Last week we learned not only the end of Ubuntu Phone support but also UBPorts decision to take over the project. This is a great effort for the project but it also means greater independence when making decisions regarding the project.
Thus, it seems that Marius Gripsgard and his team have decided make small changes that will improve Ubuntu Phone development and keep old devices too.
One of the first decisions has been to create their own store, a store where users can find any mobile app and download it easily. Actually users have the Canonical store, but at the end of this year, this store will close and users will not have an easy method to install apps, at least without connecting the mobile to another device or downloading packages from a web.
UBPorts will bring Wayland to the Ubuntu Phone project and our mobiles
UBPorts will take care of this problem with a store of its own that maintains .click packages in principle but that it can also support other types of packages in the not too distant future, such as snap packages, also facilitating the insertion of new packages and the new store in old devices, that is, BQ and Meizu mobiles.
However, the biggest change and the biggest challenge for the project will be the insertion of the graphical server Wayland in Ubuntu Phone. This will not mean the death of MIR, but Wayland will run in the background in conjunction with MIR to offer a better user experience and also facilitate device convergence.
Later, Unity 8 will come to Ubuntu Phone, but a Unity 8 that will be compatible with Wayland and MIR. In short, UBPorts has set itself ambitious but necessary objectives that will undoubtedly keep the project alive. Do not you think?
3 comments, leave yours
It may sound bad, but for now UBPorts can only aspire to be the fancier that will keep the project, the community and the device park alive while Canonical rethinks the matter and returns to Ubuntu for smartphones again (we understand that from the hand of Gnome).
For my part, I hope for the best (Remember that if my Aquaris E5… XD). If they manage to install applications such as WhatsApp in a usable way, even if they are from another "platform", I will consider that they have complied.
Wayland is not a graphical server ... It is a protocol. Each Wayland composer acts as a graphics server.
Well, personally, I hate android, apple is overrated to me, and I think we have to expand the options, personally, I would like to see a device with ubuntu reach the Mexican market