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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

#231

Post by pjmlp »

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #227
pjmlp wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some here used to work for that unit. :)

Really? That explains a lot about you: although mostly your preference for strong typing. Working for a phone company will do that for you.

Yep.

No, what explains that is that I used C for the first time in 1993, yet I was already coding since 1986.

So I was doing systems like level programming in Timex Basic, Turbo Basic, Turbo Pascal, Z80 and 80x86 on those in between years.

Also had friends using 68000, AMOS and GFA Basic on their Amigas.

Also I majored in systems level programming, with emphasis in compilers, which meant I have spent quite some time researching old programming environments, and still do. Better than reading newspapers sometimes.

So I learned that were better ways to do systems programming without having the compromises of C.

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

#232

Post by lmm »

winter_blue wrote: post #172
reledi wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The content on the page does a very poor job of explaining what it is and why we should care. It's only until I saw the KDE developers at the bottom that I realised it's a graphical desktop environment but for your mobile phone. It's FOSS so it's hackable, as in you have access to the source code and development is done in the open and contributions are encouraged. The target developer phone seems to be the LG Nexus…

Yea, the Plasma Mobile home page doesn't really make a strong pitch towards a potential user. For mobile developers, the biggest difference is that they'd be using the Qt framework instead of the Android framework. So the pitch at least for mobile developers, should be why it's a more pleasant and better (and more productive) experience to develop mobile apps with Qt vs the Android frameworks. I'm not how much better…

KDE3 is the best desktop environment I've ever used, and rock solid. I'd be confident in a KDE3-based mobile environment. But post-KDE4? No.

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

#233

Post by abrowne »

owaislone wrote: post #215
abrowne wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried MATE, such as with Ubuntu MATE? I prefer Xfce, but MATE is a great fork and update of GNOME 2.

No, I've not. Do they keep it fairly updated or is it just old Gnome2 maintained? What would be great for me is Unity7 + Gnome2 apps ported to GTK3 without turning them into iPad apps but looks like that will get even harder with Unity8 :(

They are updating it, but keeping the original style as much as possible. The forked apps, like the file manager (caja), archive manager (engrampa), text editor (pluma) etc. still have menubars and so on, but, for example, it is using dconf/gsettings and MATE in Ubuntu MATE 16.10 is all GTK+3.

They've also integrated features for setting panel layouts, and there is one ("Mutiny") that mimics Unity. They're even working on a HUD-like feature.

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

#234

Post by skykooler »

lphnull wrote: post #73
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you looked into sailfish? No physical keyboard, AFAICT, but it's based on the successor to Maemo. Also, look into the neo900 project and Pyra. Neo900 is trying to upgrade the n900, and Pyra is the successor to Pandora, which is a pocket computer in a semi-similar vein to the old nokias. Neither is finished, but they're worth a look.

I've heard of sailfish before, but I had NO idea sailfish is somewhat maemo based. This really makes me want to reconsider the Jolla phone.

Keep in mind, if you live in the US, that the Jolla is an EU phone, and doesn't support US 3G or 4G frequencies. I was stuck with a Jolla on 2G for a while. Recently I got a OnePlus X and installed Sailfish OS on that, and the experience has been much better.

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

#235

Post by skykooler »

biafra wrote: post #183
benmcnelly wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Did you hear about the neo900? Would that be an option for you?

The Neo900 would have been excellent had it come out two years ago, as originally planned. However, the various delays keep pushing it back, although it still has the same hardware. It will end up quite underpowered like the N900 is now, combined with an older chipset that doesn't support things newer open phone OS's require (like Wayland).

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

#236

Post by skykooler »

rihegher wrote: post #194
djsumdog wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble isn't the software. I'd gladly jump onto Ubuntu Touch and wanted to try out FireFox OS when it was still maintained, but the trouble is the hardware. I didn't want to buy a Nexus, which seems like the only device that's the first to be supported by any alt-OS. Back in the late 90s/early 2000s, you could just run Linux on your x86. Sometimes half your hardware didn't work, but as long as you could get Ethe…

You might want to try sailfishOS on a fairphone which work ok for basic stuff

And sailfish OS's hardware support is based on libhybris, which basically relies on using Android drivers for phones

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

#237

Post by yaantc »

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).

Nokia is the pacman of infra vendors: they acquired Siemens, then Motorola Networks (the infra part). Then recently they acquired ALU. ALU itself is the result of the acquisition by Alcatel of Lucent. And when Nortel went bankrupt, Alcatel also acquired part of the assets and employees. Sooo, lots of infrastructure vendors ended up in today Nokia. Maybe I even missed some ;)

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

#238

Post by awinter-py »

gue5t wrote: post #52

How do they justify calling it "fully open" when it uses libHybris to support binary blobs for Android just to get graphics and other essentials working?

yeah. anything that interacts with the radio hardware is going to interact with a crappy vendor RTOS, aka 'radio OS'.

Running linux on my phone is cool, but getting away from binary blobs would be priceless.

More here: http://www.osnews.com/story/27416/The_second_operating_syste...

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

#239

Post by bskdjx »

This is how I found hacker news and combinatorial back in 2011.

I'd just gotten my first smartphone and I went and searched for a "hacking app". An app for hacker news came up instead.

Several usr names and smartphones (and two dumb phones) later, I check check this site daily.

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

#240

Post by digi_owl »

pjmlp wrote: post #203
digi_owl wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Core parts were proprietary because "differentiation". The leadership was caught in a innovators dilemma (Symbian was aging but had a massive install base, Maemo has future potential but could massacre their Symbian earnings in a transition), and the board in the end brought in a Trojan horse that made a deal with Microsoft. Also, what you are currently seeing happening in desktop Linux land, wayland, systemd, etc et…

> board in the end brought in a Trojan horse that made a deal with Microsoft. And the lie keeps being repeated, it was the board that sold Nokia by having a contract that would grant Elop a huge bonus if he managed to do sell the company to someone else! http://www.forbes.com/sites/terokuittinen/2013/09/24/nokia-a... "According to changes implemented in 2010, Elop was entitled to immediate share price performance bon…

So it was deliberate on part of the board, still made him look like a trojan horse from the outside as supposedly he was there to get the company back on track.
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