Plasma Mobile – Turns your phone into a fully open hacking device • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by shmerl » Fri, Nov 04, 2016, 3:27 AM UTC

bshah wrote: post #169

Hello, Main plasma mobile developer here, I wanted to reply some questions that surfaced in comments and give a bit of overview on current state and where we need help. We initially based it on Ubuntu Touch, and later on started using our own stack based on Cyanogenmod, more information on it at : http://blog.bshah.in/2016/05/02/plasma-mobile-new-base-syste... So basically currently Plasma Mobile is made of, - KDE Fr…

> kwin_wayland supports DRM backend, and freedreno provides the DRM on android devices, however we don't have access to device which supports freedreno easily. For instance I attempted to get mainline kernel working on Nexus 5 device and also submitted some device tree source files to Linux kernel tree, and will be available in kernel 4.9 release.. But sadly I was not able to finish this project

Thanks! So were you able to get a usable result on Nexus 5? Sounds like it's the best candidate for this task. Do you plan to continue that effort, or there are some blockers that you couldn't resolve? I'm running Sailfish on Nexus 5 now, which uses libhybris and CM kernel with Qualcomm blobs, but I'm interested in more open alternative, and without driver blobs as well.

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

#262

Post by shmerl » Fri, Nov 04, 2016, 3:30 AM UTC

hackuser wrote: post #255

shmerl wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Minimal Cyanongenmod base refers to the kernel and some blob drivers, there is nothing else there from CM. So it's actually normal glibc Linux, which uses some hardware drivers for Android through libhybris.

You can read more about the approach here:

* https://mer-project.blogspot.ca/2013/04/wayland-utilizing-an...

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

#263

Post by bshah » Fri, Nov 04, 2016, 4:03 AM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #261

bshah wrote: post #169

Hello, Main plasma mobile developer here, I wanted to reply some questions that surfaced in comments and give a bit of overview on current state and where we need help. We initially based it on Ubuntu Touch, and later on started using our own stack based on Cyanogenmod, more information on it at : http://blog.bshah.in/2016/05/02/plasma-mobile-new-base-syste... So basically currently Plasma Mobile is made of, - KDE Fr…

> kwin_wayland supports DRM backend, and freedreno provides the DRM on android devices, however we don't have access to device which supports freedreno easily. For instance I attempted to get mainline kernel working on Nexus 5 device and also submitted some device tree source files to Linux kernel tree, and will be available in kernel 4.9 release.. But sadly I was not able to finish this project Thanks! So were you a…

> Thanks! So were you able to get a usable result on Nexus 5? Sounds like it's the best candidate for this task. Do you plan to continue that effort, or there are some blockers that you couldn't resolve?

Not really there are not much important blocker to get DRM working, however main thing is I don't really have free time to continue that effort.

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

#264

Post by shmerl » Fri, Nov 04, 2016, 4:59 AM UTC

bshah wrote: post #263

shmerl wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> kwin_wayland supports DRM backend, and freedreno provides the DRM on android devices, however we don't have access to device which supports freedreno easily. For instance I attempted to get mainline kernel working on Nexus 5 device and also submitted some device tree source files to Linux kernel tree, and will be available in kernel 4.9 release.. But sadly I was not able to finish this project Thanks! So were you a…

> Thanks! So were you able to get a usable result on Nexus 5? Sounds like it's the best candidate for this task. Do you plan to continue that effort, or there are some blockers that you couldn't resolve? Not really there are not much important blocker to get DRM working, however main thing is I don't really have free time to continue that effort.

I don't have a spare device now, but if I'll get one, I'll be interested in looking into it if I'll have time. Did you document your efforts anywhere?

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

#265

Post by winter_blue » Fri, Nov 04, 2016, 5:03 AM UTC

codedokode wrote: post #198

winter_blue wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

C++ has gotten a lot better with C++11/14/17. It's almost like a new language now. I agree the syntax is not the nicest. But not having a GC is not really that big of a problem. I honestly (literally) never have memory-related problems while writing C++ because I either use smart pointers, or always allocate/free objects in the constructor & destructor. I rarely even find myself calling 'new' because everything gets allocated by the STL containers. There certainly is more effort involved in this, vs. using a language with GC, but that's the (small) price in effort you pay for far more efficient memory usage and no arbitrary GC freezes.

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

#266

Post by winter_blue » Fri, Nov 04, 2016, 5:06 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #205

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.

Qt developers are nowadays pushing for JavaScript instead. Qt5 programming model is that C++ Widgets are legacy and you are supposed to do the UI in QML, a JavaScript dialect, while coding in C++ the business logic or the hardware interaction of new widgets you might create.

> Qt developers are nowadays pushing for JavaScript instead.

Uh. I've used JavaScript in a production environment, and I really really don't like it. It feels like a massive step backwards to me, when there's so many good languages out there. I wish developers would stop pushing for JavaScript everywhere.

Having to use it in the browser is horrible enough. Please don't write servers and other back-end code as well in it now. I personally wouldn't even use it for web front-end--- I would rather use a language like Elm, that cleanly compiles to JavaScript.

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

#267

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Nov 04, 2016, 5:36 AM UTC

mhall119 wrote: post #259

pjmlp wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you sure?

My assumption is due to the state of QtMobility vs the APIs available on these other systems.

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

#268

Post by flukus » Fri, Nov 04, 2016, 6:02 AM UTC

throwaway2048 wrote: post #38

paxcoder wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) Exc…

I didn't find performance to be an issue on practice. My firefox phone was silky smooth on craptastic hardware. I wish android was that smooth.

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

#269

Post by flukus » Fri, Nov 04, 2016, 6:33 AM UTC

bshah wrote: post #169

Hello, Main plasma mobile developer here, I wanted to reply some questions that surfaced in comments and give a bit of overview on current state and where we need help. We initially based it on Ubuntu Touch, and later on started using our own stack based on Cyanogenmod, more information on it at : http://blog.bshah.in/2016/05/02/plasma-mobile-new-base-syste... So basically currently Plasma Mobile is made of, - KDE Fr…

Any good links to how to build apps for this? All I'm really looking for in a phone is an easy way to build my own apps.

Also, when you say DRM, do you mean digital rights management? Why do we want that?

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

#270

Post by ptaipale » Fri, Nov 04, 2016, 4:04 PM UTC

yaantc wrote: post #237

digi_owl wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ;)

Indeed; what remains of the old big infra vendors is now in Ericsson and Nokia. Then there are the Chinese ones: Huawei and ZTE. Probably others. But particularly Huawei is growing very fast in many markets - the Chinese government is basically giving the money away, so it's hard for others to make a profit, and Huawei takes market share. If you call it a "market" after such subsidies.

Some customers, particularly very many in the USA, are not so happy to have Huawei or ZTE core switches etc, but in emerging markets they are less worried about Chinese intelligence infiltrating them, and also in Europe there seems to be less protectionism and concerns about national security. So the Chinese are catching the global market, without the Americans noticing much.