Mozilla Puts An End To Firefox OS

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  • Passso
    replied
    Originally posted by eidolon View Post

    If Thunderbird is freed from Mozilla (and survives), I might actually start using Thunderbird again. I have no faith in Mozilla as a bureaucracy. It might as well be mismanaged by AOL.
    Thunderbird fails for 1 only reason : the lack of support for Exchange...
    It could really be an Outlook alternative but as it is... useless : webmails are now giving a comparable experience with no install.

    So its only usage is the aggregation of multiple mailboxes.

    Leave a comment:


  • Daktyl198
    replied
    Originally posted by unixfan2001 View Post

    Well. Apparently I missed that memo, as I'm still working on improving it for my own experimental OS (which uses XUL for its interface).
    Anyhow. It's not nearly as ugly as some people say it is. Most of the ugliness is due to redudancy (Mac OS X/Windows specific theming) in the Omni.ja assets. Slimmed down to one specific usecase it can still serve a purpose.

    Heck. Being an XML derived language, it's close to Microsoft's XAML. That alone could be a huge benefit to a certain kind of software developer.
    I guess if we're going to go that route: there's nothing inherently wrong with XUL itself, it's the implementation inside of Gecko that most people** (including Mozilla) have issues with. It was, at one point, a separate library and not as bad as it is now... but that time is no more and it is now a tumor upon the Gecko codebase.

    If somebody could write the XUL library separately again, and to take advantage of something like Qt or even Google's Aurora toolkit for cross-platform theme integration instead of having redundant code as you put it, it might even be worthwhile to give the XUL spec an update while we're at it. But as it stands, it's ugly :P

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  • unixfan2001
    replied
    Originally posted by Daktyl198 View Post

    XUL needs to die. Everybody knows it, including Mozilla. It's a big, ugly black spot on Gecko and I'm pretty sure there are very few people these days who are willing to touch that codebase at all, for fear of breaking something or slowing something down drastically. That's why some devs are trying to create a viable HTML5-based UI for use with Servo in their free time.
    Well. Apparently I missed that memo, as I'm still working on improving it for my own experimental OS (which uses XUL for its interface).
    Anyhow. It's not nearly as ugly as some people say it is. Most of the ugliness is due to redudancy (Mac OS X/Windows specific theming) in the Omni.ja assets. Slimmed down to one specific usecase it can still serve a purpose.

    Heck. Being an XML derived language, it's close to Microsoft's XAML. That alone could be a huge benefit to a certain kind of software developer.

    Leave a comment:


  • GreatEmerald
    replied
    Originally posted by Cerberus View Post
    So basically its not a mobile OS at all
    True.
    Originally posted by Cerberus View Post
    and it will never be seen on commercially available phones?
    False. What gives you that idea? It's a shell, the UI part, there's nothing preventing one from shipping a phone with it installed. But it's not an OS, it's just a small part of an OS.

    Mer, for instance, is an OS. You can have Plasma Mobile running on top of Mer and then ship the two combined. Same with Kubuntu.

    Originally posted by Cerberus View Post
    even though SailfishOS isnt all open source, I believe that UI and core applications are proprietary
    Their UI is proprietary, yes, but core applications are FOSS. You can also change the UI to Mer's Nemo if you wish to have no proprietary parts, there's nothing stopping you from doing that.

    Originally posted by Cerberus View Post
    Concerning the thread I mentioned the person specifically asked about Plasma Mobile and didnt get a reply on that thread.
    Hm, probably because the main communication channel is IRC. You can see from their git log that it's actively being worked on:

    Leave a comment:


  • LineStewar35
    replied
    wow, i actually just found out this information problem. thank my friend. if you have not tried to inform this information to me so i wouldn't know latest news reserved this technology. this is good information. thank you
    Ada berbagai jenis tanaman antara lain jenis tanaman hias, air, hidroponik, obat dan pangan

    Leave a comment:


  • Cerberus
    replied
    Originally posted by GreatEmerald View Post

    You're not seeing the picture, looks like. Plasma Mobile is not an OS. It never was one and was never intended to be one. It's merely a shell for KDE Plasma. You can run it on desktops, if you so wish (but that's probably not very convenient). The convergeance comes from the fact that Plasma can swap shells with relative ease.

    As a product, Plasma Mobile is literally Kubuntu right now, just with the mobile shell, obviously. Kubuntu is just convenient to use at the moment, but it's not necessary, either. Previous builds (back when it was called Plasma Active) used openSUSE, for instance. There were/are builds based on Mer, too.

    So maintaining it is not going to be hard at all, because it's nothing more than an alternative shell.

    As for threads, I'm pretty sure they are asking about Plasma Active (which got folded into Plasma Mobile, hence no more activity on that front).
    So basically its not a mobile OS at all and it will never be seen on commercially available phones? If that is true then the maintainers could have explained their project better when it was news all over the Internet, currently many people think its a mobile OS that plans on competing on the mobile market, especially "against" the existing open source mobile operating systems like FirefoxOS, SailfishOS and Ubuntu Touch even though SailfishOS isnt all open source, I believe that UI and core applications are proprietary, not sure about FirefoxOS licenses as I havent investigated that, Ubuntu Touch is fully open source afaik except for the drivers but that cant be helped. And the way they demoed it on a phone seemed to reinforce the impression its an mobile OS.

    Concerning the thread I mentioned the person specifically asked about Plasma Mobile and didnt get a reply on that thread. Here is the direct link:

    Leave a comment:


  • GreatEmerald
    replied
    Originally posted by Cerberus View Post
    In either case chances of achieving success for Plasma Mobile are slim, providing that the OS reaches "finished" stage and is not abandoned, and that goes for other open source mobile operating systems. Forums seem dead and someone even started a thread "is there still anything being done?", I dont know how many people they are throwing at the OS but they will need plenty as creating a mobile OS is not an easy task.

    I like the irony though because Plasma Mobile uses stuff from Ubuntu Touch and Kubuntu afaik, even though certain elements from KDE rage against Canonical and Ubuntu. But let them work on it and we will see in a year or so if they made good progress or not.
    You're not seeing the picture, looks like. Plasma Mobile is not an OS. It never was one and was never intended to be one. It's merely a shell for KDE Plasma. You can run it on desktops, if you so wish (but that's probably not very convenient). The convergeance comes from the fact that Plasma can swap shells with relative ease.

    As a product, Plasma Mobile is literally Kubuntu right now, just with the mobile shell, obviously. Kubuntu is just convenient to use at the moment, but it's not necessary, either. Previous builds (back when it was called Plasma Active) used openSUSE, for instance. There were/are builds based on Mer, too.

    So maintaining it is not going to be hard at all, because it's nothing more than an alternative shell.

    As for threads, I'm pretty sure they are asking about Plasma Active (which got folded into Plasma Mobile, hence no more activity on that front).

    Leave a comment:


  • Cerberus
    replied
    Originally posted by TheBlackCat View Post
    It runs x86 applications when on a device that supports x86. x86 builds are available.

    As for the desktop UI, the only thing preventing that right now is the unfinished Wayland support for the desktop shell. The desktop shell and mobile shell for plasma are just two different shells built on top of the same underlying workspace, it was specifically designed from day one to support that sort of switching. It is even featured prominently on the Plasma Mobile web page
    But it does not support them on ARM devices which make up for 99.9% of phones and tablets. It is easy to support x86 on x86 platform, but phones run on ARM and will continue running on ARM in the foreseeable future, in any case Plasma Mobile is now where Ubuntu Touch and others were more than 2 years ago, at the beginning, by the time they catch up on the stability and features they will either be the only open source mobile OS around, as UT/FirefoxOS/SailfishOS have failed, or they will be well behind Ubuntu Touch who will enter the mass market via carriers and establish a niche of their own, and will therefore need to do some serious catching up. In either case chances of achieving success for Plasma Mobile are slim, providing that the OS reaches "finished" stage and is not abandoned, and that goes for other open source mobile operating systems. Ubuntu has the best overall chance because it is the most well known brand which is important for marketing and public awareness, and is aiming at OS convergence, has multiple platforms available (desktop/cloud/server/IoT) and can offer an ecosystem of their own.

    FirefoxOS has failed, SailfishOS has an very uncertain future with Jolla's financial troubles, future of Ubuntu Touch remains to be seen in the coming year or two, Plasma Mobile has a long way to go, it appears to be in very early stages of development from what I have seen. Forums seem dead and someone even started a thread "is there still anything being done?", I dont know how many people they are throwing at the OS but they will need plenty as creating a mobile OS is not an easy task.

    I like the irony though because Plasma Mobile uses stuff from Ubuntu Touch and Kubuntu afaik, even though certain elements from KDE rage against Canonical and Ubuntu. But let them work on it and we will see in a year or so if they made good progress or not.
    Last edited by Cerberus; 09 December 2015, 05:11 PM.

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  • TheBlackCat
    replied
    Originally posted by Cerberus View Post
    Has external display support+desktop UI when connected+runs x86 applications? Proof? I have seen the demo, there was nothing even close to convergence in it.
    It runs x86 applications when on a device that supports x86. x86 builds are available.

    As for the desktop UI, the only thing preventing that right now is the unfinished Wayland support for the desktop shell. The desktop shell and mobile shell for plasma are just two different shells built on top of the same underlying workspace, it was specifically designed from day one to support that sort of switching. It is even featured prominently on the Plasma Mobile web page

    Leave a comment:


  • Daktyl198
    replied
    Originally posted by unixfan2001 View Post
    The direction Firefox OS development has taken is generally a shame.
    For one, the fact that they dropped XUL in favour of a full HTML5 stack is unfortunate.

    Mixing and matching XUL and HTML5 would've been preferable.
    XUL needs to die. Everybody knows it, including Mozilla. It's a big, ugly black spot on Gecko and I'm pretty sure there are very few people these days who are willing to touch that codebase at all, for fear of breaking something or slowing something down drastically. That's why some devs are trying to create a viable HTML5-based UI for use with Servo in their free time.

    Leave a comment:

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