Re: Pushing Forward Debian Mobile BoF 12-08-17 (updated with last notes)
Am Samstag, 12. August 2017, 23:31:21 CEST schrieb Sebastian Reichel:
> Hi,
>
> Your Thunderbird creates broken GPG signatures.
>
> On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 03:28:57PM -0500, jathan wrote:
> > Pushing Forward Debian Mobile BoF
>
> Even though I'm in Montreal now for a Collabora company meeting, I
> unfortunately couldn't make it. Somehow Debconf always ends up being
> in parallel to the big European hacker camps (i.e. SHA2017 this year).
>
> > -Openmoco experience
> > Difficulties to have again Debian on mobiles
> >
> > armel? (Doesn't affect Pyra, does affect zerophone because its core is
> > raspberry pi)
> RPi2+ support armhf, but RPi Zero seems to be based on RPi1 SoC?
>
> > (going through the agenda from https://wiki.debian.org/Mobile/BoF201708):
> >
> > * Motivation
> >
> > * Software Freedom
> > * (Security) Updates
> > * usability for little scripts (always needs a full app)
> > * better flexibility (Android is not Java-or-nothing)
> > * access to software body (but UI adaptability is a big issue); still no
> > good ODF editor on Android
> >
> > Audience scope is an issue -- whatever we come up with might not
> > be suitable for everyday users. Sandboxing of an Android might
> > be a topic.
>
> chroot might become a problem with the next release, due to Android
> using old kernels. Glibc from stretch needs 3.2, which is already
> breaks support for some older devices. If that is increased in buster
> sandboxing will get much harder.
>
> > Which form factors are we talking about? Just phones? Tablets?
> > How can we get improvements in touch interfaces to convertibles?
> > (By the way: how accessible are the graphics modules on ARM to
> > Free Software? It's easy for Intel-based GPUs)
>
> If you are talking about acceleration:
>
> * Qualcomm Adreno freedreno good
> * Broadcom Videocore vc4 good
> * Nvidia Tegra nouveau ?
> * ARM Mali lima needs lots of work
> * ImgTec PowerVR - incomple RE, no driver
>
> Worth to be mentioned: On ARM the GPU is usually not taking
> care of refreshing the screen. This is done by another hardware
> components and most of those are supported mainline (so kernel
> console and unaccelerated X work).
>
> > Other use case: Devices for employees when companies have
> > extensive security requirements.
> >
> > * Hardware
> >
> > * What is based on armel is doomed (probably won't be official
> >
> > release in Buster, maybe not even in debports). Affects
> > zerophone, openmoko
> >
> > * Devices that work well and are armhf based:
> > * PocketCHIP (a PDA?)
> > * Pyra (a game console with possibility of phone calls; to be ready by
> > October)>
> > suffers from GUIs not being adapted to the input situation --
> > doesn't really need a "windowing" window manager or desktop
> > environment
> This should list Nokia N900 (mainline/debian kernel support is
> really good. Basically only camera support is missing and that
> is being worked on).
>
> Also it might be worth pointing out Droid 4, which I'm currently
> working on together with Tony Lindgren. It's progressing quite
> nicely: https://www.elektranox.org/droid4/
>
I suggest to add also Openphonux http://projects.goldelico.com/p/gta04-main/ ,
built on top of the roots of Openmoko, but also runs Replicant. Hardware is
expensive and (wrt. modern smartphones) somewhat outdated though....
Rainer
--
Rainer Dorsch
http://bokomoko.de/
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