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Any plans on porting it to more mainstream phones? It seems to be aiming for "first-world phones" at the moment which is nice since they are more open and you d

by livre 5y ago

Any plans on porting it to more mainstream phones? It seems to be aiming for "first-world phones" at the moment which is nice since they are more open and you don't have to worry (too much) about proprietary blobs and firmware but leaves a big chunk of the world out.

Kenji 5y ago
The driver situation is super tough. Modern phones are full of proprietary shit and nobody is willing/able to reverse engineer all of this, and things like documentation and data sheets aren't really available.
- livre 5y ago
  That's pretty much the answer I expected but I had to ask anyway. Thanks.
- atlantis_ 5y ago
  It is getting better though - check out libcamera.
  - megous 5y ago
    What's to check out there wrt kernel drivers?
kop316 5y ago
Right now the focus is on devices that devs have and run mainstream Linux: https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php?id=devices https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php?id=devices PostmarketOS runs on more devices (and is a great Distribution!), but they also run a lot more devices through Halium (which is a compatibility layer).
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Halium is interesting because it comes with the potential of building a pmOS Generic System Image (GSI). While this would be relying on vendor-shipped proprietary drivers and kernels, literally everything else could be Free and run on mostly any GSI-supported device with a full feature set.
  - kop316 5y ago
    Yep! My personal issue with Halium is the fact that now you have devices running around today running something like Linux 3.10, which I shutter at because of security concerns.
    - Qwertious 5y ago
      shudder*
- MartijnBraam 5y ago
  postmarketOS definitely doesn't ship halium, we're more focussed into doing proper Linux development
  - kop316 5y ago
    Whoops, my mistake! Unfortunately I cannot edit my comment to reflect that. So then out of curiosity, how are you all able to port to so many devices? Do you have a bunch of volunteers, or all most of the devices not too difficult to port to pmOS?
    - kop316 5y ago
      So a few of the pmOS folks were kind enough to discuss the pmOS structure with me, so I will try to summerize here: pmOS has really good tooling called pmbootstrap. They are able to use the downstream kernels directly (or a mainline kernel if the device supports it), and it generally isn't too difficult to get pmOS to boot with the downstream kernel. However, because of the downstream kernel, you may not get a lot of features, and will have to work to port the features to pmOS. They also have device catagories, so if someone wants to see the status of a device, they can look here: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices which bins the devices for a user to quickly understand how well a device runs pmOS.
- dengolius 5y ago
  Thanks! Now I know what device I need to buy to test it.
  - kop316 5y ago
    We welcome users, testers, and new developers! I actually started development with Mobian earlier this year. I personally would recommend getting a Pinephone for it.
- kop316 5y ago
  As MartijnBraam pointed out, pmOS doesn't ship with Halium, so that is my mistake

by livre 5y ago

Kenji 5y ago

The driver situation is super tough. Modern phones are full of proprietary shit and nobody is willing/able to reverse engineer all of this, and things like documentation and data sheets aren't really available.

livre 5y ago
That's pretty much the answer I expected but I had to ask anyway. Thanks.
atlantis_ 5y ago
It is getting better though - check out libcamera.
- megous 5y ago
  What's to check out there wrt kernel drivers?

kop316 5y ago

Right now the focus is on devices that devs have and run mainstream Linux: https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php?id=devices https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php?id=devices PostmarketOS runs on more devices (and is a great Distribution!), but they also run a lot more devices through Halium (which is a compatibility layer).

zozbot234 5y ago
Halium is interesting because it comes with the potential of building a pmOS Generic System Image (GSI). While this would be relying on vendor-shipped proprietary drivers and kernels, literally everything else could be Free and run on mostly any GSI-supported device with a full feature set.
- kop316 5y ago
  Yep! My personal issue with Halium is the fact that now you have devices running around today running something like Linux 3.10, which I shutter at because of security concerns.
  - Qwertious 5y ago
    shudder*
MartijnBraam 5y ago
postmarketOS definitely doesn't ship halium, we're more focussed into doing proper Linux development
- kop316 5y ago
  Whoops, my mistake! Unfortunately I cannot edit my comment to reflect that. So then out of curiosity, how are you all able to port to so many devices? Do you have a bunch of volunteers, or all most of the devices not too difficult to port to pmOS?
  - kop316 5y ago
    So a few of the pmOS folks were kind enough to discuss the pmOS structure with me, so I will try to summerize here: pmOS has really good tooling called pmbootstrap. They are able to use the downstream kernels directly (or a mainline kernel if the device supports it), and it generally isn't too difficult to get pmOS to boot with the downstream kernel. However, because of the downstream kernel, you may not get a lot of features, and will have to work to port the features to pmOS. They also have device catagories, so if someone wants to see the status of a device, they can look here: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices which bins the devices for a user to quickly understand how well a device runs pmOS.
dengolius 5y ago
Thanks! Now I know what device I need to buy to test it.
- kop316 5y ago
  We welcome users, testers, and new developers! I actually started development with Mobian earlier this year. I personally would recommend getting a Pinephone for it.
kop316 5y ago
As MartijnBraam pointed out, pmOS doesn't ship with Halium, so that is my mistake