it as F3 just so, and that's also these days,
this year, now usable through an amazing GTK for a little bit of IDAP called Bazaar,
which is basically a flat-up, but as an app on your phone, and you can go through that
on the go-section and just browse things, and yeah, so that's pretty cool.
Now, how are these worlds developing, so there's a one hand, we just heard about gnomes,
and the gnomes mobile, gnomes mobile too, you know, that, that nice UI, and then there's also
Fosh, and for those, we have native UI components in Liberator and Lepandy, Lepandy being the
older one, that's why the contest is also decreasing here, but as you can see, and this time, this
number of 350 apps, it's actually only the apps that I've rated as, those really fit the screen
and work with reasonably well on mobile, back then I think in 2024 it just took the total count,
so that's like doubled, and that's really, really cool, of course, not all of these apps are still
as maintained, maybe some apps were maintained in 2024, and these days,
quick and stumble with, you know, but that's just normal, all right, so this is really
making me very happy, and Katie, this cover doesn't yet indicate productivity, but also on the
plasma mobile side, the counts have been, I think, increasing at a normal level, and honestly,
I may have missed some apps here, so the actual count may be higher, and also on plasma mobile,
you can also use those GTK apps with, well, they look different, they feel slightly different,
so it's not that much of an issue, it's just like when you install some, I don't know,
Katie, PDF reader, and you don't mess up. Of course, there's more, so this is taking right from the
site, I don't know, the Android translation layer may be a small highlight, I think it was mentioned
in the new Pyproch earlier, but then we also see stuff like lipcosmic, which is what
system 76 are using for the new Cosmic Desktop, some of those apps are also useful on phones,
and of course, there's also more programming languages used, this is, I don't think, so that's
surprising, right? So, yeah, if you only know objects, if see, you can still make an app for Linux
mobile, and then to go back to that area of collaboration, just two examples here,
shining examples in my opinion, one is Pyomat, which I think originates on safest choice and has been
then first ported to Ubuntu Touch, and then later on, it's available in some distributions,
but also on flat-up again, and you can just use it to, yeah, for navigation and mapping, and
it's pretty cool to have one code base across all these very different,
or seemingly different mobile operating systems that all run Linux, and then to maybe touch more
relevant or a platform for the actual market share, there's flutter apps, and FluffyShirt is a
matrix client that really works on everything, apparently, but of course, certainly not on safe
choice and Ubuntu Touch, yeah, maybe that's something to pick up from this talk, and of course,
there's more examples, the slides are available, you can click the links, if you want to,
community favorites, I had done this last time, and it was, I think, a big mistake, and I've
threatened, that's why I repeated it, and if you look at that top-right corner,
totally obvious, candidates, if you ask on the Fediverse, Fediverse clients, but yeah, so all of these
apps, I've been using once or twice, multiple times, and I can, we've come at all of them, so I decided
to include these. Now, there are also common gaps, and those are not as great, right, or not
nice to have, and yeah, like, that stuff that we can't just do as a community, where we need others,
and first of all, mine share, and then their corporation to make that happen, and their obvious
candidates, like government idea apps, banking apps, I mean banking apps are really the most obvious,
one, like, if you're ever at a stand and throwing some mobile annex, you're always going to get
asked about banking apps, 50 times a day, and less obvious ones, but really life,
it's really important for life, like, if you've got a hard problem more, you're a diabetic,
you don't want to mess with your own code, connecting to that Bluetooth device, you don't want to
do some off by one error and die, and then you have this stuff also, right, Instagram,
TikTok, we don't have those, if you want mass adoption, we probably unfortunately need it,
and then there's other governments that are easier to address, not going through the
to leave some time at the end, and have this call to action, so yeah, so I've posted this before
on a little red blog post, but yeah, I'm going to retire from my project because of
happy personal news, I don't know if you see that as a hat of a new forming human, and I'm
I'm really happy and scared and everything, I mean, I'm 40, but it's my first kid, so,
and therefore I actually need people maybe to pick that mess up that I've created there,
and then of course there's general stuff like metadata improvements that I already talked to
these are two relevant issues, basically, and this is a way to find that out, if you are
developing, you're not even targeting mobile, maybe use that length app, and then you can,
you know what the value is that you can put in that one field, if people copy past metadata,
it's normal, it's human, but it's calling progress done right, and if you decide to contribute,
please just read that thing up there, always be nice, and stuff, that's the most important one of these,
and with that, thank you, and I hope we still have room for one or two questions.
Yes?
Something you mentioned is all of the parts of the works for different Linux operations,
you see any authority that's all of these software will pass away, and of course, in any
way.
Well, so the question is, I mentioned all the upstairs, and do I see a possibility that
apps will work across the board on all the mobile Linuxes? Now, there are, if they are not
required to feel native, and if, like in safest choice, some things, just like the computer,
just needs an update, right, if you want to run GTK apps there, otherwise it's not going to happen,
but in theory, yeah, you can totally package some GTK app for, you bunch of touch,
you can package, you bunch of touch apps as a flat pack, and then there's a lot of possibilities.
Yeah?
So, when I've found a lot of touch community, one blocker is in the rear wheel, so I don't have the
and we don't have XTG just, of course, support, yes, which blocks, for example, running GTK application
sensor, and we're working on that, I don't know where there's part of the user today.
Thank you, that was more of a statement, but there's upstream work on upstream XTG portal support,
necessary for keyboard and GTK support, Lumiri, but it's great, thank you.
Good afternoon.
Time's up, thank you, you can find each and all.