Re: GNOME Mobile, or "GNOME on Purism's Librem 5"

[Emmanuele Bassi]

On Sun, 3 Sep 2017 at 20:06, Sriram Ramkrishna  wrote:

> Hi Matthias!  Exciting news indeed!  I personally would love to see our
> platform on a phone!
>
>
> On Sun, Sep 3, 2017 at 8:48 AM Matthias Klumpp 
> wrote:
>
>> Hi!
>>
>> 2017-09-03 17:27 GMT+02:00 Alberto Ruiz :
>> > [...]
>> >> Did anyone try to use GNOME on a smaller, phone-sized display already?
>> >
>> > Well, yes, Nokia did Maemo 10+ years ago and it was all Gtk+ based:
>> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maemo
>> >
>> > The TL;DR of that story is... messy. They created a set of separate
>> > widgets, hildon, that didn't have a good story as to how they would
>> > make it upstream. Maemo's shell was stylus and keyboard driven and
>> > once the iPhone appeared everything changed...
>> >
>> > One thing they got right was making a product widely available to
>> > GNOME developers (N770, N800, N900...).
>> >
>> >> Is there interest in the community in actually making a "GNOME Mobile"
>> >> a reality (of course, Purism would help with that)?
>> >
>> > I think many of us would love to see that happening. But my take on it
>> > is that it will only happen if people step up to do the work.
>>
>> Yeah, I remember that good old times :-) Reviving Maemo is not really
>> an option, fortunately ;-) GNOME is much different now, and phones are
>> as well.
>>
>
> So apparently according to this thread -
> https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?s=7563791c558716a865ed741b04137a86=96800=18
> there is an active port to gtk3 for Hildon that might be worth observing.
> Frankly though they should be speaking to us as well since I believe there
> are still people here who have worked on hildon in the past for Nokia.
>

Let's leave Hildon where it belongs, please.

Additionally, I would try to push for gtk4 adoption and improvements; the
GTK team wants more drivers to deliver a better performance profile and
features, whereas we can't touch gtk3 any more, in terms of API.

Building a mobile extension toolkit on top of GTK is a great way to ensure
you're never going to ship anything remotely useful; working upstream so
that the GLES rendering pipeline for GTK is efficient and performant gives
a much better ROI in the medium to long term, and does not split the
community and engineering effort. That much we learned during the Nokia
days.


>> I am looking forward to your replies!
>> >
>> > I am not sure what you are trying to achieve with this email. Are you
>> > just trying to assess if the community would welcome a GNOME Mobile
>> > initiative? Because the response depends a lot on the specifics of how
>> > you want to do things.
>>
>> Yes, pretty much that was the intent. At the moment, we do not know
>> yet how many resources we will have (if any at all, depending on the
>> crowdfunding) to make the phone and GNOME Mobile a reality, but
>> figuring out what would need to be done and how any such effort would
>> be received by the community is very valuable to know in advance.
>>
>
> One possible idea is to create a hackfest and get some of the consultancy
> companies to help sponsor it and sell it as a way to open a new market for
> them.  After all, a successful phone means a new application market of
> which they could make money on consulting because they would know and
> understand the underlying stack.
>
> Absolutely you should come to the Libre Application Summit and work with
> us to get the right people there as another alternative.  Finding and
> attracting developers is probably a good first step.  You might also look
> at the Tizen stack in terms of toolchain and what not.  It already has a
> number of GNOME/GTK+ libraries already.
>

Again, leave Tizen where it belongs: on the trash heap of history.

If you want to create a platform, concentrate on the underlying vision, not
on the stack diagram. We have had far too many of those littering the side
of the road.

There are plenty of infrastructures that can deliver you an OS for a given
hardware platform and architecture; whatever you ship to make your main UX
should also be the underpinnings of your app development story, to minimise
the impedance mismatch between what you have to optimise in your OS and
what you have to optimise in your SDK.

> For example: are you going to be setting up a wikipage in
>> > wiki.gnome.org or are you going to have an in-house
>> > documentation/development process?
>> > Are you going to start writing
>> > mobile friendly widgets/apps in git(lab).gnome.org or are you going to
>> > host/bugtrack things yourselves? Are you going to start writing GNOME
>> > Shell extensions and patches for a mobile shell and contributing them
>> > upstream? Are you going to start profiling and improving GNOME Shell's
>> > performance on slow I/O?
>>
>> If we do anything, it will be done upstream, as per Purism's vision.
>> So, developing an inhouse solution based on the GNOME stack wouldn't
>> be an option for us.
>>
>
> That's 

Re: GNOME Mobile, or "GNOME on Purism's Librem 5"

[Sriram Ramkrishna]

Hi Matthias!  Exciting news indeed!  I personally would love to see our
platform on a phone!


On Sun, Sep 3, 2017 at 8:48 AM Matthias Klumpp 
wrote:

> Hi!
>
> 2017-09-03 17:27 GMT+02:00 Alberto Ruiz :
> > [...]
> >> Did anyone try to use GNOME on a smaller, phone-sized display already?
> >
> > Well, yes, Nokia did Maemo 10+ years ago and it was all Gtk+ based:
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maemo
> >
> > The TL;DR of that story is... messy. They created a set of separate
> > widgets, hildon, that didn't have a good story as to how they would
> > make it upstream. Maemo's shell was stylus and keyboard driven and
> > once the iPhone appeared everything changed...
> >
> > One thing they got right was making a product widely available to
> > GNOME developers (N770, N800, N900...).
> >
> >> Is there interest in the community in actually making a "GNOME Mobile"
> >> a reality (of course, Purism would help with that)?
> >
> > I think many of us would love to see that happening. But my take on it
> > is that it will only happen if people step up to do the work.
>
> Yeah, I remember that good old times :-) Reviving Maemo is not really
> an option, fortunately ;-) GNOME is much different now, and phones are
> as well.
>

So apparently according to this thread -
https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?s=7563791c558716a865ed741b04137a86=96800=18
there is an active port to gtk3 for Hildon that might be worth observing.
Frankly though they should be speaking to us as well since I believe there
are still people here who have worked on hildon in the past for Nokia.


>
> >> I am looking forward to your replies!
> >
> > I am not sure what you are trying to achieve with this email. Are you
> > just trying to assess if the community would welcome a GNOME Mobile
> > initiative? Because the response depends a lot on the specifics of how
> > you want to do things.
>
> Yes, pretty much that was the intent. At the moment, we do not know
> yet how many resources we will have (if any at all, depending on the
> crowdfunding) to make the phone and GNOME Mobile a reality, but
> figuring out what would need to be done and how any such effort would
> be received by the community is very valuable to know in advance.
>

One possible idea is to create a hackfest and get some of the consultancy
companies to help sponsor it and sell it as a way to open a new market for
them.  After all, a successful phone means a new application market of
which they could make money on consulting because they would know and
understand the underlying stack.

Absolutely you should come to the Libre Application Summit and work with us
to get the right people there as another alternative.  Finding and
attracting developers is probably a good first step.  You might also look
at the Tizen stack in terms of toolchain and what not.  It already has a
number of GNOME/GTK+ libraries already.




> > For example: are you going to be setting up a wikipage in
> > wiki.gnome.org or are you going to have an in-house
> > documentation/development process?
> > Are you going to start writing
> > mobile friendly widgets/apps in git(lab).gnome.org or are you going to
> > host/bugtrack things yourselves? Are you going to start writing GNOME
> > Shell extensions and patches for a mobile shell and contributing them
> > upstream? Are you going to start profiling and improving GNOME Shell's
> > performance on slow I/O?
>
> If we do anything, it will be done upstream, as per Purism's vision.
> So, developing an inhouse solution based on the GNOME stack wouldn't
> be an option for us.
>

That's appreciated. :)


>
> > These are a few ideas on how you might want to procede:
> >
> > - Communication: start communicating your vision of what a GNOME
> > mobile is and document it on wiki.gnome.org and be vocal about it on
> > planet.gnome.org as you make progress
> > - Design: engage your designers with the design team early to see how
> > we can create certain continuity between the desktop and the touch
> > GNOME experiences
> > - Planning: I would try to assess what are the specific technical
> > challenges of the platform as of now, and start sketching a plan on
> > how to overcome them
> > - Iterate: I'd start trying to write a simple app (say, the messaging
> > app) on a standard GNOME Shell session, look at the shortcomings, list
> > them and have your developers start proposing patches and/or
> > strategies to overcome those (at first, Gtk+ and GNOME Shell I'd say,
> > but in the future flathub and GNOME Builder are other projects that
> > you might want to engage wrt the developer experience aspect of
> > things)
>
> This is exactly the reply I was looking forward to, thank you! :-)
>
>
One possible problem is building GNOME under ARM.  I don't know of any
GNOME desktop running on ARM processors.  It might not be a big deal, but
who knows what problems occur?  I would start with that first.


> > There is another thing that would help 

Re: GNOME Mobile, or "GNOME on Purism's Librem 5"

[Matthias Klumpp]

Hi!

2017-09-03 17:27 GMT+02:00 Alberto Ruiz :
> [...]
>> Did anyone try to use GNOME on a smaller, phone-sized display already?
>
> Well, yes, Nokia did Maemo 10+ years ago and it was all Gtk+ based:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maemo
>
> The TL;DR of that story is... messy. They created a set of separate
> widgets, hildon, that didn't have a good story as to how they would
> make it upstream. Maemo's shell was stylus and keyboard driven and
> once the iPhone appeared everything changed...
>
> One thing they got right was making a product widely available to
> GNOME developers (N770, N800, N900...).
>
>> Is there interest in the community in actually making a "GNOME Mobile"
>> a reality (of course, Purism would help with that)?
>
> I think many of us would love to see that happening. But my take on it
> is that it will only happen if people step up to do the work.

Yeah, I remember that good old times :-) Reviving Maemo is not really
an option, fortunately ;-) GNOME is much different now, and phones are
as well.

>> I am looking forward to your replies!
>
> I am not sure what you are trying to achieve with this email. Are you
> just trying to assess if the community would welcome a GNOME Mobile
> initiative? Because the response depends a lot on the specifics of how
> you want to do things.

Yes, pretty much that was the intent. At the moment, we do not know
yet how many resources we will have (if any at all, depending on the
crowdfunding) to make the phone and GNOME Mobile a reality, but
figuring out what would need to be done and how any such effort would
be received by the community is very valuable to know in advance.

> For example: are you going to be setting up a wikipage in
> wiki.gnome.org or are you going to have an in-house
> documentation/development process?
> Are you going to start writing
> mobile friendly widgets/apps in git(lab).gnome.org or are you going to
> host/bugtrack things yourselves? Are you going to start writing GNOME
> Shell extensions and patches for a mobile shell and contributing them
> upstream? Are you going to start profiling and improving GNOME Shell's
> performance on slow I/O?

If we do anything, it will be done upstream, as per Purism's vision.
So, developing an inhouse solution based on the GNOME stack wouldn't
be an option for us.

> These are a few ideas on how you might want to procede:
>
> - Communication: start communicating your vision of what a GNOME
> mobile is and document it on wiki.gnome.org and be vocal about it on
> planet.gnome.org as you make progress
> - Design: engage your designers with the design team early to see how
> we can create certain continuity between the desktop and the touch
> GNOME experiences
> - Planning: I would try to assess what are the specific technical
> challenges of the platform as of now, and start sketching a plan on
> how to overcome them
> - Iterate: I'd start trying to write a simple app (say, the messaging
> app) on a standard GNOME Shell session, look at the shortcomings, list
> them and have your developers start proposing patches and/or
> strategies to overcome those (at first, Gtk+ and GNOME Shell I'd say,
> but in the future flathub and GNOME Builder are other projects that
> you might want to engage wrt the developer experience aspect of
> things)

This is exactly the reply I was looking forward to, thank you! :-)

> There is another thing that would help Purism a lot, and it is the
> availability of the form factor itself. It would be great if we could
> have, say, a cheap (~100 USD) Intel based tablet that we could use as
> a reference and figure a way to make it available to the upstream
> developers willing to help and test. The 300 USD prototyping board is
> already expensive enough that prolly many people are not even thinking
> pledging for it (in my case, it'll be just another pile of circuits
> lying around my drawer.

Yes indeed. At this years Debconf we had a "Debian Mobile" BoF and the
inavailability of affordable boards for testing was pretty much listed
as the #1 issue to get more developer interested in mobile. The same
problem is plaguing the Plasma Mobile developers over at KDE. It would
be awesome if we could do something about that (but I can't promise
anything yet).

> Another approach could be running GNOME Shell on your laptop and
> access it remotely with an Android app, Jonas Adahl has been working
> on the GNOME Shell infrastructure for remote access and this is
> something that will certainly be feasible in the near future.

That's an interesting idea!

> Long story short, if you guys want to pull this off, you need to lead,
> with code, communicating a clear vision of what you want to achieve,
> and engaging on concrete items to start figuring out how to do this
> without conflicting with the ongoing plans of the GNOME platform.

That for sure :-) Thank you for your detailed reply!
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Re: GNOME Mobile, or "GNOME on Purism's Librem 5"

[Alberto Ruiz]

Hello Matthias,



2017-09-03 15:29 GMT+01:00 Matthias Klumpp :
> [ Please keep the CC list for replies ]
>
> Hello!
> So, is having a mobile UX something in scope for GNOME as a project
> and the GNOME Shell?



> Did anyone try to use GNOME on a smaller, phone-sized display already?

Well, yes, Nokia did Maemo 10+ years ago and it was all Gtk+ based:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maemo

The TL;DR of that story is... messy. They created a set of separate
widgets, hildon, that didn't have a good story as to how they would
make it upstream. Maemo's shell was stylus and keyboard driven and
once the iPhone appeared everything changed...

One thing they got right was making a product widely available to
GNOME developers (N770, N800, N900...).

> Is there interest in the community in actually making a "GNOME Mobile"
> a reality (of course, Purism would help with that)?

I think many of us would love to see that happening. But my take on it
is that it will only happen if people step up to do the work.


> I am looking forward to your replies!

I am not sure what you are trying to achieve with this email. Are you
just trying to assess if the community would welcome a GNOME Mobile
initiative? Because the response depends a lot on the specifics of how
you want to do things.

For example: are you going to be setting up a wikipage in
wiki.gnome.org or are you going to have an in-house
documentation/development process? Are you going to start writing
mobile friendly widgets/apps in git(lab).gnome.org or are you going to
host/bugtrack things yourselves? Are you going to start writing GNOME
Shell extensions and patches for a mobile shell and contributing them
upstream? Are you going to start profiling and improving GNOME Shell's
performance on slow I/O?

These are a few ideas on how you might want to procede:

- Communication: start communicating your vision of what a GNOME
mobile is and document it on wiki.gnome.org and be vocal about it on
planet.gnome.org as you make progress
- Design: engage your designers with the design team early to see how
we can create certain continuity between the desktop and the touch
GNOME experiences
- Planning: I would try to assess what are the specific technical
challenges of the platform as of now, and start sketching a plan on
how to overcome them
- Iterate: I'd start trying to write a simple app (say, the messaging
app) on a standard GNOME Shell session, look at the shortcomings, list
them and have your developers start proposing patches and/or
strategies to overcome those (at first, Gtk+ and GNOME Shell I'd say,
but in the future flathub and GNOME Builder are other projects that
you might want to engage wrt the developer experience aspect of
things)

There is another thing that would help Purism a lot, and it is the
availability of the form factor itself. It would be great if we could
have, say, a cheap (~100 USD) Intel based tablet that we could use as
a reference and figure a way to make it available to the upstream
developers willing to help and test. The 300 USD prototyping board is
already expensive enough that prolly many people are not even thinking
pledging for it (in my case, it'll be just another pile of circuits
lying around my drawer.

Another approach could be running GNOME Shell on your laptop and
access it remotely with an Android app, Jonas Adahl has been working
on the GNOME Shell infrastructure for remote access and this is
something that will certainly be feasible in the near future.

Long story short, if you guys want to pull this off, you need to lead,
with code, communicating a clear vision of what you want to achieve,
and engaging on concrete items to start figuring out how to do this
without conflicting with the ongoing plans of the GNOME platform.

> Kind regards,
> Matthias Klumpp (PureOS developer at Purism)
>
>
> P.S: I hope this is the appropriate list for such a discussion -
> putting it here seemed like a good idea to me, in case it is not we
> could move this thread to another list.
>
> [1]: https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
> ___
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> desktop-devel-list@gnome.org
> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list



-- 
Cheers,
Alberto Ruiz
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GNOME Mobile, or "GNOME on Purism's Librem 5"

[Matthias Klumpp]

[ Please keep the CC list for replies ]

Hello!

As some of you might already know from this years GUADEC or the media
coverage, we at Purism are planning to make a phone based on free
software, called the Librem 5[1] (if the crowdfunding succeeds).
We do need a UI for the phone, and using GNOME would make sense for us
since our laptops are already GNOME based.

Unfortunately, no GNOME Mobile UX exists yet, and I am not aware of
any concrete plans to change that at the moment.
I do think though that having a "GNOME Mobile" would be very
beneficial for the free software ecosystem in general, and I think it
makes sense to initiate a discussion about it, and see what actually
needs to be done to make GNOME work well on mobile.

Making a phone affects app development (we need dedicated apps for the
phone, e.g. a dialer/sms app), the toolkit (GTK+ needs a responsive
interface to adapt well to different screen sizes and form factors, as
well as maybe mobile-specific widgets), as well as the Shell and of
course a design of how a GNOME phone would look like and work in the
first place.

This is nothing a single company could just easily develop, because it
affects so many areas of GNOME, and is pretty much something the whole
project would need to be on board with.

So, is having a mobile UX something in scope for GNOME as a project
and the GNOME Shell?
Did anyone try to use GNOME on a smaller, phone-sized display already?
Is there interest in the community in actually making a "GNOME Mobile"
a reality (of course, Purism would help with that)?

I am looking forward to your replies!

Kind regards,
Matthias Klumpp (PureOS developer at Purism)


P.S: I hope this is the appropriate list for such a discussion -
putting it here seemed like a good idea to me, in case it is not we
could move this thread to another list.

[1]: https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
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