This article is for those of you running Saucy or for those of you brave enough to run Trusty. Did you know that you can run some of the Ubuntu Touch system apps right on your desktop? That's right. Continue reading to find out how. (And see some screenshots!)
The first step is to grab the packages that contain the apps. Luckily, they are all in the main archives - so there is no need to use a PPA. Let's take a look at three of the applications. Begin by installing them with the command below:
sudo apt-get install gallery-app notes-app webbrowser-app
The first of the four apps we will look at is the Ubuntu Web Browser. Launching the application is relatively straightforward:
webbrowser-app
A window will open that should look something like the following:
If you can't see the URL bar along the bottom, hold down the left mouse button just above the bottom of the window and drag upward. (This can be a bit tricky at first, but after a few tries, you'll get the hang of it.) The URL bar is also home to the back button and Activity button. Clicking on the activity button will display recently visited pages as well as the current "tabs" that are open. (The "+" button will open a new tab.)
All in all, the browser is extremely simple and lightweight. If you want something that isn't cluttered, and you don't mind the heavily touch-oriented gestures, then this might be the browser for you. The browser is WebKit-based for the curious folks out there.
Running the gallery app is relatively similar to running the browser:
gallery-app
If you have pictures in your ~/Pictures
directory, they will appear in the application:
Clicking on a picture will enlarge it and you can "swipe" from right-to-left or left-to-right to jump to the next or previous picture respectively. There really isn't too much to say about this app. Pretty much everything works the way you would expect it to.
If you are using Trusty and try to run:
notes-app
...you will immediately receive an error. That's because there is no such executable file in $PATH. However, you can still run the app with the following command:
qmlscene /usr/share/notes-app/NotesApp.qml
This is a bit inconvenient and hopefully it is something that the maintainers are planning to fix soon. Anyway, if you manage to get the application up and running, it looks something like this:
There are many more apps than I had time to cover in this short article. You can find the full list under "Projects" on this page:
Download the official 2buntu app for both Android and Ubuntu Touch.