3 ms·

> Why is "phone interface" buried down at the end of the page under "future goals"? Well, right now there is no phone interface available yet, and that is why

> Why is "phone interface" buried down at the end of the page under "future goals"? Well, right now there is no phone interface available yet, and that is why it is a future goal (which does not necessarily mean, that it is in distant future). > I mean, if a project wanted to put a "10 year life-cycle" on an IoT blender by porting Gnu/Linux to it, you'd think the first order of business would be writing a Gnu/Linux program to, you know, blend things. Getting 10+ years of running performant Weston demos would be a very distant 2nd to that. I'm not selling you a blender here. I wanted to create a solid base to run GNU/Linux natively on smartphones, and now there is this pmbootstrap component, which works quite well and seems worthy of a release. This enables other people to jump in and contribute, if they want to, and accelerate development even more, because multiple persons can work in parallel on the project. This is much more important to me, than silently working a few months or however long it would take me in my free time to package Plasma Mobile and make a release after that, just to hear that another crucial component is missing from the OS.

jancsika 9y ago
> This is much more important to me, than silently working a few months or however long it would take me in my free time to package Plasma Mobile and make a release after that, just to hear that another crucial component is missing from the OS. So, imagine sharing a video that shows the fruits of your labor in order to drum up some interest in your project. Strauss' "Thus Spake Zarathustra" is playing in the background. The video shows you booting the phone into Gnu/Linux. As the music builds, you touch the screen of the phone to make it start to do a task. As you enter data into the phone to complete this task, the music builds toward a climax. Finally, at the climax of the music the task on the phone is complete, and the phone reacts in the most dramatic way a phone possibly can. What do you imagine the phone doing in such a video?
- mappu 9y ago
  > The video shows you booting the phone into Gnu/Linux. ... What do you imagine the phone doing in such a video? Making some kind of trivial kernel patch in vim, compiling, reconfiguring the bootloader, and then successfully rebooting into the new kernel
- Drdrdrq 9y ago
  Read his comment again, you are missing the point. He is not offering you a phone, he is offering lower level components and showing you how it can be used to build a phone. Feel free to jump in and help him! Congrats to OP, hope this takes off in a major way! We could use a free (as in freedom) OS for phones!
  - djsumdog 9y ago
    Yea I thought this was more of a "turn your old phone into a Beagle Board/Pi/Tiny portable computer" type project. I'm really for this idea. It'd be nice to just run regular Linux on old phone hardware.
- mintplant 9y ago
  Are you deliberately trying to discourage this person to the point where they give up and quit? The negativity throughout this thread is making me want to just leave HN.
  - sydd 9y ago
    While I dont agree with the tone of the post above, I agree with the content. While its a noble thing to try to build a new phone OS, I dont see the slightest chance that it will take off. Look at others who tried and failed: - Ubuntu trying basically the same with an estabilished brand, mobile experts, a huge community,.. - Mozilla. Here same as Ubuntu - Microsoft. Yeah, they were closed source, but had almost endless $$$ to throw at their project. Heck they even bought one of the biggest mobile brands (Nokia) and failed. - Other smaller ones like Tizen, Sailfish OS,... So me being negative is just being realistic.
    - dTal 9y ago
      "I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu)..." Now Linux is the most widely used OS in the world, and the "big and professional" GNU still doesn't have a production-ready kernel release. We need this project, or something like it. We need a Free OS for phones. I actually find the HN negativity on display here encouraging; it worked for Dropbox.
    - 5ilv3r 9y ago
      > So me being negative is just being realistic. No, just plain rude.

jancsika 9y ago

> This is much more important to me, than silently working a few months or however long it would take me in my free time to package Plasma Mobile and make a release after that, just to hear that another crucial component is missing from the OS. So, imagine sharing a video that shows the fruits of your labor in order to drum up some interest in your project. Strauss' "Thus Spake Zarathustra" is playing in the background. The video shows you booting the phone into Gnu/Linux. As the music builds, you touch the screen of the phone to make it start to do a task. As you enter data into the phone to complete this task, the music builds toward a climax. Finally, at the climax of the music the task on the phone is complete, and the phone reacts in the most dramatic way a phone possibly can. What do you imagine the phone doing in such a video?

mappu 9y ago
> The video shows you booting the phone into Gnu/Linux. ... What do you imagine the phone doing in such a video? Making some kind of trivial kernel patch in vim, compiling, reconfiguring the bootloader, and then successfully rebooting into the new kernel
Drdrdrq 9y ago
Read his comment again, you are missing the point. He is not offering you a phone, he is offering lower level components and showing you how it can be used to build a phone. Feel free to jump in and help him! Congrats to OP, hope this takes off in a major way! We could use a free (as in freedom) OS for phones!
- djsumdog 9y ago
  Yea I thought this was more of a "turn your old phone into a Beagle Board/Pi/Tiny portable computer" type project. I'm really for this idea. It'd be nice to just run regular Linux on old phone hardware.
mintplant 9y ago
Are you deliberately trying to discourage this person to the point where they give up and quit? The negativity throughout this thread is making me want to just leave HN.
- sydd 9y ago
  While I dont agree with the tone of the post above, I agree with the content. While its a noble thing to try to build a new phone OS, I dont see the slightest chance that it will take off. Look at others who tried and failed: - Ubuntu trying basically the same with an estabilished brand, mobile experts, a huge community,.. - Mozilla. Here same as Ubuntu - Microsoft. Yeah, they were closed source, but had almost endless $$$ to throw at their project. Heck they even bought one of the biggest mobile brands (Nokia) and failed. - Other smaller ones like Tizen, Sailfish OS,... So me being negative is just being realistic.
  - dTal 9y ago
    "I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu)..." Now Linux is the most widely used OS in the world, and the "big and professional" GNU still doesn't have a production-ready kernel release. We need this project, or something like it. We need a Free OS for phones. I actually find the HN negativity on display here encouraging; it worked for Dropbox.
  - 5ilv3r 9y ago
    > So me being negative is just being realistic. No, just plain rude.