18 ms·

PinePhone Manjaro Community Edition

349 points by jandeboevrie 6y ago

hasperdi 6y ago
This is an exciting development! I am though wondering, if the current version is stable & working well enough to be a daily driver / main phone.
fsflover 6y ago
I wonder if it will be powered by Purism's Phosh (by default) like many other distros already. "Phosh is current available on 8 different mobile distros that have been ported to the PinePhone, and Phosh is the preferred DE on 7 of those 8." https://amosbbatto.wordpress.com/2020/08/05/advantages-of-phosh/ https://amosbbatto.wordpress.com/2020/08/05/advantages-of-ph... The list of those distros is in the link.
- joshumax 6y ago
  Manjaro on the PinePhone currently has 2 branches. The first alphas used Plasma Mobile and another branch of alphas use Phosh. Work on the Plasma Mobile builds seems to have slowed down for Manjaro ARM, partially likely due to some UI instability and also because the Phosh experience currently feels more polished.
- MYEUHD 6y ago
  > There are currently three Manjaro PinePhone build variants (Lomiri, Phosh and Plasma Mobile) for users to try out
collyw 6y ago
I like Manjaro and I like the idea of an open source phone, but I was disappointed by the Ubuntu phone after actually buying one. It's basically that "content is king", with the content being apps. Is this going to be the same? (A lot of the apps on the Ubuntu phone were web based rather than native, which is actually a drawback when you don't have an internet connection. There was no way to do offline maps for example).
- linmob 6y ago
  The app situation is not perfect, but there are some (not all available on every distribution): https://linmobapps.frama.io https://linmobapps.frama.io. Specifically Pure Maps is available as a Flatpak and can be used in conjunction with OSM Scout Server for Offline Maps. Also, Anbox support got almost usable in the PinePhone’s ArchLinuxARM distribution with working networking and a working keyboard just yesterday, so some Android apps are going to work. I expect Manjaro to ship at least the same level of Anbox support with their PinePhone CE.
- sukilot 6y ago
  What about Open Street Map? https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Using_OpenStreetMap_offline https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Using_OpenStreetMap_offl... ?
- arghwhat 6y ago
  The phones are made, and sold at this price, as a community service to help develop the open source platforms (postmarketOS, ubuntu touch, etc.), not as a consumer phone. A prototype of sorts.
- opan 6y ago
  I also got the UBPorts Community Edition. I highly recommend installing postmarketOS or something else. Ubuntu Touch has this strange locked down approach, mounting the FS read-only and forcing a [buggy] gui on you. With pmOS I can install programs I'm familiar with from my computer, use the package manager over ssh and update everything with one command, view processes in htop, edit things in vim, etc. It's a lot of fun now, and I was rather miserable when I used Ubuntu Touch the first couple days I had it. pmOS also supports LUKS full disk encryption at install time, which is pretty cool.
  - RealStickman_ 6y ago
    I actually found the UI to be quite good on Ubuntu Touch. However I swapped it for mobian due to its locked down nature same as you did.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
xorcist 6y ago
Is this the same hardware revision as the previous, postmarketOS-based, one?
- hoistbypetard 6y ago
  According to the article, yes: > Both configurations of the Manjaro CE PinePhones feature rev. 1.2a PCBA, introduced with postmarketOS CE that is currently shipping.
DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
Can someone help me understand the relationship between phone hardware and carriers in the US? I recently bought a new, unlocked Samsung phone on Amazon. When I put a Verizon SIM card into it, a Verizon-specific firmware module got added. I don't understand why that would be necessary. Asking because I'm attracted to the idea of a phone I truly control, but not sure what that means for carrier compatibility.
- jbj 6y ago
  I used 3 different unlocked phones in US, as for US sim cards, I used MetroPCS, T-mobile, and Cricket, non of those added anything, althought their respective websites told me about an app they strongly reccomended. Only trace was the Sim card toolkit menu which was diaplayed for whatever inserted sim card, but I never used any of those.
  - sloshnmosh 6y ago
    Depending on the device you are using you might not have noticed. I used WireShark on a hotspot that my unlocked IPhone was using and captured the visual voicemail blob used by Cricket/AT&T just last week. Also, the SIM card toolkit can be used remotely by your provider. Lookup SimBad exploit
- joecool1029 6y ago
  T-Mobile and Verizon should allow any modern device. Verizon used to need a activation conponent for the CDMA radio but modern devices just use LTE and voLTE. They did have a visual voicemail blob that used to be pulled in, but now they follow spec and don't require anything special. Sprint (which is now T-Mobile) has required an activation app for their CDMA devices called SprintDM. Without it, phone will not activate and work. Most alternative OS like LineageOS don't include it, but if you activate on stock OS and don't wipe modem partitions, it continues to work. Thankfully they are transitioning to T-Mobile network. AT&T has no activation crap but may not let imported devices based on IMEI numbers they don't have.
  - deepstack 6y ago
Foxboron 6y ago
Every time the Pine64/Pinephone stuff gets mentioned I go looking for the Arch Linux ARM project mentions, and donation links. Previously they just avoid mentioning this, but most of the Manjaro ARM stuff couldn't happen without the tireless work of the Arch ARM developers. I've had to repeatedly mention they shouldn't remove attribution from PKGBUILDs they take from Arch ARM. https://gitlab.manjaro.org/manjaro-arm/packages/core/linux-rpi4/commit/d9f94b8fb3e6260c159763cba176cea2358573dd https://gitlab.manjaro.org/manjaro-arm/packages/core/linux-r... Also begging for donations to Manjaro ARM, but with no mentions of Arch ARM. This was fixed with the old announcements, but it seems like any donations has been removed from current announcements. > We will donate $10 per unit sold to the Manjaro development team. To learn more about this scheme please click here. But where? Currently there is Manjaro the Company and Manjaro the Community. Both has separate funds, which is partially where the treasurer drama stems from. And is there any donations to the dependant projects? This annoys me as most of the packaging efforts are on the Arch ARM side of things, not Manjaro. You can open any of their distributed ISOs and take a look at the packager information.
- MayeulC 6y ago
  > Every time the Pine64/Pinephone stuff gets mentioned You probably mean Manjaro/Pinephone or something like this, I initially thought you equated Pinephone with Manjaro. (hint for others: it is not, there are a various other compatible distros). I agree that Arch Arm upstream does a pretty good job, though that packaging job is 70% orthogonal to, say, alpine+postmarketos packaging :)
  - brtln 6y ago
    I believe postmarketOS team closely collaborates with Alpine. It cannot be said about Manjaro, neither in relation to Arch or Arch ARM.
    - unixhero 6y ago
      Manjaro is downstream from Arch.
crazypython 6y ago
Do these support Android apps? How would I develop a native app for one of these?
- Shared404 6y ago
  > Do these support Android apps? They do not, at least not yet. They may support anbox at some point, but that's not a given. > How would I develop a native app for one of these? The same as you would for any Linux distro. I would check out Plasma Mobile, as they have toolkit's and a workflow already in place is my understanding.
  - mikece 6y ago
    > They do not, at least not yet. And hopefully never. Almost all Android apps rely on the closed-source GMS for essential functionality (eg: push notifications). There will need to be an open alternative to GMS if the goal is to support Android apps but a better idea would be to abandon Android as template basis going forward.
    - vinay427 6y ago
      There are a number of apps I use and depend on that work fine without Google services. Signal comes to mind, for instance. I agree that a better template would be great, but I can't imagine we'll get there anytime soon, and I would love to use my PinePhone as a daily driver in the near future. I won't do this without a few key apps that don't have direct alternatives considering some people with whom I would like to communicate only use these options. I think getting people onto devices that support open and flexible alternatives is the first step to actually converting users to these alternatives. I won't switch to a platform that doesn't let me communicate with people I know, and I wouldn't expect others to do so either. However, I could get people to switch from a less convenient option (e.g. Signal on Anbox) to a more convenient option (e.g. Matrix for messaging) in time.
      - oropolo 6y ago
candiddevmike 6y ago
I personally would avoid anything Manjaro related due to recurring controversies around the project leadership: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/hxpj87/change_in_manjaro_team_composition_announcements/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/hxpj87/change_in_man... I wish PinePhone would partner with Arch or Debian instead.
- glenstein 6y ago
  I share this concern. Their own treasurer raised a concern as to whether community donated funds were handled according to the process they had put in place. For a period of time while this was happening, they responded by hiding forum threads about the subject. Eventually the treasurer parted ways with the team, and although they claim they didn't kick their treasurer out, their treasurer felt more or less like they had no choice but to leave, feeling effectively kicked out. Their apparent respect for their own stated internal practices was basically non-existent and their way of addressing concern raised does not appear to have been great, and their attempt to shut down discussion without explaining anything was bad, and when they did make a statement it did not feel entirely forthright or comprehensive, and it was different in many ways from what the treasurer had said, making it hard to figure out what really happened. It doesn't appear that any money was used in an improper way (all valid project-related costs, no tickets to Disneyland), only that it was not reviewed + processed consistently with their own internal policies. The management wants to emphasize the 'no improper use' part, which is fair enough so far as it goes. But it does not make them appear trustworthy should there be a real question in the future where we need to rely on their version of events to get to the bottom of something. Related discussion on lemmy: https://dev.lemmy.ml/post/38078 https://dev.lemmy.ml/post/38078
  - Zancarius 6y ago
    ...and it's not even just the controversies. Manjaro feels like they play fast and loose with everything. Arch doesn't include AUR helpers by default specifically because of the potential for user-generated packages to install malware or do something damaging (with the intent being that if you want to use the AUR you really ought to understand the implications). Manjaro not only includes AUR helpers--it seems to actively encourage its use for packages not officially maintained. Though, in their defense, their wiki page does (finally?) include fair warnings borrowed from Arch[1]. I'm just not sure it shares the same visibility. Otherwise it feels like a parasitic project masquerading as "Arch but easier." While there is truth to the latter, the oddly curious aspect to me--having been helping newbie Linux users for a couple years now--is that it seems new users generally have more long-term problems with Manjaro than they do with Arch. I don't have any facts to back this up, but speaking from my own anecdotes one would think the "easier" distro wouldn't be subject to this sort of trouble. Also, they recently lost all of their support forum images earlier this month[2]. [1] https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Arch_User_Repository https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Arch_User_Repository [2] https://linuxreviews.org/Manjaro_Linux_Lost_All_Of_Their_Support_Forum_Images https://linuxreviews.org/Manjaro_Linux_Lost_All_Of_Their_Sup...
yearoflinux 6y ago
As someone who has always made fun of "year of linux on desktop", I want to say this move will finally pave a way for the next decade to end with "year of linux on mobile". Using a popular distro will be the push linux needed on phone. While Manjaro users themselves (IMHO) aren't really developers, this is gateway to get Arch people involved. Arch is a very vibrant community with a lot of people who try to contribute back. Good decision. Can't wait to use netcat for quick chat with friends :) (PS: I know supremacists will claim Android is linux but the thing about supremacists is they no real ideals so they will ignore how close Android is)
- blendergeek 6y ago
  > (PS: I know supremacists will claim Android is linux but the thing about supremacists is they no real ideals so they will ignore how close Android is) That Android contains the Linux (R) kernel is no mere "claim", rather it is the truth. Also, obviously, Android is not what anyone was thinking of when they say "Linux". This confusion stems from people using the term "Linux" both to refer to a kernel (the original and still accepted meaning) and to refer to an operating system combining said kernel with the GNU userspace.
  - trenchgun 6y ago
    Exactly! https://youtu.be/QXUSvSUsx80 https://youtu.be/QXUSvSUsx80
  - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
    Precisely; Android is a perfect example of why it's meaningful to call it GNU+Linux, because Android+Linux and busybox+Linux (Alpine and some embedded systems) are real things that are really Linux systems, but the userland is actually a pretty big deal.
Const-me 6y ago
I wonder are there similar devices with 3-4” displays instead of 6”? I don’t even need purposely-built Linux phone, I am OK getting one with Android and installing Linux myself. I want modern hardware (LTE, GLES 3.1, ideally optical camera stabilization), reasonably new Linux kernel, and good software support for basic functions (touch screen, phone, SMS, camera, web browser).
- ncmncm 6y ago
  It is effectively impossible to install an upstream kernel on random phone hardware. It is very hard to field a phone that can take a kernel without proprietary blobs tied to a particular ancient kernel. So, there are two live efforts in that direction, PinePhone and Librem 5.
  - Const-me 6y ago
    There're devices out there which started as proprietary hardware, then community implemented the support. RTL-SDR was initially a TV tuner, Raspberry Pi SoC was designed for a set top box, people made XBMC (now Kodi) re-purposing game console into a Linux media player. Why that never happens to cell phones, what's so special about them?
    - ncmncm 6y ago
      Cellphones have a lot of peculiar, absolutely undocumented and very buggy peripherals, and tricky system-level power management demands. Pi's SOC was meant to be designed in to a variety of products, so needed to be documented and understood. Cell phone chips are dumpster fires, as a rule, and are forgotten by their manufacturer within months of first delivery.
      - Const-me 6y ago
        Good points, but on the other hand the market penetration is enormous, e.g. Samsung probably shipped hundreds of millions of their galaxies. There’re thousands of exceptionally good software developers worldwide. It’s surprising no one so far found a good way to re-purpose the hardware. The OS kernel is open source already (wasn’t the case for the original xbox), and all these proprietary firmware blobs are shipped with the devices.
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
I see several comments questioning the choice of Manjaro on PinePhone, but as the name suggests it's Community Edition after all; Those who want Manjaro on smartphone, now have a device to develop for. I think, the way Pine64 is pushing these CE devices is smart and definitely a positive step for overall pure Linux smartphone ecosystem. But, I'm also hearing great things about Mobian[1] on PinePhone and AFAIK it's being largely developed by an individual. I would like Pine64 to come up with a way to support these talented individual developers as well, besides supporting large well-established communities. [1]https://mobian-project.org/ https://mobian-project.org/
- RealStickman_ 6y ago
  I can confirm that Mobian is pretty good. And I'd love a community edition of it.
- squeezingswirls 6y ago
  Meanwhile you can install Mobian in any Pinephone, and support the Mobian Project here https://liberapay.com/mobian/donate https://liberapay.com/mobian/donate
- megous 6y ago
  Lot of the projects pinephone depends on are developed just by a bunch of talented individuals. Majority of the PinePhone specific bootloader/firwmare/kernel driver work and upstreaming is done by maybe 3 individuals, neither of whom are associated with any of the distros supported so far, AFAIK. And you can't have a working distro without a working kernel. A lot of value is based on the results of linux-sunxi.org project, and related communities, like lima project, etc. It's FOSS, hey. Everything depends on everything, and it's kind of a hard to support everyone. I personally wish for a "Linux kernel CE" edition, in the future, being one of those kernel devs. ;)
  - tpxl 6y ago
    How/where does one contribute? Is there a guide specifically for this (phone/pinephone development). I couldn't quite figure it out from the mobian repo ):
smoyer 6y ago
I've got an (old) Samsung Galaxy S4 that I've stuck with because it suits my needs and it still works well. Knowing that it will eventually die, I guess I have two questions I'd love to have answered by Pinephone owners: 1) Is a Pinephone a viable alternative either iOS or Android? 2) How do you get it connected to carrier X?
- blendergeek 6y ago
  Disclaimer: I do not (yet) have my Pinephone. > 1) Is a Pinephone a viable alternative either iOS or Android? A Pinephone will never support all the proprietary apps (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Fortnite, etc). In order to be viable, I would say a phone needs to support phone calls, SMS, MMS, camera, GPS/Navigation, and have a fast and snappy web browser. Currently the Pinephone supports everything except MMS (which is necessary for "texting" pictures and groups). Because you will not have access to FB Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram, Snapchat, etc on a Pinephone, you will have to you SMS/MMS for communication if you want to interoperate with people from the mainstream. 2) For T-Mobile based carriers in the US, you just stick in the simcard.
  - squeezingswirls 6y ago
    You're mostly right but there's the Anbox project to somewhat fill that gap.
  - syl_sau 6y ago
    > you will not have access to FB Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram, etc. Actually you can access Facebook, Instagram and Twitter messages through their respective websites (and you can get notifications from the site if the browser supports it), but no WhatsApp nor Snapchat -- though Anbox might just fix this problem.
  - cocoa19 6y ago
    "A Pinephone will never support all the proprietary apps (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Fortnite, etc)." That sounds like a feature I'm excited about :).
josteink 6y ago
I pre-ordered the PmOS community edition, and it's getting delivered tomorrow. From what I can tell, this is the same HW, but without a different distro pre-loaded. I'm super-stoked to try out the different distros, and will definitely give Manjaro a shot too :)
- squeezingswirls 6y ago
  Yes, it's the same hardware with a different distro pre-installed, and a different back cover.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- cookiengineer 6y ago
  > I pre-ordered the PmOS community edition, and it's getting delivered tomorrow. How did you get notified? I didn't receive any email since my purchase (I only have the receipt). Contacted sales@pine64 and opened up a support ticket, but haven't got any replies from them.
  - ncmncm 6y ago
    You get an SMS from DHL identifying Syabas Tech as the shipper. (This is a different Syabas from the one that manages tap water in Malaysia.) Anyway I did.
    - josteink 6y ago
      Yeah same here. SMS (and email) from DHL about shipment on the way from “Syabas Technology Hong Kong Limited”. I also never got an order-confirmation upon ordering, but received one later quite swiftly when I emailed support and asked.
slantyyz 6y ago
Does anyone know if you can heavily customize the user interface of the PinePhone? The reason why I'm asking is that I have yet to find a feature phone or smartphone that my father (in his 80s) can use. He basically doesn't want to learn new things, and he's more interested in learning/memorizing repeatable steps than intuiting how to do things by reading text on the screen. All he needs is the ability to make/receive calls, and easily get the bluetooth built into his car to connect to the phone. The bluetooth is a nice-to-have though. I haven't had much luck with feature phones because he doesn't (want to) understand rocker switches or navigation using arrow keys. I also tried the "dummy" launchers on Android, but didn't get very far with him. He's also tried iPhones, but didn't get very far. The funny thing is that he's pretty good with the Nortel phone he uses with his land line in terms of dialing favorites, etc.
- dleslie 6y ago
  You're not tied to a particular OS, even, so yes.
- ThePowerOfFuet 6y ago
  Why a smartphone? A Nokia 101 (or whichever model above it which has Bluetooth) seems like a much better fit.
  - slantyyz 6y ago
    He already has a Nokia feature phone. The problem is that a feature phone has more features than he needs, and sometimes requires navigation to perform a task. Also, some of the physical controls are rockers, which he doesn't seem to grasp. If I could at least limit him to a phone app (with no easy way to get to the home screen) with discrete buttons for almost everything and almost no navigation, I think he'd be able to get by better than he does now.
- monoideism 6y ago
  Sounds like a feature phone would be a much better fit for him than a smartphone. Maybe pick out 2-3 to look at and have him choose one. Bonus is they're much cheaper.
Teichopsia 6y ago
I have a spare phone which I would like to flash but I have not been able to find any device specific information on how to do it. I checked XDA but they don't have any device specific info. Google returns sketchy pages wanting to install software. The phone is not on the list of supported devices on lineage OS website. And I have been unable to find a how-to do it yourself guide. I followed a guide on how to do it over a decade ago and that is as far as my knowledge goes. I suspect things have changed since??? I would appreciate if someone could point me in the right direction. The device, a blu G5 plus (which when I search on XDA it returns Moto G5 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) Edit: Nevermind, I believe I've got it.
- klerpi 6y ago
  How did you do it? Support got dropped for my mi a1
moreorless 6y ago
Anyone actually using this as a daily driver? I am completely Apple free except for the the phone. I would love to be able to ditch that.
- bjo590 6y ago
  Most people cannot live w/o MMS or some apps that do not have a mobile website equivalent.
megous 6y ago
Anyway, with all those distros piling up for PinePhone, I finally decided to release p-boot with display support and GUI multi-boot menu. https://xnux.eu/p-boot/ https://xnux.eu/p-boot/ I'll make some multi-boot SD card demo image next, perhaps with postmarket, arch linux, mobian and ubuntu touch. :)
- hideevidence 6y ago
  Your work is impressive! What's amazing is the mere seconds you see a productive screen in. Android takes full 30 seconds for me.
  - megous 6y ago
    That requires a customized PID 1 init program and a lightweight GUI (that map app is just ~10MiB of code + some code for postgresql that runs in the background) - most of the delay there is waiting for the postgresql to start up, actually. Arch Linux to some lightweight GUI based on Xorg/i3wm takes about 8s. Similar for my Electron/X11 fullscreen based GUI for the phone (also in the video). Both are much larger. Sadly, the Linux userspace is quite bloated, and the limiting factor is loading times from storage to RAM. You basically need to load >200 MiB of binaries/.so files to have anything useable running. With eMMC speed of ~85MiB/s and SD card speed of 25MiB/s max for sequential reads only, you get the picture of where the most of the delay is.
    - justinclift 6y ago
      Is this one of the cases where PostgreSQL is overkill and something like SQLite would be a better fit?
      - megous 6y ago
        I like the fact that I can get easy to set up replication, without much effort, that works reliably with frequent network failures and such.
Waterfall 6y ago
Can the pinephone hardware realistically be used to run Linux comfortably on mobile? The pinebook sucked and this is the same hardware,the pinebook pro has 4gb and still struggles
- fsflover 6y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH3RbrwhNd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH3RbrwhNd8
  - Waterfall 6y ago
    Is it running without power savings? It's better than I thought it would run
FullyFunctional 6y ago
My immediate reaction when seeing the phone: thank $randomdeity that the screen is a proper rectangle and not some moronic almost-oval (eff you Apple).
phre4k 6y ago
Cool, does it include a small dial to put the clocks back when they manage to let their TLS certificates run out the 4th time?
panpanna 6y ago
Here is an unpopular opinion: Phones are hard, maybe the FOSS world should put more effort into the pine tablet for now. Because the core system of not ready yet much less the telephony stuff, and yet here we are doing distro hoping and pretending our apps are touch friendly.
Valkhyr 6y ago
I'd really like an unbranded version with these (or better) specs, even at a slightly higher price (I don't particularly identify with any of the distros that have been released so far, not to say there is anything bad about them of course :-)). I imagine that is what the final retail version will be? I'm on pre-order for a Librem 5, but the Pinephone is more compact, and since I'd want it essentially as a portable linux computer in addition to a regular daily driver smartphone (i.e. carry two "phones"), it might fit my needs better...
- seba_dos1 6y ago
  Dunno if I'd call PinePhone "more compact". It's thinner, but it's bigger (about 1.5cm higher). I'm holding both of them next to each other right now and Librem 5 ends where the PinePhone's camera begins.

349 points by jandeboevrie 6y ago

This is an exciting development! I am though wondering, if the current version is stable & working well enough to be a daily driver / main phone.

fsflover 6y ago

I wonder if it will be powered by Purism's Phosh (by default) like many other distros already. "Phosh is current available on 8 different mobile distros that have been ported to the PinePhone, and Phosh is the preferred DE on 7 of those 8." https://amosbbatto.wordpress.com/2020/08/05/advantages-of-phosh/ https://amosbbatto.wordpress.com/2020/08/05/advantages-of-ph... The list of those distros is in the link.

joshumax 6y ago
Manjaro on the PinePhone currently has 2 branches. The first alphas used Plasma Mobile and another branch of alphas use Phosh. Work on the Plasma Mobile builds seems to have slowed down for Manjaro ARM, partially likely due to some UI instability and also because the Phosh experience currently feels more polished.
MYEUHD 6y ago
> There are currently three Manjaro PinePhone build variants (Lomiri, Phosh and Plasma Mobile) for users to try out

collyw 6y ago

I like Manjaro and I like the idea of an open source phone, but I was disappointed by the Ubuntu phone after actually buying one. It's basically that "content is king", with the content being apps. Is this going to be the same? (A lot of the apps on the Ubuntu phone were web based rather than native, which is actually a drawback when you don't have an internet connection. There was no way to do offline maps for example).

linmob 6y ago
The app situation is not perfect, but there are some (not all available on every distribution): https://linmobapps.frama.io https://linmobapps.frama.io. Specifically Pure Maps is available as a Flatpak and can be used in conjunction with OSM Scout Server for Offline Maps. Also, Anbox support got almost usable in the PinePhone’s ArchLinuxARM distribution with working networking and a working keyboard just yesterday, so some Android apps are going to work. I expect Manjaro to ship at least the same level of Anbox support with their PinePhone CE.
sukilot 6y ago
What about Open Street Map? https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Using_OpenStreetMap_offline https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Using_OpenStreetMap_offl... ?
arghwhat 6y ago
The phones are made, and sold at this price, as a community service to help develop the open source platforms (postmarketOS, ubuntu touch, etc.), not as a consumer phone. A prototype of sorts.
opan 6y ago
I also got the UBPorts Community Edition. I highly recommend installing postmarketOS or something else. Ubuntu Touch has this strange locked down approach, mounting the FS read-only and forcing a [buggy] gui on you. With pmOS I can install programs I'm familiar with from my computer, use the package manager over ssh and update everything with one command, view processes in htop, edit things in vim, etc. It's a lot of fun now, and I was rather miserable when I used Ubuntu Touch the first couple days I had it. pmOS also supports LUKS full disk encryption at install time, which is pretty cool.
- RealStickman_ 6y ago
  I actually found the UI to be quite good on Ubuntu Touch. However I swapped it for mobian due to its locked down nature same as you did.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago

xorcist 6y ago

Is this the same hardware revision as the previous, postmarketOS-based, one?

hoistbypetard 6y ago
According to the article, yes: > Both configurations of the Manjaro CE PinePhones feature rev. 1.2a PCBA, introduced with postmarketOS CE that is currently shipping.

DoofusOfDeath 6y ago

Can someone help me understand the relationship between phone hardware and carriers in the US? I recently bought a new, unlocked Samsung phone on Amazon. When I put a Verizon SIM card into it, a Verizon-specific firmware module got added. I don't understand why that would be necessary. Asking because I'm attracted to the idea of a phone I truly control, but not sure what that means for carrier compatibility.

jbj 6y ago
I used 3 different unlocked phones in US, as for US sim cards, I used MetroPCS, T-mobile, and Cricket, non of those added anything, althought their respective websites told me about an app they strongly reccomended. Only trace was the Sim card toolkit menu which was diaplayed for whatever inserted sim card, but I never used any of those.
- sloshnmosh 6y ago
  Depending on the device you are using you might not have noticed. I used WireShark on a hotspot that my unlocked IPhone was using and captured the visual voicemail blob used by Cricket/AT&T just last week. Also, the SIM card toolkit can be used remotely by your provider. Lookup SimBad exploit
joecool1029 6y ago
T-Mobile and Verizon should allow any modern device. Verizon used to need a activation conponent for the CDMA radio but modern devices just use LTE and voLTE. They did have a visual voicemail blob that used to be pulled in, but now they follow spec and don't require anything special. Sprint (which is now T-Mobile) has required an activation app for their CDMA devices called SprintDM. Without it, phone will not activate and work. Most alternative OS like LineageOS don't include it, but if you activate on stock OS and don't wipe modem partitions, it continues to work. Thankfully they are transitioning to T-Mobile network. AT&T has no activation crap but may not let imported devices based on IMEI numbers they don't have.
- deepstack 6y ago

Foxboron 6y ago

Every time the Pine64/Pinephone stuff gets mentioned I go looking for the Arch Linux ARM project mentions, and donation links. Previously they just avoid mentioning this, but most of the Manjaro ARM stuff couldn't happen without the tireless work of the Arch ARM developers. I've had to repeatedly mention they shouldn't remove attribution from PKGBUILDs they take from Arch ARM. https://gitlab.manjaro.org/manjaro-arm/packages/core/linux-rpi4/commit/d9f94b8fb3e6260c159763cba176cea2358573dd https://gitlab.manjaro.org/manjaro-arm/packages/core/linux-r... Also begging for donations to Manjaro ARM, but with no mentions of Arch ARM. This was fixed with the old announcements, but it seems like any donations has been removed from current announcements. > We will donate $10 per unit sold to the Manjaro development team. To learn more about this scheme please click here. But where? Currently there is Manjaro the Company and Manjaro the Community. Both has separate funds, which is partially where the treasurer drama stems from. And is there any donations to the dependant projects? This annoys me as most of the packaging efforts are on the Arch ARM side of things, not Manjaro. You can open any of their distributed ISOs and take a look at the packager information.

MayeulC 6y ago
> Every time the Pine64/Pinephone stuff gets mentioned You probably mean Manjaro/Pinephone or something like this, I initially thought you equated Pinephone with Manjaro. (hint for others: it is not, there are a various other compatible distros). I agree that Arch Arm upstream does a pretty good job, though that packaging job is 70% orthogonal to, say, alpine+postmarketos packaging :)
- brtln 6y ago
  I believe postmarketOS team closely collaborates with Alpine. It cannot be said about Manjaro, neither in relation to Arch or Arch ARM.
  - unixhero 6y ago
    Manjaro is downstream from Arch.

crazypython 6y ago

Do these support Android apps? How would I develop a native app for one of these?

Shared404 6y ago
> Do these support Android apps? They do not, at least not yet. They may support anbox at some point, but that's not a given. > How would I develop a native app for one of these? The same as you would for any Linux distro. I would check out Plasma Mobile, as they have toolkit's and a workflow already in place is my understanding.
- mikece 6y ago
  > They do not, at least not yet. And hopefully never. Almost all Android apps rely on the closed-source GMS for essential functionality (eg: push notifications). There will need to be an open alternative to GMS if the goal is to support Android apps but a better idea would be to abandon Android as template basis going forward.
  - vinay427 6y ago
    There are a number of apps I use and depend on that work fine without Google services. Signal comes to mind, for instance. I agree that a better template would be great, but I can't imagine we'll get there anytime soon, and I would love to use my PinePhone as a daily driver in the near future. I won't do this without a few key apps that don't have direct alternatives considering some people with whom I would like to communicate only use these options. I think getting people onto devices that support open and flexible alternatives is the first step to actually converting users to these alternatives. I won't switch to a platform that doesn't let me communicate with people I know, and I wouldn't expect others to do so either. However, I could get people to switch from a less convenient option (e.g. Signal on Anbox) to a more convenient option (e.g. Matrix for messaging) in time.
    - oropolo 6y ago

candiddevmike 6y ago

I personally would avoid anything Manjaro related due to recurring controversies around the project leadership: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/hxpj87/change_in_manjaro_team_composition_announcements/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/hxpj87/change_in_man... I wish PinePhone would partner with Arch or Debian instead.

glenstein 6y ago
I share this concern. Their own treasurer raised a concern as to whether community donated funds were handled according to the process they had put in place. For a period of time while this was happening, they responded by hiding forum threads about the subject. Eventually the treasurer parted ways with the team, and although they claim they didn't kick their treasurer out, their treasurer felt more or less like they had no choice but to leave, feeling effectively kicked out. Their apparent respect for their own stated internal practices was basically non-existent and their way of addressing concern raised does not appear to have been great, and their attempt to shut down discussion without explaining anything was bad, and when they did make a statement it did not feel entirely forthright or comprehensive, and it was different in many ways from what the treasurer had said, making it hard to figure out what really happened. It doesn't appear that any money was used in an improper way (all valid project-related costs, no tickets to Disneyland), only that it was not reviewed + processed consistently with their own internal policies. The management wants to emphasize the 'no improper use' part, which is fair enough so far as it goes. But it does not make them appear trustworthy should there be a real question in the future where we need to rely on their version of events to get to the bottom of something. Related discussion on lemmy: https://dev.lemmy.ml/post/38078 https://dev.lemmy.ml/post/38078
- Zancarius 6y ago
  ...and it's not even just the controversies. Manjaro feels like they play fast and loose with everything. Arch doesn't include AUR helpers by default specifically because of the potential for user-generated packages to install malware or do something damaging (with the intent being that if you want to use the AUR you really ought to understand the implications). Manjaro not only includes AUR helpers--it seems to actively encourage its use for packages not officially maintained. Though, in their defense, their wiki page does (finally?) include fair warnings borrowed from Arch[1]. I'm just not sure it shares the same visibility. Otherwise it feels like a parasitic project masquerading as "Arch but easier." While there is truth to the latter, the oddly curious aspect to me--having been helping newbie Linux users for a couple years now--is that it seems new users generally have more long-term problems with Manjaro than they do with Arch. I don't have any facts to back this up, but speaking from my own anecdotes one would think the "easier" distro wouldn't be subject to this sort of trouble. Also, they recently lost all of their support forum images earlier this month[2]. [1] https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Arch_User_Repository https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Arch_User_Repository [2] https://linuxreviews.org/Manjaro_Linux_Lost_All_Of_Their_Support_Forum_Images https://linuxreviews.org/Manjaro_Linux_Lost_All_Of_Their_Sup...

yearoflinux 6y ago

As someone who has always made fun of "year of linux on desktop", I want to say this move will finally pave a way for the next decade to end with "year of linux on mobile". Using a popular distro will be the push linux needed on phone. While Manjaro users themselves (IMHO) aren't really developers, this is gateway to get Arch people involved. Arch is a very vibrant community with a lot of people who try to contribute back. Good decision. Can't wait to use netcat for quick chat with friends :) (PS: I know supremacists will claim Android is linux but the thing about supremacists is they no real ideals so they will ignore how close Android is)

blendergeek 6y ago
> (PS: I know supremacists will claim Android is linux but the thing about supremacists is they no real ideals so they will ignore how close Android is) That Android contains the Linux (R) kernel is no mere "claim", rather it is the truth. Also, obviously, Android is not what anyone was thinking of when they say "Linux". This confusion stems from people using the term "Linux" both to refer to a kernel (the original and still accepted meaning) and to refer to an operating system combining said kernel with the GNU userspace.
- trenchgun 6y ago
  Exactly! https://youtu.be/QXUSvSUsx80 https://youtu.be/QXUSvSUsx80
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  Precisely; Android is a perfect example of why it's meaningful to call it GNU+Linux, because Android+Linux and busybox+Linux (Alpine and some embedded systems) are real things that are really Linux systems, but the userland is actually a pretty big deal.

Const-me 6y ago

I wonder are there similar devices with 3-4” displays instead of 6”? I don’t even need purposely-built Linux phone, I am OK getting one with Android and installing Linux myself. I want modern hardware (LTE, GLES 3.1, ideally optical camera stabilization), reasonably new Linux kernel, and good software support for basic functions (touch screen, phone, SMS, camera, web browser).

ncmncm 6y ago
It is effectively impossible to install an upstream kernel on random phone hardware. It is very hard to field a phone that can take a kernel without proprietary blobs tied to a particular ancient kernel. So, there are two live efforts in that direction, PinePhone and Librem 5.
- Const-me 6y ago
  There're devices out there which started as proprietary hardware, then community implemented the support. RTL-SDR was initially a TV tuner, Raspberry Pi SoC was designed for a set top box, people made XBMC (now Kodi) re-purposing game console into a Linux media player. Why that never happens to cell phones, what's so special about them?
  - ncmncm 6y ago
    Cellphones have a lot of peculiar, absolutely undocumented and very buggy peripherals, and tricky system-level power management demands. Pi's SOC was meant to be designed in to a variety of products, so needed to be documented and understood. Cell phone chips are dumpster fires, as a rule, and are forgotten by their manufacturer within months of first delivery.
    - Const-me 6y ago
      Good points, but on the other hand the market penetration is enormous, e.g. Samsung probably shipped hundreds of millions of their galaxies. There’re thousands of exceptionally good software developers worldwide. It’s surprising no one so far found a good way to re-purpose the hardware. The OS kernel is open source already (wasn’t the case for the original xbox), and all these proprietary firmware blobs are shipped with the devices.

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

I see several comments questioning the choice of Manjaro on PinePhone, but as the name suggests it's Community Edition after all; Those who want Manjaro on smartphone, now have a device to develop for. I think, the way Pine64 is pushing these CE devices is smart and definitely a positive step for overall pure Linux smartphone ecosystem. But, I'm also hearing great things about Mobian[1] on PinePhone and AFAIK it's being largely developed by an individual. I would like Pine64 to come up with a way to support these talented individual developers as well, besides supporting large well-established communities. [1]https://mobian-project.org/ https://mobian-project.org/

RealStickman_ 6y ago
I can confirm that Mobian is pretty good. And I'd love a community edition of it.
squeezingswirls 6y ago
Meanwhile you can install Mobian in any Pinephone, and support the Mobian Project here https://liberapay.com/mobian/donate https://liberapay.com/mobian/donate
megous 6y ago
Lot of the projects pinephone depends on are developed just by a bunch of talented individuals. Majority of the PinePhone specific bootloader/firwmare/kernel driver work and upstreaming is done by maybe 3 individuals, neither of whom are associated with any of the distros supported so far, AFAIK. And you can't have a working distro without a working kernel. A lot of value is based on the results of linux-sunxi.org project, and related communities, like lima project, etc. It's FOSS, hey. Everything depends on everything, and it's kind of a hard to support everyone. I personally wish for a "Linux kernel CE" edition, in the future, being one of those kernel devs. ;)
- tpxl 6y ago
  How/where does one contribute? Is there a guide specifically for this (phone/pinephone development). I couldn't quite figure it out from the mobian repo ):

smoyer 6y ago

I've got an (old) Samsung Galaxy S4 that I've stuck with because it suits my needs and it still works well. Knowing that it will eventually die, I guess I have two questions I'd love to have answered by Pinephone owners: 1) Is a Pinephone a viable alternative either iOS or Android? 2) How do you get it connected to carrier X?

blendergeek 6y ago
Disclaimer: I do not (yet) have my Pinephone. > 1) Is a Pinephone a viable alternative either iOS or Android? A Pinephone will never support all the proprietary apps (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Fortnite, etc). In order to be viable, I would say a phone needs to support phone calls, SMS, MMS, camera, GPS/Navigation, and have a fast and snappy web browser. Currently the Pinephone supports everything except MMS (which is necessary for "texting" pictures and groups). Because you will not have access to FB Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram, Snapchat, etc on a Pinephone, you will have to you SMS/MMS for communication if you want to interoperate with people from the mainstream. 2) For T-Mobile based carriers in the US, you just stick in the simcard.
- squeezingswirls 6y ago
  You're mostly right but there's the Anbox project to somewhat fill that gap.
- syl_sau 6y ago
  > you will not have access to FB Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram, etc. Actually you can access Facebook, Instagram and Twitter messages through their respective websites (and you can get notifications from the site if the browser supports it), but no WhatsApp nor Snapchat -- though Anbox might just fix this problem.
- cocoa19 6y ago
  "A Pinephone will never support all the proprietary apps (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Fortnite, etc)." That sounds like a feature I'm excited about :).

josteink 6y ago

I pre-ordered the PmOS community edition, and it's getting delivered tomorrow. From what I can tell, this is the same HW, but without a different distro pre-loaded. I'm super-stoked to try out the different distros, and will definitely give Manjaro a shot too :)

squeezingswirls 6y ago
Yes, it's the same hardware with a different distro pre-installed, and a different back cover.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
cookiengineer 6y ago
> I pre-ordered the PmOS community edition, and it's getting delivered tomorrow. How did you get notified? I didn't receive any email since my purchase (I only have the receipt). Contacted sales@pine64 and opened up a support ticket, but haven't got any replies from them.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  You get an SMS from DHL identifying Syabas Tech as the shipper. (This is a different Syabas from the one that manages tap water in Malaysia.) Anyway I did.
  - josteink 6y ago
    Yeah same here. SMS (and email) from DHL about shipment on the way from “Syabas Technology Hong Kong Limited”. I also never got an order-confirmation upon ordering, but received one later quite swiftly when I emailed support and asked.

slantyyz 6y ago

Does anyone know if you can heavily customize the user interface of the PinePhone? The reason why I'm asking is that I have yet to find a feature phone or smartphone that my father (in his 80s) can use. He basically doesn't want to learn new things, and he's more interested in learning/memorizing repeatable steps than intuiting how to do things by reading text on the screen. All he needs is the ability to make/receive calls, and easily get the bluetooth built into his car to connect to the phone. The bluetooth is a nice-to-have though. I haven't had much luck with feature phones because he doesn't (want to) understand rocker switches or navigation using arrow keys. I also tried the "dummy" launchers on Android, but didn't get very far with him. He's also tried iPhones, but didn't get very far. The funny thing is that he's pretty good with the Nortel phone he uses with his land line in terms of dialing favorites, etc.

dleslie 6y ago
You're not tied to a particular OS, even, so yes.
ThePowerOfFuet 6y ago
Why a smartphone? A Nokia 101 (or whichever model above it which has Bluetooth) seems like a much better fit.
- slantyyz 6y ago
  He already has a Nokia feature phone. The problem is that a feature phone has more features than he needs, and sometimes requires navigation to perform a task. Also, some of the physical controls are rockers, which he doesn't seem to grasp. If I could at least limit him to a phone app (with no easy way to get to the home screen) with discrete buttons for almost everything and almost no navigation, I think he'd be able to get by better than he does now.
monoideism 6y ago
Sounds like a feature phone would be a much better fit for him than a smartphone. Maybe pick out 2-3 to look at and have him choose one. Bonus is they're much cheaper.

Teichopsia 6y ago

I have a spare phone which I would like to flash but I have not been able to find any device specific information on how to do it. I checked XDA but they don't have any device specific info. Google returns sketchy pages wanting to install software. The phone is not on the list of supported devices on lineage OS website. And I have been unable to find a how-to do it yourself guide. I followed a guide on how to do it over a decade ago and that is as far as my knowledge goes. I suspect things have changed since??? I would appreciate if someone could point me in the right direction. The device, a blu G5 plus (which when I search on XDA it returns Moto G5 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) Edit: Nevermind, I believe I've got it.

klerpi 6y ago
How did you do it? Support got dropped for my mi a1

moreorless 6y ago

Anyone actually using this as a daily driver? I am completely Apple free except for the the phone. I would love to be able to ditch that.

bjo590 6y ago
Most people cannot live w/o MMS or some apps that do not have a mobile website equivalent.

megous 6y ago

Anyway, with all those distros piling up for PinePhone, I finally decided to release p-boot with display support and GUI multi-boot menu. https://xnux.eu/p-boot/ https://xnux.eu/p-boot/ I'll make some multi-boot SD card demo image next, perhaps with postmarket, arch linux, mobian and ubuntu touch. :)

hideevidence 6y ago
Your work is impressive! What's amazing is the mere seconds you see a productive screen in. Android takes full 30 seconds for me.
- megous 6y ago
  That requires a customized PID 1 init program and a lightweight GUI (that map app is just ~10MiB of code + some code for postgresql that runs in the background) - most of the delay there is waiting for the postgresql to start up, actually. Arch Linux to some lightweight GUI based on Xorg/i3wm takes about 8s. Similar for my Electron/X11 fullscreen based GUI for the phone (also in the video). Both are much larger. Sadly, the Linux userspace is quite bloated, and the limiting factor is loading times from storage to RAM. You basically need to load >200 MiB of binaries/.so files to have anything useable running. With eMMC speed of ~85MiB/s and SD card speed of 25MiB/s max for sequential reads only, you get the picture of where the most of the delay is.
  - justinclift 6y ago
    Is this one of the cases where PostgreSQL is overkill and something like SQLite would be a better fit?
    - megous 6y ago
      I like the fact that I can get easy to set up replication, without much effort, that works reliably with frequent network failures and such.

Waterfall 6y ago

Can the pinephone hardware realistically be used to run Linux comfortably on mobile? The pinebook sucked and this is the same hardware,the pinebook pro has 4gb and still struggles

fsflover 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH3RbrwhNd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH3RbrwhNd8
- Waterfall 6y ago
  Is it running without power savings? It's better than I thought it would run

FullyFunctional 6y ago

My immediate reaction when seeing the phone: thank $randomdeity that the screen is a proper rectangle and not some moronic almost-oval (eff you Apple).

phre4k 6y ago

Cool, does it include a small dial to put the clocks back when they manage to let their TLS certificates run out the 4th time?

panpanna 6y ago

Here is an unpopular opinion: Phones are hard, maybe the FOSS world should put more effort into the pine tablet for now. Because the core system of not ready yet much less the telephony stuff, and yet here we are doing distro hoping and pretending our apps are touch friendly.

Valkhyr 6y ago

I'd really like an unbranded version with these (or better) specs, even at a slightly higher price (I don't particularly identify with any of the distros that have been released so far, not to say there is anything bad about them of course :-)). I imagine that is what the final retail version will be? I'm on pre-order for a Librem 5, but the Pinephone is more compact, and since I'd want it essentially as a portable linux computer in addition to a regular daily driver smartphone (i.e. carry two "phones"), it might fit my needs better...

seba_dos1 6y ago
Dunno if I'd call PinePhone "more compact". It's thinner, but it's bigger (about 1.5cm higher). I'm holding both of them next to each other right now and Librem 5 ends where the PinePhone's camera begins.