KDE Plasma Mobile Has Been Making Great Progress

[Numeric]

To throw my two cents into the ring. It looks like plasma mobile is doing exactly what their website promised. "Plasma Mobile is an open-source user interface for phones... Plasma Mobile turns your phone into a fully hacking device." (https://www.plasma-mobile.org/) So far it is both open source and has turned my PinePhone Braveheart Edition into a device I can hack around with. It is far from perfect, but Plasma Mobile is also far from what it was on the day when I first flashed my SD card.

Some may wish to argue, "What is the point of PM when mature mobile platforms and mobile UIs already exist." One could assume that Linus's peers might have wondered the something similar back in the day when he introduced his little fledging home project: the Linux kernel. It's too soon for us to exclaim "waste of effort" on Plasma Mobile. Even in the worst case scenario that it goes nowhere, was it truly a waste for the developers who learned something from the process? Or was it a waste for the improvements made to shared framework's libraries that may be used by other projects (or are currently being used). I would believe not. As long as the code is FLOSS, the effort is preserved for the future; whether it be as a functional mobile platform, a teaching experience, or just some better libs as a part of a desktop shell.

Plasma Mobile, Phosh, Lomiri, and the other mobile FLOSS shells are young code in terms of functional maturity. Let's see where the hands of time take these projects before we prophesize their fate.

[Baguy]

I am sure my opinion will be unpopular .... but plasma mobile is a complete waste of time and resources.
Cannot for the life of me think why so much manpower gets wasted on this. It will NEVER compete.

You're looking at it wrong. Plasma mobile isn't trying to compete with the big players, nor is Ubuntu Touch with lomiri. It's about offering a choice to people, particularly those fond of FOSS alternatives.

[HighValueWarrior]

I am sure my opinion will be unpopular .... but plasma mobile is a complete waste of time and resources.
Cannot for the life of me think why so much manpower gets wasted on this. It will NEVER compete.

[uid313]

I didn't say it's about corporations, I said it's about developers. And developers won't bother.

More and more Android patches are getting mainlined to the Linux kernel.
With Anbox they could run Android applications on it.

[ALRBP]

I didn't say it's about corporations, I said it's about developers. And developers won't bother.

No, it's about manufacturers who do not sell phones with it preinstalled and make efforts to PREVENT installation of an alternative OS. Even Lineage OS, which is 100% compatible with Android apps (because it's Android) has insignificant make share due to manufacturers not preinstalling it (extremely rare) and Lineage OS being barely able to run correctly on a few recent devices.

[bug77]

It's not about corporations backing it. The KDE community can care less if facebook made an app for their UI because it's about open source, not proprietary spyware. That said, if mobile linux phones do ever gather the attention of developers, then plasma mobile can run those apps, even if they are GTK or Electron (or something proprietary), or an android app even in anbox. It's not limited to just QT apps, and you can run whatever. Good luck convincing the community they need a closed-source app though.

I didn't say it's about corporations, I said it's about developers. And developers won't bother.

[Baguy]

can one actually use it on phones and do, you know, normal phone-y things like calls and texting? or is it good for showing off and for sshing to the computers only?

Yes, but it's not really ideal for use. Plasma mobile isn't even at version 1 yet, and it shows a severe lack of polish overall. It's been getting better every month though.

[Baguy]

It doesn't matter, there's no room for another mobile OS if you built in on pixie dust.
Despite Microsoft's best efforts, developers just won't bother developing for more than two operating systems. Imagine how "well" this will go for companies smaller than Microsoft that give it a shot.

It's not about corporations backing it. The KDE community can care less if facebook made an app for their UI because it's about open source, not proprietary spyware. That said, if mobile linux phones do ever gather the attention of developers, then plasma mobile can run those apps, even if they are GTK or Electron (or something proprietary), or an android app even in anbox. It's not limited to just QT apps, and you can run whatever. Good luck convincing the community they need a closed-source app though.

[bug77]

KDE is awesome, I still cannot understand how Canonical did not chose it for Ubuntu having plans for mobile devices too.

It doesn't matter, there's no room for another mobile OS if you built in on pixie dust.
Despite Microsoft's best efforts, developers just won't bother developing for more than two operating systems. Imagine how "well" this will go for companies smaller than Microsoft that give it a shot.

[szymon_g]

can one actually use it on phones and do, you know, normal phone-y things like calls and texting? or is it good for showing off and for sshing to the computers only?