Lomiri in Debian - Convergence for all Device Form Factors
Speaker: Mike Gabriel
Track: Other
Type: Long talk (45 minutes)
Room: Grand amphi
Time: Jul 14 (Mon): 16:30
Duration: 0:45
For Debian, Lomiri is a new operating environment provided in a usable scope of functionalities starting with Debian 13. Some may remember the Ubuntu Touch project initiated by Canonical Ltd. with their initiative to come up with a convergent desktop, or rather… ‘operating’ environment called ‘Unity 8’ that could be used across all device form factors (desktop, tablet, phone).
After Canonical Ltd. discontinued their work on Ubuntu Touch in 2017, the developers at the UBports community (now under the umbrella of the UBports Foundation) took over the upstream maintenance of the complete Ubuntu Touch software ecosystem. Part of this take-over was forking Unity8 as Lomiri.
Over two cycles of Debian (we started before the Debian 12 release), a team of Debian maintainers and Lomiri / Ubuntu Touch upstream developers worked on bringing the complete Lomiri software stack to Debian. With the release of Debian 13 a major milestone of this work will be / has been reached.
In this talk, we will recapitulate the history of the project, look at the challenges of the whole endeavour, get an idea of what a convergent operating environment like Lomiri can do for its users and, last but not least, learn: Ubuntu Touch (i.e. Lomiri upstream) is still alive and a vibrant community these days.