[Gta04-owner] GNOME on Smartphone

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting H. Nikolaus Schaller (2017-10-27 08:19:18)
>> Am 26.10.2017 um 16:38 schrieb Jonas Smedegaard <jonas at jones.dk>:
>>> 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.
>
> Well, I just did an apt-get install without knowing what it will 
> install. And it appears that it was neither installed nor tagged as 
> missing. Maybe it is optional despite the requirements list?

Ah, libegl1 is a virtual package in stretch: You instead have 
libglapi-mesa installed.


>>> A more fundamental question is why everyone wants to require OpenGL.
>>
>> Your question is flawed: Not everyone wants that.
>
> It is not flawed, it is rhetorically exaggerated :)
>
>> 
>> 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.
>
> No, not at all, i don't want to beat anyone.

Sorry, I stand corrected!

<nitpicking>
A deadline is a thing, so I guess you meant any_thing_ :-P
</nitpicking>

> I am just curious to better understand the implications of running 
> Gnome on a smartphone. And with a GTA04 I can already do such 
> experiments.

You can indeed experiment.

If you want to experiment with running GNOME without OpenGL, then try 
remove (or temporarily rename) /usr/lib/*/libGL.so*.


 - Jonas

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

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