14 DAY TRIAL // Today, July 25, KDE e.V., the organization behind the modern, mature, and robust KDE desktop environment, which is used in numerous Linux kernel-based operating systems, has had the great pleasure of announcing a new project targeted at mobile device, Plasma Mobile.
We reported the other day that some detailed information was posted on the Internet about a so-called Plasma Phone UI that runs on top of the next-generation Wayland display server and is based on existing technologies from Canonical's Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system and the Kubuntu Linux distribution.
Now it's official, as KDE has posted detailed news about its upcoming Plasma Mobile interface, which promises to offer you the freedom you've always wanted to hack it, modify it how you see fit, and redistribute it. It also promises to be user-friendly, to protect and respect your privacy at all times, as well as to be highly customized and modular.
"Plasma Mobile offers a Free (as in freedom and beer), user-friendly, privacy-enabling, customizable platform for mobile devices," says Sebastian Kügler. "Plasma Mobile is Free software, and is now developed via an open process. Plasma Mobile is currently under development with a prototype available providing basic functions to run on a smartphone."
A prototype is available now for LG Nexus 5
According to KDE, the Plasma Mobile project is designed from the ground up to use the full power of a mobile phone, and it promises to offer support for all kinds of applications, including native KDE apps written in Qt, GTK+ apps, Ubuntu apps, as well as Android apps.
Plasma Mobile is available today as a developer preview, supporting the LG Nexus 5 smartphone from Google. At the moment of writing this article, the software offers support for making and receiving phone calls, a workspace for system management, as well as a task switcher for controlling and navigating apps.
