Plasma/Mobile/General: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 03:03, 10 November 2018

What is Plasma Mobile?

Plasma Mobile offers a free (As in freedom and beer), user-friendly, privacy-enabling and customizable platform for mobile devices. Based on the Halium project, we have official installable prototypes for two Android devices. However, Plasma Mobile is under heavy development and unfortunately cannot be used as a daily driver for most people.

Halium isn't Plasma Mobile: Halium is only providing support to packing a basic Android system based upon LineageOS into an LXC container into a normal GNU/Linux system. Then the host system is able to use the proprietary android firmware into a normal system using libhybris, which is the simplest way without reverse-engineering all drivers. Unfortunately, this requires old and often outdated Android kernels to be used under-the-hood.

Why?

The most common offerings on mobile devices lack openness and trust. In a world of walled gardens, we want to create a platform that respects and protects the user's privacy to the fullest. We want to provide a fully open base which others can help develop and use for themselves, or in their products.

Can I use it?

Official images based on Halium and KDE Neon Git-Unstable are provided for the Nexus 5X and Nexus 5. This is the reference system where most current development is happening, and scripts are supplied to ease installation of the Neon rootfs onto your own device for testing. See further instructions here.

There is also postmarketOS, a touch-optimized Alpine Linux with support for many more devices, and while it's in very early stages of development, it offers Plasma Mobile as an available interface for the devices it supports. You can see the list of supported devices here, but given the state of pmOS, your mileage may vary.

The interface is using KWin over Wayland and is now mostly stable, albeit a little rough around the edges in some areas. A subset of the normal KDE Plasma features are available, including widgets and activities, both of which are integrated into the Plasma Mobile UI.

What can it do?

There are quite a few touch-optimized apps that are now being bundled with the Neon-based Plasma Mobile image, allowing a wide range of basic functions. These are mostly built with Kirigami, KDE's interface framework allowing convergent UIs that work very well in a touch-only environment. The included software is bound to change with time, but in the current "edge" rootfs, you can find:

The Angelfish web browser, based on QtWebEngine/Chromium, with full touch support including pinch-to-zoom
The vvave music player
The Discover software center (Playing the role of an "app store" in this context)
Marble Maps
The Index file manager (From the Maui Project but designed for both Android and Plasma Mobile)
A simple camera application
Peruse, a comic book reader
vPlayer, a video player that can play local and remote files, along with support for searching and playing YouTube videos

Other software can be installed from Discover. Any Qt5 app (Including software designed for the desktop, such as Calligra) will run without many issues, though it will still be difficult to use on a touch display. Currently, software built with the GTK toolkit will run, but with major scaling issues, and without any support for the on-screen keyboard. If possible, use software built with Kirigami for best results.

A dialer is included, and an app for SMS called "Spacebar" is under development, but you cannot currently make calls or texts. This is unintended behavior, and we intend to restore that functionality in time.

Supported features of the Nexus 5 and Nexus 5X include the camera, Wi-FI, battery monitoring and power settings, and audio (Including hardware volume buttons)

Where can I find...

More info, such as installation instructions, is available in the Plasma Mobile Wiki and on the Plasma Mobile website.

The code for various Plasma Mobile components can be found on git.kde.org.

You can also ask your questions in the Plasma Mobile community groups and channels.

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-=== What is Plasma Mobile ===
+=== What is Plasma Mobile? ===
-Plasma Mobile offers a Free (as in Freedom and beer), user-friendly, privacy-enabling and customizable platform for mobile devices. There's a prototype providing basic functionality that is running on a limited, but growing range of Android devices using the [https://halium.org/ Halium] project. Currently Plasma Mobile is under heavy development and unfortunately can't be used as a daily driver.
+Plasma Mobile offers a free (As in freedom and beer), user-friendly, privacy-enabling and customizable platform for mobile devices. Based on the [https://halium.org/ Halium] project, we have official installable prototypes for two Android devices. However, Plasma Mobile is under heavy development and unfortunately cannot be used as a daily driver for most people.
-Halium isn't Plasma Mobile: Halium is only providing support to packing a basic android system based upon LineageOS into an LXC container into a normal GNU/Linux system. Then the host system is able to use the proprietary android firmware into a normal system using [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybris_(software) libhybris], which is the simplest way without reverse-engineering all drivers. Unfortunately this way the often outdated android kernels still need to be used.
+Halium isn't Plasma Mobile: Halium is only providing support to packing a basic Android system based upon LineageOS into an LXC container into a normal GNU/Linux system. Then the host system is able to use the proprietary android firmware into a normal system using [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybris_(software) libhybris], which is the simplest way without reverse-engineering all drivers. Unfortunately, this requires old and often outdated Android kernels to be used under-the-hood.
 === Why? ===
@@ Line 9: / Line 9: @@
 The most common offerings on mobile devices lack openness and trust. In a world of walled gardens, we want to create a platform that respects and protects the user's privacy to the fullest. We want to provide a fully open base which others can help develop and use for themselves, or in their products.
-=== What's the status? ===
+=== Can I use it? ===
-Plasma Mobile is available as a developer prototype running on about 10 Android devices using Halium. This number is constantly increasing as there are more and more device ports on Halium, you can find a list of the finished and unfinished ports on [https://github.com/Halium/projectmanagement/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3APorts GitHub] and on the [http://docs.halium.org/en/latest/supplementary/devices/index.html#device-overview Halium Wiki]. Their supported features differ and it's the best if you look up a specific device port for that information.
+Official images based on Halium and KDE Neon Git-Unstable are provided for the Nexus 5X and Nexus 5. This is the reference system where most current development is happening, and scripts are supplied to ease installation of the Neon rootfs onto your own device for testing. [https://www.plasma-mobile.org/neon-arch-reference-rootfs/ See further instructions here.]
-But don't think Plasma Mobile can't do anything, there are already some features available: making and receiving phone calls, navigation via. [https://marble.kde.org/ Marble] and image viewing using [https://userbase.kde.org/Koko Koko]. This is not a promise that it will work on all devices, because most of the Halium ports are still missing some fixes and the provided KDE Neon system also needs debugging.
+There is also postmarketOS, a touch-optimized Alpine Linux with support for many more devices, and while it's in very early stages of development, it offers Plasma Mobile as an available interface for the devices it supports. [https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices You can see the list of supported devices here, but given the state of pmOS, your mileage may vary.]
+The interface is using KWin over Wayland and is now mostly stable, albeit a little rough around the edges in some areas. A subset of the normal KDE Plasma features are available, including widgets and activities, both of which are integrated into the Plasma Mobile UI.
+=== What can it do? ===
+There are quite a few touch-optimized apps that are now being bundled with the Neon-based Plasma Mobile image, allowing a wide range of basic functions. These are mostly built with Kirigami, KDE's interface framework allowing convergent UIs that work very well in a touch-only environment. The included software is bound to change with time, but in the current "edge" rootfs, you can find:
+* The Angelfish web browser, based on QtWebEngine/Chromium, with full touch support including pinch-to-zoom
+* The vvave music player
+* The Discover software center (Playing the role of an "app store" in this context)
+* Marble Maps
+* The Index file manager (From the Maui Project but designed for both Android and Plasma Mobile)
+* A simple camera application
+* Peruse, a comic book reader
+* vPlayer, a video player that can play local and remote files, along with support for searching and playing YouTube videos
+Other software can be installed from Discover. Any Qt5 app (Including software designed for the desktop, such as Calligra) will run without many issues, though it will still be difficult to use on a touch display. Currently, software built with the GTK toolkit ''will'' run, but with major scaling issues, and without any support for the on-screen keyboard. If possible, use software built with Kirigami for best results.
+A dialer is included, and an app for SMS called "Spacebar" is under development, but you cannot currently make calls or texts. This is unintended behavior, and we intend to restore that functionality in time.
+Supported features of the Nexus 5 and Nexus 5X include the camera, Wi-FI, battery monitoring and power settings, and audio (Including hardware volume buttons)
 === Where can I find... ===
 More info, such as installation instructions, is available in the [http://community.kde.org/Plasma/Mobile Plasma Mobile Wiki] and on the [http://www.plasma-mobile.org Plasma Mobile website].
 The code for various Plasma Mobile components can be found on [https://projects.kde.org/projects/playground/mobile git.kde.org].
 You can also ask your questions in the [https://www.plasma-mobile.org/join/ Plasma Mobile community groups and channels].