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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

#251

Post by shmerl »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #250
shmerl wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has nothing to do with technical necessity, or even expenses of delivering a specific user's service. Exactly my point. Therefore it's driven by greed, and is an indication of monopoly abuse. To repeat what I said. ISPs already have tired plans for _bandwidth_, and those who are heavier users can pay more for more bandwidth, which has technical necessity behind it. There is completely no need in caps. See https:…

No, it's not "driven by greed", it's "driven by basic math". There's nothing abusive about asking people using your service to pay more than the people who use it the least. And it has nothing to do with "monopoly abuse", we have four (five-ish) national carriers as well as plenty of regional offerings. Mobile providers are the least monopolistic telecoms in the industry right now. The idea of paying for network spee…

> No, it's not "driven by greed", it's "driven by basic math".

Stop the demagoguery please. Calling greed "math" doesn't change it being greed.

> Paying for usage is the ideal situation

You sound like an ISP shill. Are you one? Paying for usage is horrendous, because ISPs who own media services disadvantage competing media services, by excluding their own from caps. This should be forbidden not just by Net Neutraility, but simply by antitrust law. But I suppose you think monopoly is ideal situation too, right? And you'd claim there is nothing wrong with "asking to pay more" because people have no choice but to use the abusive monopolist if they want service, and it's not greed but "basic math". Yeah, right.

Arguing with shills is pointless though, so I finished here. Everything was said above already anyway.

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

#252

Post by Grishnakh »

OOPMan wrote: post #219
pjmlp wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You obviously aren't aware that since Android 5 there isn't any bytecode being interpreted. Android is 100% native code since that version. Even the changes in Android 7, although they use an intepreter written in Assembly, the code is JITed with profile information, both are cached and it gets ultimately fully compiled to native code when the device is charging. Also in case you didn't notice, Apple is pushing for L…

Unfortunately, despite all this Android is still a turd of an OS. Just about every Android device I've used has been painful in some way or other and invariably I've ended up rooting it and installing a custom firmware, generally the most light-weight one I can find. Unfortunately, despite these antics Android remains annoyingly prone to sluggishness, freezing, reboots and various other random problems. Ultimately it…

That's weird; Android works pretty well for me these days. I have lots of problems with sluggishness, freezing, rebooting, etc. on my old HTC phone which had Gingerbread (I think), an ancient version of Android.

But on my Galaxy S4 and my current Galaxy S5 (which is updated to 6.0.1 I think), things work quite well.

It's not perfect of course: I'm using the regular Samsung/Sprint ROM which is absolutely loaded with crapware. I disabled all the crapware, but it's still there wasting a lot of valuable space out of my 16GB. It could be a little faster at times, like with the camera. But freezing and reboots just aren't a problem the way there were on old Android versions that I've used.

I do plan on trying out CyanogenMod sometime when I have some free time. But for now, the carrier-pushed version seems to work decently well. I don't have any giant complaints.

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

#253

Post by dingo_bat »

OOPMan wrote: post #220
dingo_bat wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the same performance by any measure. But you're right that android seems to be needlessly inefficient.

That is something of an understatement by any measure.

Which part?

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

#254

Post by Grishnakh »

codedokode wrote: post #202
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…

Regarding drivers, they are probably present as linux kernel modules in original phone firmware. Cannot they be reused in a custom open firmware? Of course you might need a userspace components to control hardware too which is a problem. Also SOC manufacturer usually has the drivers reference code but he might not publish it.

>Regarding drivers, they are probably present as linux kernel modules in original phone firmware. Cannot they be reused in a custom open firmware?

Generally not. Linux kernel modules generally can't be loaded by kernels with different versions, as the ABI constantly changes. It can be hard to use them even with the same version, if it was compiled differently. This is why they're always pushing for the drivers to be open-sourced and submitted to the kernel project for inclusion, because maintaining them separately is a giant PITA.

Phone makers don't bother because they don't care: they're not going to maintain the drivers very long anyway.

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

#255

Post by hackuser »

shmerl wrote: post #186
hackuser wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for responding. I'm still having trouble finding the information: > * https://plasma-mobile.org/technology/ This page doesn't mention the OS, afaict. > * https://plasma-mobile.org/nexus-5/ This page seems to describe installing Plasma Mobile on top of Cyanogenmod, a fork of Android. Neon is mentioned only under "OLD INSTRUCTIONS AND ERRATA (no longer needed)".

Old instructions show what it is. The base is the same. See for example: https://kubuntu.org/news/kubuntu-team-launches-plasma-mobile...

Thanks for responding to all my questions. fyi: The dev chimed in later in this discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12861481

It turns out it runs Neon, in a container, on top of Cyanogenmod.

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

#256

Post by hackuser »

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/…

In case anyone reads this later: The dev chimed in later in this discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12861481

It turns out it runs Neon, in a container, on top of Cyanogenmod. They formerly used Ubuntu Touch, but no longer.

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

#257

Post by ocdtrekkie »

shmerl wrote: post #251
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not "driven by greed", it's "driven by basic math". There's nothing abusive about asking people using your service to pay more than the people who use it the least. And it has nothing to do with "monopoly abuse", we have four (five-ish) national carriers as well as plenty of regional offerings. Mobile providers are the least monopolistic telecoms in the industry right now. The idea of paying for network spee…

> No, it's not "driven by greed", it's "driven by basic math". Stop the demagoguery please. Calling greed "math" doesn't change it being greed. > Paying for usage is the ideal situation You sound like an ISP shill. Are you one? Paying for usage is horrendous, because ISPs who own media services disadvantage competing media services, by excluding their own from caps. This should be forbidden not just by Net Neutrailit…

It literally has nothing to do with greed. I explained this, my link provided an example. But you seem hung up on T-Mobile's borderline fraudulent advertising scheme.

I have no business in the ISP space, accusing someone of being a shill because you disagree with them basically renders you useless in a discussion, and speaks to your inability to look at the argument objectively.

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

#258

Post by lphnull »

Gruselbauer wrote: post #209
lphnull wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My raspberry pi 3, encased in a rainbow colored 3d printed case and with a 3.5" touch screen, is what took the place of my n900. It's a fraction of the cost of an n900, but with a standard rpi linux distribution and modern specs. Sure I can't make calls with my pi, but the sacrifice is well worth it for the nerd appeal of having a fully functional computer in your pcoket.

Got some kind of build recipe for that? A mobile ssh station that doesn't suck would be worth my enternal soul to me. Or two of those!

I like xubuntu because it's minimalistic and not as bloated. It doesn't take a lot of effort to set up your favorite packages like a lamp server and the like after a basic install. My cheap touch screen is a little laggy, but when plugged into an HDMI monitor, the OS is as fast as a desktop computer. Be sure to buy the latest rpi though, because the original rpi1 is kind of slow and disappointing compared to the latest one with much nicer specs. With an external high-capacity battery and a USB wireless keyboard, it can even function as a laptop replacement if you're okay with using linux as your main OS.

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

#259

Post by mhall119 »

pjmlp wrote: post #206
zerr wrote: post #22

Finally, the platform with the sane API - C++/Qt.

Ubuntu Phone, Sailfish and Blackberry also had it. It didn't help them that much. Plus as far as I am aware, none of them contributed anything from their forks back to the Qt community.

Ubuntu's Qt changes and platform implementation have been upstreamed. I'm willing to bet that Sailfish's have been too.

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

#260

Post by codedokode »

humanrebar wrote: post #230
codedokode wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I don't see much benefits from using Qt. C++ is pretty old language that doesn't have a GC and its syntax for me is worse than Java's.

> ...and its syntax for me is worse than Java's Both C++ and Java have been improving their syntax in recent years. I'd recommend reintroducing yourself to the latest version of either.

But the header files are still there, aren't they? One still has to write a method name and arguments twice.
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