Plasma Mobile on the Librem 5

[Sebastian Kügler]

Hey Zlatan,

On Sat, 2 Sep 2017 17:23:09 +0200
Zlatan Todoric <zlatan.todoric at puri.sm> wrote:

> (Cleared all previous mails to make this one more visible, feel free
> to respond on this one while quoting previous replies in this thread)
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> so I had discussion with our CEO and he is of course absolutely in.
> To make clear our standpoint - both GNOME and KDE *will* be first
> class citizen on Librem5. So there is no favorite between two, but
> both are equal in this challenge.
> 
> That said, looking in general code readiness between two, it would
> appear that plasma mobile would be default in first wave of librems
> (we are not releasing until one DE is ready for it and we will also
> not wait for other DE to be ready but gradually add it). There is
> some discussion in terms of offer - do we want to offer Librem5 with
> choice of having Plasma or GNOME or do we have both right away inside
> (maybe to heavy for such device)  so users can pick during boot-up?

I'm not familiar with GNOME's strategy for a mobile UI (would love to
know more however!), so for me it's hard to judge whether Plasma is
technologically closer. From the Plasma side, I know that we're
*currently* not good enough for anything end-user, so it will need a
dedicated development push, and we need to rally the resources
necessary for that. I do know that there is a good amount of interest
in the community, but my impression is also that many people are
playing a waiting game for others to move before they're getting their
hands dirty. This is something we need to resolve to get the ball really
rolling. A decent plan and coordination of these effort is definitely
needed, and this is something we should come up with first. Build and
they will come.

On the other hand, the offering of non-Android Free software mobile
workspaces and apps have, with the demise of Firefox OS and Ubuntu
become pretty thin, and the best we can hope from that rather
disappointing development is that a consolidation will bundle
resources and get the community together with more focus. 

> Also, while currently we are offering PureOS with GNOME as default on
> Librem13/15, I think there is future for KDE as desktop offering by
> default as well (also as an option PureOS GNOME and PureOS Plasma/KDE)
> because the convergence might be very interesting choice for many
> users and your desktop is very modular for fine tweaking.

I haven't looked into the packaging for the device, so it's hard to
comment on that. I can imagine that Plasma is something people would
want to run on the device, and it makes a story of complementary
devices both running Plasma more compelling, so I think we should at
least have an answer to that.

That said, I'm not familiar with packaging for PureOS, and KDE is just
getting ready to flatpak things. I'm not sure in how far flatpacking
the DE is an option, but I guess Matthias can weigh in here as well. We
do have some expertise in the Plasma team as well, but so far the DE
itself hasn't been the primary target of our flatpak efforts, we've
more concentrated on apps. I'd be interesting to know, perhaps we can
use the Librem notebooks as potential targets when we think about how we
want to make deployment of Plasma possible. I suppose it's a good way
to get Plasma ready for deployment on the handheld devices as well.
These kind of deployment scenarios are actually at the heart of
Plasma's cross device strategy, so I'd love to find out more.

> Now that is said - what suggestion do you have for a meeting around
> promoting collaboration between Purism and KDE regarding Librem5?
> Videoconferencing or async via mail? Other tools? I would add to the
> discussion our CEO, CMO and Director of Creative.

Video would probably work best, a phone conference is also an option.
Plasma and KDE promo people are mostly in Europe, but I'm sure we can
make something work, even if it's outside of office hours (I don't
mind). 

Cheers,
-- 
sebas

    http://vizZzion.org   ⦿    http://www.kde.org