121–130 of 276 posts
> Plasma Mobile is developed by one of the most reputable and longest-standing software development organisations in the world. But you don't want to clearly tell us who it is?
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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 pro…
I've definitely coded bash on it, many times.
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.
Just other day I was trying latest Ubuntu on a pen drive and I couldn't believe that renaming a directory now open a modal dialog that asks you for the new name of the directory. WTH? What was wrong with the inline directory naming? It was perfect and everyone else does it. It's such a basic thing to understand. You rename an item and edit it's name inline. You see all the time what you are remaning. As soon as you rename it, you see the change take effect immediately and see the new item take new place if sorting changes. Instead we now have a modal dialog that that asks for the new name. I also couldn't find any "create new file" in right click. What was wrong with that? IRRC, the search button also does open a dialog elsewhere.
Then come GnomeShell. That thing has 4 different types of controls on 4 edges of the screen. Every edge has a different control. Left has dock, top has a panel, right has workspace switcher and bottom has yet another panel which hosts different indicators than the top panel. I think bottom one handles 3rd party app indicators. Why do I as a user have to remember which different positions for different indicators? If I open something from top left corner (launcher) and want to switch workspace, I'll to drag my mouse all the way from top left corner to the right edge. I just don't get it.
I do actually really like Unity7. It's simple, clean and yet powerful. All indicators are in 1 place, switcher is simply inside dock and has amazing keyboard accessibility. I hope Unity8 doesn't ruin it with it's focus on mobile.
/rant
I don't hate Gnome. I love Gnome and has great respect and gratitude for it's developers. They are some of the best developers I know. It's just that the recent UX decisions have made it unusable for me and it kills me to think about how amazing and simple Gnome could have been.
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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 pro…
But I could and did use it to write and edit long-form prose.
It's way better than a touch-screen for shelling in and fixing server issues when you're stuck at a party away from keyboard.
Actual code writing tends to mean using lots of symbols though, and while the N900 keyboard was better than a touch screen, both make you want to rip open your skull and put the wires in directly in frustration.
I miss that keyboard.
When I had that keyboard, the best email-interface was still Mutt over a terminal. You could use Vim! Type without looking! It was ace.
That phone had the best microphone out of any I've ever owned by a clear mile too. Certainly the only one that could stand up to being used in the band practice-room without just distorting to hell coz of the volume.
I still use it for that, for video-recording band-practise, cos nothing else ever came close. The USB port broke and now can only transfer files with WI-FI and have to use an external battery charger, and all my batteries are swelling slightly and really ought to be retired.
But I don't have anything else that will actually work for it.
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> 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 pro…
I don't relate; I'm a super fast typist on my N900. I do still hate that pipes and angle brackets aren't on the keyboard, and wish they had just designed it with a fourth row. I've done a lot of server work through it; anything that wasn't worth going back to my desk. Pulling the N900 out and ssh'ing in is a 5-10 second prospect. I can't stand on-screen keyboards, but I think part of that is that most phones are capa…
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> 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 pro…
I don't relate; I'm a super fast typist on my N900. I do still hate that pipes and angle brackets aren't on the keyboard, and wish they had just designed it with a fourth row. I've done a lot of server work through it; anything that wasn't worth going back to my desk. Pulling the N900 out and ssh'ing in is a 5-10 second prospect. I can't stand on-screen keyboards, but I think part of that is that most phones are capa…
I miss that keyboard.
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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) Exc…
The big problem is that all the OEMs that can build you a phone are providing android support because this is what they get from SOC vendors and there is no business incentive to provide "pure linux" support. Plasma sits on top of the Android HAL like Firefox OS did. Nothing different there. Go buy you QC license and see for how long you'll get blob updates. You're totally wrong about the performance penalty of FxOS…
In 2012, at the Akademy (KDE conference) in Tallinn, I spoke with Plasma developers who were, at the time, working on a tablet called "Vivaldi", which was supposed to ship with Plasma Active (the KDE 4 version of Plasma Mobile) based on Mer (the community fork of Meego). And they really struggled with the hardware part: They carefully assembled a BOM of parts for which open-source drivers were available, ordered test devices, built the whole software stack. And when they were ready to start mass production, the manufacturer was like: "What, that chip? That's soooo last month. We have this new chip here, which is completely undocumented, but we have an Android driver for you." Last I heard, they never got an actual device shipped because of that mess.
I don't know if it's gotten any better since then, but I can easily imagine how that situation led them to base the new Plasma Mobile on the Android HAL.
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Their own Linux distro?
It's based off Kubuntu. It does use Android drivers and libhybris when it has no access to native drivers.
*> it does use android drivers*
I'm a LFS[0] kind of guy. I'm also just as opposed to proprietary driver blobs as the next guy...
But, for the purpose of getting more use out of my existing phone... I guess I can just root the thing and copy some kernel modules off, eh? Nice.
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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
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 wou…
I used it as my main phone when travelling for years and it worked everywhere I needed it to when other phones wouldn't. I'd use it for getting unwacoughted access to WiFi when I was in a tough spot. I'd manage my servers with it. I'd use it to emit music through the radio on car trips and such (why is this no longer a thing?). I could even push my own programs on it without having to make a sacrifice to the phone gods. I'd also kill for a keyboard like that again.
But no, instead you have to get a hobbyist device or get one of the many shiny slabs running (poorly) one of three (and I mean, really, two) ecosystems.