Plasma Mobile on the Librem 5

[Matthias Klumpp]

2017-08-29 16:44 GMT+02:00 Sebastian Kügler <sebas at kde.org>:
> Hi Matthias, et al!
>
> On Tue, 29 Aug 2017 15:28:36 +0200
> Matthias Klumpp <matthias at tenstral.net> wrote:
>> [ Please keep the CC list intact for replies ]
>>
>> [...]
>
> Yes, Kirigami has been rather a success story, and we see more and more
> applications adopting it. That means that they will work much better
> also on mobile devices, such as phones. (It doesn't necessarily mean
> that they'll run and work entirely perfectly on a phone, but moves them
> from "this is clearly a desktop-focused UI into "small, fixable
> niggles".)

As usual with software :-)

>> ## Some details about the phone software
>>
>> The base operating system of the phone will be PureOS[3], our Debian
>> derivative that is currently pending endorsement from the FSF.
>> The plan is to use OSTree[4] for the base system, in order to achieve
>> atomic updates and easy rollbacks, as well as Flatpaks[5] for
>> deployment of applications. It is likely that we will have our own
>> Flatpak repository with apps specifically for the phone at some point
>> in the future.
>
> Great, this is a direction we've been pursuing as well, e.g. by adding
> support for Flatpak to discover, our package manager client (and KDE
> Store / OCS client). Discover uses Kirigami as well, by the way, so it
> works well on a smartphone already.

Yes, and Discover is a key component of the whole OS stack. There was
a talk by Jan at GUADEC about the state of Flatpak in KDE Discover,
and the status seemed to be "almost done". (I also tested this a while
back without problems).

>> The system will make full use of systemd and will use Bubblewrap[6]
>> for sandboxing of selected more critical components.
>
> Interesting, makes a lot of sense. I can't really comment from a Plasma
> point of view on this, it's something we need to try and if necessary,
> make work.

This is more of an OS-wide approach to isolate components better - in
the long run, I hope we can have vulnerability mitigation in place
from the kernel to the apps wherever it makes sense.

>> [...]

>> Our scope for this project is limited, in order to be able to complete
>> it successfully and not end up in a never ending development loop: The
>> phone should be able to communicate via Matrix, have a web browser,
>> make calls, take pictures. We are not aiming for a massive amount of
>> apps, but instead want the basic functionalities of the phone working
>> well when we ship it - more apps and features  can be delivered later
>> via Flatpaks and system updates.
>>
>> The UI therefore doesn't need to be excessive and support each and
>> every feature that Android already has, having a more minimal UI works
>> fine.
>
> I think that's a very valid approach. Catching up with Android (or iOS)
> in a short time-frame won't work, and it's better and more realistic to
> concentrate on a limited feature set and extend from there.
>
> That said, we have a reasonably working shell / workspace UI to launch
> and switch between apps, and a bunch of essential system controls, so
> we should offer a state which isn't too far from a basic usable system
> (except perhaps for Matrix support, but I'd suggest to read Eike's
> email, he's our chat goto guy and knows these ins and outs much better
> than I do).
>
> I think it would make sense to sit down and look at the delta between
> what you have in mind as a basic feature set and what we currently
> have, and then evaluate what we need to work on and prioritize based on
> that.

I think Plasma Mobile's current feature set pretty much covers what we
need already - the only thing needed would be system integration and
lots of design & polish. But I guess I need to try the phone UI again,
instead of just watching videos of it :-) (last time hands-on was last
year at Akademy).

> [...]
> We've been continuously improving our memory requirements (actually
> across the whole stack including Plasma desktop), and we will continue
> to do that. Bugfixing is of course among our top priorities.
>
> Aside from the obvious, embedded targets (not just phones, but also
> mini computers such as ODROID C1+, Pine64, Pinebook are an increasingly
> important target for us, so there's more performance work going to come
> in that specific area as well.
>
> What we're currently lacking is enthusiasm from people who want to work
> at the user interface level. We're running into a bit of a
> chicken-and-egg problem here, as we've long lacked viable target
> devices for Plasma Mobile, and a platform that only runs on very
> specific hardware and isn't at end-user quality (or very, very close)
> is not that attractive to many people.

This was pretty much the result of our "Debian Mobile" BoF that we had
at this year's Debconf as well - it's a tricky to solve problem, but
the Librem 5 could help a bit with that.

> [...]
> I think a project such as the librem could attract a lot of interest
> from the community, but we need to do a much better job communicating
> that. We definitely get a lot of feedback from people that are
> interested, and I sense there's a real niche in the market for an open,
> hackable Free software phone (especially with privacy as a stated
> project goal), but we (esp. Plasma / KDE) need to do a better job at
> getting these interested people to actually contribute.
>
> That said, we have a few things planned for our launchers, during a
> meeting at our yearly conference Akademy last month, we've identified a
> few things that we would like to see improved on our launcher and home
> screen. We also want to make the top (drag-down bar) a tad more
> light-weight.
>
> The settings app is still rather basic (and that may be fine!), but
> it's extensible and code can be shared with the desktop version, which
> is undergoing a redesign as we speak.

Nice! We might be able to help out with that a bit, but at this point
in time I can't promise anything yet ;-)

> [...]
> Would it make sense to get together and look at Plasma Mobile and
> Purism's plans, and devise a possible strategy and next steps? Maybe
> get together in a video conference with everybody interested in this
> project, and see how we can work out common ground and plans, and how
> we can kick things off?

I would like that a lot, I think it's a good way forward.
@Zlatan, what do you think?
We would need to have a bit of internal discussion first though, and
maybe need to wait for the campaign to succeed first.

Cheers,
    Matthias

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