Re: GNOME Mobile, or "GNOME on Purism's Librem 5"

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

On Sun, 2017-09-03 at 16:29 +0200, Matthias Klumpp wrote:
> [ Please keep the CC list for replies ]
<snip>
> So, is having a mobile UX something in scope for GNOME as a project
> and the GNOME Shell?
> Did anyone try to use GNOME on a smaller, phone-sized display
> already?
> Is there interest in the community in actually making a "GNOME
> Mobile"
> a reality (of course, Purism would help with that)?
>
> I am looking forward to your replies!

Disregarding the fact that asking for the direction GNOME would need to
go as a project to accommodate your use case when you've already said
you could achieve it in 18 months seems a bit, well, like putting the
cart before the horse. Anyway...

There are plenty of things to be done on "the desktop" that would be
useful for convertible laptops (like your own Librem 11), tablets (same
one, but without the keyboard) and small form factor tablets, like
cheap 7" Windows tablets you can now find for under $100.

In no particular order:
- working on a tip-top On-Screen Keyboard
- working on more touch-enabled widgets (GtkImageView, "swipe" enabled
listbox rows, slide-under toolbars that need scroll down to show up
again, etc.)
- have a go at gnome-shell's "maximising sovereign windows" problem
(it's named exactly like that in bugzilla ;)
- experimenting with UIs with smaller screens (build yourself a ghetto
phone with the right size screen, and try out whether we need new
widgets, adaptive apps or just CSS changes)
- try integrating with (currently out-of-tree) OOM killer helpers to go
away from application lifetime management by the users
- implementing USB "gadget" to share the device's network access, or
music library (requires specific hardware with the gadget capability)

Tons to do! Let me know if you want to start experimenting with any of
those, I'll gladly point you the right direction, and to the right
people.

Cheers