13 ms·
For a second, I thought, "Man is it really that slow to compile a hello-world Python GTK app?" I completely forgot he was doing this all on a phone. I'm super
by vlmutolo 6y ago
For a second, I thought, "Man is it really that slow to compile a hello-world Python GTK app?" I completely forgot he was doing this all on a phone.
I'm super impressed with the state of "convergence" here. Dragging a window over from a full desktop monitor to the phone was exciting to watch.
I doubt I would want to do development directly on the phone, but only because the phone is going to be underpowered compared to a desktop. But since it's just a standard linux distro on the phone, it probably wouldn't be too hard to set up the Librem to automatically pull the latest build from the desktop/laptop for testing purposes.
- reddotX 6y agoyawnn.. ubuntu touch had convergence 5 yeas ago, nobody cared
- em3rgent0rdr 6y agoand Motorola Atrix 4G sortof had that 10 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Atrix_4G#Webtop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Atrix_4G#Webtop
- fsflover 6y agoThis is not the same at all. Librem 5 runs desktop apps on a phone, not making mobile apps run on a big screen.
- chriswarbo 6y agoI've been doing that for about 12 years using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openmoko https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openmoko I still use it every day, since it has my two-factor auth credentials (in GPG); although I transferred my SIM to a PinePhone last Christmas :)
- seba_dos1 6y agoGTA01 and GTA02 had no way to connect external screen though, and even if they had it it wouldn't be pleasant at all - Glamo was even too weak to drive the internal VGA screen :) But yeah - I'm working on the Librem 5 now, but I remember making my first steps in Python on the Openmoko Neo Freerunner back in 2008 while starting to contribute to SHR and it still has a special place in my heart!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- atat7024 6y agoBullshit, respectfully. Convergence has been held back by UX and UX alone. It's the single most-requested feature at my bespoke secure technology firm.
- fsflover 6y ago> It's the single most-requested feature at my bespoke secure technology firm. I'm curious now, is your firm going to order a bunch of Librem 5 phones?
- atat7024 6y agoNo. Their security model does not meet the baseline security needs of our clients.
- fsflover 6y agoActually you can customize the OS as you wish on this phone. Perhaps it's a big task though.
- qchris 6y agoWould you mind elaborating on that? My understanding is from a verification point of view, the Librem 5 is functionally at the absolute top-tier in terms of OpSec concerns, with everything from the bootloader up being open and customized, full disk encryption available, and the only binary blobs (I think on the modem?) being completely sandboxed. Are there additional concerns, and what kind of solutions do they currently use that do meet those needs?
- seba_dos1 6y agoYou can even set up a secure boot chain with your own encryption keys, see: https://boundarydevices.com/high-assurance-boot-hab-i-mx8m-edition/ https://boundarydevices.com/high-assurance-boot-hab-i-mx8m-e... (it's a tutorial for a board that uses SoC from the same family as the Librem 5)
- 6y ago
- swiley 6y agoRespectfully, ubuntu touch is a terrible OS. When people ask for convergence on a phone they want a normal desktop Linux OS not an Android knockoff that can run some X11 apps.
- chriswarbo 6y ago> Dragging a window over from a full desktop monitor to the phone was exciting to watch. Slightly related, there's a nice tool called x2x which combines two X displays on different machines, so moving the cursor off the side of one makes it appear on the other (AFAIK it works using a 1-pixel-wide window at the screen edge). I used this to control my OpenMoko with keyboard and mouse (over SSH), in lieu of an external screen/'dock' like the article shows. > But since it's just a standard linux distro on the phone, it probably wouldn't be too hard to set up the Librem to automatically pull the latest build from the desktop/laptop for testing purposes. It's probably easiest to just SSH into the phone as needed, and use scp/rsync/sshfs/etc. to copy things across. If nothing else, it avoids the horrors of having to type commands via a touchscreen.
- fsflover 6y ago> the horrors of having to type commands via a touchscreen You can connect a keyboard to the phone as shown in the video. Bluetooth keyboards work too.
- seba_dos1 6y ago> "Man is it really that slow to compile a hello-world Python GTK app?" GNOME Builder uses Flatpak - when you press "run" button it does full flatpak packaging and runs the resulting package inside a sandbox. Of course you could still run such app natively, directly from the terminal, in which case it would be pretty much instantaneous :)
- Seirdy 6y agoNow that a lot of GTK mindshare seems to be moving towards gtk-rs, I have a feeling that it's about to get a lot less instantaneous. This isn't a swipe at Rust, per se: if you're using Rust you've probably already decided that build speed and portability aren't as important as memory safety and performance, and I'm sure that's often a valid trade-off. I do think that "dev builds" should be much faster than release builds, and that means building natively should be default.
- seba_dos1 6y agoIndeed - however, I'm usually compiling things straight on the phone, it's not that slow. Rust can be challenging in this regard, but works acceptably well once you get dependency crates already compiled (which can require adding some swap, unfortunately).
- qchris 6y agoI believe this is actively being worked on; there's a compiler backend being built using Cranelift instead of LLVM that will supposedly improve debug built times by a fair amount, and then the full release builds will switch over to the LLVM-optimized version. Last I saw, the improvement between the existing rustc and Cranelift-based one was something like 15%, but that may have changed in the interim.
- pjmlp 6y agoIt is still way slower than using C++ with gtkmm.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y ago> I'm super impressed with the state of "convergence" here. Convergence is great for productivity. Ubuntu Touch's main USP was that and I was even able to get it working in UBPorts on my nexus4[1]. It's a shame that convergence is still a hit or miss on android ecosystem, At this point of smartphone compute hardware & USB-C standardization we should be able to plug any smartphone to a monitor. At least Linux smartphone ecosystem is betting high on that. [1] https://twitter.com/heavyinfo/status/1251048583190609920?s=20 https://twitter.com/heavyinfo/status/1251048583190609920?s=2...
- DennisAleynikov 6y agoit is quite ridiculous. as a passionate Samsung DeX defender at first, I dove right into that ecosystem when the s8 came out and am now at a point where my s10 is never getting a software update BECAUSE ANDROID BROKE THE API FOR SAMSUNGS WSL. Termux was a victim too to a much lesser degree but Samsung had literally had Linux on Dex beta and I was absolutely free to just have my phone. It was incredible going to school, sitting down at a random monitor and just having all of my vscode files and blender assets follow me around
- Abishek_Muthian 6y agoWhat a shame, I thought at least Samsung have their DeX albeit with special hardware. So no more DeX? I presume some new Android phones at least support mirroring through USB-C.
- Jonnax 6y agoNo DeX still exists. What Samsung had was a a beta of running a Linux distro in a kind of isolated container on Android. This also let you boot into Ubuntu 16.04 with external display and use things like VS Code. Google changed something in their APIs preventing the beta from continuing on newer versions of android.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
- sammorrowdrums 6y agoI've been making a hobby app with GTK Rust in GNOME Builder for Pinephone and eventually Librem 5. App runs well on Pinephone but building Rust GTK App on Pinephone takes forever. I did it once out of curiosity. Luckily qemu cross compiling is easy to do on laptop and SCP it to phone, with native Linux SSH and root on phones it is refreshing. Cannot wait for Librem 5 to get shipped, it's a lot more powerful than Pinephone, but I'm super happy to be experimenting on the future of Linux phones and convergence, regardless of where it ends up going.
- squarefoot 6y ago> App runs well on Pinephone but building Rust GTK App on Pinephone takes forever. Have you tried Lazarus on the Pinephone and the Librem5? It already runs on different ARM boards and apparently it does on the Pinephone too producing fast code. https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php?topic=52217.0 https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php?topic=52217.0 Check also the video on mega.nz linked in that thread.
- sammorrowdrums 6y agoThanks for suggestion, haven't tried it before but I'll check it out.
- linmob 6y agoIs it publicly available? If so, may I list it on https://LINMOBapps.frama.io https://LINMOBapps.frama.io?
- sammorrowdrums 6y agoOnce I get at least close to an MVP I'll get in touch!
- crossroadsguy 6y agoNow imagine an Android developer who wants to buy a new laptop and thinks they should be able to live with 4GBs of RAM for normal non-heavy usage. Then they remember they might want to use Android Studio as well. Then sky is the limit when it comes to RAM at least.
- twodave 6y agoAndroid Studio is basically a space heater that accidentally produces an app now and then.
- alskdj21 6y agoI'm using a 4 years old laptop with 4GB as my main machine. As much as I want to develop Android apps, there's no way for me to do it with Android Studio. The IDE itself would consume much of the memory with glaring input lags, and there's gradle. The tooling isn't there outside the IDE. Kotlin-language-server and ktlint sadly isn't enough. I really wish android dev is more accessible.
- pjmlp 6y agoMost of my Android development is either mobile Web, or NDK stuff. This approach allows me to ignore of the Android development pain, mostly develop on desktop and just focus on the device for final testing. Naturally on that case Koltin isn´t part of the story.
- pjmlp 6y agoJava development is part of the stuff I do, on a laptop that doesn't have any issues dealing with VS, Netbeans or Eclipse, I can complety forget to even attempt to use Android Studio.
- twodave 6y agoIt's more doable from this standpoint to use IntelliJ to build Android apps, but not as straightforward (and from what I've experienced can be a source of conflict when some team members still use Android Studio).
- Hjfrf 6y agoIt's an exciting idea that as phones get more powerful, plugging the phone into a monitor could replace the desktop entirely for many home users.