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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

#81

Post by darklajid »

zanny wrote: post #75
darklajid wrote: post #21

I like this announcement and still root for any alternative phone platform. The thing is - which device would I buy? Plasma Mobile supports the Nexus 5 and (maybe) the OnePlus One right now. CopperheadOS doesn't support either of those. I was unable to get a reliable source for supported devices for Ubuntu Phone (best I found was [1], not even sure if that's related) and so far I don't believe that the supported devi…

Plasma Mobile is more meant to be a standardization platform to make phone OSes than the be all end all one in and of itself. Copperhead is just a liberated Android for the most part, it just replaces Replicant. Since Jolla develops sailfishOS, and the OS itself is mostly proprietary, it should be no surprise there isn't a hobbyist community supporting it on Android phones. Plasma Mobile and Firefox OS were both in a…

I understand that, and I certainly understand that these (any?) projects shouldn't cater to me (I'm not representative of the market at large).

What I'm hoping for is some sort of 'reference device' (i.e. the Flame for FxOs) that is supported across platforms. It doesn't matter if it's ~older~ (Nexus 4?), just a way to compare platforms against each other: Run Ubuntu Phone, Plasma Mobile and CM on the same device (not at the same time ofc), check out if your use cases are supported/the platform can do what you need. Keep whatever is best, retry in 6 month. That'd be awesome.

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

#82

Post by swiley »

hackuser wrote: post #55

If I understand correctly, this is a user environment. What OS does it run on? A Linux distro? Android? I don't see that detail mentioned on the site. Perhaps people familiar with KDE and Plasma know, but I don't. Or perhaps I'm overlooking something obvious ... EDIT: Wikipedia says that Plasma is a desktop environment, not an OS, and that "Plasma Mobile is a Plasma variant for smartphones". https://en.wikipedia.org/…

It's gnu/linux with wayland/KDE for the GUI.

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

#83

Post by swiley »

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.

It looks like it's running wayland, so you can probably just run X11 (with fvwm or whatever).

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

#84

Post by imjustsaying »

benmcnelly wrote: post #47
lphnull wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wou…

You are not alone, I have two good friends that still have theirs too, and nothing will ever be good enough for them again. That phone spoiled them, and is the direction they wish phones went. Alas, they have gone the way of the masses instead, but you know if someone like a OnePlus came out with a modern powered phone, with a big battery (phone size doesn't matter to us), a physical keyboard, dual sim, expandable me…

Maddox would enjoy a reboot, too.

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone

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

#85

Post by shmerl »

Well, there weren't any major updates from them lately (the intro video is from Jul 25, 2015). I'm waiting for some handset device which can run it properly with Wayland on native GPU drivers and Mesa, without any libhybris and Android graphics blobs.

Freedreno[1] kind of was progressing to enable that, but I'm not sure if there is any handset around which would be usable in native form given there some other drivers involved besides the GPU. Did anyone try that with Google Pixels?

[1]. https://github.com/freedreno/freedreno/wiki

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

#87

Post by Jedd »

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #40
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.

  > It may be underpowered now, but that physical
  > keyboard still makes my envious: I could almost
  > maybe write code on something like that.
I had one. That's what I thought. I was wrong.

It was slower than swype & variants for normal (mail, sms, etc) writing.

The physical keyboard had the benefit of providing relatively easy access to 'dev' keys - esc, ctrl, special characters. But it was so teeny that even as a proficient user (it was my primary phone for 3-4 years) the experience was arduous.

Years later I bought a tablet + BT keyboard (a Logitech one with the hard clam shell that became the stand) and that experience is much preferred. Would work well with a phone too, if you're happy with a small screen. Not pocket sized, certainly, but the keyboard is actually usable.

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

#88

Post by throwaway2048 »

digi_owl wrote: post #72
ptaipale wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, Nokia - under Elop's leadership - decided to go to Windows Phone platform for mobile phones, and discontinue Maemo. That WP thing didn't go so well. However Nokia as a company did not go under; it is still very much there, particularly in telecom infra business.

It seems that very few people these days knows that all the big name European mobile brands (Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens) were also big name infrastructure brands. And that two of them still operate (Ericsson and Nokia, the latter having bought Siemens infrastructure division).

As was Motorola in the USA

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

#89

Post by shmerl »

hackuser wrote: post #62
djsumdog wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a full OS. Look at the forums and they talk about porting. I don't think it runs on Android, but has a Linux base that has to be ported to different arm platforms.

Their own Linux distro?

It's based off Kubuntu. It does use Android drivers and libhybris when it has no access to native drivers.

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

#90

Post by shmerl »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #65

Sadly, my recurring problem is that as a Verizon customer, I have exactly zero options outside the big two and an obsolete version of the third. (I'm carrying a Lumia 929, presently.) Nobody bothers developing third party OS offerings that work on Verizon networks.

T-Mobile is flexible and allows using any compatible LTE handset. They don't care what OS you use on it.
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