What’s new: Ubuntu Touch RTM is moving towards promotion in slow steps
As you may know, Ubuntu Touch is being developed on three different branches: a stable branch, a devel branch and a RTM branch. While new features and changes are first tested on the devel branch and get moved to the stable one when they are stable enough, the RTM branch does not get new features, only security and stability fixes.
For now, the Canonical developers are focusing a lot on getting the RTM (release for manufacturing) branch of Ubuntu Touch stable for daily usage. According to Oliver Grawert, the first RTM image is almost ready for promotion, this meaning good news for all the Ubuntu and Linux enthusiasts and fans.
“We are moving towards our first promotion of an RTM image in slow steps, some of the blockers have been fixed and are in the process of landing in the RTM distro (location service and new click sideloading support). We decided to drop one blocker that has purely cosmetic effects on the test results( seekbar tests in mediaplayer are not skipped on arches where no seekbar is available), but trading for that there was a new blocking issue with the url-dispatcher found during QA testing where the music app does not start when tapping on a single track in the music scope,”
While there is no official release date for the Ubuntu Touch powered phones, they should be released this Autumn, if everything goes as scheduled.
The story so far:
Canonical has been working a lot at Ubuntu Touch, the mobile version of Ubuntu. While the initial plan was to make it available for all the Google Nexus smartphones and tablets, the developers have dropped the support for Galaxy Nexus, Google Nexus 7 2012 and Google Nexus 10, Ubuntu Touch, now based on Ubuntu 14.10, being officially available only for the Google Nexus 4 smartphone and the Google Nexus 7 2013 tablet. (Nexus 5 is not yet support by Ubuntu Touch.) The first Ubuntu Touch powered phones are scheduled to be released this year, in Europe by BQ and on the Chinese market by Meizu, one Asia’s leading smartphone manufacturers.
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