sunweaver's NET

Debian Lomiri for Debian 13 (previous project)

In our previous project around Debian and Lomiri (lasting until July 2025), we achieved to get Lomiri 0.5.0 (and with it another 130 packages) into Debian (with two minor exceptions [1]) just in time for the Debian 13 release in August 2025.

Debian Lomiri for Debian 14

At DebConf in Brest, a follow-up project has been designed between the project sponsor and Fre(i)e Software GmbH [2]. The new project (on paper) started on 1st August 2025 and project duration was agreed on to be 2 years, allowing our company to work with an equivalent of ~5 FTE on Lomiri targetting the Debian 14 release some time in the second half of 2027 (an assumed date, let's see what happens).

Ongoing work would be covered from day one of the new project and once all contract details had been properly put on paper end of September, Fre(i)e Software GmbH started hiring a new team of software developers and (future) Debian maintainers. (More of that new team in our next Q4/2025 report).

The ongoing work of Q3/2025 was basically Guido Berhörster and myself working on Morph Browser Qt6 (mostly Guido together with Bhushan from MiraLab [3]) and package maintenance in Debian (mostly me).

Morph Browser Qt6

The first milestone we could reach with the Qt6 porting of Morph Browser [4] and related components (LUITK aka lomiri-ui-toolkit (big chunk!

We at Fre{i}e Software GmbH now have a confirmed budget for working on Debian based tablets with the special goal to use them for educational purposes (i.e. in schools).

Those Debian Edu tablets shall be powered by the Lomiri Operating Environment (that same operating environment that is powering Ubuntu Touch).

That said, we are hiring developers (full time, part time) [*] [**]:

• Lomiri developers (C/C++, Qt5 and Qt6, QML, CMake)
• Debian maintainers

Global tasks will be:

• Transition Lomiri from Qt5 to Qt6
• Consolidate the Lomiri Shell on various reference devices (mainline Linux only)
• Integrate Lomiri Shell with cloud services such as Nextcloud and OpenCloud
• XDG Desktop Portal support for Lomiri, integrate better with non-Lomiri Wayland apps
• Bring more Lomiri-specific (Ubuntu Touch) apps to Debian
• ... (more to come) ...

The budget will cover work for the +/- next 1.5-2 yrs. Development achievements shall culminate in the release of Debian 14.

If you are interested in joining our team, please get in touch with me via known communication channels.

light+love,
Mike (aka sunweaver at debian.org)

[fsgmbh] https://freiesoftware.gmbh
[*] We can employ applicants who are located in Germany, Austria or Poland (for other regions within the EU, please ask).
[**] Alternatively, if you are self-employed, we are happy to onboard you as a freelancer.

After (quite) a summer break, here comes the 4th article of the 5-episode blog post series on Polis, written by Guido Berhörster, member of staff at my company Fre(i)e Software GmbH.

Have fun with the read on Guido's work on Polis,
Mike

Table of Contents of the Blog Post Series

1. Introduction
2. Initial evaluation and adaptation
3. Issues extending Polis and adjusting our goals
4. Creating (a) new frontend(s) for Polis (this article)
5. Current status and roadmap

4.

Here comes the 3rd article of the 5-episode blog post series on Polis, written by Guido Berhörster, member of staff at my company Fre(i)e Software GmbH.

Enjoy also this read on Guido's work on Polis,
Mike

Table of Contents of the Blog Post Series

1. Introduction
2. Initial evaluation and adaptation
3. Issues extending Polis and adjusting our goals (this article)
4. Creating (a) new frontend(s) for Polis
5. Current status and roadmap

Polis - Issues extending Polis and adjusting our Goals

After the [initial implementation of limited branding support][1], user feedback and the involvement of an UX designer lead to the conclusion that we needed more far-reaching changes to the user interface in order to reduce visual clutter, rearrange and improve UI elements, and provide better integration with the websites in which conversations are embedded.

Challenges when visualizing Data in Polis

Polis visualizes groups using a spatial projection of users based on [similarities in voting behavior][4] and places them in two to five groups using a [clustering algorithm][5]. ![Polis conversation][6] During our testing and evaluation users were rarely able to interpret the visualization and often intuitively made incorrect assumptions e.g. by associating the filled area of a group with its significance or size.

Lomiri Weather App goes Open Meteo

In Ubuntu Touch / Lomiri, Maciej Sopyło has updated Lomiri's Weather App to operate against a different weather forecast provider (Open Meteo). Additionally, the new implementation is generic and pluggable, so other weather data providers can be added-in later.

Big thanks to Maciej for working on this just in time (the previous implementation's API has recently been EOL'ed and is not available anymore to Ubuntu Touch / Lomiri users).

Lomiri Weather App - new Meteorological Terms part of the App now

While the old weather data provider implementation obtained all the meteorological information as already localized strings from the provider, the new implementation requires all sorts of weather conditions being translated within the Lomiri Weather App itself.

The meteorological terms are probably not easy to translate for the usual software translator, so special help might be required here.

Call for Translations: Lomiri Weather App

So, if you feel entitled to help here, please join the Hosted Weblate service [1] and start working on Lomiri Weather App.

Thanks a lot!

light+love
Mike Gabriel (aka sunweaver)

[1] https://hosted.weblate.org/
[2] https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/lomiri/lomiri-weather-app/

Here comes the 2nd article of the 5-episode blog post series written by Guido Berhörster, member of staff at my company Fre(i)e Software GmbH.

Enjoy also this read on Guido's work on Polis,
Mike

Table of Contents of the Blog Post Series

1. Introduction
2. Initial evaluation and adaptation (this article)
3. Issues extending Polis and adjusting our goals
4. Creating (a) new frontend(s) for Polis
5. Current status and roadmap

Polis - Initial evaluation and adaptation

The [Polis code base][4] consists of a number of components, the administration and participation interfaces, a common web backend, and a statistics processing server. Both frontends and the backend are written in a mixture of JavaScript and TypeScript, only the statistics processing server is written in Clojure.

In case of self hosting the preferred method of deployment is via Docker containers using Docker Compose or any other orchestrator.

This is the first article of a 5-episode blog post series written by Guido Berhörster, member of staff at my company Fre(i)e Software GmbH. Thanks, Guido for being on the Polis project.

Enjoy the read on the work Guido has been doing over the past months,
Mike

A team lead by Raoul Kramer/[BetaBreak][2] is currently adapting [Polis][3] for evaluation and testing by several Dutch provincial governments and central government ministries. [Guido Berhörster][8] (author of this article) who is an employee at [Fre(i)e Software GmbH][1] has been involved in this project as the main software developer. This series of blog posts describes how and why Polis was initially modified and adapted, what issues the team ran into and how this ultimately lead them to start a new Open Source project called [Particiapp][7] for accelerating the development of alternative Polis frontends compatible to but independent from the upstream project.

Table of Contents of the Blog Post Series

1. Introduction (this article)
2. Initial evaluation and adaptation
3. Issues extending Polis and adjusting our goals
4. Creating (a) new frontend(s) for Polis
5. Current status and roadmap

Polis - The Introduction

What is Polis?

Polis is a platform for participation which helps to gather, analyze and understand viewpoints of large groups of participants on complex issues.

This is a call for testing of Debian Edu based on Debian bookworm. With the Debian 12.5 point release all required packages have landed in the Debian Edu ISO images that allow you to install a Debian Edu system based on Debian 12.

ISO Image Downloads

You can find the Blueray Disc ISO image (use for main server installation) at: http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/current/amd64/iso-bd/debian-ed...

For standalone workstation installations or installations on an already up-and-running Debian Edu site, please use the netinst ISO image: http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/current/amd64/iso-cd/debian-ed...

Quick Start HowTo

For testing Debian Edu 12, set up e.g. LXD or libVirt and install (at least) three virtual machines. In your virtualization software prepare an internal network where the VMs can reach one another without needing access to your local network.

The three VMs:

• setup a gateway VM (no DHCP service) at 10.0.0.1/8 (e.g. OPNsense, pfSense, Debian Edu Router, etc.), two NICs: one uplink, one NIC in the internal network
• install the Debian Edu mainserver from the ISO image on another VM, one NIC in the internal network
• then boot a 3rd VM via PXE and install your first workstation, on NIC in the internal network

Happy testing!

Yesterday, the UBports core developer team released Ubuntu Touch Focal OTA-1

(In fact, Raoul, Marius and I were in a conference call when Marius froze and said: the PR team already posted the release blog post; the post is out, but we haven't released yet... ahhhh... panic... Shall I?, Marius said, and we said: GO!!! This is why the release occurred in public five hours ahead of schedule. OMG.)

For all the details, please study:
https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-news-1/post/ubuntu-touch-ota-1-focal-re...

Credits

Thanks to all the developers, other contributors and funding providers that helped to reach this massive milestone.

Prologue

For over a year now, Fre(i)e Software GmbH (my company) is involved in Ubuntu Touch development. The development effort currently is handled by a mix of paid and voluntary developers/contributors under the umbrella of the UBports Foundation. We are approaching the official first release of Ubuntu Touch 20.04 with rapid pace.

And, if you are a non-Englisch native speaker, we'd like to ask you for help... Read below.

light+love
Mike (aka sunweaver at debian.org, Mastodon, IRC, etc.)

Internationalization (i18n) of Ubuntu Touch 20.04

The UBports team has moved most of the translation workflows for localizing Ubuntu Touch over to Hosted Weblate:

• https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/lomiri/
• https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/ayatana-indicators/
• https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/ubports/
• https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/open-store-io/

To contribute to the UBports projects you need to register here:

• https://hosted.weblate.org/accounts/register/

The localization platform of all UBports / Lomiri components is sponsored by Hosted Weblate via their free hosting plan for Libre and Open Source Projects. Many thanks for providing this service.

Translating Lomiri

The translation components in the Lomiri project have already been set up and are ready for being updated by translators.