KDE Community Announces Fully Open Source Plasma Mobile 44
sfcrazy writes: Today, during the Akademy event, the KDE Community announced Plasma Mobile project. It's a Free (as in Freedom and beer), user-friendly, privacy-enabling and customizable platform for mobile devices. Plasma Mobile claims to be developed in an open process, and considering the community behind it, I don't doubt it.
A great line: "Plasma Mobile is designed as an ‘inclusive’ platform and will support all kinds of apps. In addition to native apps written in Qt, it also supports GTK apps, Android apps, Ubuntu apps, and many others." And if you have a Nexus 5, you can download and play with a prototype now.
Re:Plasma is for cows (Score:4, Funny)
They go "Moi".
They are very self centered...
Re: (Score:2)
You did not turn it into a haiku.
My cows are from France.
They are very self-centered.
They go Moi Moi Moi.
I admit it is not as good as the gay sex haiku that has been popping up lately. But your post was so very close that it had to be done.
Re: (Score:1)
Sexconker is, I think, a goober at times. However, they posted one comment that was a parody of the moo troll. I am not sure how we concluded that they are the actual moo troll based on such limited data. I think they are more likely to be the GNAA guy. Maybe the goatse guy? Speaking of which, that goatse guy has been here for a very long time. That is some serious dedication.
Re: (Score:1)
Someone postulated that it was a group of trolls who made posts to see who could get the highest response count. They seemed to indicate some higher knowledge but, frankly, they could just be conspiratorially inclined. Anyhow, the posts seem to show up fairly quick and at all hours of the day. I suspect it is a bot. Faking a CAPTCHA is not too hard to do once you have enough samples.
Re: (Score:1)
It's a platform, obviously.
mobile needs *something*. (Score:3, Insightful)
I haven't used Plasma Mobile, but the current mobile ecosystem is a mess, so we badly need an alternative even if it is niche.
Right now we have these choices:
iOS - Huge app ecosystem, but a non-starter for anyone who doesn't consider it acceptable for Apple maintain control over everybody's device, able to censor what apps you can run, etc. It is not an open platform, it's a control-freak company deciding what you can and can't do.
Android - Huge app ecosystem, but a non-starter for anyone who doesn't consider it acceptable for mass scale harvesting of personal data by an advertising company. It's a "half open" platform, but the app ecosystem is a clusterfuck of crapware.
FirefoxOS - "web apps". Meh.
I don't know if Plasma is the answer, but today we don't have an answer for people who want a good mobile platform that is beholden to the device's actual owner. If this thing can be on the side of its owners, and enough apps are developed and ported to be useful (it doesn't have to get anywhere near the iOS or Android level - even a few % of that is fine as long as it covers the major bases), maybe it is an interesting project.
Re: (Score:3)
Android - Huge app ecosystem, but a non-starter for anyone who doesn't consider it acceptable for mass scale harvesting of personal data by an advertising company. It's a "half open" platform, but the app ecosystem is a clusterfuck of crapware.
The crapware really isn't a problem. No one is forcing you to install crapware on your phone from the app store (undeletable crapware pre-loaded by the carrier and mfgr is another matter). If you're picky about what apps you install, you shouldn't have a problem. I
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
the current mobile ecosystem is a mess, so we badly need an alternative
Good idea. There's too many competing platforms that try to be the standard, so we need a new one that will really be the standard.
https://xkcd.com/927/ [xkcd.com]
Re: (Score:1)
Try not to laugh but there are Windows phone options as well. Ironically, from a practical standpoint - not from an idealistic view, they are really pretty open. The source is not open, of course. However, you can install and do anything you want on them and install things from any source you want to use. From a practical standpoint that makes them a viable option even if they are underused. I do not own one but I understand that they are actually quite good these days when viewed objectively.
Re: (Score:3)
Wayland.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
You have been here long enough to know that such behavior is not tolerated around here. You should feel bad for even suggesting such a thing. RTFA? No... We do not even read the summary half the time. We do not even read the comment we are replying to half the time. It is how we roll.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I haven't read TFA, but as this is for mobile devices, most likely it's a framebuffer.
Yawn ... Why mobile? (Score:1)
Re:Yawn ... Why mobile? (Score:4, Informative)
This isn't the same KDE that runs on your desktop, this is a different version made for mobile platforms. Some of the underlying code (the "framework") is the same, but the UI is different. KDE is the only group out there, it seems, that thinks we should have different interfaces on different devices.
Re:Yawn ... Why mobile? (Score:4, Funny)
KDE is the only group out there, it seems, that thinks we should have different interfaces on different devices.
KDE is also the only group out there that thinks we should have different interfaces on the same device.
Re: (Score:1)
And they're right. I'm looking forward to setting up Plasma Mobile to automatically replace Plasma Desktop when I switch my Yoga 2 Pro into tablet mode.
Re: (Score:2)
At least I hope, this adapting of Plasma to mobile didn't involve fucking up the UI for desktop use as it happened with Window
What about the RIL? (Score:1)
I'd really love to be able to call someone a mile away when we are both near each other but not a mast!
Re: (Score:2)
Your script failed the Turing test.
KDE = My way or the highway (Score:1)
Note to the KDE developers: KDE is not supposed to be the star of the show. It's supposed to be there, unnoticed in the background, ready to do what I tell it to do, not what it thinks that I should be doing.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you are confusing KDE with either GNOME or Unity. KDE is the desktop that allows you to configure it to work however you want it, the others are the ones that do not.
Free (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
"Free. . . . . . . . . . "
Sorry for all the extra space there; my quotation mark got loose.
KDE - disappointing (Score:2)
As a KDE person, I find the demo clip rather disappointing. So I have nothing against KDE, to the contrary.
But what we see is totally off the shelf, a phone applet being pretty blunt, other apps, very much skeleton apps. I believe it does what it should do, but there was no visible refinement to a staple diet, basic interface.
It looks as if the underlying software was the standard KDE software, so that would be fine, if we had an ecosystem that works on 32" as well as on 4.5". Does it? Thanks to Qt it ought