User-Interfaces
At the moment Weston is the default UI for postmarketOS. It is simple and helps us to keep researching and developing the base of pmOS but in the future we will also support other more sophisticated and fancy User Interfaces.
Here is a list showing examples and the on-going work on this topic.
User Interfaces
Weston
Weston is the default, minimal, interface based on XWayland. It allows developers to do "simple" things like running firefox and opening a terminal, plus testing the touchscreen and other peripherals.
Project page: https://github.com/wayland-project/weston
Plasma Mobile
Plasma Mobile is a mobile variant of the KDE Plasma user interface, optimized for touchscreen.
Work in Progress.
For more information, see issues #161, and #378.
Project page: https://plasma-mobile.org/
Hildon
Hildon is an application framework originally developed for mobile devices (PDAs, mobile phones, etc.) running the Linux operating system as well as the Symbian operating system. It was developed by Nokia for the Maemo operating system and is now a part of GNOME. It focuses on providing a finger-friendly interface. It is primarily a set of GTK+ extensions that provide mobile-device–oriented functionality, but also provides a desktop environment that includes a task navigator for opening and switching between programs, a control panel for user settings, and status bar, task bar and home applets. It is standard on the Maemo platform used by the Nokia Internet Tablets and the Nokia N900 smartphone.
Hildon is based on GTK2 and there is a work in progress port to GTK3.
For more information, see PR #461.
MATE
MATE is a full GTK-based desktop environment forked from the code base of GNOME 2.
Xfce4
Xfce4 is another full GTK-based desktop environment, aiming to be fast and lightweight.
Others
See issue #62 for more information on other UIs that could be ported to postmarketOS. Some of these are:
- ubports (Fork of the discontinued Ubuntu Phone project)
- mer/SailfishOS related:
- sway
- LuneOS (link) (UI from continuation of webOS, HP's discontinued and open sourced mobile operating system with Wayland and QT5)
- PDA interfaces, may be desirable, as they are suited to devices capable of stylus input, such as the Nokia N900 and Galaxy Note devices, as well as devices with constrained system resources. There is some work into porting components from these to PMOS.
- Other graphical interfaces supported by Alpine should work to some extent on pmOS. These include GNOME 3.
How to choose a different UI
You have to configure pmbootstrap
before generating the system image either by pmbootstrap init
or pmbootstrap config
:
$ ./pmbootstrap init [09:22:39] Target device (either an existing one, or a new one for porting). [09:22:39] Available (49): amazon-thor, asus-flo, asus-grouper, asus-tf101, fairphone-fp2, google-glass, htc-ace, htc-bravo, huawei-angler, huawei-y530, leeco-s2, lenovo-karate, lg-d285, lg-d855, lg-dory, lg-h815, lg-hammerhead, lg-lenok, lg-mako, motorola-osprey, motorola-shamu, motorola-titan, nokia-rx51, oneplus-bacon, oneplus-onyx, qemu-aarch64, qemu-amd64, qemu-vexpress, samsung-espresso10, samsung-i747m, samsung-i9003, samsung-i9070, samsung-i9100, samsung-i9195, samsung-i9305, samsung-i9505, samsung-maguro, samsung-n7100, samsung-s6500d, semc-anzu, sony-amami, sony-aries, sony-castor-windy, sony-honami, sony-yuga, t2m-flame, teclast-x80pro, wiko-lenny3, xiaomi-ido [09:22:39] Device [qemu-amd64]: [09:22:56] Available user interfaces (6): [09:22:56] * none: No graphical environment [09:22:56] * hildon: (X11) Lightweight GTK+2 UI (optimized for single-touch touchscreens) [09:22:56] * luna: (Wayland) webOS UI, ported from the LuneOS project (Not working yet) [09:22:56] * mate: (X11) MATE Desktop Environment, fork of GNOME2 (stylus recommended) [09:22:56] * plasma-mobile: (Wayland) Mobile variant of KDE Plasma, optimized for touchscreen [09:22:56] * weston: (Wayland) Reference compositor (demo, not a phone interface) [09:22:56] * xfce4: (X11) Lightweight GTK+2 desktop (stylus recommended)
$ ./pmbootstrap config ui weston