Purism Begins Making Their Own Wayland Compositor For The Librem 5 Smartphone

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Purism Begins Making Their Own Wayland Compositor For The Librem 5 Smartphone

While Purism continues eyeing KDE Plasma and GNOME Shell for delivering the user-interface options of the Librem 5 smartphone, they have begun developing their own Wayland compositor and their own shell too...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Purism-Starts-Wayland-Compost

[Azrael5]

How long to get it available for users?

[stikonas]

How long to get it available for users?

Probably never...

[Lanz]

I was considering upgrading to this phone, but I'd rather run Android than Gnome.

[boxie]

WTF? Ok, now's the time to worry.

Damn, just focus on Plasma mobile, improve whatever you feel you need to and get over with it.

this was my first thought too, but I do hope my initial fears are wrong

[lechiensympa]

this was my first thought too, but I do hope my initial fears are wrong

I think you guys should forget about Purism doing any community work. Note this is not even a Gnome project, it's just Purism doing something from scratch based on GTK to work on their devices, much like Jolla and Ubuntu Mobile did.

The only work done to get Plasma Mobile has been packaging so far and they don't plan to give it any love beyond that. If any of you wants to have a usable Plasma on their Purism device, you better help KDE get there.

Purism just wanted to have KDE on their fundraiser page but then develop their own thing.
If that worries you, then yes. It's time to worry.

[sarmad]

Hmmm.. starting to feel it was a mistake to support their campaign.

[Numeric]

Hmmm.. starting to feel it was a mistake to support their campaign.

I supported the campaign as well. This news was expected, but nonetheless troubling to me. The CEO of Purism, Todd Weaver, made it clear in Episode 31 of Late Night Linux (2/28/18) he had a strong preference towards Gnome. His exact quote was "If we picked one it would be Gnome, so we wouldn't be picking Plasma Mobile because we want a future that we have a unified approach across our laptops, tablets and mobile devices. And that future we have planned is based off of a Gnome future" After hearing this, I signed up to KDE's 'Join the Game' membership to give more funds to the group behind Plasma Mobile. I don't know why Gnome is so rooted into Purism's long-run goals, but it is beginning to look like my future shiny Librem 5 will need to be flashed with KDE Neon.

Regardless we need the Librem 5 to exist. A future phone running a secure mainline Linux kernel is my first concern, the desktop environment comes second.

[SpyroRyder]

So how is this a surprise or any more evidence that they would fail?

1) They said they were going with a Gnome based experience *by default* with the abiulity to install Plasma Mobile should you wish
2) a couple of months ago they had a blog post were they stated that in discussion with the Gnome devs they came to the conclusion that at least for now it'd be easier/quicker to create a Wayland compositor for their own usage than to investigate how the Mutter code base works with things like rotation and optimize it for their own use. Some of Mutters ways of doing things would be a little odd because it has had to operate as both a Wayland and X compositor.
3) Unlike previous efforts in this space, Mir and to a lesser extent Sailfish, they aren't writing everything from scratch but using wlroots. This library is mainly written by the Sway guys for having a nicer base than libweston to build compositors off.
4) Because of 3 this newly made compositor looks to already be at basic demoable stage and probably isn't that far from the point that Unity 8 was when it got canned.

[sarmad]

I supported the campaign as well. This news was expected, but nonetheless troubling to me. The CEO of Purism, Todd Weaver, made it clear in Episode 31 of Late Night Linux (2/28/18) he had a strong preference towards Gnome. His exact quote was "If we picked one it would be Gnome, so we wouldn't be picking Plasma Mobile because we want a future that we have a unified approach across our laptops, tablets and mobile devices. And that future we have planned is based off of a Gnome future" After hearing this, I signed up to KDE's 'Join the Game' membership to give more funds to the group behind Plasma Mobile. I don't know why Gnome is so rooted into Purism's long-run goals, but it is beginning to look like my future shiny Librem 5 will need to be flashed with KDE Neon.

Regardless we need the Librem 5 to exist. A future phone running a secure mainline Linux kernel is my first concern, the desktop environment comes second.

My concern is not that they are investing in Gnome. If they manage to pull it through and release the phone with Gnome running well that'll be great. My concern is that they might not even get it done to begin with and that the phone ends up delayed and delayed. This is just too much work to finish in one year.