Canonical abandoned the project but, after a time of uncertainty, the development of Ubuntu Touch has continued apace with UBports. Many have been the improvements that have been introduced in the last versions, including the renaming environment from Unity 8 to Lomiri, but there is still a lot of work ahead and there is already a scheduled date for the OTA-12 of the mobile version of Canonical's operating system.
As we read in the entry that They have published on the UBports blog, the Ubuntu Touch OTA-12 will arrive next May 6. That will be more than 5 months after a OTA-11 that arrived at the end of October. If you are wondering if the COVID crisis has had something to do with the long period of time between the previous version and the next, we are also wondering, but the answer must be no because they have not mentioned anything. It probably has more to do with the amount of internal tinkering they've done for this release.
OTA-12 highlights from Ubuntu Touch
- Change from Mir 0.24 to Mir 1.2.
- Lomiri's return to version 8.15 + 17.04.20170404-0ubuntu2, one of the last versions released by Canonical, and built on it. This introduces several new interaction models, including Application Drawer. As data, the code still appears "unity8".
- Scopes have been removed. The Dash has been removed, taking the old home screen and scopes with it.
We hope that the removal of scopes is the most talked about change in this update, as it will change the home screen for everyone. This topic was much discussed in I want to go home to the UBports Forum, and we hope this discussion continues with this update. We think it is necessary to read the entire forum topic before sharing your thoughts. Many excellent points of view were raised.
The previous news will be joined by more that will be revealed at the time of the stable release of OTA-12. Right now, UBports asks users for help to test and report bugs so that the stable version arrives as polished as possible.