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Plasma Mobile

plasma-mobile.org

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Re: Plasma Mobile

#31

Post by wz1000 »

chestnut-tree wrote: post #19
RivieraKid wrote: post #8

I've lost all hope in the KDE project, they simply don't understand UI / UX design.

I think the main problem is that the open source model of software development doesn't really work when it comes to visual or interaction design. We've all heard that phrase 'design by commitee' but that's what you get when everyone wants a say in the way the UI works. I can understand why this happens even though the outcome is often an unfriendly UI. Imagine you're a developer who's spent time and effort contributi…

What do you find 'unfriendly' about Plasma 5 and Breeze?

Re: Plasma Mobile

#32

Post by wz1000 »

veeti wrote: post #30
jbk wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The front page is just a marketing thingie. Look at the video. It looks great.

You must have some very low standards for "looking great". Like they say, this is a prototype and it shows. The design is all over the place. The one thing that sticks out the most is that there is no sense of scale at all. Everything is either ridiculously huge or tiny. For example, look at the compact status bar: really small text and icons. Then look at the navigation icons on the bottom of the screen, the dialer…

Everything you mention is relatively easy to fix. Submit a patch if you don't like it. That's the beauty of open source :)

Re: Plasma Mobile

#33

Post by wz1000 »

RivieraKid wrote: post #17
jlas wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good enough for the mostly tech-oriented users that interact with it though.

I've heard several years ago that their UI philosophy is to target advanced users. No problem with that specifically (although one could argue that you can target casual and advanced users at the same time without much compromises). But their implementation of this philosophy seems to be - "don't think whether it's a good idea to put this button here, just make it an option in the settings". Which is clearly wrong.

> "don't think whether it's a good idea to put this button here, just make it an option in the settings". Which is clearly wrong.

Why is that?

Re: Plasma Mobile

#34

Post by veeti »

RivieraKid wrote: post #8

I've lost all hope in the KDE project, they simply don't understand UI / UX design.

Agreed. I used KDE for years, but I just couldn't stand the hideous interface anymore. GNOME 3 looks good and finally has all the functionality I need from a DE.

I had high hopes for their new visual design effort, but in my opinion the new Plasma 5 theme looks like a really, really bad OS X Yosemite ripoff. (Which is ironic, since Yosemite came afterwards.)

Re: Plasma Mobile

#35

Post by sho_hn »

jbk wrote: post #2

So, there is not much information on the website yet, but this is basically a full stack for mobiles, based on Wayland and Kwin for the UI and Ofono for the phone part. The reference implementation is based on Ubuntu Touch, and use libhybris to get hw support. However, it's different from UT, by the fact that it's not using Mir, but Wayland directly through Kwin. It seems to run Ubuntu Touch applications, X11 applica…

Right, here's the stack as a quick recap: Kubuntu with systemd + Android GPU driver via libhybris + kwin as Wayland display server and compositor (with a hwcomposer backend for the renderer) + plasmashell + phone shell package. Ofono for GSM. Regular Linux desktop bits for everything else.

This different from e.g. Firefox OS which relies on Android's SurfaceFlinger as display server, or Ubuntu Phone which uses their own Mir windowing system. The proprietary bits we rely on on a phone-by-phone basis (GPU drivers, radio) are abstracted away behind standard APIs (GLES) or Ofono, so all of this also runs on e.g. the desktop Mesa GL stack unmodified. The use of Kubuntu or systemd are incidental (the Kubuntu community has been a great aid!); nothing prevents any other distro from taking this - all on regular kde.org master branches slated for eventual release - and putting things together in the usual ways.

We also got full open governance and no mandatory central copyright assignment at kde.org, unlike some other open-ish phone projects.

As for convergence options -- plasmashell is in principle designed to be able to load and swap shell packages at runtime, while potentially retaining state. We're not quite there yet (e.g. because our Wayland bits are not up to supporting the full desktop just yet), but at some point we hope to allow you to dock your phone via HDMI, bring up Plasma Desktop on the attached monitor and e.g. retain your notifications.

Re: Plasma Mobile

#36

Post by wvh »

Exciting stuff. I think it's important there is a solid open-source stack on mobile, even if most people won't leave iOS or Android behind. Is there any cooperation with the Jolla or Ubuntu folks, perhaps through the Mer project or common Qt development? It would be good to avoid duplicate work.

Have you been thinking about the hardware problem in the long run? Jolla has apparently decided to leave the hardware business; I'm not sure where open-source mobile developers will get (guaranteed) hardware for their systems in the future.

Re: Plasma Mobile

#37

Post by wz1000 »

wvh wrote: post #36

Exciting stuff. I think it's important there is a solid open-source stack on mobile, even if most people won't leave iOS or Android behind. Is there any cooperation with the Jolla or Ubuntu folks, perhaps through the Mer project or common Qt development? It would be good to avoid duplicate work. Have you been thinking about the hardware problem in the long run? Jolla has apparently decided to leave the hardware busin…

AFAIK, this is based on Ubuntu Touch.

Re: Plasma Mobile

#38

Post by veeti »

wz1000 wrote: post #32
veeti wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must have some very low standards for "looking great". Like they say, this is a prototype and it shows. The design is all over the place. The one thing that sticks out the most is that there is no sense of scale at all. Everything is either ridiculously huge or tiny. For example, look at the compact status bar: really small text and icons. Then look at the navigation icons on the bottom of the screen, the dialer…

Everything you mention is relatively easy to fix. Submit a patch if you don't like it. That's the beauty of open source :)

Ah, the good old "submit a patch if you don't like it". This is a common problem all throughout the user interface shown, not an isolated issue. And as mentioned, it's a _prototype_: I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say this is far, far from the final user interface anyway.

Re: Plasma Mobile

#39

Post by sho_hn »

afro88 wrote: post #7

Free OS on your phone is great and all, but it's got that quirky linux UI problem where usability is an after thought to "me too" features. For example, I can't read any of the text on the phone image on the front page, and physically the image on my screen is bigger than my iPhone. So the text is unreadable in the OS by default?

FWIW, this is very early and not representative of where we want the UI to be. A lot of our effort so far has gone into e.g. getting our Wayland story sorted out (we knew we wanted to be Wayland from day 1 on the phone, and do it properly to where every line of code we write also gets Plasma Desktop closer to being on Wayland) and getting all our service infrastructure ducks in a row on a phone device. Our community designers have in the meantime poured a lot of effort into generating user personas, design guidelines and mockups, but we're only just beginning to reallocate developer resources to realization.

This is open source -- you get to see how the sausage is made.

Re: Plasma Mobile

#40

Post by wz1000 »

veeti wrote: post #38
wz1000 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything you mention is relatively easy to fix. Submit a patch if you don't like it. That's the beauty of open source :)

Ah, the good old "submit a patch if you don't like it". This is a common problem all throughout the user interface shown, not an isolated issue. And as mentioned, it's a _prototype_: I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say this is far, far from the final user interface anyway.

In the end, it is a community effort. It needs people from the community to contribute. If you think you can do something better, I really encourage you to do so.
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