6 ms·

Heh, neat to see this here! I'm one if the (junior) devs helping out on this project, so if there are any specific questions I'm happy to try and answer!

by kop316 5y ago

livre 5y ago
Any plans on porting it to more mainstream phones? It seems to be aiming for "first-world phones" at the moment which is nice since they are more open and you don't have to worry (too much) about proprietary blobs and firmware but leaves a big chunk of the world out.
- Kenji 5y ago
  The driver situation is super tough. Modern phones are full of proprietary shit and nobody is willing/able to reverse engineer all of this, and things like documentation and data sheets aren't really available.
  - livre 5y ago
    That's pretty much the answer I expected but I had to ask anyway. Thanks.
  - atlantis_ 5y ago
    It is getting better though - check out libcamera.
    - megous 5y ago
      What's to check out there wrt kernel drivers?
- kop316 5y ago
  Right now the focus is on devices that devs have and run mainstream Linux: https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php?id=devices https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php?id=devices PostmarketOS runs on more devices (and is a great Distribution!), but they also run a lot more devices through Halium (which is a compatibility layer).
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    Halium is interesting because it comes with the potential of building a pmOS Generic System Image (GSI). While this would be relying on vendor-shipped proprietary drivers and kernels, literally everything else could be Free and run on mostly any GSI-supported device with a full feature set.
    - kop316 5y ago
      Yep! My personal issue with Halium is the fact that now you have devices running around today running something like Linux 3.10, which I shutter at because of security concerns.
      - Qwertious 5y ago
        shudder*
  - MartijnBraam 5y ago
    postmarketOS definitely doesn't ship halium, we're more focussed into doing proper Linux development
    - kop316 5y ago
      Whoops, my mistake! Unfortunately I cannot edit my comment to reflect that. So then out of curiosity, how are you all able to port to so many devices? Do you have a bunch of volunteers, or all most of the devices not too difficult to port to pmOS?
      - kop316 5y ago
        So a few of the pmOS folks were kind enough to discuss the pmOS structure with me, so I will try to summerize here: pmOS has really good tooling called pmbootstrap. They are able to use the downstream kernels directly (or a mainline kernel if the device supports it), and it generally isn't too difficult to get pmOS to boot with the downstream kernel. However, because of the downstream kernel, you may not get a lot of features, and will have to work to port the features to pmOS. They also have device catagories, so if someone wants to see the status of a device, they can look here: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices which bins the devices for a user to quickly understand how well a device runs pmOS.
atlantis_ 5y ago
No questions but one suggestion - it would be great to ease the process of making PWAs for the Linux space. My background is designer -> JS -> node -> mucking around with C/C++, and I think this would be a great way to seed experimentation and creativity around apps - essentially hooking into the curiosity of someone chancing on the project but then being able to pick through examples, boilerplates etc and getting excited at prospect of experimenting with some core HTML/CSS/JS skills for a side project - also specifically outside of the cloying business space of android/win/iOS. The problem with Electron is you embed an entire browser with each app - perhaps some sort of version manager that links PWAs + GTK webviews?
- kop316 5y ago
  > it would be great to ease the process of making PWAs for the Linux space So developing for Mobian is no different than developing for Debian (in fact then I don't need to use the Modem, I just do all of my development on a Debian Machine). So this isn't a Mobian issue per se? EDIT: I also checked, you can install PWAs via Epihpany (which is installed by default on Mobian).
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- mobian 5y ago
  You can write native applications for GTK in any language you want. Most of the time they should be much less memory hungry than running a browser.
danieldk 5y ago
Do you have a threat/security model? Perhaps, the project is not aiming for world dominance. But if it is, it would be nice to have integration with a secure element to store secrets, application sandboxing (so that a chat client cannot read your banking session), etc.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  Most daemons are sandboxed by Debian (or upstream) already. For applications, Debian ships firejail.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    AppArmor also allows for some sandboxing, and is enabled by default in Debian stable.
    - goodpoint 5y ago
      AppArmor does very little compared to modern sandboxes.
- kop316 5y ago
  > Do you have a threat/security model? Not explicitly no. Implicitly, it would be the same as Debian, and I would argue we go for sane/common sense security defaults. Is there a particular threat your worried about/want me to comment on?

Heh, neat to see this here! I'm one if the (junior) devs helping out on this project, so if there are any specific questions I'm happy to try and answer!

by kop316 5y ago

Heh, neat to see this here! I'm one if the (junior) devs helping out on this project, so if there are any specific questions I'm happy to try and answer!

livre 5y ago

Any plans on porting it to more mainstream phones? It seems to be aiming for "first-world phones" at the moment which is nice since they are more open and you don't have to worry (too much) about proprietary blobs and firmware but leaves a big chunk of the world out.

Kenji 5y ago
The driver situation is super tough. Modern phones are full of proprietary shit and nobody is willing/able to reverse engineer all of this, and things like documentation and data sheets aren't really available.
- livre 5y ago
  That's pretty much the answer I expected but I had to ask anyway. Thanks.
- atlantis_ 5y ago
  It is getting better though - check out libcamera.
  - megous 5y ago
    What's to check out there wrt kernel drivers?
kop316 5y ago
Right now the focus is on devices that devs have and run mainstream Linux: https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php?id=devices https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php?id=devices PostmarketOS runs on more devices (and is a great Distribution!), but they also run a lot more devices through Halium (which is a compatibility layer).
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Halium is interesting because it comes with the potential of building a pmOS Generic System Image (GSI). While this would be relying on vendor-shipped proprietary drivers and kernels, literally everything else could be Free and run on mostly any GSI-supported device with a full feature set.
  - kop316 5y ago
    Yep! My personal issue with Halium is the fact that now you have devices running around today running something like Linux 3.10, which I shutter at because of security concerns.
    - Qwertious 5y ago
      shudder*
- MartijnBraam 5y ago
  postmarketOS definitely doesn't ship halium, we're more focussed into doing proper Linux development
  - kop316 5y ago
    Whoops, my mistake! Unfortunately I cannot edit my comment to reflect that. So then out of curiosity, how are you all able to port to so many devices? Do you have a bunch of volunteers, or all most of the devices not too difficult to port to pmOS?
    - kop316 5y ago
      So a few of the pmOS folks were kind enough to discuss the pmOS structure with me, so I will try to summerize here: pmOS has really good tooling called pmbootstrap. They are able to use the downstream kernels directly (or a mainline kernel if the device supports it), and it generally isn't too difficult to get pmOS to boot with the downstream kernel. However, because of the downstream kernel, you may not get a lot of features, and will have to work to port the features to pmOS. They also have device catagories, so if someone wants to see the status of a device, they can look here: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices which bins the devices for a user to quickly understand how well a device runs pmOS.

atlantis_ 5y ago

No questions but one suggestion - it would be great to ease the process of making PWAs for the Linux space. My background is designer -> JS -> node -> mucking around with C/C++, and I think this would be a great way to seed experimentation and creativity around apps - essentially hooking into the curiosity of someone chancing on the project but then being able to pick through examples, boilerplates etc and getting excited at prospect of experimenting with some core HTML/CSS/JS skills for a side project - also specifically outside of the cloying business space of android/win/iOS. The problem with Electron is you embed an entire browser with each app - perhaps some sort of version manager that links PWAs + GTK webviews?

kop316 5y ago
> it would be great to ease the process of making PWAs for the Linux space So developing for Mobian is no different than developing for Debian (in fact then I don't need to use the Modem, I just do all of my development on a Debian Machine). So this isn't a Mobian issue per se? EDIT: I also checked, you can install PWAs via Epihpany (which is installed by default on Mobian).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
mobian 5y ago
You can write native applications for GTK in any language you want. Most of the time they should be much less memory hungry than running a browser.

danieldk 5y ago

Do you have a threat/security model? Perhaps, the project is not aiming for world dominance. But if it is, it would be nice to have integration with a secure element to store secrets, application sandboxing (so that a chat client cannot read your banking session), etc.

goodpoint 5y ago
Most daemons are sandboxed by Debian (or upstream) already. For applications, Debian ships firejail.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  AppArmor also allows for some sandboxing, and is enabled by default in Debian stable.
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    AppArmor does very little compared to modern sandboxes.
kop316 5y ago
> Do you have a threat/security model? Not explicitly no. Implicitly, it would be the same as Debian, and I would argue we go for sane/common sense security defaults. Is there a particular threat your worried about/want me to comment on?