The Linux Phone
App Ecosystem

 

Apps for Sailfish OS, Ubuntu Touch and their new-ish contenders

and plans for LinuxPhoneApps.org

RELOADED

This could be so simple!

* well, almost, issues with BT, Cam, Safety Net and so on would remain

See also: https://blogs.gnome.org/jdressler/2023/12/20/a-dive-into-jolla-appsupport/

Not so fast... AGENDA

  • whoami / history
  • What's not in this Talk
  • Apps on Sailfish OS
  • Apps on Ubuntu Touch
  • New contenders (LinuxPhoneApps.org)
  • Highlights
  • Gaps and Challenges
  • Q&A

About me

https://linmob.net

How it started

I found this

https://mglapps.frama.io

and forked it

https://linuxphoneapps.org/

Part One

The Linux Phone (App)

Ecosystem

Motivation

The space is a tiny niche, that may or not be stronger due to being heavily fragmented.

 

Goals

  • encouraging more collaboration
  • learning from what other projects do
  • personal: spending some time with Ubuntu Touch and Sailfish OS ;-)

Assumptions

 

  • apps for open standards should be implementable
  • apps for services with free API access too
  • apps for services that have an api should be doable

Sailfish OS

  • risen from the ashes of Nokia and Meego
  • 2013: Jolla Phone
  • Wayland, btrfs, systemd - in 2013
  • latest release: 4.6.0.11 (Sauna) / 20 May 2024
  • Jolla C2 will come with 5.0
  • Sailfish X - buy license, bring a Sony device
    • moving to subscriptions
  • Android App Support

 

Open source with added closed-source components and extensions of third parties which can be of other licences as well
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfish_OS

Jolla Store

  • requires Jolla account
  • no for pay apps
  • no web interface, did not count

openrepos.net

  • Storeman frontend
  • no for pay apps
  • also list apps for other projects
  • ~2000 apps listed for Sailfish OS

Chum

  • the newest contender
  • also has a web frontend
  • no for pay apps
  • ~190 apps listed for Sailfish (+ 20 compared to February)
  • including Kirigami apps (23.04 release)!

Sailfish Highlights

According to our poll,

are highlights!

 

Also, with Contrac, SFOS had the only #MobileLinux Covid19 contact tracing app.

Ubuntu Touch

  • envisioned in 2011
  • 2015: bq Aquaris E4.5
  • Mir, Upstart, Unity 8
  • read only rootfs
  • dropped by Canonical and continued by UBports in April 2017. Unity 8 is now Lomiri, Mir does Wayland too now and 20.04 uses systemd
  • latest release: 20.04 OTA 4 / 30 January 2024

 

Mark Shuttleworth announced on 31 October 2011 that by Ubuntu 14.04, the goal was that Ubuntu would support smartphones, tablets, smart TVs and other smart screens (such as car head units and smartwatches)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Touch

Open-Store

Numbers: Late January 2024

Other ways to install apps

  • Inside a Ubuntu container  - Libertine 
  • this is mainly useful for tablets, as 16.04 and 20.04 contain few mobile friendly apps in their repositories
  • Snapz0r: Install Snaps on Ubuntu Touch
  • both: bring your own env, or things may be tiny ;-)

Highlights

More interesting apps

Gaps (poll + from experience)

  • Matrix apps on 20.04 (beyond adaptions of Element Desktop and Cinny)
  • XMPP beyond https://conversejs.org/
  • (Desktop) Firefox for Ubuntu Touch (poll)

 "New" contenders

New contenders

  • 2017/2020 ff. Librem 5 / PinePhone
  • lots of projects based on desktop distributions
  • PureOS, postmarketOS, Mobian, Manjaro - to just name a fraction of what came up
  • Main UIs: Plasma Mobile, Phosh, GNOME Shell Mobile
  • No proper app store solution (ish)
  • hence LinuxPhoneApps.org

See https://linmob.net/resources for links.

https://linuxphoneapps.org/frameworks/

https://linuxphoneapps.org/programming-languages/

AppStream Metadata

GNOME Software

  • Can show whether apps are adaptive according to metadata
  • PureOS Store (fork) has toggle to only show adaptive apps

 

UI: GTK4 / libadwaita

 

(LPA.org lists 207 libadwaita apps + 66 libhandy apps)

Highlights (GNOME)

KDE Discover

Does not do this (yet.)

 

But: It uses Kirigami and is adaptive!

 

LPA.org lists 117 Kirigami apps and some more apps that just use Kirigamit and MauiKit or QtQuick and should work "as native" on Plasma Mobile

Highlights (Plasma)

Highlights (Other)

Special: Apps that run everywhere

 

Generally, building a Qt app with QtQuick Components 2 might lead to something portable, but what do I know ;-)

Special: Apps that run everywhere

 

See also: This FOSDEM Talk:
Flutter - about the nightmare of cross platform development targetting Linux mobile
 

There's more

Here are a few more long-lived Linux Mobile Projects that were not mentioned in this talk:

Poll results

Find them at https://linuxrocks.online/@linuxphoneapps/111796292510471036

 

 

Gaps (Poll in February)

  • Poll results
    • WhatsApp
    • Banking apps (likely various), NFC payments
    • Maps/Navigation (Organic Maps/osmAnd/Waze)
    • decent E-Mail app (Geary is close)
    • apps for Electric vehicles
    • apps for new mobility (Scooters and such)
    • camera app working on all devices
    • crypto-currency wallets

More Current gaps

  • Attention grabbing Social Media
  • Office clients (Libre Office - Collabora Office Online works fine in Firefox though)
  • ...

Frequent annoyances

  • Please, if you maintain an app, do release it some point
  • Flutter apps built only for x86_64 Linux
  • Electron apps built only for x86_64 Linux (WTF, Signal?)
  • Generally apps only built for x86_64 Linux!

qemu/binfmt to the rescue?

Future Challenges

  • Appification of more and more public and private services
  • E.g., in Germany:
    • DHL Packstation (in 2023)
    • BahnCard (soon)

Solution?

  • virtualized Android
  • reverse engineer all the things ;-)

AND / OR

  • We need to push government to keep important services accessible to people without smartphones by just two platform vendors
    • technical solution: The Web.

Stuff I would like to see

  • More cross-project collaboration in the app space
  • Better App Metadata
  • Make access to non-distro app sources easier in distributions
  • Donation nagging in other App install things
  • A bug tracker like Mozilla's Platform Tilt
  • Help with LinuxPhoneApps.org ;-)

Conclusions

  • I hope this wasn't too overwhelming or boring
  • There may be more apps, than you'd think
  • Regarding initial Assumptions: Nope, people just scratch their itch :-)

https://linuxphoneapps.org/packaged-in/

Part two:

LinuxPhoneApps.org

This is it:

it has apps

and games (needs maintainance!)

and docs

and a hack to easily create app listings

and

an issue tracker

Please check it out and ... all help is appreciated

  • As always, the README is a good starting point https://framagit.org/linuxphoneapps/linuxphoneapps.frama.io/-/blob/main/README.md
  • Create listings with https://linuxphoneapps.org/lpa_helper.html
  • or just check things that are wrong, https://linuxphoneapps.org/tags/no-appstream-metadata-manual-maintenance/ may be a good starting point

Plans for the remainder of 2024

  • make it a well working progressive web app
  • fix design and template issues
  • come up with ways to programmatically figure out
    • when an app saw its newest release
    • or latest commit
    • which UI framework an app uses (to see if a GTK3 app is now GTK4
    • ...

Thank you!

and, if you want to contribute

Q&A

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