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Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Experimental Ubuntu Touch Emulator Released

The Ubuntu developers have released an experimental Ubuntu Touch emulator running Unity 8 and Mir.

Currently, the Ubuntu Touch Emulator is only available for Ubuntu 14.04 trusty Tahr but you can try installing it from source if you want to use it in an older Ubuntu version.

According to the wiki, Ubuntu Touch Emulator if functional, but there are some things that need work. For instance, Powerd and AppArmor are disabled by default for now. Also, the first boot takes a few minutes and it's also possible for Qemu to hang while booting. In my test, the keyboard on the right didn't work and Unity is pretty slow but it's usable.

Here are a few more Ubuntu Touch Emulator (with Unity 8 & Mir) screenshots:

Ubuntu Touch Emulator seems to be based on the Android Emulator

Install Ubuntu Touch Emulator

If you've upgraded to Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr, you can install the Ubuntu Touch Emulator from the Ubuntu repositories:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-emulator

Then, create and run a new instance (called "myinstance" below):

sudo ubuntu-emulator create myinstance
ubuntu-emulator run myinstance

The first time you're running the emulator, the boot will take a while. When it finishes booting, a shell with Ubuntu Touch will start, asking you to enter the username and password:

Both the username and password are "phablet" (without the quotes). After this, it will take yet another few minutes and Unity 8 with Mir should be loaded in the Ubuntu Touch Emulator.

For more info or if you want to build the Ubuntu Touch Emulator from source, check out the instructions on the wiki.

Ubuntu Touch X86 Emulator: Better Emulator Performance, Faster Startup [Ubuntu Installation Instructions]

Yesterday I wrote about installing Ubuntu Touch Emulator (ARM) in Ubuntu, but as you've probably noticed from the video or from your own experience if you've installed it, the ARM emulator is very slow.

There's a preview Ubuntu Touch Emulator x86 image that works a lot better than the ARM emulator and even though it's available as a preview, it's probably better to use that instead of the ARM emulator, so here's how to install it.

In my test, the x86 Ubuntu Touch Emulator did not only work very fast and fluid, but it also started very fast (in about 10-15 seconds) as opposed to the ARM emulator which takes minutes to start.

Furthermore, in the ARM emulator article, I was telling you that setting the memory didn't work in my test - well, this did work with the x86 emulator so I was able to set the emulator RAM to 1024mb. However, the x86 Ubuntu Touch Emulator test video below uses the defaults (so it has the memory set to 512mb).

Known issues for Ubuntu Touch x86 Emulator:

Nested mode is currently disabled (unity-system-compositor) as it crashes Unity8 (seems to be an issue with latest Mir from lp:mir/devel, as it also happens on ARM);
Gallery-App doesn't work properly, probably because it's still trying to use libGL.so.

Ubuntu Touch x86 Emulator video

(direct video link)
As you can see from the video above, the X86 emulator starts a lot faster and is a lot more fluid than the ARM emulator (in the ARM emulator video I had to pause the screencast utility many times because some applications took ages to start but in the X86 emulator video, I didn't pause it at all).

How to install Ubuntu Touch x86 Emulator in Ubuntu

Update 13 May, 2014: Ubuntu Touch Emulator x86 is now available in a PPA!

Important: I tested the Ubuntu Touch Emulator x86 in Ubuntu 14.04 and 12.04 and:

in Ubuntu 14.04 running on my laptop: I was able to install and run it without any issues;
in Ubuntu 12.04 running in Virtualbox (so double virtualization...): the emulator was installed successfully and it worked, but there were some vertical stripes rendered on top of the Ubuntu Touch x86 emulator, which made it unusable. This might be because of VirtualBox though.

To add the Phablet Tools PPA and install the Ubuntu Touch Emulator with x86 support, use the following commands:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:phablet-team/tools
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-emulator

If you've previously installed Ubuntu Emulator from the repositories, run an upgrade too:

sudo apt-get upgrade

To create an x86 Ubuntu Emulator instance, use the following command:

sudo ubuntu-emulator create UbuntuTouch --arch=i386

where "UbuntuTouch" is the instance name.

For how to use and configure Ubuntu Touch Emulator, see our previous article: Ubuntu Touch Emulator: Installation And Usage In Ubuntu 14.04, 13.10 And 12.04

via +RicardoSalveti

A while back it was decided to create a separate Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn ISO running Unity8 on Mir, including the new core apps:

"The goal is to ramp up the quality of the unity8 desktop, without destabilizing our current environmenent. For that we are going to keep an unity7 image and add a new one for unity8 on the desktop, that new iso should become the default one by 16.04".

The new testing "flavor" is called Ubuntu Desktop Next and a daily ISO is available for download starting today. However, the ISO is still work in progress and for now, it still includes Xorg (needed for the current LightDM greeter and Ubiquity) and also, the list of packages that will be included on the ISO is marked as work in progress, so the default package selection should change.

According to the Building an unity8 desktop image blueprint, there are still quite a few items on the todo list, including:

make unity8-greeter usable on Desktop;
set up testing for the new image;
look at feature gaps in the greeter and things we need to implement
get the installer working at least in only-ubiquity (installer only) mode, installing from the live session is a wishlist item for this cycle;
look at pre-installing click packages on the ISO.

For more information about tne new Ubuntu Desktop Next ISO, check out today's Unity8 Desktop Preview Image UDS session.

Download the new Ubuntu Desktop Next 14.10 (Utopic Unicorn) Daily Build*

(the username is "ubuntu-desktop-next" - without the quotes - , and the password is blank which means you must simply hit the enter key)

* In my test, the current daily ISO didn't work properly and the Unity8 session failed to start (and I've tried it in VMware Player - which is supposed to support Mir -, and booting off an USB stick) but maybe it was something related to my system, I'm not sure. However, given that the not only Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn but this ISO too are in early development stages, that's to be expected. Hopefully the ISO will work soon - I'll retest and let you know when it works.

Ubuntu Touch Emulator: Installation And Usage In Ubuntu 14.04, 13.10 And 12.04

A while back, Canonical released an experimental Ubuntu Touch emulator running Unity 8 and Mir. Back then, there were a few bugs, including a nasty one on 64bit that could break the system and since they were fixed, I though I'd write an article on how to properly install and use the Ubuntu Touch Emulator in Ubuntu 14.04, 13.10 and 12.04.

The initial Ubuntu Touch Emulator installation instructions changed so if you've installed the first experimental release, use the instructions below to create new instances.

Below you can watch two quick Ubuntu Touch Emulator test videos I've recoded in Ubuntu 14.04:

(ARM instance; direct video link)

(x86 instance; direct video link)

Install Ubuntu Touch Emulator in Ubuntu 14.04, 13.10 and 12.04

Update 13 May, 2014: The Emulator package from the Phablet tools PPA was updated with Ubuntu Touch x86 support which is much much faster than the ARM instance, as you can see in the videos above!

Ubuntu Touch Emulator is available in the official Ubuntu 14.04 repositories but it's an old version and futhermore, it doesn't support x86 instances, so I recommend using the Phablet Tools PPA, which has packages for Ubuntu 14.04, 13.10 and 12.04.

Add the Phablet Tools PPA and install the emulator using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:phablet-team/tools
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-emulator

If you've installed an older version of Ubuntu Emulator, also run an upgrade:

sudo apt-get upgrade

The Ubuntu Emulator package is also available in the Ubuntu SDK PPA, but it's an older version at the time I'm writing this article (about one month older than the one from the Phablet Tools PPA).

Note that I've only tested it in Ubuntu 14.04 and 12.04, but it should also work in Ubuntu 13.10 since the PPA above has packages for it.

Creating and running instances

1. The first thing you need to do is create a new instance - we'll call it "UbuntuTouch" in the commands below:

Create an ARM instance:

sudo ubuntu-emulator create UbuntuTouch --channel=ubuntu-touch/utopic-proposed

To create an Ubuntu Touch Emulator x86 instance, use the following command:

sudo ubuntu-emulator create UbuntuTouch --arch=i386 --channel=ubuntu-touch/utopic-proposed

The current "stable" image doesn't seem to work, that's why I've added the Utopic proposed channel for the image in the commands above.

On Ubuntu 12.04, you may get the following error:

Error while converting ~/.local/share/ubuntu-emulator/UbuntuTouch/system.img: Unknown option 'compat'
qemu-img: Invalid options for file format 'qcow2'.

I'm not sure why this error is displayed, but the emulator runs just fine so ignore it.

2. Then, run the new instance by using the following command:

ubuntu-emulator run UbuntuTouch

The first time you run the emulator, the boot process will take quite a while. When it finishes booting, a shell with Ubuntu Touch will start, asking you to enter the username and password:

If you want to interact with the emulator via an interactive ADB session, log in here using "phablet" (without the quotes) for the username and "0000" (without the quotes) as the password. It's not required to log in here if you only want to use the Ubuntu Touch Emulator GUI.

After this, it might take another few minutes and Unity 8 with Mir should be loaded in the Ubuntu Touch Emulator.

In theory, Ubuntu Touch emulator should support some parameters, such as setting the memory ("--memory"), which by default is set to 512mb of RAM, but for some reason the instance doesn't start when using this, or at least it didn't in my test.

3. Optional: change the Ubuntu Touch Emulator size:

Ubuntu Touch Emulator with a 0.7 scale on my 1920x1080 monitor.

If the default Ubuntu Touch Emulator size is too big for your screen, you can scale it down. To do this, run it with the "--scale" option. For instance, to scale the emulator to half its original size, use:

ubuntu-emulator run --scale 0.5 UbuntuTouch

Notes:

the downloaded images are stored under ~/.cache/ubuntuimages
the images are stored under ~/.local/share/ubuntu-emulator

Deleting instances

To delete an Ubuntu Touch Emulator instance, use the following command:

sudo ubuntu-emulator destroy UbuntuTouch

Where "UbuntuTouch" is the name of the instance you've created. If you can't remember the name, you can run the command below to list your Ubuntu Touch Emulator instances:

ubuntu-emulator list

Creating / restoring snapshots

Ubuntu Touch Emulator supports disk snapshots - to take a snapshot, use the following command:

ubuntu-emulator snapshot --create=SNAPSHOT1 UbuntuTouch

where "SNAPSHOT1" is the name of the snapshot and "UbuntuTouch" is the name of your instance created above.

Then, when you wish to restore this snapshot, use:

ubuntu-emulator snapshot --revert=SNAPSHOT1 UbuntuTouch

You can also use "--revert-pristine" to revert to the originally created snapshot.

References: davidplanella.org, Touch wiki

Ubuntu 14.10 Might Use Converged QML Applications, Replace Nautilus With Ubuntu Filemanager App

Oliver Grawert, SW-Integration engineer at Canonical posted a message on the Ubuntu Desktop mailing list in which he says that Ubuntu 14.10 is likely to start using converged QML applications on the desktop by default.

As you probably know, the plan is to switch to Unity 8 for Ubuntu 14.10 and along with it, it seems that some converged QML applications that are currently running on the phone and tablets might make it to the desktop. The core Ubuntu Touch apps are developed by the community under guidance of the Canonical design team.

One of the applications that might be replaced with a converged QML app is Nautilus:

"With all the complaints and unhappyness about Nautilus upstream ripping out things like dual pane and other beloved and helpful features I expect we can do better and I think this is the right time to:

a) collect requirements
b) file whishlist bugs
c) if *you* want to contribute, get in contact with the developers"

- Oliver Grawert

Here's how Ubuntu Filemanager App currently looks like on the desktop:

At the current state, Ubuntu Filemanager App is not exactly ready for the desktop, at least not as a default application but that's about to change. Hopefully that will bring features such as a dual pane, tabs support, a proper search, extensions support and so on, even though some of these features don't make sense on the phone or table, because after all, it will also run on the desktop.

What do you think?

via lffl.org, ubuntu-desktop mailing list

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