The sixth UBports update OTA has already been released

Recently the UBports community announced the launch of the sixth OTA update (Over-the-Air) of the Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system for all Ubuntu Phone compatible devices.

Lhe UBports community, is the one that continues to maintain Ubuntu Touch for a variety of mobile devices. For those who were left with the idea that Ubuntu Touch had been abandoned for good, it really was not.

After the abandonment of Ubuntu Touch development by Canonical, the UBports team led by Marius Gripsgard was the one who took over the reins to continue with the project.

Ubports is basically a foundation whose mission is to support the collaborative development of Ubuntu Touch and promote the widespread use of Ubuntu Touch. The foundation provides legal, financial and organizational support to the entire community.

It also serves as an independent legal entity to which community members can contribute code, funding, and other resources, with the knowledge that their contributions will be kept for the public benefit.

The sixth update of UBports is here

The UBports project recently released the OTA-6 firmware update for all officially supported Ubuntu smartphones and tablets.

El project is also developing an experimental Unity 8 desktop port, available in versions for Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04.

This sixth update OTA is based on Ubuntu 16.04 (The OTA-3 build was based on Ubuntu 15.04, and from OTA-4, transitioned to Ubuntu 16.04).

All changes in the new version are related to the development of the browser web Morph Browser, which is being developed as part of the browser-ng project and is based on the current Chromium codebase.

In addition to this, the problems to restore the previous session were solved, the work with self-signed certificates was solved, the problems with the ReCaptcha job and reproduction of multimedia content were solved, order the design of the scroll bars.

Besides the browser, improved compatibility with Oneplus One smartphone, updated libhybris library (Support for Android 7.1 drivers has been added.)

On the other hand, the transition to Qt 5.9.7 has been made and a new library has been activated to work with sensors.

The project infrastructure has launched a gateway for the Matrix communication client, which allows receiving notifications through the Matrix.

The app development calculator app, music app, ubports app, and weather app has been transferred to the GitLab platform.

From the updates in the program directory, the implementation of a VPN setup application that supports OpenVPN and PPTP connections is noted.

Known issues to expect with this release.

• The Nexus 5 viewfinder freezes when shooting successively.
• On larger screens (such as BQ M10 and Nexus 7), the browser will close after opening a selection box in landscape mode.
• When switching between text boxes in the browser, the keyboard input type is not updated.
• In the browser, the selection boxes open in a new window. This is expected to continue until a newer version of Mir is used.
• In some applications, dialog boxes will pop off the screen when the keyboard appears.

Plans for the next UBports OTAs

In lTo next version ofUBports OTA-7, a transition to the new versions of the Unity8 shell and the Mir display server is planned., as well as improved tools for launching Wayland-based applications.

While for the OTA-8 it is programmed to provide full support for the Anbox environment to run Android applications.

How to get this new OTA?

LExisting Ubuntu Touch users on the stable channel (which is selected by default in the UBports installer) rThey will receive the OTA-6 update through the Updates screen of the System Configuration.

Devices will randomly receive the update from today until December 12.