3 ms·
All too often, a Linux gadget shows up to an established market place, with its academically superior ideology (which I love and support) and then wonder why it
by travisgriggs 6y ago
All too often, a Linux gadget shows up to an established market place, with its academically superior ideology (which I love and support) and then wonder why it always feels like a has-been, a Johnny-come-lately to the party.
I don't know about others, but what I would want in alternative phone is something that is different in a different way. For example, a simple and open hackable phone that enables creativity. If Linux is part of that story, fine. But I'd be open to other options.
Basically it's the Raspberry Pi. And the arruino thing. Sure proving that I could do some sort of actual development on a pi might be fun for a while, but what makes the Pi fun is that it's simple and straightforward and approachable enough that it encourages creativity. People make cool and fun things with Pi's. I would want a phone platform that would enable that same type of exploratory creativity in the phone hardware space. Linux kind does that for the Pi.
- d--b 6y agoCouldn't agree more. If I get a Linux phone, I don't want to get a smartphone that tries and fails to be an Android phone. I am perfectly fine if the phone only has a terminal interface, where I can type "call 212 555 5555" to make a phone call. Especially if I could then hack the audio input/output with some other terminal tool that would allow me to record, or change my voice.
- megous 6y agoThis is the thing I don't understand. People say they want this, but... You can already do that with PinePhone, right now. All that's needed for this use case is already there. (since 8 months ago, really) The drivers are all there if you really want this, and it's a few weekends project to write a bunch of scripts that will make PinePhone do exactly what you want just by using common Linux tools. You can use fbkeyboard and write a bunch of shell scripts. Calling is no more than a few AT commands that you can wrap in a shell functions or whatever. If you really want to be fancy, you can write something that will allow you to queue AT commands and call your scripts on unsolicited indications from the modem. You don't even need a modem manager or any other complicated SW like that, if you don't like complexity. Mobile data can be entirely handled by the kernel too, with just some generic configuration commands to set it up. No complicated usersapce needed, no daemons needed, not even pppd, like with older GPRS modems. Audio is solved at this point, and I documented all the controls and have a suggested setup for the very flexible calling setup where you can monitor, playback, record, modem audio, your mic/earphone, in whatever combination you want. There's even a tool that can do the setup based on some config flags, no need to mess with individual controls or ALSA tools. No audio daemon is necessary for basic use cases. I even have this documented on my website: https://xnux.eu/devices/pine64-pinephone.html https://xnux.eu/devices/pine64-pinephone.html if you click through various links in the features table. All you need is just start and implement your ideas. No kernel hacking needed, or any complicated stuff like that. It's just there for the taking. People who actually did something like this can probably be counted on one hand. There's sxmo, and there are 1 or 2 people I remember writing to me personally, that seemed to have some similar low-tech but extremely flexible and hackable custom setup.
- travisgriggs 6y agoFair enough. It sounds like it's kinda there. And yet, for me, you kind of answered another question with "a few weekends" and "a few AT commands". Because at first blush that isn't as approachable as I'd like. And what you described was doing things that I already do rudimentarily with phones for years. Does it have gpio that I can do weird things with? And what about graphics programming? Because handhelds have screens, and I'm 1000% sure I don't want to have to navigate the X stack with C as I have over the years, or GTK, and frankly, I don't really want to have to setup compiler tool chains or any of that. I realize in typing this up, that while the Linux on a pi is cool, it's actually that I can hack Python live in it right away that makes it so accessible. I think what I want in an open/creative phone is a live AND graphical programming environment like Squeak/Smalltalk or something of similar ilk.
- megous 6y agoYou can write everything in python if you like. Pinephone is just a Pi with a screen and USB attached modem and some other things that are accessible in more than one way. Don't like AT, use modemmanager. Don't like gtk, make some python canvas lib write to a framebuffer. You can probably make the whole phone UI just with `dialog` and shell scripts. If anything, there are too many options. ;)
- d--b 6y agoWell, I'm getting one then!