Guest post by KDE has announced the release of Plasma Active One, which is a KDE 4.x style interface and API designed for touch devices. The Plasma Active Team states that “Plasma Active is innovative technology for an intelligent user experience. It is intended for all types of tablets, smartphones and touch computing devices such as set-top boxes, smart TVs, home automation, in-vehicle infotainment”.
The Plasma Active website has a slideshow depicting some elements of the UI. The developers have a defined master plan and mission statement for Plasma Active.
Plasma Active runs on the proven Linux desktop stack, including the Linux kernel, Qt and KDE’s Plasma Framework. The user interface is designed using Plasma Quick, a declarative markup language allowing for organic user interface design based on Qt Quick. Plasma Active uses existing Free desktop technology and brings it to a spectrum of devices through a device-specific user interface. Classical Plasma Widgets can be used on Plasma Active as well as newly created ones. The key driver for the development of Plasma Active is the user experience. Collaboration is made easy through high-level development tools and a well defined process.The first release of Plasma Active fully focuses on tablet computers. Plasma Active Tablet’s user experience is designed around the web, social networks and multimedia content.
A number of applications have already been adapted to work with Plasma Active. Kontact Touch, Calligra Active, Bangarang and a collection of Active Apps provide a stable and powerful set of functionality, making Plasma Active suitable for personal and professional use cases.
It looks great! I hope they find some manufacturers willing to use it as a supported interface. The problem with a third party tablet OS/interface is the availability of drivers and/or general lock down of the system which would prevent KDE Active from working on many of them.
Hilarious. KDE going GNOME…
A nice overview and (contrasting) opinion piece can be found here:
http://www.datamation.com/open-source/kdes-plasma-active-tops-gnome…
KDE’s ‘Plasma Active’ Tops GNOME 3 and Unity
Conclusion:
People can’t use the conventional KDE user interfaces in those devices with small screens and touchscreens, but not everything must be rebuilt 🙂
Edited 2011-10-12 00:57 UTC
Indeed.
Here is a review with screen-shots showing some conventional KDE applications running under Plasma Active on Meego.
http://m.zdnet.com.au/plasma-active-339323981.htm
The Plasma Active web browser, Kontact Active and Calligra Office Active have new UIs specifically for Plasma Active, but from the above screenshots it is clear that kwrite and konsole do not.
Hrm, interesting. It’s like plasma-netbook done even better. Will have to check it out.
I would be extremely happy to pay for a top-notch tablet that runs Plasma Active well and I would hope that it would also integrate well with my existing kde desktop.
To me KDE is the promise of Linux on the desktop fulfilled. I have not seen anything which is more intuitive or nicer to use. Perhaps, my only gripe is that the nepomuk integration and the search experience isn´t quite up-to-par yet, but it will ge there.
I’m glad to see something like this in the form of an optional interface “edition” instead of the developers shitting all over everything that makes KDE what it is and trying to change the core desktop. GNOME is destroying themselves by designing for specialized portable devices, and claiming that it’s in the best of all users’ interests, and for all types of devices; sorry, but I don’t buy it. I was originally unhappy with the KDE4 series, but it seems to be the only major desktop environment (aside from Xfce) that still has its sanity. If only it didn’t have such high system requirements… but then again, GNOME 3 even outdone them on that by requiring a working 3D card and drivers.
I couldn’t agree more. I think for the KDE desktop edition performance is good enough to take with more or less current hardware but for the KDE active edition they will definitive need to tweak for performance and battery-lifetime. That is good news cause I would expect that KDE desktop will profit from such tweaks too.
Just awesome.
LXDE is at the very least becoming major (check out position of Lubuntu vs. Kubuntu or Xubuntu on Distrowatch), and it’s rather sane.
Edited 2011-10-18 23:44 UTC
Anyone have a list of Touchscreen monitors and tablets that work well with Xorg (pref Debian6 but if Deb7 is becoming stable enough…)
Every time I have a go at dropping a distro on a device, it always dies with the lack of drivers for the touchscreens I have access to. I’d be interested in hearing what touchscreens work well.
(can’t play with the new KDE touchy interface without a touchy)
WeTab is pretty much the only option if you want to test the touchscreen part of it according to the devs. They’re recommending a x86 tablet that is known to support meego.
Or the viewsonic viewpad ( its x86 based) I’m now told which makes a lot of sense and isn’t too difficult to find.
Or ExoPC, since it’s the exact same hardware.
Unfortunately both of these systems only support 2 simultaneous touch points, which limits the range of applications that can be developed for them. On the plus side, they’re cheap, especially the WeTab.
Edited 2011-10-13 01:37 UTC
KDE depends on a hardware abstraction layer called Solid.
http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Architecture/KDE4/Solid
Plasma Active One should therefore work on all devices which are supported by Solid. It is a matter of getting the drivers working with Solid, it is not a matter of re-writing Plasma Active One to work on different devices.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/kde-takes-on-android-apples-i…
“The first release of Plasma Active fully focuses on tablet computers. Plasma Active Tablet’s user experience is designed around the web, social networks and multimedia content.†Today, Plasma Active runs on MeeGo and the openSUSE-based Balsam Professional (German language site). There are also OS images for Intel-based tablets, and package builds for ARM and x86 platforms. The group is working flashable images for ARM platforms. The interface will also run on Oracle’s VirtualBox virtual machine.”
Edited 2011-10-11 22:14 UTC
Now that Meego is suspect, the Acer Iconia M500 looks like one good candidate to run Plasma Active instead.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/01/acer-unveils-meego-tablet-runnin…
If not this, then perhaps the WeTab.
Edited 2011-10-12 03:57 UTC
I’ll have to look into those. I’ve been looking at touchscreen monitors but these days, a tablet is just as good for what I want to do; ultimately, my own minimal install to support a thinclient kind of thing around the house. (No need for a full rig setup just to provide a remote display of a web-app and keyboard/mouse setups don’t really cut it around the kitchen and such.)
…What does organic mean in this context? I see that alot, but can never figure what is supposed to be “organic.”
Edited 2011-10-11 17:35 UTC
Nothing. It means nothing.
As I understand, “organic” as “constitutional in the structure of something”. Parts, with an structure, related to others, with norms, that form a defined “organism” as a whole. [http://ardictionary.com/Organic/2198].
It means it can be adjusted to suit the environment, possibly through trial and error.
http://www.organicui.org/?page_id=71
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_user_interface
ARM support is still in development? Given the landscape of smartphones and tablets, I wonder why that wasn’t the first target.
Because every arm chipset is different, you would basically need to take a specific board as a starting point.
For an OS’s project it makes sense to productize intel first and then think of arm. Once pa goes wayland, arm support will be much easier to do because of lessrequirements imposed on drivers.
If you are interested in following up on how pa reaches different hw platforms, start tracking the Mer project.
Tl;Dr; arm sucks
ARM sucks? Or is it just that SoCs suck due to their specialized nature?
Also, couldn’t they have taken some of the Android kernel/driver code? I guess the higher layers may have to be rebuilt, but the drivers should be in a usable state (because they are used
).
Android drivers will be easier to use after switch to wayland. Accelerated x11 support is hard to do if you only have Android drivers.
You already answered the question, given the landscape of smartphones and tablets.
The issue is that apart from Nokias Maemo and Megoo phones, there are no Meego or other Linux(w/userspace) available devices. It’s only Android, lacing the Linux userspace.
Yeah, I can appreciate the technical problems in getting it onto today’s hardware.
I really hope that ARM is a the next big development step, I think Linux likely got where it is now because it ran/runs on the common hardware. Virtually no-one I know has any x86 based phone or tablet devices, but that’s not to say that it not useful to target those devices.
Well, to work as well as on x86, Linux on ARM would need two things : standard and well-documented hardware, and easy device reflashing.
Several major phone manufacturers are opening up their bootloaders, so we’re getting there on the reflashing front. But as for standard and well-documented hardware… NVidia, TI, and Qualcomm each do their own thing in their little corner, and if it has not changed since the last time I checked, the only resource which they publicly provide to OS developers are binary Android drivers.
Probably someone will end up reverse engineering those or shoehorning them on Linux at some point, and we’ll get something not very reliable and efficient like Nouveau, but for every piece of ARM hardware out there. The future of Linux on ARM, or every other alternative OS for that matter, does not look bright.
Edited 2011-10-12 05:50 UTC
My only real point is a pragmatic one: grab the most common phone hardware, and use the Android/Linux stack as far as you can. You don’t need source for the drivers if the binaries are present. It might not be the cleanest solution, but if they work…
I believe Android drivers cannot be used directly on a kernel, without some kind of emulation. The two kernels are already sufficiently far away from each other to make drivers incompatible.
Seems like I had forgotten that TI do provide Linux drivers though. That’s already something.
Edited 2011-10-12 16:48 UTC
I was looking for an actual tablet based on the TI OMAP platform, and I came up with this:
http://www.slashgear.com/texas-instruments-blaze-tablet-available-t…
Unfortunately, TI’s Blaze tablet is not for the budget concious:
http://www.tabletpcreview.com/default.asp?newsID=1478
… but it would be very cool to run Plasma Active on such a device (if you had one), would it not?
Perhaps the TI Blaze is a foretaste of what may be possible (at a more reasonable price) quite soon.
Edited 2011-10-12 23:58 UTC
With better search terms I found a few at least with a little more reasonable affordability:
The Lenovo IdeaPad A1 Now Selling for $199
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/IdeaPad-Gingerbread-OMAP-Kindle-Fire-Pr…
The Droid Bionic, LG Thrill/Optimus 3D, and Droid 3
http://www.androidauthority.com/android-ice-cream-sandwich-coming-l…
Archos Sub-$400 “G9” Tablets
http://hothardware.com/News/Archos-To-Ship-Sub400-G9-Tablets-With-A…
True, re-flashing and some of the hardware drivers are the issues.
The hardest issue is the lack of accelerated graphics drivers, as its the key element and no easy task to develop. As for the rest of the peripherals in the SoCs, it’s far less complex is somewhat better documented and there are lots of code for similar hardware that can be adapted.
The second mayor issue is the re-flashing, the complexity and the risk of bricking are a serious roadblock for most.
As for the SoC vendors, currently the best bet is to find something with a touch screen and a TI SoC(Anyone know of such a tablet?). On such a device, the issues would mainly be about the re-flashing. Since most of the drivers already have quite mature solutions, thanks to the Beagle and Panda boards.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTgzNg
Samsung Puts Out New Open-Source ARM DRM Driver
“Samsung has published the code to a new open-source DRM driver for its EXYNOS4210 System-On-a-Chip. The EXYNOS4210 has impressive 3D graphics capabilities, uses the dual-core ARM Cortex A9 processor, and is used in various smart-phones. The Samsung Galaxy S II is one of the smart-phones using the Exynos 4210 SoC. Samsung is hoping to push this DRM driver into the mainline Linux kernel.”
Outside of ARM
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTg3MA
Texas Instruments Has New Open-Source Driver
“While Texas Instruments released an open-source driver last year for the Linux kernel within the DRM area (the TILER driver), it didn’t make it into the mainline tree for the lack of open-source user-space applications/drivers that could take advantage of it, i.e. the usual ARM graphics mess. Yesterday, however, Texas Instruments released a new open-source DRM driver for their OMAP platforms.”
Edited 2011-10-12 13:09 UTC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments_OMAP
I’m sorry about that, I got it wrong.
“Texas Instruments OMAP (Open Multimedia Application Platform) is a category of proprietary system on chips (SoCs) for portable and mobile multimedia applications developed by Texas Instruments. OMAP devices generally include a general-purpose ARM architecture processor core plus one or more specialized co-processors.”
OMAP platform SoCs apparently have ARM cores.
OMAP 4 – The 4th generation OMAPs, OMAP4430, 4460 and 4470 all use dual-core ARM Cortex-A9s. All OMAP 4 comes with an IVA3 multimedia hardware accelerator with a programmable DSP that enables 1080p Full HD and multi-standard video encode/decode.
OMAP 5 – The 5th generation OMAP, OMAP 5 SoC uses a dual-core ARM Cortex-A15 CPU with two additional ARM Cortex-M4 cores to offload the A15s in less computionally intensive tasks to increase power efficiency, two PowerVR SGX544MP graphics cores and a dedicated TI 2D BitBlt graphics accelerator, a multi-pipe display sub-system and a signal processor. They respectively support 24 and 20-megapixel cameras for front and rear 3D HD video recording. The chip also supports up to 8GB of dual channel DDR3 memory, output to four HD 3D displays and 3D HDMI 1.4 video output. OMAP 5 also includes 3 USB 2.0 ports and a SATA 2.0 controller.
Wow.
Edited 2011-10-12 21:57 UTC
“Plasma Active runs on the proven Linux desktop stack, including the Linux kernel, Qt and KDE’s Plasma Framework.”
Ugh. Somehow that doesn’t sell me on their x86 tablet idea.
Edited 2011-10-11 22:01 UTC
Given the breakthrough concept of Activities:
http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2011/10/activities.html
coupled with the fact that a number of apps are already working with Plasma Active One, including Kontact Touch, Calligra Active, Bangarang and a collection of Active Apps, I think that Plasma Active is a far better idea for tablets than adapting a phone OS (e.g. iOS, Android) or a desktop OS (Metro).
http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2011/04/plasma-active-calligra-active.ht…
So it has a capable touch-enabled Office Suite included out-of-the-box.
PS: I believe that Kontact Touch works with Exchange on the server.
http://vizzzion.org/blog/2011/10/plasma-active-perspectives-the-app…
“In the area of groupware and email, Plasma Active really shines thanks to Kontact Touch, a mature groupware suite designed specifically for touchscreen interfaces. Kontact Touch has all the features already known from its desktop counterpart, among which a vast variety of connectors to groupware servers, among which Exchange and Kolab. For on-the-go use-cases, Kontact Touch’s offline features are a big win, making it easy to catch up on what happened during offline periods. Kontact Touch’s email client performs really well on the underpowered tablet, even for insanely large mailboxes with tens of thousands of emails.”
Edited 2011-10-11 22:39 UTC
The proven Linux desktop stack refers to X11. Unproven seems to mean Wayland or whatever else is out there (Android? Framebuffer? console ascii art?).
Taken into account that Meego is build on that proven Linux desktop stack and so is Balsam it somehow makes sense to focus on that first.
Seems the plan is to get support for Wayland done in 2012. See http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=wayland_kde_2012…
It can run on ARM as well.
You read a lot of “Nokia is dead, MeeGo is dead” crap on the internet these days.
While Nokia is not fully committed to meego anymore, it is nice to see how their work on MeeGo and Qt/QtQuick have benefited the FOSS community with projects like this.
Mer and derivatives are to rescue.
Plasma Active team had a meeting with the Mer project team ( http://mer-project.org ) , for planning how to produce an open mobile distro combining the best efforts of Mer core, and Plasma Active UI.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3938857/mer_pa_meeting.html