[Gta04-owner] GNOME on Smartphone

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting H. Nikolaus Schaller (2017-10-26 15:26:40)
> 
>> Am 26.10.2017 um 15:12 schrieb Jonas Smedegaard <jonas at jones.dk>:
>> 
>> Quoting H. Nikolaus Schaller (2017-10-26 14:38:09)
>>> there is currently a lot of hype around running Gnome on a 
>>> smartphone which seems to need new hardware to be possible.
>>> 
>>> This made me curious. Therefore I took a fresh µSD card and did 
>>> [...] apt-get install gnome-core
>> 
>> Yes, that is the easy part.
>> 
>> Challenging parts are these:
>> 
>> a) get GPU drivers for hardware-backed OpenGL working for the 
>> particular device (since GNOME depend on OpenGL and software-only 
>> emulation is likely too power hungry even if fast enough).
> 
> Does it?

Yes: https://wiki.gnome.org/GraphicsRequirements


> At least the apt-get install on Debian 9.1 didn't ask for such 
> dependencies.

If by "such dependencies" you (like me) mean package libegl1 then I am 
curious how you managed to install gnome-core without that.


> A more fundamental question is why everyone wants to require OpenGL.

Your question is flawed: Not everyone wants that.

I believe rephrasing to "why those embrasing shiny UIs use abstraction 
layers like OpenGL or Vulcan" hints at the answer ;-)


>> Might make sense to faster reach a usable state by doing b) without 
>> waiting for GTK+4.  But that has a real risk of repeating QtMoko 
>> which didn't want to wait for Qt to properly cover phones.
> 
> Seems to be a big hen&egg situation.

Imposing unreasonable constraints lead to odd scenarios, yes ;-)

You introduces a constraint of beating the Librem5 deadline. Remove that 
deadline and it makes sense for Qt and GTK+ to evolve in their own pace: 
Both projects already actively develop towards support for phones.

 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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