Debian is the Universal Operating System and we want to run it on our mobile devices. What are the apps a mobile user needs, and what is the state of readiness in Debian of these apps?
Things to look for:
- Works well on small screen (main window, but also dialogs such as preferences)
- Works well on low-resolution screen (such as 480x272 pocketCHIP)
- Works well with only left clicks (single touch screens)
- Works well with no keyboard (some devices need to use precious screen space for onscreen keyboard)
- Supports gestures where appropriate (scrolling or dragging/swiping)
- Supports multitouch gestures where appropriate (pinch zoom, etc)
- Resource efficient (low-RAM devices)
Things to document:
- Configurations that make the mobile experience better
- Work still to be done
Apps
- EBook Reader: fbreader -- works well on small screen, even with low resolution
- ~/.FBReader/ui.xml for pocketCHIP: attachment:fbreader-ui.xml
- Maemo platform config: https://github.com/geometer/FBReader/blob/7abc80d12fab06b05ea1fe68a0e73ea5e9486463/zlibrary/core/data/default/config.maemo.xml
- XMPP
- Dino -- simple user interface; now uses GNOME's state of the art tooling for adapting to mobile devices and small screens
- Dino on desktop usually follows a two-column layout with contacts in a pane on the left and the rest left for messaging. On small vertical screens (such as smartphone ones), the left pane automagically becomes collapsed when needed. Dino is highly regarded for its adaptiveness and emphasis on user experience.
- Support for audio/video calls is mature and cared for. This is the first known client to support multi-party Jingle calls. An issue causing instability with Cheogram and/or JMP.chat calling was found to lie in GnuTLS, and having been fixed, this works well except for the omission of a DTMF dial pad.
- Kaidan is the counterpart to Dino in the Qt/KDE ecosystem, but it hasn't gotten as far in maturing yet.
- Gajim -- works decently on small screen. Low resolution all windows fit except for the "account settings" window
- ~/.config/gajim/config for pocketCHIP: attachment:gajim-config
- ~/.config/gajim/pluginsconfig/roster_tweaks for pocketCHIP (for use with roster tweaks plugin): attachment:gajim-roster_tweaks
- Snags: without a keyboard, there is no way to show/hide the roster in single-window mode, or to show/hide the menu bar. The menu bar is quite small on a low-res screen, so it is best used with a keyboard. Tabbed conversations can become hard to navigate if you have many open. Need to double-click, click+enter, or right-click to open a chat -- usable on single-touch, but not ideal. Gajim's support for Jingle calls is known to be mostly broken, unmaintained, and based on obsolete specifications, and a ground-up replacement is what's to be hoped for.
- Auto-join MUCs you have left are re-joined on connection blip: https://dev.gajim.org/gajim/gajim/issues/8361
- No way to show/hide the participants panel in a MUC: https://dev.gajim.org/gajim/gajim/issues/8352
- Dino -- simple user interface; now uses GNOME's state of the art tooling for adapting to mobile devices and small screens
- Bible: Xiphos is probably our best bet, if you hide all optional panels it seems fine for small-screen use. Currently all windows will not fit on a low-resolution screen, though at least the main window can (https://github.com/crosswire/xiphos/issues/812) with a very small patch
- Web browser -- pocketCHIP uses surf and you keyboard heavily. Works ok. Maybe firefox? They had a Maemo build back in the day, but it's been abandoned. I see reports online that at least basic touch gestures can be set up with it.
- Update: I am using both surf and firefox on PinePhone now. Both work great with touch, since I guess GTK can tell when it's a real touchscreen vs just a mouse and change gesture support accordingly.
- Midori? https://bbs.nextthing.co/t/another-way-to-browse-the-web-from-your-pocket-c-h-i-p/17550
- UBPorts browser?
- Email: https://dekkoproject.org/
Check out: https://sr.ht/~mil/Sxmo/