F38 proposal: MobilityPhoshImage (Self-Contained Change proposal)

[Ben Cotton]

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/MobilityPhoshImage

This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes
process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive
community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved
by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.


== Summary ==
Phosh is a wayland shell for mobile devices based on Gnome. The
mobility SIG has packaged up Phosh and related packages into a
'phosh-desktop' package group and would like to start making x86_64
and aarch64 images for mobile devices.


== Owner ==
* Name: [[User:Kevin| Kevin Fenzi]], [[User:Torbuntu| Torrey Sorensen]]


== Detailed Description ==
There's a number of x86_64 and aarch64 tablets and other mobile
devices that could use a more mobile centric interface/desktop than
traditional Fedora desktops/labs/spins. Having Fedora images for these
devices will make it easier to install and use them. Having a image
will also help remix efforts, allowing them to reuse userspace
packages and metadata (kickstarts, etc) with a modified kernel.

Note: Plasma Mobile is also being packaged and will be requested in
another change

Note: Pinephone and Pinephone Pro are eventual targets for these
images, but more kernel patches must be upstreamed before these
devices will boot and function.


== Benefit to Fedora ==
These images will spread Fedora to mobile devices and bring more users
into the Fedora community as well as showcasing upstream work to
provide a 100% open source phone interface for devices once they are
workable from vanilla kernels.


== Scope ==
* Proposal owners: Create kickstarts and other configuration needed to
produce aarch64 and x86_64 images. Fix bugs related to phosh-desktop
group and associated packages.

* Other developers: Help test images and groups

* Release engineering: Review kickstarts and pungi configutation,
produce images.

* Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)
* Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)
* Alignment with Objectives:


== Upgrade/compatibility impact ==


== How To Test ==
Install the produced image to a suitable x86_64 or aarch64 device with
arm-image-installer or dd
Boot the image and confirm it comes up to a phosh desktop
Use various desktop functions and report issues.


== User Experience ==


== Dependencies ==


== Contingency Plan ==
* Contingency mechanism: (What to do?  Who will do it?) N/A (not a
System Wide Change)
* Contingency deadline: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
* Blocks release? N/A (not a System Wide Change), Yes/No


== Documentation ==
N/A (not a System Wide Change)

== Release Notes ==
Initial images are produced for x86_64 and aarch64 mobile devices
using the Phosh desktop.


-- 
Ben Cotton
He / Him / His
Fedora Program Manager
Red Hat
TZ=America/Indiana/Indianapolis

[Ben Cotton]

On Tue, Nov 8, 2022 at 10:10 AM Ben Cotton <bcotton(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  Initial images are produced for x86_64 and aarch64 mobile devices
>  using the Phosh desktop. 
Is the plan to add these images to an existing website or a new one?
Or are you going to work that out with the Websites & Apps team? (Note
that they're targeting F38 for the launch of a reconfigured getfedora,
so it's good to engage with them early on this.)

-- 
Ben Cotton
He / Him / His
Fedora Program Manager
Red Hat
TZ=America/Indiana/Indianapolis

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Tue, Nov 08, 2022 at 10:21:43AM -0500, Ben Cotton wrote:
>  On Tue, Nov 8, 2022 at 10:10 AM Ben Cotton <bcotton(a)redhat.com&gt;
> wrote:
>  >
>  > Initial images are produced for x86_64 and aarch64 mobile devices
>  > using the Phosh desktop.
>  
>  Is the plan to add these images to an existing website or a new one? 
The new one I would think?

>  Or are you going to work that out with the Websites & Apps team?
> (Note
>  that they're targeting F38 for the launch of a reconfigured getfedora,
>  so it's good to engage with them early on this.) 
Yeah, was going to try and work it out with them (which I have not yet
done). Where's the best place to engage with them these days?

kevin

[Ben Cotton]

On Tue, Nov 8, 2022 at 1:34 PM Kevin Fenzi <kevin(a)scrye.com&gt; wrote:
>  Yeah, was going to try and work it out with them (which I have not yet
>  done). Where's the best place to engage with them these days? 
I'd start with either Discussion[1] or chat[2]. There are a couple of
Pagure repos as well, but the new work is being done in GitLab, so
depending on where the content ends up, the repo may change.

[1] https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/c/project/websites/66
[2] https://chat.fedoraproject.org/#/room/#websites:fedoraproject.org

-- 
Ben Cotton
He / Him / His
Fedora Program Manager
Red Hat
TZ=America/Indiana/Indianapolis

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Tue, Nov 08, 2022 at 03:09:46PM -0500, Ben Cotton wrote:
>  On Tue, Nov 8, 2022 at 1:34 PM Kevin Fenzi <kevin(a)scrye.com&gt;
> wrote:
>  >
>  > Yeah, was going to try and work it out with them (which I have not yet
>  > done). Where's the best place to engage with them these days?
>  
>  I'd start with either Discussion[1] or chat[2]. There are a couple of
>  Pagure repos as well, but the new work is being done in GitLab, so
>  depending on where the content ends up, the repo may change.
>  
>  [1] https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/c/project/websites/66
>  [2] https://chat.fedoraproject.org/#/room/#websites:fedoraproject.org 
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/fitting-the-new-f38-mobile-phosh-s...

Everyone welcome to follow along/chime in there. 

kevin

[Scott Anecito]

What is the driver for choosing Phosh over GNOME Shell? Let me first say the amount of
work put in by both Purism and the GNOME community into Phosh and other mobile components
like libhandy has been critical to Linux mobile space. While mobile friendly GNOME Shell
improvements only recently started and is not currently as feature rich as Phosh, the
recent focus on it by the GNOME community has lead to some fast and impressive development
as seen on the GNOME blog:
https://blogs.gnome.org/shell-dev/2022/09/09/gnome-shell-on-mobile-an-upd...

Most of the changes in the blog look to be targeting merging upstream in time for 44's
release which I believe would be in Fedora 38. Even then though GNOME Shell wouldn't
be at feature parity with Phosh. However, the main argument long term for having a mobile
image that uses GNOME Shell over Phosh is more resourcing due to mutual benefits on mobile
and desktop with things like the new gesture API referenced in the blog.

If feature set is the driver, I understand, but as a Librem5 owner and someone with all
their boxes imaged with Fedora I'd be curious if there would be any plans to
eventually switch to GNOME Shell once feature parity happens.

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Thu, Nov 10, 2022 at 01:35:36AM -0000, Scott Anecito via devel wrote:
>  What is the driver for choosing Phosh over GNOME Shell? 
There's no choosing something over something else. This isn't a Fedora
Mobility Edition, but rather a first look at a Phosh based setup. 

Phosh has been around a long while, the remix that the mobility sig
makes currently uses it, and it seems to be making progress all the
time. 

The plasma mobile desktop has also been around a while, but I am not
sure if it's all packaged up yet or how it fits together. The kde sig
has been working on this. If they reach a point where things are
working, they can submit a plasma-mobile change. 

If down the road we think this area should be covered by a edition, then
we would need to closely decide what would meet our users needs.

>  Let me first say the amount of work put in by both Purism and the
> GNOME community into Phosh and other mobile components like libhandy has been critical to
> Linux mobile space. While mobile friendly GNOME Shell improvements only recently started
> and is not currently as feature rich as Phosh, the recent focus on it by the GNOME
> community has lead to some fast and impressive development as seen on the GNOME blog:
> https://blogs.gnome.org/shell-dev/2022/09/09/gnome-shell-on-mobile-an-upd...
>  
>  Most of the changes in the blog look to be targeting merging upstream in time for
> 44's release which I believe would be in Fedora 38. Even then though GNOME Shell
> wouldn't be at feature parity with Phosh. However, the main argument long term for
> having a mobile image that uses GNOME Shell over Phosh is more resourcing due to mutual
> benefits on mobile and desktop with things like the new gesture API referenced in the
> blog. 
gnome-shell's mobility changes look really interesting and I would
encourage folks interested in that to work on a gnome mobility spin?

>  If feature set is the driver, I understand, but as a Librem5 owner
> and someone with all their boxes imaged with Fedora I'd be curious if there would be
> any plans to eventually switch to GNOME Shell once feature parity happens. 
I don't know of any plans right now, but I think it's likely to happen
if things are merged and are in a workable state. :) 

kevin