An Interview With Zlatan Todoric, Open-Source Developer & Former Purism CTO

[Flohack]

He recommended the Pinephone. Will it have its baseband separated from the CPU and be able to deliver the same privacy/security promises made by the Purism crowd?

It would be nice if someone could also state by when they are planning to finish designing that Pinephone, and even start shipping it.

Please read https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/just an internet search away. The modem part is a Quectel EG-25G so I assume its connected via USB to the main SoC. There are HW switches mentioned but I cannot recall now if this is already in the first iteration. So no, it probably does not have all those assertions that Purism made so far. But it´s still a major step towards open hardware.

That said, PinePhone design is ready. The shipment will start however when the software is finished. Quote: I dare say, unless something really unexpected happens – we will likely have the PinePhone ready before the end of this year. As we’ve said numerous times, this does not mean that we will start selling PinePhones the day we get them from factory; we will wait for at least one fully functioning OS build prior to sales commencing.

Further infos e.g. here: https://forums.ubports.com/topic/2403/pinephone - the current plan is that UBports will finished the port to the PinePhone also end of this year. Which means that sales may start in the first quarter 2020. The OS actually works already so that integration tests can be done: https://twitter.com/Mariogrip/status...26433374720013

BR Florian

[blackiwid]

- GTK/Gnome. Seriously?

Dude why not also bring up systemd I am not sure they use it but if they use gnome chances are high they use Systemd. Just because you don't like GTK and love QT does not mean that 99% of the linux folks think the same ruffly 50% of them disagree with you and like gtk/gnome more. I would even argue that it's much more than 50% but I have no numbers to back that up. But I am pretty confident that as much people hate QT (it's ugly as hell) and love GTK/GNOME than the other way so to bring that up shows that you are not serious.

[mariogrip]

Dude why not also bring up systemd I am not sure they use it but if they use gnome chances are high they use Systemd. Just because you don't like GTK and love QT does not mean that 99% of the linux folks think the same ruffly 50% of them disagree with you and like gtk/gnome more. I would even argue that it's much more than 50% but I have no numbers to back that up. But I am pretty confident that as much people hate QT (it's ugly as hell) and love GTK/GNOME than the other way so to bring that up shows that you are not serious.

Problem is not Like/Hate gtk3 or qt5. the problem is that qt5 runs much better on lower end arm hardware due to it's superb GPU utilization so you simply will not get the same user experience using gtk3 on a phone. There is a reason why both jolla and canonical choose to go with qt for phones. Qt is the toolkit, how it looks is up to the developer.

[You-]

Some skepticism is good and healthy (hence my earlier question about any outsiders having recieved Aspen devices), but at the same time the company is not selling vapurware.

We can all see their work within the Gnome community building their software. its not complete yet but it isnt vapourware and will allow great things to happen for GTK/Gnome.

That gives me some confidence in that even if they bit off more than they can chew, they will get there as long as they keep at it.

[pgeorgi]

1. Why not go for a Qualcomm chip? There was already upstream driver work, so less effort needed (and I am still not sure if the current GPU is properly hardware accelerated).

It's hard to get Qualcomm to answer your calls when the projected sale of your device is on the low end. They're also not the most open source friendly SoC vendor, and a locked down baseband processor that controls the CPU is not a good situation for a "privacy friendly" device.

[blackiwid]

Some skepticism is good and healthy (hence my earlier question about any outsiders having recieved Aspen devices), but at the same time the company is not selling vapurware.

We can all see their work within the Gnome community building their software. its not complete yet but it isnt vapourware and will allow great things to happen for GTK/Gnome.

That gives me some confidence in that even if they bit off more than they can chew, they will get there as long as they keep at it.

Is the Plasma thing done a phone app written and everything or did they for 10 years make nothing than marketing a nice looking website?

About speed I couldn't care less about graphics give me a external keyboard and a emacs fullscreen and I have everything I need. The phone ability is stupid anyway. Also they have "convergence" don't they? So a kde desktop on a pc would be useless to me... I was pretty happy with the speed of gnome 3 on a netbook back then, sure with more than 1gb ram but the librem has 3gb so more as enough for gnome.

No they had nothing to show of I think they started 2012 it took Librem to come out that they became panic and had to release anything. Else it would be to obvious that they are paperware.

but hey I always hear the hardware vendor like Pinephone does not matter you can install every os on a open phone why is that only true for pinephone but not for librem? I think you can install plasma mobile too. So what's your point? And yes the few people that spend so much money on such a product will be able to flash it.

[blackiwid]

Pine Project and their fans seem to be like the Democrats, instead of just saying why they are better they have to say why "Trump" sucks instead and therefor weaken them self. How about concentrating advertising their own shit instead of saying the others suck therefor you must buy from us.

[Barry]

Pine Project and their fans seem to be like the Democrats, instead of just saying why they are better they have to say why "Trump" sucks instead and therefor weaken them self. How about concentrating advertising their own shit instead of saying the others suck therefor you must buy from us.

That's not my impression of the article or of the comments so far. Instead, I would say that Purism has wanted people to be talking about the Librem 5, and unfortunately, it has been giving people reasons to say bad things about the phone and the company. If things somehow change, I would expect people to be happy about that, even supporters of the PinePhone.

[danmcgrew]

Pine Project and their fans seem to be like the Democrats, instead of just saying why they are better they have to say why "Trump" sucks instead and therefor weaken them self. How about concentrating advertising their own shit instead of saying the others suck therefor you must buy from us.

<sarcasm>
One had to know that keeping this discussion on an intellectual, factual level was too much to expect.
</sarcasm>

[Nite_Hawk]

I respect the honesty but this is painfully naive. We live in a hype-driven economy. No one is doing anything sustainable, and you aren't interesting if you aren't growing 1000% year on year. The goal is the same everywhere, hype yourself up until either investors or one of the major companies is fooled into believing that you have something valuable, and then wait until the money starts flowing in before you scrap the junk you were working on and start over. You survive and create "brand awareness" until you look like a real company, and hopefully don't piss off too many people in the meantime. This is not an environment for honest people who want to make a sustainable business, it is for grifters and idealists who care more about image than substance and will say anything to get their way.

Most folks have no idea how true this really is unless they've experienced it themselves. Having come out the other side of it I still look back in wonder sometimes. We actually had something legitimately valuable, but valuable isn't good enough. Investors don't want slow solid growth, they want billion dollar valuations in a couple years.