Alternative history: What if Jolla never existed? - Page 22 - maemo.org

Stskeeps | # 211 | 2015-11-24, 15:46 | Report

Originally Posted by aegis View Post

The head? Surely that's the bottom.

How much are we decapitating here? Launcher replacements are ten a penny but no matter what nice ideas you see in launchers, you end up with Android apps and material design still rearing it's cheery but ultimately simplistic head.

How much of Android can we keep low down and still have a completely different UI?

http://pastie.org/10558283 or so.

And able to speak services like https://android.googlesource.com/pla...fiManager.aidl

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MartinK | # 212 | 2015-11-24, 15:57 | Report

Originally Posted by javispedro View Post

Reading the comments in https://blog.jolla.com/open-letter-jolla-community/ have just made me reaffirm myself in my position that it is stupid to try and go mass market. Thus "disrupting" anything should be out of the table.

I came to a similar observation. Also I'm afraid that the actual end result of the attempt to attack the mass market is something that does not appeal to either - its too unpolished and lacks too many features for the picky mass market while at the same it is too dumbed down, oversimplified and closed for the highly technical users.

BTW, even though technical users are definitely a minority, they are also a group that often provides advice to the less technical majority, can influence purchasing decisions in companies, are able to tolerate less stable but cutting edge software and can in many cases help with development.

Also targeting technical users should not be taken as a defeat - no one says you can't make the product (or its variant) accessible to wider audience once technical user helped to make it great.

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endsormeans | # 213 | 2015-11-24, 16:03 | Report

Originally Posted by billranton View Post

Yes, except in that case can't you use hybris to let you run glibc stuff too? You could basically decapitate Android, and replace the head with something more GNU like, package manager based.

A-HA!
Gnu-droid!
Speaking of heads and decapitation and Android ...
Put a gnu brain on that android body...
and what you'd have is a bloody unstoppable Hydra-droid-esque-monstrosity which you'd never be able to kill..
Sucker'd just grow more heads!

hehee
I'm all for an unstoppable-benign-juggernaut-of-an-os...
especially gnu-ey

Me.
All I want...is the ability to run as many different os's (preferably linux-ish) (and preferably rolling release ..too much to ask from Santa?

) and window managers on a handheld as possible....
that'll work decently of course ..

everything after that is just icing on the cake.
what's the adage?
"Heaven is options...Hell is one..or none..."
something like that.
It is simplistic.
I am grinding it down to fundamental basics...
but that was what originally lured me to the maemoan dark side way back when....

Last edited by endsormeans; 2015-11-24 at 16:28.

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Venemo | # 214 | 2015-11-24, 16:05 | Report

Originally Posted by MartinK View Post

BTW, even though technical users are definitely a minority, they [...] are able to tolerate less stable but cutting edge software [...]

Yes, to a certain extent. But tolerating bugs for two years that still haven't been fixed since 1.0.0 is really bad, even for technical users. At least for me, it's very irritating and makes me feel that it was a waste of time to test the stuff and report the bug.

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MartinK | # 215 | 2015-11-24, 16:57 | Report

Originally Posted by Stskeeps View Post

This might sound a bit heretic, but what if you could stuff your UX experience (reusing a bit of middleware, but not all the privacy invading **** and with no UX) on top of any Android hardware out there with less than 1 day worth of porting effort?

.. Except it would require not using a Mer-based (or for that matter any GNU/Linux) OS and leaving your favourite technologies behind, for the easier spreading.

That'd be a lot easier, wouldn't it?

What matters more? glibc/systemd; or control over the experiences that is the thing you actually touch; spread easily across the world to everybody?

I think this would certainly be an interesting project - sounds a but like an open source boot to Qt.

A big advantage would be certainly the relatively small amount of work needed to have something running and being able to basically run Qt apps on Android as first class citizens and without the Android bloat & spying crap. That sounds kinda like Firefox OS done right (Firefox OS does not use libhybris but basically gutted down Android with Firefox running fullscreen).

I can also imagine porting my apps to this platform as long as Python 3 is available as they & their deps already run on Android (after a substantial amount of work).

On the other hand I can also see some potential disadvantages and open questions:

If you want to do something Google is not interested in doing/supporting (or does not want you to do) you will be on your own and might need to write stuff from scratch that is easily possible on normal Linux distros.
Also any changes in the underlying Android base system might require to carry the resulting patches forever as Google would not be likely to merge them & to make them work with any changes Google does in the future.
Loosing control of your base system - Google dictates the direction of the platform and the project could not reasonably expect to change it, even if it is heading in a detrimental way. Also note that while this is highly unlikely, Android (minus kernel) is under BSD - Google could pull another Android 3 if it wanted (not releasing source or giving access only to partners).
Every non-android library you would want to use would need to be rebuild against Bionic - this is sometimes easy, but sometimes not trivial thing due to Bionic being a broken mess. So by default (until someone ports the needed libs) this means loosing any remaining compatibility with non-Qt based software.
If someone wanted to make this closer to "normal Linux" he would basically need to "unbreak" the system vs modifying normal Linux to be suitable for mobile devices. Still this could be eventually possible if the project is popular (eq. slowly replacing Android stuff and converging back to "normal" Linux).
What about multitasking and task switching/windowing ?
How would software distribution be handled ? - The existing Android packaging mechanisms probably could not be used.
Not normal but embedded Linux - which is a difference many seem to underestimate. (example: try to unpack a tar archive on a stock Android device, not to mention using ssh - good luck ).

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daperl | # 216 | 2015-11-24, 17:23 | Report

Originally Posted by Venemo View Post

To be honest, smarphones and tablets are already very boring. Wouldn't it be more interesting to come up with “the next big thing” instead?

Well, maybe we should get smartphones right before we move on. The n900 was a great start, but then the iOS meme spread like a virus and here we are today. We need to back up and go down the other path. The path where the device was a computer with cell phone capabilities.

I don't wear or want a watch. I don't want a Google Star Trek communicator on my shirt. I wear cargo pants and cargo shorts so I can carry around a computer.

Originally Posted by Stskeeps View Post

This might sound a bit heretic, but what if you could stuff your UX experience (reusing a bit of middleware, but not all the privacy invading **** and with no UX) on top of any Android hardware out there with less than 1 day worth of porting effort?

Sounds great. An unlocked Galaxy Note 4 could be the development target device. In pink of course.

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itdoesntmatt | # 217 | 2015-11-24, 17:37 | Report

Originally Posted by Venemo View Post

I have no idea. Had I known, I'd already be filthy rich.

However... what happened to the concept of a mobile computer? That the N95 and later the N900 tried to be?

sorry for my stupid consideration but why is so wanted from you? You have mini pc, you can have tablet, 2 in 1, why would i need a smartphone to use it as a pc? (with its little battery). you would need also a keyboard, a monitor, so what?

Last edited by itdoesntmatt; 2015-11-24 at 17:58.

Copernicus | # 218 | 2015-11-24, 17:55 | Report

Originally Posted by itdoesntmatt View Post

what sorry for my stupid consideration but why is so wanted from you? You have mini pc, you can have tablet, 2 in 1, why would i need a smartphone to use it as a pc? (with its little battery). you would need also a keyboard, a monitor, so what?

I want it. I like the idea of working at my desktop, then disconnecting a pocketable mobile device from it and continuing my work as I go.

The concept of a mobile device that works differently than your desktop, that you "sync" to your desktop when you leave and return, was created (and perfected!) with the PDAs back in the 90's. All we've really got today with the smartphone world are PDAs that are also good media players...

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itdoesntmatt | # 219 | 2015-11-24, 18:00 | Report

Originally Posted by Copernicus View Post

I want it. I like the idea of working at my desktop, then disconnecting a pocketable mobile device from it and continuing my work as I go.

The concept of a mobile device that works differently than your desktop, that you "sync" to your desktop when you leave and return, was created (and perfected!) with the PDAs back in the 90's. All we've really got today with the smartphone world are PDAs that are also good media players...

you simply want continuum from microsoft but in an open source form? i don't feel the utility, but is only my opinion. i don't think i would work even when i am walking to go somewhere. could be useful for some cases, but not for most, i believe.

pichlo | # 220 | 2015-11-24, 18:18 | Report

Originally Posted by Copernicus View Post

I want it. I like the idea of working at my desktop, then disconnecting a pocketable mobile device from it and continuing my work as I go.

Originally Posted by

The concept of a mobile device that works differently than your desktop, that you "sync" to your desktop when you leave and return, was created (and perfected!) with the PDAs back in the 90's...

...and then forgotten. The last device I owned that fulfilled that function perfectly was my Palm Treo 600.

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