[00:00.000 --> 00:09.000]  Welcome to the final talk, wow.
[00:09.000 --> 00:13.000]  So lots of people want to know where to go from here.
[00:13.000 --> 00:15.000]  Welcome Clayton Craft.
[00:15.000 --> 00:17.000]  We are really happy.
[00:17.000 --> 00:22.000]  His plane made it barely despite bad weather and all that.
[00:22.000 --> 00:27.000]  So some might know him as Crafty Guy in some chat rooms.
[00:27.000 --> 00:32.000]  Well, I don't need to introduce him here.
[00:32.000 --> 00:35.000]  Welcome and yeah, glad to have you here.
[00:35.000 --> 00:40.000]  Thank you.
[00:40.000 --> 00:44.000]  Yeah, so I'm Clayton, also known as Crafty Guy.
[00:44.000 --> 00:48.000]  You might recognize me from some of my contributions to Post Market OS.
[00:48.000 --> 00:52.000]  Or you might recognize me from my avatar, right?
[00:52.000 --> 00:57.000]  I started contributing to this distribution back in 2017,
[00:57.000 --> 01:01.000]  mainly because it had initial support for the Nokia N900,
[01:01.000 --> 01:04.000]  which was the first Linux phone I owned.
[01:04.000 --> 01:10.000]  And by 2017, I was really tired of the two options for mobile operating systems.
[01:10.000 --> 01:13.000]  I wanted something that could run a recent Linux kernel,
[01:13.000 --> 01:15.000]  that had a familiar user space,
[01:15.000 --> 01:20.000]  and most importantly, wasn't trying to exfiltrate personal information all the time.
[01:20.000 --> 01:23.000]  And I still feel that way today, which is why I'm here,
[01:23.000 --> 01:27.000]  because I think that we as a community need to try to answer the question,
[01:27.000 --> 01:29.000]  where do we go from here?
[01:29.000 --> 01:33.000]  Because here today, the situation is quite a bit different
[01:33.000 --> 01:37.000]  and has improved in some ways from the last few years.
[01:37.000 --> 01:41.000]  For example, there's a number of phones out there now that can run Linux,
[01:41.000 --> 01:44.000]  some of them out of the box, which is really exciting.
[01:44.000 --> 01:48.000]  However, when you look at how many phones exist out in the world today,
[01:48.000 --> 01:52.000]  thousands and thousands of them, and only a small handful can do this.
[01:52.000 --> 01:55.000]  So I think there's some improvement there, obviously.
[01:55.000 --> 02:01.000]  There's also a lot more distributions, both Linux and, as you saw in the previous talk,
[02:01.000 --> 02:05.000]  other alternative operating systems that can boot on these phones.
[02:05.000 --> 02:11.000]  However, I think there's not a whole lot of coordination between distributions today,
[02:11.000 --> 02:15.000]  because a lot of these distributions are targeting the same hardware.
[02:15.000 --> 02:18.000]  They also are targeting some of the same use cases.
[02:18.000 --> 02:21.000]  And so a lot of them are trying to solve some of the same problems
[02:21.000 --> 02:23.000]  and have some of the same goals.
[02:23.000 --> 02:26.000]  And a lot of distributions are kind of doing it on their own
[02:26.000 --> 02:31.000]  and not really comparing notes and trying to work collaboratively to solve these things
[02:31.000 --> 02:35.000]  in cases where the work being done to solve the problem
[02:35.000 --> 02:38.000]  could be used by multiple distros, for instance.
[02:38.000 --> 02:43.000]  And another exciting thing I think today is there's a lot more applications
[02:43.000 --> 02:46.000]  that have been created both with some of the work from Purism
[02:46.000 --> 02:52.000]  and other folks in the community that lets these applications work pretty well
[02:52.000 --> 02:54.000]  on mobile form factors.
[02:54.000 --> 02:59.000]  However, when you consider non-technical end users and what they expect
[02:59.000 --> 03:04.000]  for a modern smartphone, there's still a lot of missing functionality there.
[03:04.000 --> 03:08.000]  So again, more room for improvement.
[03:08.000 --> 03:12.000]  And I think there's a lot of people both inside and outside the community
[03:12.000 --> 03:15.000]  who are really interested in what we're doing.
[03:15.000 --> 03:19.000]  And I think a lot of them are kind of asking the same questions.
[03:19.000 --> 03:23.000]  Specifically, one question I think everybody's asking, no matter who you are,
[03:23.000 --> 03:25.000]  is what's it like, right?
[03:25.000 --> 03:29.000]  What's it like to have a phone that can run Linux and use it as a daily driver?
[03:29.000 --> 03:33.000]  What's it like to depend on that for navigation and communication?
[03:33.000 --> 03:37.000]  And obviously whoever's asking this is...
[03:37.000 --> 03:40.000]  The answer to that question depends a lot on who's asking it
[03:40.000 --> 03:42.000]  and where they're coming from.
[03:42.000 --> 03:45.000]  For example, an end user, when they ask, hey,
[03:45.000 --> 03:48.000]  what's it like to use your phone that's running Linux,
[03:48.000 --> 03:52.000]  they want to know can they message grandma on WhatsApp
[03:52.000 --> 03:56.000]  or can they use it to navigate from your hotel to the Fosdum conference
[03:56.000 --> 03:59.000]  and stuff like that.
[03:59.000 --> 04:03.000]  I think myself as an OS developer, when I think about this question,
[04:03.000 --> 04:08.000]  I tend to think about a lot of the problems I run into
[04:08.000 --> 04:13.000]  with developing and maintaining an operating system on Linux phones
[04:13.000 --> 04:17.000]  and how a lot of these problems, again, are shared between distributions
[04:17.000 --> 04:21.000]  because, again, we're targeting a lot of the same hardware and use cases.
[04:21.000 --> 04:26.000]  And I think about how hard it is today to create or solve problems
[04:26.000 --> 04:30.000]  that can be reused by other distributions
[04:30.000 --> 04:34.000]  without a whole lot of rework on their part, right?
[04:34.000 --> 04:38.000]  A recent example of this is a Libram5 user, Chris Vogel,
[04:38.000 --> 04:42.000]  last week was trying to work around a problem on the Libram5
[04:42.000 --> 04:47.000]  and he created some patches for this workaround, submitted them to Purism,
[04:47.000 --> 04:51.000]  and I actually just happened to come across the patches
[04:51.000 --> 04:55.000]  because I was trying to address the same problem on PostMarketOS.
[04:55.000 --> 04:59.000]  And his patches look good from the context of PurOS,
[04:59.000 --> 05:03.000]  but they were pretty much unusable for me on PostMarketOS
[05:03.000 --> 05:07.000]  because of just differences in the distribution, right?
[05:07.000 --> 05:10.000]  His patches were relying heavily on SystemD services
[05:10.000 --> 05:13.000]  in order to trigger things to apply workarounds,
[05:13.000 --> 05:15.000]  and I don't have SystemD in PostMarketOS,
[05:15.000 --> 05:18.000]  so that was a non-starter right there.
[05:18.000 --> 05:22.000]  I was able to talk to him and give some tips on how he could redo it
[05:22.000 --> 05:25.000]  so that it would work across multiple distributions,
[05:25.000 --> 05:27.000]  even ones without SystemD.
[05:27.000 --> 05:30.000]  And I think this is kind of like the current happy situation
[05:30.000 --> 05:34.000]  where he's off creating something now that could be reused, right?
[05:34.000 --> 05:38.000]  But I think there's a lot of cases where because people don't know
[05:38.000 --> 05:41.000]  there's other distributions or know what they need,
[05:41.000 --> 05:44.000]  oftentimes people run into problems like this
[05:44.000 --> 05:47.000]  and they create something which works totally fine for them,
[05:47.000 --> 05:51.000]  but is not usable or not even known to other distributions
[05:51.000 --> 05:53.000]  with the same problems, right?
[05:53.000 --> 05:57.000]  So, like, I might end up recreating or redoing a lot of the work
[05:57.000 --> 06:00.000]  and then it's inefficient, right?
[06:00.000 --> 06:03.000]  I would rather spend the time not solving problems
[06:03.000 --> 06:05.000]  that have already been solved elsewhere,
[06:05.000 --> 06:08.000]  but, you know, adding new functionality or supporting users
[06:08.000 --> 06:14.000]  who are using the distribution that I'm hoping to develop.
[06:14.000 --> 06:18.000]  And I think, like, we need a number of things as a community
[06:18.000 --> 06:21.000]  in order to address some of these inefficiencies
[06:21.000 --> 06:23.000]  with, like, maintaining distributions
[06:23.000 --> 06:26.000]  that target a lot of the same hardware
[06:26.000 --> 06:28.000]  and use cases.
[06:28.000 --> 06:31.000]  It'd be really nice if, like, in that previous situation
[06:31.000 --> 06:34.000]  I just spoke about, there was a place for a developer
[06:34.000 --> 06:36.000]  like Chris or myself or anyone, right,
[06:36.000 --> 06:39.000]  to ask for feedback directly from the community
[06:39.000 --> 06:42.000]  and be fairly confident that they're reaching, like, you know,
[06:42.000 --> 06:44.000]  critical mass of the community, right?
[06:44.000 --> 06:48.000]  And also where distributions can sort of, like, provide this feedback.
[06:48.000 --> 06:51.000]  So when people do solve problems that they're experiencing
[06:51.000 --> 06:54.000]  or when people are trying to implement things
[06:54.000 --> 06:56.000]  that they could really use,
[06:56.000 --> 06:59.000]  that they have the opportunity to provide feedback
[06:59.000 --> 07:01.000]  and, you know, the person doing the work
[07:01.000 --> 07:03.000]  can take or leave the feedback,
[07:03.000 --> 07:05.000]  but at least know that they're getting input
[07:05.000 --> 07:07.000]  or have access to this input
[07:07.000 --> 07:10.000]  so they can create something that's usable by everyone,
[07:10.000 --> 07:12.000]  and we don't have these cases where people
[07:12.000 --> 07:16.000]  are just kind of one-off doing the same thing, right?
[07:16.000 --> 07:18.000]  I think it would also be really nice
[07:18.000 --> 07:22.000]  if we had as a community a list of priorities that we care about,
[07:22.000 --> 07:27.000]  both, like, goals and also, like, these shared problems.
[07:27.000 --> 07:30.000]  The main purpose of this is, like, when contributors come along
[07:30.000 --> 07:33.000]  and they want something to work on or not sure what to do,
[07:33.000 --> 07:35.000]  they could see this list of priorities
[07:35.000 --> 07:38.000]  and, you know, if we come up with it as a community,
[07:38.000 --> 07:41.000]  we can put stuff up there we care about, obviously,
[07:41.000 --> 07:43.000]  and when people choose to work on these priorities,
[07:43.000 --> 07:45.000]  then we all benefit, right,
[07:45.000 --> 07:48.000]  because they're working on things that we said are important to us.
[07:48.000 --> 07:51.000]  And so, you know, maybe it'll provide some motivation
[07:51.000 --> 07:53.000]  or inspiration for folks that want to contribute
[07:53.000 --> 07:56.000]  and aren't necessarily certain how.
[07:56.000 --> 08:00.000]  And I think by kind of addressing the first two things,
[08:00.000 --> 08:04.000]  we'll inherently create a stronger relationships
[08:04.000 --> 08:08.000]  within the community, right, between individuals and projects,
[08:08.000 --> 08:12.000]  and I think that these strong relationships are critical.
[08:12.000 --> 08:15.000]  Like, if we want to have any chance of convincing, you know,
[08:15.000 --> 08:17.000]  businesses or governments or what have you,
[08:17.000 --> 08:20.000]  or even just end users, right, like...
[08:20.000 --> 08:23.000]  Like, if I want to try to convince, you know,
[08:23.000 --> 08:26.000]  a new group of users or something to give this a shot,
[08:26.000 --> 08:28.000]  we need to be somewhat organized
[08:28.000 --> 08:31.000]  and have an idea for, like, what we're trying to accomplish
[08:31.000 --> 08:33.000]  and be able to communicate that well externally
[08:33.000 --> 08:36.000]  so people know what we're all about.
[08:36.000 --> 08:39.000]  And these strong relationships, I think, are necessary for that,
[08:39.000 --> 08:42.000]  and, I mean, it's great, like, meeting people here at FOSM,
[08:42.000 --> 08:45.000]  but it's, like, very one-off, right, and we need to maintain that,
[08:45.000 --> 08:47.000]  and I think we maintain that by better organizing
[08:47.000 --> 08:50.000]  and, you know, trying to implement some of the things here
[08:50.000 --> 08:53.000]  I think we need.
[08:53.000 --> 08:57.000]  So, I'm here to propose forming a committee.
[08:57.000 --> 08:59.000]  I'm not even sure if committee is the right word for this,
[08:59.000 --> 09:05.000]  but bottom line is we need to somehow be more organized than we are.
[09:05.000 --> 09:10.000]  Not necessarily, like, you know, dictatorial or anything like that,
[09:10.000 --> 09:15.000]  but in some ways, at a higher level,
[09:15.000 --> 09:18.000]  just addressing, like, you know, having a place for people to get feedback,
[09:18.000 --> 09:22.000]  and I think a committee or some central place where distributions
[09:22.000 --> 09:26.000]  and projects are represented could be a place like that.
[09:26.000 --> 09:30.000]  I also think, like, as a developer,
[09:30.000 --> 09:35.000]  I'm not necessarily, like, the greatest at communicating when I'm working on
[09:35.000 --> 09:38.000]  and, like, what my motivations are for working on this
[09:38.000 --> 09:42.000]  and what Linux on mobile or FreeSoft on mobile have to offer.
[09:42.000 --> 09:46.000]  So, I think we should also, like, work on our public representation
[09:46.000 --> 09:49.000]  and having a committee or whatever you want to call it
[09:49.000 --> 09:52.000]  to be sort of the single point for communicating to the world
[09:52.000 --> 09:55.000]  what we're doing and why we want to do it would be important.
[09:55.000 --> 09:57.000]  Like, I know why I'm here, right?
[09:57.000 --> 10:01.000]  I don't want to have a corporate centralized device
[10:01.000 --> 10:03.000]  that's leaking personal information
[10:03.000 --> 10:05.000]  and I want the freedom to hack on this thing
[10:05.000 --> 10:08.000]  and, you know, do what I want, more or less.
[10:08.000 --> 10:12.000]  But, again, I think a lot of us are developers or engineers
[10:12.000 --> 10:16.000]  and we're not necessarily, like, the best at communicating that
[10:16.000 --> 10:18.000]  to non-technical users specifically.
[10:18.000 --> 10:21.000]  So, I think, you know, having some central thing
[10:21.000 --> 10:23.000]  where we can kind of work together to create something
[10:23.000 --> 10:30.000]  that can educate the world about us is, you know, nice to have.
[10:30.000 --> 10:34.000]  Now, I know what you're thinking, like, who is this guy?
[10:34.000 --> 10:39.000]  Why would I want some oversight committee thing,
[10:39.000 --> 10:42.000]  like, authority telling me what I can and can't work on
[10:42.000 --> 10:43.000]  during my free time?
[10:43.000 --> 10:45.000]  Because I know a lot of people here, myself included,
[10:45.000 --> 10:48.000]  are working on this during our free time.
[10:48.000 --> 10:50.000]  And, yeah, the last thing I wanted somebody to be like,
[10:50.000 --> 10:52.000]  here's the priorities for you.
[10:52.000 --> 10:54.000]  You know, when are you going to have them done by?
[10:54.000 --> 10:56.000]  Because that's silly.
[10:56.000 --> 10:57.000]  And I completely agree.
[10:57.000 --> 11:00.000]  That's not the purpose of this.
[11:00.000 --> 11:04.000]  And the question, like, the point is, I don't really know
[11:04.000 --> 11:06.000]  what this looks like when it organizes,
[11:06.000 --> 11:08.000]  but I think we need to organize.
[11:08.000 --> 11:10.000]  And I created a working group.
[11:10.000 --> 11:12.000]  There's a link to the matrix room on the slide
[11:12.000 --> 11:16.000]  where I would invite everybody here, everybody listening online,
[11:16.000 --> 11:19.000]  everybody in this community to join in
[11:19.000 --> 11:27.000]  and let's figure out how we can become more organized.
[11:27.000 --> 11:30.000]  And, oh, I'd like to thank my employer, Gallia,
[11:30.000 --> 11:34.000]  for sponsoring my travel to come here to give this talk.
[11:34.000 --> 11:38.000]  And, yeah, any questions, comments, opinions?
[11:38.000 --> 11:40.000]  Pretty short talk, but...
[11:40.000 --> 11:58.000]  Yeah, go ahead.
[11:58.000 --> 12:22.000]  Thank you very much.
[12:22.000 --> 12:32.000]  Thank you very much.
[12:32.000 --> 12:42.000]  Thank you very much.
[12:42.000 --> 12:52.000]  Thank you very much.
[12:52.000 --> 13:21.000]  Thank you very much.
[13:21.000 --> 13:49.000]  Yeah, that's one of the motivations
[13:49.000 --> 13:53.000]  for why I spent way too much time thinking about this.
[13:53.000 --> 13:57.000]  Yeah, for problems like that that exist across distributions
[13:57.000 --> 14:01.000]  and whatever, it'd be nice to know about that, right?
[14:01.000 --> 14:04.000]  If you're also trying to work on supporting a new device
[14:04.000 --> 14:07.000]  or, you know, improving something in your distro
[14:07.000 --> 14:10.000]  and you want to know if other people have had this problem.
[14:10.000 --> 14:13.000]  And right now, it's like, you have to kind of know
[14:13.000 --> 14:16.000]  what other distros are out there who might be working on this thing
[14:16.000 --> 14:19.000]  and then, you know, know where to find information
[14:19.000 --> 14:21.000]  and then go search, like, a million different GitLab instances
[14:21.000 --> 14:23.000]  or whatever to figure out, like, is this a problem
[14:23.000 --> 14:25.000]  that other people have seen or not?
[14:25.000 --> 14:27.000]  And it's kind of a mess, right?
[14:27.000 --> 14:30.000]  And the same goes for, like, a lot of other problems
[14:30.000 --> 14:32.000]  I've come across.
[14:32.000 --> 14:34.000]  And so, yeah, that's the idea, right?
[14:34.000 --> 14:38.000]  Have kind of a central place where people can...
[14:38.000 --> 14:40.000]  where problems like that can be expressed
[14:40.000 --> 14:42.000]  and people who are working on them,
[14:42.000 --> 14:44.000]  no matter what distribution you're in,
[14:44.000 --> 14:46.000]  work together on these things.
[14:46.000 --> 15:13.000]  Yes?
[15:16.000 --> 15:30.000]  Yeah.
[15:30.000 --> 15:32.000]  Yeah, that's tricky, right?
[15:32.000 --> 15:36.000]  Because, like, in the desktop world,
[15:36.000 --> 15:39.000]  there's some focus towards, like, flat pack
[15:39.000 --> 15:42.000]  and other ways to sort of package the runtime.
[15:42.000 --> 15:44.000]  So then it kind of doesn't matter what the distro is, right?
[15:44.000 --> 15:46.000]  You can reuse the same runtime
[15:46.000 --> 15:48.000]  and then you write your application
[15:48.000 --> 15:50.000]  and you target that thing and...
[15:50.000 --> 15:52.000]  I don't know if that's right for us,
[15:52.000 --> 15:54.000]  but, like, that's a specific thing,
[15:54.000 --> 15:56.000]  but I agree, like, there should be a way
[15:56.000 --> 15:58.000]  that people can talk about these things
[15:58.000 --> 16:00.000]  within these distributions we have.
[16:00.000 --> 16:04.000]  And, like, I think there's a fine line,
[16:04.000 --> 16:09.000]  like, we don't necessarily want to try to...
[16:09.000 --> 16:11.000]  I like that there's a lot of distributions
[16:11.000 --> 16:13.000]  and I like that they're all doing their own thing, right?
[16:13.000 --> 16:16.000]  Because, like, PostmarketOS was started by Ali
[16:16.000 --> 16:18.000]  for a very specific reason
[16:18.000 --> 16:20.000]  and, like, people started Mobian
[16:20.000 --> 16:22.000]  because they wanted to run Debian on their device
[16:22.000 --> 16:25.000]  and there's less focus on, like, what the runtimes are there,
[16:25.000 --> 16:30.000]  but I think it's a good thing that there's so much, like,
[16:30.000 --> 16:33.000]  distro diversity or whatever within the community
[16:33.000 --> 16:36.000]  and I wouldn't really want to try to, like,
[16:36.000 --> 16:42.000]  shoehorn any particular runtime mechanism
[16:42.000 --> 16:44.000]  or whatever you want to call it.
[16:44.000 --> 16:46.000]  On the other hand, I know that's, like...
[16:46.000 --> 16:48.000]  I know it's hard for application developers, right?
[16:48.000 --> 16:51.000]  Like, as you said, so...
[16:51.000 --> 16:53.000]  On the disk of Linux, for example,
[16:53.000 --> 16:57.000]  you can expect it to have some, like, Q or GTK or something.
[16:57.000 --> 17:00.000]  And this still is not the given on the...
[17:00.000 --> 17:01.000]  Right.
[17:01.000 --> 17:04.000] ...like some sort of Q, some special GTK
[17:04.000 --> 17:06.000]  or even some something of the custom.
[17:06.000 --> 17:07.000]  Yeah.
[17:07.000 --> 17:09.000]  It's not, like, if you can even count on, like,
[17:09.000 --> 17:11.000]  common QE library...
[17:11.000 --> 17:15.000]  So would it be nice if you had a way to ask distributions,
[17:15.000 --> 17:19.000]  like, hey, what version of GTK3 are you running or something, right?
[17:19.000 --> 17:22.000]  And be able to get input directly from them.
[17:22.000 --> 17:24.000]  So that way, at least, you know, like,
[17:24.000 --> 17:26.000]  here's the minimum version I need to support.
[17:26.000 --> 17:28.000]  I know it's not the ideal situation where you just, like,
[17:28.000 --> 17:30.000]  support whatever you want, but...
[17:30.000 --> 17:32.000]  Yeah, basically, the idea is, like,
[17:32.000 --> 17:35.000]  you'd be able to go and say, hey, Linux mobile distros,
[17:35.000 --> 17:40.000]  I want to target this version of GTK4 for this application.
[17:40.000 --> 17:42.000]  If you care about this application,
[17:42.000 --> 17:46.000]  is there, like, a version I should look at targeting or something?
[17:46.000 --> 17:48.000]  And so today, if you wanted to do that,
[17:48.000 --> 17:50.000]  you'd have to, like...
[17:50.000 --> 17:52.000]  You'd have to know what all the distros are
[17:52.000 --> 17:55.000]  that might be interested in using this thing you want to create.
[17:55.000 --> 17:57.000]  And then you need to know how to contact them.
[17:57.000 --> 17:59.000]  And even when you do, the people who have an opinion
[17:59.000 --> 18:01.000]  might not even be online or, you know,
[18:01.000 --> 18:03.000]  might not be available or maybe you asked the wrong person
[18:03.000 --> 18:04.000]  or something.
[18:04.000 --> 18:06.000]  So it's not great, right?
[18:06.000 --> 18:08.000]  See, what I'm proposing is, like,
[18:08.000 --> 18:11.000]  have a way that you could ask for feedback
[18:11.000 --> 18:13.000]  from all the folks in the community
[18:13.000 --> 18:15.000]  and people who care about what you're doing
[18:15.000 --> 18:17.000]  can be like, yeah, here's a version I use,
[18:17.000 --> 18:19.000]  or, like, maybe, you know,
[18:19.000 --> 18:22.000]  maybe this person is, like, representing their distro
[18:22.000 --> 18:25.000]  and they take it back to the person who knows
[18:25.000 --> 18:26.000]  that's working on their distro
[18:26.000 --> 18:29.000]  and then they, you know, give you the answer back or whatever.
[18:29.000 --> 18:33.000]  So it's a way to convey information, basically,
[18:33.000 --> 18:35.000]  to and from people who are interested in, you know,
[18:35.000 --> 18:38.000]  solving those problems.
[18:38.000 --> 18:39.000]  Yes?
[18:39.000 --> 19:08.000]  I like that you mentioned the public representation.
[19:08.000 --> 19:27.000]  Yeah.
[19:27.000 --> 19:39.000]  Yeah, sure.
[19:39.000 --> 19:41.000]  I mean, I get reminded daily, right?
[19:41.000 --> 19:43.000]  My wife's like, what are you working on exactly?
[19:43.000 --> 19:47.000]  And I'm like, oh, some phone stuff, you know.
[19:47.000 --> 19:51.000]  But I know, like, there's a lot of people, friends, family,
[19:51.000 --> 19:53.000]  whatever who have tried to search online
[19:53.000 --> 19:56.000]  for, like, what this Linux mobile thing
[19:56.000 --> 19:58.000]  or free software mobile thing is all about.
[19:58.000 --> 20:02.000]  And they tend to see, like, you know,
[20:02.000 --> 20:05.000]  posts by people and projects who are the loudest
[20:05.000 --> 20:07.000]  talking about what they're doing specifically,
[20:07.000 --> 20:11.000]  but not, like, what the whole thing is about, right?
[20:11.000 --> 20:15.000]  And, yeah, so, like, if a business or you
[20:15.000 --> 20:17.000]  or somebody's interested, you kind of just get, like,
[20:17.000 --> 20:20.000]  this hodgepodge collection of information
[20:20.000 --> 20:22.000]  and it's hard to, like, figure out
[20:22.000 --> 20:25.000]  what exactly is going on here.
[20:25.000 --> 20:27.000]  Yeah, it's like you're interested in
[20:27.000 --> 20:30.000]  and you follow the trail of information
[20:30.000 --> 20:32.000]  and you end up at some point
[20:32.000 --> 20:34.000]  and then you start that point
[20:34.000 --> 20:36.000]  and maybe you could go to another.
[20:36.000 --> 20:39.000]  And it's fine like that, but it's a big effort
[20:39.000 --> 20:41.000]  for the public.
[20:41.000 --> 20:43.000]  Yeah, yeah.
[20:43.000 --> 20:45.000]  For now, it's for the techies.
[20:45.000 --> 20:47.000]  Right.
[20:47.000 --> 20:54.000]  And it's okay because it started from that group of people
[20:54.000 --> 20:58.000]  and we need to ask people otherwise it wouldn't exist,
[20:58.000 --> 21:02.000]  but I think it's something that should be ensured.
[21:02.000 --> 21:06.000]  Yeah, thanks for proving my point.
[21:06.000 --> 21:08.000]  Yes.
[21:08.000 --> 21:12.000]  How is this different than, like, Linux in general?
[21:12.000 --> 21:15.000]  I mean, a lot of people use phones
[21:15.000 --> 21:18.000]  and in a way that they're not very aware
[21:18.000 --> 21:20.000]  of what the operating system is, maybe.
[21:20.000 --> 21:21.000]  How is it different?
[21:21.000 --> 21:25.000]  Has Linux succeeded where mobile Linux is in or something like that?
[21:25.000 --> 21:27.000]  Yeah, I mean, defending on how...
[21:27.000 --> 21:30.000]  You've already had this kind of central place,
[21:30.000 --> 21:32.000]  but I don't think it does really.
[21:32.000 --> 21:37.000]  No, no, no.
[21:37.000 --> 21:40.000]  Desktop Linux is what I call it, I don't know.
[21:40.000 --> 21:43.000]  Yeah, you know, like Red Hat and Canonical and those folks
[21:43.000 --> 21:47.000]  who are doing desktop and server distributions.
[21:47.000 --> 21:52.000]  Those communities are kind of dominated by certain companies
[21:52.000 --> 21:56.000]  who are out there to make a product and sell support
[21:56.000 --> 22:01.000]  and sell services and sell products and whatever.
[22:01.000 --> 22:04.000]  I mean, there are some OEMs who are doing stuff
[22:04.000 --> 22:06.000]  that are selling products.
[22:06.000 --> 22:08.000]  Purism is the obvious one,
[22:08.000 --> 22:14.000]  but we don't really have any big corporate participants
[22:14.000 --> 22:16.000]  in this community yet.
[22:16.000 --> 22:19.000]  I honestly don't want to see that happen
[22:19.000 --> 22:22.000]  because I think there's a lot of history
[22:22.000 --> 22:27.000]  with trying to run this type of environment on phones, right?
[22:27.000 --> 22:34.000]  And I think that some of the past failures were due to big corporations
[22:34.000 --> 22:38.000]  getting involved, dumping a ton of resources in.
[22:38.000 --> 22:42.000]  You could argue whether it was done effectively or not,
[22:42.000 --> 22:44.000]  but then kind of just giving up when they lose interest
[22:44.000 --> 22:46.000]  because, you know, it didn't turn a profit
[22:46.000 --> 22:49.000]  as fast as they thought it would or whatever.
[22:49.000 --> 22:52.000]  So, like, I don't want to recreate that.
[22:52.000 --> 22:55.000]  And I also realized, like, we don't have, you know,
[22:55.000 --> 22:58.000]  a ton of money pouring into this right now,
[22:58.000 --> 22:59.000]  which could be a good thing.
[22:59.000 --> 23:01.000]  So, I mean, this is my attempt to, like,
[23:01.000 --> 23:04.000]  try to organize without waiting around for somebody to be like,
[23:04.000 --> 23:07.000]  hey, that's a business model I need to throw money at
[23:07.000 --> 23:09.000]  and then just overwhelming us with, you know,
[23:09.000 --> 23:12.000]  like one option and, you know, one or two devices
[23:12.000 --> 23:15.000]  and sort of just like pigeonhole
[23:15.000 --> 23:17.000]  in the whole community in that way.
[23:17.000 --> 23:20.000]  So, I'm hoping that by bringing this discussion up now,
[23:20.000 --> 23:25.000]  we can kind of prevent that from happening.
[23:25.000 --> 23:28.000]  And, yeah, it'd be cool if, like,
[23:28.000 --> 23:30.000]  desktop Linux had something like that.
[23:30.000 --> 23:34.000]  But I think we're also kind of in a more unique situation,
[23:34.000 --> 23:38.000]  like people that want to run Linux on their desktop.
[23:38.000 --> 23:40.000]  The hardware is kind of boring, right?
[23:40.000 --> 23:42.000]  Like, it's mostly x86.
[23:42.000 --> 23:44.000]  It's kind of a solved problem.
[23:44.000 --> 23:47.000]  Every so often, you'll get, like, a Wi-Fi module that acts up
[23:47.000 --> 23:49.000]  and, like, oh, wow, you know, unsupported hardware.
[23:49.000 --> 23:53.000]  But on phones, it's like, oh, wow, the whole platform doesn't work,
[23:53.000 --> 23:54.000]  right?
[23:54.000 --> 23:55.000]  And then you kind of, like, start from the ground up.
[23:55.000 --> 23:59.000]  And it's getting better as, like, Luca was talking about.
[23:59.000 --> 24:01.000]  And the work that people are doing on Mainline Linux,
[24:01.000 --> 24:04.000]  it's getting better, right, with device spring up.
[24:04.000 --> 24:08.000]  But there's still a lot of, like, weird hardware out there.
[24:08.000 --> 24:14.000]  And so, yeah, I think, like, a lot of the organization can
[24:14.000 --> 24:17.000]  benefit some of that, because, again, a lot of these distros
[24:17.000 --> 24:19.000]  are targeting some of the same hardware.
[24:19.000 --> 24:22.000]  So, like, when you run into a problem, it's almost certainly
[24:22.000 --> 24:27.000]  going to be specific to, like, some device model
[24:27.000 --> 24:30.000]  or some family of SoCs.
[24:30.000 --> 24:33.000]  And so, like, as distros, we want to know what those problems are,
[24:33.000 --> 24:37.000]  so we're not having to try to solve them individually.
[24:37.000 --> 24:39.000]  Hope that answers your question.
[24:39.000 --> 24:41.000]  Yeah.
[24:41.000 --> 25:09.000]  I did think there's at least two things, you know, proposed.
[25:09.000 --> 25:16.000]  No, I think those are two things I'd like to see happen.
[25:16.000 --> 25:19.000]  I think they're very much related, right?
[25:19.000 --> 25:24.000]  What I mean by that is if the distros can get their shit together,
[25:24.000 --> 25:27.000]  then the end user experience gets better, right?
[25:27.000 --> 25:30.000]  I think, in my opinion, people who develop applications
[25:30.000 --> 25:33.000]  for distros and don't necessarily have to think too hard
[25:33.000 --> 25:35.000]  about the distros or can at least, like, you know,
[25:35.000 --> 25:37.000]  get the feedback necessary to make something
[25:37.000 --> 25:40.000]  that works everywhere, gives end users more choices.
[25:40.000 --> 25:43.000]  They can run more distributions based on,
[25:43.000 --> 25:47.000]  and they may not care, right, in some cases,
[25:47.000 --> 25:51.000]  but also, like, it kind of sucks using a phone
[25:51.000 --> 25:55.000]  and running into a problem that's, like, distro-specific, right?
[25:55.000 --> 26:00.000]  And you kind of want your applications to work the same,
[26:00.000 --> 26:02.000]  regardless of what distro you have, right?
[26:02.000 --> 26:05.000]  Because you don't want to have a phone
[26:05.000 --> 26:08.000]  that's running post-market OS that supports, like,
[26:08.000 --> 26:11.000]  you know, these applications and these features and whatnot,
[26:11.000 --> 26:14.000]  and then have a device running Manjaro or Mobian or something else,
[26:14.000 --> 26:17.000]  and, you know, you have a different set of things that work there,
[26:17.000 --> 26:20.000]  and then you have, you know, another phone with some other distro on there
[26:20.000 --> 26:23.000]  with, you know, some different set of applications
[26:23.000 --> 26:25.000]  and stuff that work there.
[26:25.000 --> 26:29.000]  So I think by getting all the distros kind of, you know, organized,
[26:29.000 --> 26:32.000]  and I don't think it's just distros.
[26:32.000 --> 26:35.000]  I think it's also OEMs, too,
[26:35.000 --> 26:37.000]  and other projects that are in the community,
[26:37.000 --> 26:40.000]  I think, should also be a part of this as well.
[26:40.000 --> 26:43.000]  And by kind of getting our stuff together,
[26:43.000 --> 26:48.000]  then we can help with providing a more consistent experience
[26:48.000 --> 26:52.000]  for end users who, you know, that's what they want.
[26:52.000 --> 26:54.000]  They want their phone to work.
[26:54.000 --> 27:04.000]  That sounds like a great closing statement.