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Plasma Mobile – Turns your phone into a fully open hacking device

plasma-mobile.org

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Re: Plasma Mobile – Turns your phone into a fully open hacking device

#31

Post by benmcnelly »

lytedev wrote: post #26

Interface seems gratuitously large except the status bar and clock and whatnot. In all the shots of the home screen (?) the on-screen navigation buttons seem to cover the labels of the app icons... sometimes. The "Muon" app has a smaller icon so the label sits higher... looks not so great. However, it seems they're trying to appeal to the more Libre folks - anti-all-current-smartphone-OS-vendors and their watchful ey…

I hope that you are right and this turns into that, but its also an opportunity for someone to branch it off into a commercial product. Some people don't want a pocket computer, they want a groomed and simple to use OS with user experience in mind, that "just works".

Re: Plasma Mobile – Turns your phone into a fully open hacking device

#32

Post by lytedev »

benmcnelly wrote: post #30

The power of things like this taking off is not what they are now, but what they can be. There are lots of real people with their own good reasons to not be tied to Google/Apple, and whats really impressive here is that unlike firefox OS, they are (in my opinion) doing this in a much better way. As this catches on, it only helps improve linux hardware (ARM) support, telephony applications for linux, and the like. As…

This seems like a perfect response to my comment.

The question is: how? The website doesn't make it very clear to developers (after a fairly quick skim on my part, at least) as to how they can help with the initiative. I have a Nexus 6p, and it seems like my device isn't supported, but how can I maybe help with porting to a new device?

Re: Plasma Mobile – Turns your phone into a fully open hacking device

#33

Post by overcast »

It's good to see some new projects. But I guess I'm just in the camp where my phone is something I don't want to mess around with. Love tinkering with things, been piecing together computers since I was a kid. But when it comes to phone, I want it to just work without my intervention. I don't care if there is zero control.

Re: Plasma Mobile – Turns your phone into a fully open hacking device

#34

Post by benmcnelly »

lytedev wrote: post #32
benmcnelly wrote: post #30

The power of things like this taking off is not what they are now, but what they can be. There are lots of real people with their own good reasons to not be tied to Google/Apple, and whats really impressive here is that unlike firefox OS, they are (in my opinion) doing this in a much better way. As this catches on, it only helps improve linux hardware (ARM) support, telephony applications for linux, and the like. As…

This seems like a perfect response to my comment. The question is: how? The website doesn't make it very clear to developers (after a fairly quick skim on my part, at least) as to how they can help with the initiative. I have a Nexus 6p, and it seems like my device isn't supported, but how can I maybe help with porting to a new device?

Yes, this is the pain point of things like this. It really will (most likely) take someone branching it off into a paid product to advance it faster (or) a very large amount of people getting involved. Traditionally these things grow slowly, but I am impressed at what they have so far.

Re: Plasma Mobile – Turns your phone into a fully open hacking device

#35

Post by paxcoder »

benmcnelly wrote: post #30

The power of things like this taking off is not what they are now, but what they can be. There are lots of real people with their own good reasons to not be tied to Google/Apple, and whats really impressive here is that unlike firefox OS, they are (in my opinion) doing this in a much better way. As this catches on, it only helps improve linux hardware (ARM) support, telephony applications for linux, and the like. As…

What is FirefoxOS' way of doing things, and why is it (in your opinion) wrong?

Re: Plasma Mobile – Turns your phone into a fully open hacking device

#36

Post by mixedCase »

sockopen wrote: post #10

Video was fun with time being 13:37, Linus giving the finger, etc... but the actual UX seems gross and over-sized (albeit not quite as bad as FireFox OS). I'm sure they will have at least a couple dozen of installs.

UX is very obviously on super early stages.

However Plasma 5 still has its fair share of UX issues here and there so I'm crossing fingers the KDE design community gets its hands on this.

Re: Plasma Mobile – Turns your phone into a fully open hacking device

#37

Post by lphnull »

benmcnelly wrote: post #30

The power of things like this taking off is not what they are now, but what they can be. There are lots of real people with their own good reasons to not be tied to Google/Apple, and whats really impressive here is that unlike firefox OS, they are (in my opinion) doing this in a much better way. As this catches on, it only helps improve linux hardware (ARM) support, telephony applications for linux, and the like. As…

I used to have that. It was my Nokia n900. I was able to pull up live thumbnail previews of all apps running in the background, and this included live simultaneous previews of: youtube videos in a web browser, games, and Debian, without lag. Try doing that on today's technology. It had a wonderfully acurate resistive touch screen that was pressure senstive that was really good for drawing and coloring! The camera would start up immediately as soon as I opened the shutter, even while the screen is off and in a sleep state. My modern android device takes so much longer to even get the shutter ready.

I loved always having access to a physical keyboard and an actual root linux shell out of the box without any hacking. I loved that my n900 behaved more like a computer and less like "mobile" device.

Too bad Nokia decided to end support for the n900. Most of its developers and lots of its users abandoned ship, and now I only use it as a camera because the n900 is stuck in 2009, and the web in 2016 is so bloated and heavy that nothing- not even the web browser or the unupdated apps- are usable now.

Re: Plasma Mobile – Turns your phone into a fully open hacking device

#38

Post by throwaway2048 »

paxcoder wrote: post #35
benmcnelly wrote: post #30

The power of things like this taking off is not what they are now, but what they can be. There are lots of real people with their own good reasons to not be tied to Google/Apple, and whats really impressive here is that unlike firefox OS, they are (in my opinion) doing this in a much better way. As this catches on, it only helps improve linux hardware (ARM) support, telephony applications for linux, and the like. As…

What is FirefoxOS' way of doing things, and why is it (in your opinion) wrong?

Firefox OS used the android closed source driver vendor centric model and a html/js frontend.

It had most of the downsides of android (closed drivers, no updates after 6 months, buy a new device or get exploited, beholden to vendors, OEMs and telcos which invariably suck, central control over software distribution), and zero of the upsides (abysmal performance [even the dialer was a laggy mess], lack of software)

Except for the fact you might trust Mozilla more than google, it wasn't anymore meaningfully open than android, and suffered crippling drawbacks in comparison. Nobody except a few developers cared that you can write apps in html/js.

Re: Plasma Mobile – Turns your phone into a fully open hacking device

#39

Post by oever »

owaislone wrote: post #19

Just like desktop KDE, the UI doesn't appeal to me. I find it too flashy and kind of "in your face". My favorite mobile OS so far has been Meego that ran on N9. That device was mind blowing and that OS. Amazing. It had such a simple, yet useful UI. Multi-tasking was better than what even Android has now. I hope Jolla doesn't die like that and we see a lot more devices come out running Sailfish.

I'm still using my N950 with Meego. Very nice device and OS. My other phone runs Ubuntu Mobile which is also very nice.

Judging from the video, the state of Plasma Mobile is very impressive.

Re: Plasma Mobile – Turns your phone into a fully open hacking device

#40

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

owaislone wrote: post #19

Just like desktop KDE, the UI doesn't appeal to me. I find it too flashy and kind of "in your face". My favorite mobile OS so far has been Meego that ran on N9. That device was mind blowing and that OS. Amazing. It had such a simple, yet useful UI. Multi-tasking was better than what even Android has now. I hope Jolla doesn't die like that and we see a lot more devices come out running Sailfish.

I never had a Meego phone, or a Nokia at all. But I still want an N900: Physical keyboard, a hackable Linux base, and a system that's not very powerful, but usually powerful enough. And that was in '09.

It may be underpowered now, but that physical keyboard still makes my envious: I could almost maybe write code on something like that.

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