Does anyone know if Ubuntu Touch supports flatpaks? I’ve been following the project and think what they’re doing is super cool for mobile Linux. I’ve even been thinking about installing it on one of my devices just to try it out at some point.
One problem though. Does it support flatpak? If not, that might be a deal breaker. All the best mobile friendly apps are easily available through flathub. It’s also my preferred way to get them since snap is not as good and natives packages are bound to be outdated given Ubuntu Touch’s current version.
Unlike what many people tend to assume, Ubuntu Touch is not just Ubuntu installed on a smartphone. It’s a separate distro built on Ubuntu technology that has since been partly abandoned. It has a special way of sandboxing applications, dealing with drivers, and dealing with UI. It’s not like the mobile versions of distros like Manjaro where you just boot Linux but on a touch screen.
Out of the box, it doesn’t run Flatpak applications, or even normally compiler applications. Neither Snap nor Flatpak seem to be supported by Ubuntu Touch or its built-in package manager. However, you can create a container in which you install nornal Ubuntu software, which you could try to use to get your Flatpak apps running. You’ll need to edit the .desktop files and do a lot of it through the command line, though. I a way, it’s a bit like running Linux apps on Android, in that you can set up a separate little Linux environment if you want. Support is better on UBTouch (you do get stuff like hardware acceleration) but you’ll have to fiddle and set up the environment yourself.
You can probably get the Flatpak daemon running fine. However, the security model on UB Touch is AppArmor-based and the display system still seems to be based on Mir (rather than X11 or Wayland), so I’m not sure if existing GUI apps will even work if you get the permission model working. Worth a shot, but Mir is practically abandoned outside of old Ubuntu desktops and UBTouch.
Thank you. This was the answer I was looking for. It’s sad that the process to get apps running is fairly convoluted. I hope that things will get easier in the future though I have no clue how hard it would be for them to transition to wayland or improve mir for running other app types. I think flatpak would be huge for improving the usability though since it would give them access to all of flathub.
Flatpak is just a package manager. If it’s built for whatever you have UT installed on, sure. Why not?
It’s just there’s a severe lack of communication regarding it. I’ve never seen a single flatpak app mentioned in their videos, posts, or documentation. I’m sure since it’s based on Ubuntu the package exists but it seems like they aren’t on board with flatpak generally. I’ve seen mention of getting snaps and they have an app store but there’s no flatpak support on it.
I don’t mind the terminal but a graphical interface would be much preferred.
Canonical makes Ubuntu, and also the Snap Package Manager. They’ve been trying to push Snap for years, which is why Flatpak is an alternative to Snap. You won’t find Canonical/Ubuntu docs spreading Flatpak.
Canonical dropped Ubuntu Touch ages ago. The team running UBPorts doesn’t have any interest in the Snap store the way normal Ubuntu does.
The default store uses Clickable packages, which are like normal packages but with permissions and such. Confinement is based on AppArmor rather than Snap.
UBPorts even has a demo/proof of concept for publishing mobile apps as Flatpak’s on desktop, so they do have an interest in Flatpaks at the very least.
There’s a good reason UB Touch doesn’t use Flatpak, and it’s the same reason iOS and Android don’t use Flatpak: the system wasn’t written to support it. Theoretically it’s possible to combine the right support libraries and add OS level wrappers, but it doesn’t work like that at the moment.
This is a community project though. They aren’t affiliated with canonical I think as they’re not an official spin.
The footer of the Ubuntu Touch site:
Not sure what you thought you were into, but…
But this is on their faq
Right, but just because you have people maintaining the project, it’s still based on Canonical’s Ubuntu, therefore Snap by default. Take it up with their community if you don’t like that, that’s the point of community outreach.
I’m not saying I have any problem with it, it’s their work after all. I was just asking a question since I couldn’t find anything that clarified the project’s position. And tbh I would feel very uncomfortable entering their channels, asking if they support flatpak and then leaving. So I figured I would ask on lemmy and leave the information for all who were equally curious.
