Plasma Phone OS (or simply Plasma Phone) is a complete software stack for mobile devices and includes the following libre technologies: Plasma Mobile (a Plasma-based shell), KWIN/KWayland, Voicecall, Ofono, RIL, OHM, Telepathy. It allows to run several Qt-based applications to run on top of it, for example: Plasma apps, Ubuntu Touch based apps, Sailfish OS based apps, Nemo based apps.
The website is pretty minimal, but the first few comments on this Hacker News post gives a good overview.
Of what seen in the movie introduction.
Agreed.
But at least it’s an improvement over the tablet UI they produced a while back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb7isMAmwW0
Indeed, HS comments, that are for some reason downoted by all these tinfoil hat open source pathetic zealots who go “linux? IZ GOOD WOO YEAH LINUX YEAR OF DESKTOP PHONE im so dumb gpl f–k yeah”, really hit the nail:
>Yeah… new mobile platform is a really hard thing to do – and without a designer (whom they clearly don’t have), it’s impossible. Nobody will use this.
Downvoted.
Reply:
>Let’s be honest, even if they did have a talented team of designers nobody would use this.
Downvoted.
Reply:
>Probably.
Downvoted. I guess this could be downvoted for saying “probably” and not “abso-f–king-lutely”, but still.
Useless project defended by open source zealots, who are the most irrelevant community in IT. Yet the most vocal one – “M $”, “not open minded”, etc.
D
Linux, bunch of fat basement dwelling pussies, so sad.
Edited 2015-07-25 18:46 UTC
Eh, perhaps those ‘zealots’ don’t care that KDE won’t become the next Apple. Perhaps they just want a capable system to use for themselves.
You seem to be every bit as immature as them yourself, by the way. And not any more relevant, of course.
Thank you for your very productive contribution to this topic.
I dig KDE, and I dig this. I can’t wait to see more, maybe even try it on my own phone.
How comes it doesn’t work on the HTC HD2 ? Isn’t that supposed to be THE versatile phone ?
Try finding native Linux drivers which work with glibc for that handset. Especially for the GPU. Most of the time they are non existent.
The way it works for Nexus 5 and the like is through libhybris, which allows using Android only bionic drivers with glibc Linux. And that requires work with adapting the kernel to work with glibc too. So it’s not a simple thing really.
For current libhybris adaptations progress see https://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Adaptations/libhybris
I hope with Intel advancing in mobile SoCs this will be simplified, since Intel usually does provide open Linux drivers for their hardware, so possibly there won’t be a need to use libhybris in such cases.
Qualcomm on the other hand is highly annoying.
Edited 2015-07-26 04:21 UTC
I like to see it work, but I just can’t see it work or it only work with very few devices
So far Sailfish still wasn’t opened, and while there is some movement in that direction, a solid and functional open handset Linux UX was still lacking. More options are welcome!
I’m somewhat surprised it’s Kubuntu based. I thought KDE decided to use Mer Core for mobile versions.
Now I’ll test it on Nexus 5 and compare to Sailfish
UDPATE: Huge virtual buttons on the bottom don’t look very good. I like Sailfish’s minimalistic approach and using gestures for navigation. There is really no need for all those buttons which clutter the screen.
Edited 2015-07-26 04:12 UTC
Its pre alpha.
The UI is just there for the purpose of having one.
Its not nearly final.
Did you ever use plasma active? It was kind of terrible because of mer’s lack of real usage. Starting from kubuntu makes a lot of sense as Ubuntu has already done much of the heavy lifting ubuntu touch was much more usable due to basic things like… a virtual keyboard working with every text prompt in the system.
Being terrible had nothing to do with Mer (which is simply the base distro). UI was simply very far from well designed in Plasma Active itself which was the same on Kubuntu based variants of PA.
Mer’s main problem is that they froze some packages in an ancient state, because they want to cater to paranoid vendors who are afraid of GPLv3. I.e. for instance Bash is stuck in some 8 year old version. But for that Mer had to provide a separate set of packages instead of making it uniformly frozen.
Edited 2015-07-27 14:24 UTC
Well, personally I loved the UI. Thought it was great. I would have bought a finished vivaldi, if it ever came to pass. However, having a non functioning virtual keyboard was kind of a deal breaker for me.
This certainly makes Mer terrible, in my eyes. I won’t use it.
UI was interesting, but it felt clunky to me. Many things weren’t adapted (like Konsole for instance) and it could be more simplified. There was for sure room for improvement. I would have bought Vilvaldi too (I was on the waiting list), but alas, the project was cancelled.
I think Mer should work that thing out, it’s one of the sore points which annoys me there.
Edited 2015-07-27 19:17 UTC
I think the sign of maturity of this project is that they are focusing on an available target that is relatively common: Nexus 5. With plasma active, I wanted to get involved early, but the only devices they had were these obscure ( in the USA) tablets that were:
1) Old
2) More expensive than newer hardware.
3) Rare
While some one did a one off port to nexus 7, it wasn’t maintained.
Doing your own hardware is tough and expensive. I counciled them against it, but they wouldn’t listen. Some of those guys thought that the very act of doing everything open would enact change in the mobile/tablet industry. But no, the economies of scale crushed them.
Even Jolla couldn’t pull it through (i.e. getting normal Linux drivers). And their scale was bigger. That’s why the resorted to libhybris hack, and using Android hardware adaptation with it. It’s quite unfortunate, but with Qualcomm and etc. I don’t expect anything else.
Only Intel usually act better since they provide open drivers. But strangely even in that case Jolla plan to use libhybris and x86 Android adaptation from Intel for the upcoming tablet (in theory they could avoid it, but from what I’ve heard, they were concerned with Mesa not performing well enough which could affect battery life). And weirdly Intel don’t use Mesa for Android GPU driver.
I really hope new Intel SoCs for handsets (Morganfield with Intel GPU) will improve the situation further. I’m really sick of this ARM mess.
Edited 2015-07-27 20:53 UTC
Absolutely correct. I believe what they need is phone manufacturer support, in which again will bring them back to the drawing board = money.
No, I think they need a cyanogen mod style approach. Get software in the hands of enthusiasts who can install it on their devices and contribute code as well. Then when you have a critical mass, try moving into OEM bundles.
Now, they’ll need to figure out what cyanogen has not: how to sell something that’s given away for free without compromising their values.
I wonder if they could do an end and around the oems, by directly selling services to end users.
Any ideas what services people would pay for? Maybe encrypted email? TOR/VPN combo?
Stuff like Kolabnow works pretty well as a commercial service: https://kolabnow.com
Yeah, I was thinking of something similar, but with a larger appeal. I mean, I’d like a KDE phone, but wouldn’t want to pay for Kolabnow. If I ever do subscribe, it will be because they support foss development. The service itself doesn’t really appeal to me.
I’d pay for Kolabnow. You get e-mail, CalDAV, CardDAV, WebDAV, privacy respecting company, and the whole service runs on FOSS. Pretty good mix to pay for (and it supports development of those FOSS projects).
Edited 2015-07-28 19:10 UTC
Its just that I don’t trust policies or Swiss law. If it were more like silent circle or lavabit, then I’d consider it.
Of course if it were, it wouldn’t be in operation anymore. So I guess it protects your data from advertisers. But so does email hosted on my private email serer.