Jolla Review: Some Rough Edges, But This Linux Smartphone Shows Promise (Forbes)

Posted Jan 15, 2014 15:49 UTC (Wed) by Arker (guest, #14205)
In reply to: Jolla Review: Some Rough Edges, But This Linux Smartphone Shows Promise (Forbes) by lbt
Parent article: Jolla Review: Some Rough Edges, But This Linux Smartphone Shows Promise (Forbes)

I really do not think you can coherently claim "complete root access" and "ability to replace the entire stack" if this is all sitting on top of binary drivers.

Nonetheless it does sound like your heart is in the right place, so I wish you the best of luck.

Jolla Review: Some Rough Edges, But This Linux Smartphone Shows Promise (Forbes)

Posted Jan 15, 2014 16:17 UTC (Wed) by lbt (subscriber, #29672) [Link] (5 responses)

Well, no more so than on any desktop PC with an Nvidia card, a closed bios and, say, a usb ADSL modem or a wifi card with a blob.

I *think* we're a tiny bit more hackable than a PC BIOS since the really early bootloader is the open "lk".

OTOH if you're alluding to the usual kernel/blob binding then yes, you're limited to the usual annoying embedded-kernel-module-version-tie if you want those bits of hardware to work (but some is done via libhybris and is, I think, more kernel-version agnostic). Sorry. Rebuilding the kernel and/or adding modules is fine though.

Also, yes, the NSA (or in our case more likely a far-eastern govt) probably have lower level access than you (via the blobs) if that's what you meant.

(usual disclaimer that hacking this kind of thing without knowing what you're doing gets you an expensive brick)

Jolla Review: Some Rough Edges, But This Linux Smartphone Shows Promise (Forbes)

Posted Jan 15, 2014 18:11 UTC (Wed) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]

"Well, no more so than on any desktop PC with an Nvidia card, a closed bios and, say, a usb ADSL modem or a wifi card with a blob."

Exactly.

I am not going to say that I have never purchased any of the above, but I can certainly say that I will go to some lengths to avoid them, and would certainly not describe such a system as free or open or trust it any further than my ability to audit.

"Also, yes, the NSA (or in our case more likely a far-eastern govt) probably have lower level access than you (via the blobs) if that's what you meant."

Even if it's only(!) the Chinese military that has the access today, it's almost inevitable that criminal gangs will gain access tomorrow.

Jolla Review: Some Rough Edges, But This Linux Smartphone Shows Promise (Forbes)

Posted Jan 16, 2014 0:24 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] (3 responses)

Either I misunderstand you or you're trying to blur the difference between firmware blobs and drivers, between "My USB ADSL modem needs me to have a copy of this mysterious file or else it's essentially useless" vs "My Jolla needs me to run a proprietary kernel module that exists only for specific builds, or else it's essentially useless".

The former is an annoyance, but it's fire-and-forget. I recall running some horrible perl script or something with a Windows driver CD mounted, and then it was done and the USB ADSL modem worked forever after even though I changed CPU architecture. Hobbyists put up with worse all the time.

The latter is a major obstacle, realistically without a large, dedicated engineering resource it will quickly rot and cease to exist.

Ten years or more after the makers of my (early, long pre-UVC) USB webcam went out of business AFAICT, it works fine in Fedora 19, arguably better than it ever did in Windows. Now, ten years after Jolla are bankrupt how much of a Jolla phone will work with a new Linux? My impression is that the answer is "not enough to make it a useful artefact".

Jolla Review: Some Rough Edges, But This Linux Smartphone Shows Promise (Forbes)

Posted Jan 16, 2014 12:11 UTC (Thu) by lbt (subscriber, #29672) [Link] (2 responses)

Rest assured - my intention is not to try and blur anything, apologies if I did.

I thought this was quite clear:
"yes, you're limited to the usual annoying embedded-kernel-module-version-tie"

Also note that we're not having quite the same conversation; I replied to :
"complete root access" and "ability to replace the entire stack"
but I think we need to be discussing:
"what's the long term impact of the hardware landscape in mobile today"

I suggest that the more relevant part of my reply is an nVidia card - once they stop providing support for an old card in a new kernel you're stuck.

Incidentally I was simplifying a bit: on this class of devices the GPU 'driver' is an opensource 'pass through' driver to userland but it probably exposes volatile bits of the kernel internals so it's essentially tied to a version.
Since the kernel is also the usual hacked about non-upstreamed vendor kernel which you could theoretically break into a maintainable patch set with **much** effort - realistically it's not going to happen.

Overall you're right though ... but is the answer "they're working towards our goals but they might go bankrupt, lets not bother supporting them"?

I'm not trying to answer that - but I am trying to explain why, as a free software developer, I'm excited to be making things better, not worse.

Jolla Review: Some Rough Edges, But This Linux Smartphone Shows Promise (Forbes)

Posted Jan 17, 2014 0:53 UTC (Fri) by deepfire (guest, #26138) [Link]

This was very clear and useful, which is a preciously rare thing to have with an actual mainstream software vendor. Thank you for that.

It will be interesting to compare this with Blackphone.

Jolla Review: Some Rough Edges, But This Linux Smartphone Shows Promise (Forbes)

Posted Jan 22, 2014 17:38 UTC (Wed) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

I have a Nvidia chipset which I think is old enough to be unsupported by Nvidia, but since I never used Nvidia's drivers I haven't noticed any reduction in support. The free drivers do KMS, and I believe they can play 3D games, but I own supported hardware for playing 3D games on, so I didn't really try.

Probably there were dubious proprietary drivers for that webcam at some point too. Never tried them, if it doesn't work in free drivers then realistically (as you've observed) it will probably stop working soon and never work again, so why bother?

Eventually of course even the kernel developers stop caring. My first ever PC, if I still had it, wouldn't boot a modern Linux kernel. I don't ask for miracles, but it does seem as though Jolla doesn't give me most of what I'd actually care about. Thanks for your honesty, and good luck.