Plasma Active on my Nexus 7

[SteveRiley]

I am typing this message on the aforementioned configuration. Behold:



Well, actually nothing after "behold" came from the Nexus 7. The Plasma web browser and/or Maliit keyboard won't send a carriage return in the text editor! So I had to submit the post, then upload the photo from my crappy mobile phone camera to Dropbox, then come back to the post on my PC to finish.

Nevertheless, it's almost usable in its current state. A number of minor bugs keep it from being a daily driver. But wow, Plasma Active sure is a nice UI. I just wish we could get it running on more hardware that more people use.

More: http://ruedigergad.com/2012/12/21/pl...on-on-nexus-7/

The distribution is built on Mer, a Meego fork. It's RPM-based, meaning it feels completely foreign to me. Nevertheless, I shall soldier on, zypper refresh && zypper updateing for a while.

[vinnywright]

Nice , first time I'v seen it running
I had meego running in a VM and on the HD one time but never got plasma to run ,,,,,,, nice work.

VINNY

[sithlord48]

i have been having problems gettng Kubuntu-Active working on my tablet(wifi nexus7). when i install it i lose touch support...under Plasma Active. Unity however seams to work just fine. this is installing from the ubuntu nexus 7 daliy iso's (tried a few differnt days worth of them). where is our arm7a build of kubuntu so i can start with that? will we get one?

[dmeyer]

The distribution is built on Mer, a Meego fork. It's RPM-based, meaning it feels completely foreign to me. Nevertheless, I shall soldier on, zypper refresh && zypper updateing for a while.

Zypper is amazing! I love it. Zypper is probably the best package manger in my opinion. Pacman is also pretty epic. Its one of those two but I'm leaning towards Zypper. Its so consistent and powerful!

[Aykay]

Have a question - so, is plasma active something that can be ran atop Kubuntu? Or is it only available on the Mer base?

Also, I have a few questions about Plasma active on Mer - I assume Amarok and Dolphin are there, but how about some other staples like audacity, calibre, and such? I've never used non-debian distros, so I don't really know what the package crossover is like.

[SteveRiley]

Last October, the Kubuntu-Active packages were pretty broken. Haven't checked since then, as I no longer have an x86-based tablet. I finally sold that frustrating Samsung 700t.

The KDE folks are building Active versions of many applications. You should be able to find information at http://community.kde.org/Plasma/Active.

[Aykay]

The nexus is not an x86 device, right? So this means a 32bit iso will not install? Still not clear on the difference of plasma active (based on mer) vs kubuntu 13.04 with plasma active.

Plasma active is NOT the new netbook configuration of the plasma desktop, right?

[SteveRiley]

The nexus is not an x86 device, right? So this means a 32bit iso will not install?

Nexus 7 is ARM. Specifically, an nVidia Tegra 3 T30L built from a Coretex-A9 MPCore CPU. ARM is a wholly different beast than x86 and x86_64; each family of ARM SoCs (systems-on-chips) requires binaries compiled specifically for it. That is, binaries compiled for Tegra 2 won't run on Tegra 3 or Tegra 4, or on OMAP 2 or OMAP 3 or OMAP 4 or OMAP 5 ad nauseum.

Still not clear on the difference of plasma active (based on mer) vs kubuntu 13.04 with plasma active. Plasma active is NOT the new netbook configuration of the plasma desktop, right?

Plasma Active is KDE's effort to create a tabet-specific UI. Unlike Windows 8 and Ubuntu Unity, which try to cram tablet and desktop metaphors together (and achieve an abysmal result), KDE builds different variants of Plasma for different needs. Plasma Desktop is what you're running on your desktop. Plasma Netbook is almost the same thing, with a different launcher and a different default window handling mechanism. Plasma Active is for touch screens and has an altogether different feel, while still retaining a good degree of KDE-ness. Under the covers, though, it's all still KDE.

"Based on Mer" means that the underlying Linux distribution is Mer, an RPM-based distribution that traces its roots to the now-defunct Meego. For folks working on the Plasma Active project, Mer seems to be their distro of choice, especially for ARM-based hardware. The same folks also produce x86-based Plasma Active builds, again built on Mer.

An automatic build script assembles a remix of Kubuntu with Plasma Active. When I checked it many months ago, it was completely broken -- some package scripts were wrong. I'm downloading the Raring build now and will try it in VirtualBox.

[SteveRiley]

Well, I'm giving up. There is no visible mouse cursor, and the "Development" tab on the settings page is missing. Trying to mouse around with an invisible cursor is frustrating as hell. Also, KWin keeps crashing, regardless of whether 3D acceleration is enabled or disabled, and regardless of whether I configure the backend to use XRender or OpenGL. I couldn't figure out how to use the non-GLES version of KWin.

[Aykay]

Which method of installing plasma active did you use? Muktware's guide? I've made a live usb of the raring+plasma active i386 iso, but if I'm understanding this correctly I'd be able to run that on my netbook but not really on the nexus? What's confusing there is that there's an android app called "Complete linux installer" which appears to work by installing from a traditional x86 iso, so I'm wondering if I can use that to install the kubuntu 13.04 w/ active image or if I should just bite the bullet and go with Mer/Active.

[SteveRiley]

Which method of installing plasma active did you use? Muktware's guide? I've made a live usb of the raring+plasma active i386 iso, but if I'm understanding this correctly I'd be able to run that on my netbook but not really on the nexus?

For my brief experiment last night, I downloaded the same ISO you did and futzed around trying to get it to work in VirtualBox. You might have better luck than I did if you try it on real hardware. For that matter, since you're in experimental mode, you might try the Saucy release instead.

What's confusing there is that there's an android app called "Complete linux installer" which appears to work by installing from a traditional x86 iso, so I'm wondering if I can use that to install the kubuntu 13.04 w/ active image or if I should just bite the bullet and go with Mer/Active.

Nope, that app requires ARM builds and Android devices with the correct ARM processor. Note the following from the requirements:

* Armv7 processor (Debian does work on Armv6 but other distros do not)

Consult the "ARM Architecture" column in Wikipedia's list of ARM microprocessor cores. Then look at the "ARM Core" column. If your device contains one of these processors, then you can use the app and install the correct ARM build of your distro of choice. You most certainly cannot use any x86 build in this case. The app is not doing CPU emulation; instead, it just sets up a chroot environment within Android and runs the Linix distro within that.

I may dig out my Nexus 7 and try the latest Plasma Active build later this evening. I looked at the first release and was not too impressed. It's probably matured somewhat since then.

[Aykay]

Ah, I just realized that that android app is actually trying to run linux ON TOP of android, it's not creating a neat, separate partition for it the way the multirom method is.