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A comment on Ten years after first shipping Openmoko Neo1973.

Re:Ten years after first shipping Openmoko Neo1973 by mindcrime on Sunday July 09, 2017 @08:03PM (#14732450)
The thing is, the world still needs a genuinely open smart-phone. OK, you can pull teeth to root your Android phone and install that successor-to-Cyanogenmod-thing, but we're still far from the openness of the PC ecosystem. Remember being able to build a PC from parts bought piecemeal from ads in Computer Shopper, then install your choice of Microsoft DOS, FreeDOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonflyBSD, Solaris x86, OS/2 Warp, BeOS, Minix, Netware, etc., etc? Sure, getting audio and accelerated graphics to work could be a PITA for some combinations, and network card drivers were kinda iffy on Linux a long time ago... but still, by and large, it was YOUR machine and you could run whatever OS you wanted on it and do whatever you wanted with it. The shortcomings w/r/t drivers and what-not were usually the result of apathy (eg, manufacturers not shipping Linux drivers or OS/2 drivers because of lack of perceived demand) rather than outright attempts to stop you from running Linux, OS/2, etc.

Sadly, it doesn't look like we'll ever be able to build our own smartphones from components, but it would be nice if we could at least get manufacturers to stop actively blocking attempts to run alternate software and what-not. :-(

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ten years after first shipping Openmoko Neo1973 by mozartoz on Sunday July 09, 2017 @09:02PM (#14732685)
Mobile hardware is a nightmare. The best thing we have to cope with it, so far, is libhybris. And I don't see things getting much better.

All we have is Pyra, the incoming Neo900 and semi-closed Jollas with Sailfish.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ten years after first shipping Openmoko Neo1973 by notspanishflu on Sunday July 09, 2017 @09:31PM (#14732776)
There's a "collaborative project to unify the Hardware Abstraction Layer for projects which run GNU/Linux on mobile devices with pre-installed Android" called Halium.

https://halium.org/

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ten years after first shipping Openmoko Neo1973 by subway on Monday July 10, 2017 @12:07AM (#14733311)
Complete with the device mfg's unpatched 3.10 kernel.

Thanks, but no thanks.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ten years after first shipping Openmoko Neo1973 by audi100quattro on Monday July 10, 2017 @01:39AM (#14733636)
I wouldn't write it off so easily, it makes sense as an open source alternative to google's project treble albeit with parts of android still running underneath. A stable linux HAL on a few widely used devices would make all the upstream dev easier. Even if you are stuck on an older kernel because of a blob driver, it's progress and similar to when you can't upgrade the kernel on your laptop now because nvidia haven't updated their drivers.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ten years after first shipping Openmoko Neo1973 by ekianjo on Sunday July 09, 2017 @09:21PM (#14732740)
The Pyra is not going to be released anytime soon, the Neo900 is overpriced... but we do have Plasma Mobile running on a few devices.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ten years after first shipping Openmoko Neo1973 by subway on Sunday July 09, 2017 @10:07PM (#14732922)
The Pyra is a helluva lot closer to shipping than the Neo900. A great many of the components have seen production runs already.

I'm not sure Neo900 has even figured out how competently handle their donated funds, let alone how to get a device to production. ( https://neo900.org/funds-transfer )

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ten years after first shipping Openmoko Neo1973 by PopePompous on Sunday July 09, 2017 @10:32PM (#14733014)
The neo900 is so late that it doesn't really matter at this point whether it is ever released at all. You'll have to be a pretty hardcore fan to pay about $1000 for a phone with amateur software and circa 2011 hardware specs, partially made with recycled components.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ten years after first shipping Openmoko Neo1973 by ekianjo on Monday July 10, 2017 @06:04AM (#14734629)
The Pyra s overheating problems on the sandwhiched SOC have not been resolved at all and now they are even considering adding a fan so late in dev stage. Far from finished I tell you.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ten years after first shipping Openmoko Neo1973 by wolfgke on Monday July 10, 2017 @06:31AM (#14734733)
> The Pyra s overheating problems on the sandwhiched SOC have not been resolved at all and now they are even considering adding a fan so late in dev stage.

I'm watching the Pyra project very closely, but I have never heard of these problems. Can you give me a source on this?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ten years after first shipping Openmoko Neo1973 by ekianjo on Tuesday July 11, 2017 @09:08PM (#14749392)
I know several folks who are actively working on the Pyra prototypes in hand and who voiced the exact same concern.
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Re:Ten years after first shipping Openmoko Neo1973 by dTal on Monday July 10, 2017 @02:57PM (#14738668)
The Pyra cannot thermally sustain unthrottled operation indefinitely. Neither can any modern smartphone. This isn't regarded as a problem and definitely no one is considering adding a fan (in fact the cases are slated for mass-production this month).

Where did you get this idea?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ten years after first shipping Openmoko Neo1973 by ekianjo on Tuesday July 11, 2017 @09:09PM (#14749399)
The cases were stated for mass production a year ago already yet everything gets pushed bacl every now and then for tweaking. I would not bet on anythIng releasing in this year.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ten years after first shipping Openmoko Neo1973 by enthdegree on Monday July 10, 2017 @08:43AM (#14735361)
PostmarketOS is still in it's infancy, but has an active crowd of developers on Freenode https://github.com/postmarketOS
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ten years after first shipping Openmoko Neo1973 by mmjaa on Monday July 10, 2017 @08:35AM (#14735319)
PocketCHIP can also be turned into a cell phone, don't forget. That actually might be the most promising alternative of them all ..
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ten years after first shipping Openmoko Neo1973 by jerrylives on Sunday July 09, 2017 @09:37PM (#14732797)
>Remember being able to build a PC from parts bought piecemeal from ads in Computer Shopper, then install your choice of Microsoft DOS, FreeDOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonflyBSD, Solaris x86, OS/2 Warp, BeOS, Minix, Netware, etc., etc?

Uh...you can still do this? Why the past tense

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ten years after first shipping Openmoko Neo1973 by mindcrime on Sunday July 09, 2017 @11:00PM (#14733097)
Mostly because I was was illustrating that point with certain archaic details (Computer Shopper magazine, OS/2, BeOS, etc.) and it just came out that way. But yes, your point is valid, you certainly can still "do that" in the PC realm. I should have said something like "Compare the smart phone world to the PC world where you can build a PC ..."
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ten years after first shipping Openmoko Neo1973 by dTal on Monday July 10, 2017 @05:24PM (#14739833)
It's true that the mobile landscape is more a more challenging target (device tree is changing this). But I think the embarrassing truth is that the free software community has failed to deliver a decent software offering. Even if I had a phone with all of the drivers (which isn't that uncommon, actually - proprietary firmware and protocols are a problem, as is 3d acceleration special sauce, but most actual drivers are in kernel tree and free) ... what would I run on it? FirefoxOS? Discontinued. Ubuntu Phone? Discontinued. SailfishOS? Closed-source!

Hell, even if I wanted to run straight Debian (let's be honest, I do) - where's the dialer program? It's actually pretty straightforward to plug a GSM dongle into a regular desktop machine and get a perfectly functioning modem TTY that does calls and SMS and all the rest of it. Where's the friendly interface? There isn't really one.

This is something I hope that the Pyra will help with. We'll have regular Debian "desktops" with GSM modems in peoples pockets being used as phones. That's bound to spur some development effort.

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Re:Ten years after first shipping Openmoko Neo1973 by psy-q on Monday July 10, 2017 @11:24AM (#14736744)
The PC market is devolving into something where you can't do any of that anymore either, with non-upgradeable devices like the Apple MacBooks or quite sealed things like the Microsoft Surface products. And average users don't seem to mind.

Maybe it's a subjective thing, but it feels to me like we've actually taken several steps back in the last 5 years or so.

[ Parent | on HN ]