5 ms·

Similar experience with a new PinePhone last week but different conclusion. PinePhone is our only hope. It's still in Beta, months or years from being consumer

Similar experience with a new PinePhone last week but different conclusion. PinePhone is our only hope. It's still in Beta, months or years from being consumer ready. And that's just where it needs to be from a development standpoint. Don't rush. That said, reading your comment I also wonder about having too many distros of Linux going after PinePhone. I had an SD card with I believe 14 distros. Doesn't that mean the core development is divided 14 times? It seems like combining together strengths would be beneficial.

officeplant 5y ago
>Doesn't that mean the core development is divided 14 times? Honestly I don't think personally that it hurts things as much as one might expect. There is a lot of work from each distro that benefits all of the others. For example the Mobian dev was one of the first to really tackle the issue of battery life and their work benefited all the other teams. That being said it might be better to have a few larger dev teams, but as long as their works contribute back to the community there is always benefit to the whole.
- 29083011397778 5y ago
  I'd second your assumption. Geary, MegaPixels (the camera app), Phosh (one of the few window managers), the modem firmware, and more are mostly shared between all the distros. Doubly so for upstreamed SoC firmware, battery efficiency improvements, and more that I'm sure I'm overlooking. Frankly, it makes me question anyone who says desktop Linux is divided because we have options - at this point, it's more like there's no large corporate backer with a vested interest in making the desktop experience mainstream.
  - abacadaba 5y ago
    SteamOS?
    - 29083011397778 5y ago
      Good catch, thank you. While Steam currently prints money AFAIK, they're simultaneously 30 years behind Apple and Microsoft (as far as being the driving force of a desktop) and the reason Steam (and gaming on Linux) has come so far, so fast recently.
  - reginold 5y ago
    Asking for clarity since I'm one month into my Linux journey: Are you saying that most of the distros are really just more surface level changes rather than deep "divisions"? I've been struggling to understand.
    - opan 5y ago
      They ship different things out of the box but can largely use the same exact software. They may update at different rates and thus have different versions of things. They are not entirely different operating system like Mac OS vs Windows.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      Mostly. There are a half dozen different desktops to choose from. Same for ways to package software. Most of what a distribution does is make some choices and configure it. Most distributions learn from each other in some way. Most distributions fix things upstream so that other distributions can take advantage for their useful changes.
    - TobTobXX 5y ago
      Most distributions are derivations and arise because some skilled people wished some core functionality would be different. And other distributions started from scratch, but obviously don't want to do really everything on their own, so they took other software. The result is that a lot of established software is shared.
idle_zealot 5y ago
> Doesn't that mean the core development is divided 14 times? I don’t think it’s quite that simple. A lot of these competing mobile distros are using and working on the same libraries and porting desktop applications to mobile in similar ways. The biggest differences are usually the desktop distro that they’ve made their base and their desktop environment of choice. It’s common to see enhancements to an application or even core functionality like battery utilization or suspend improvements land in one distro and then be quickly adopted by others. As someone who’s mostly a bystander, the outliers seem to be the people working on the distros that aren’t ports of desktop Linux, like Sailfish, Nemo, and Ubuntu Touch. Of the main desktop-Linux-ports cluster the biggest divide seems to exist between launcher/DE development. Developers are split between the Gnome-based Phosh interface and the Plasma mobile interface. But a similar dichotomy exists on desktop. I’ll also throw in an honorable mention of sxmo and its wayland port, which I consider the equivalent to the underdog tiling window managers on the desktop; which is to say its only option good enough to consider using.
- reginold 5y ago
  good to know, appreciate the clarification! Glad to hear the work is cumulative.
- josteink 5y ago
  > I’ll also throw in an honorable mention of sxmo and its wayland port, which I consider the equivalent to the underdog tiling window managers on the desktop; which is to say its only option good enough to consider using. It’s a funny thing indeed. sxmo seems to be the only option not focusing on competing with Apple and Google on a “good enough for mainstream” ux. I mean Phosh is nice and all. Having frameworks for contacts and calendars just like in Gnome is nice. Pulseaudio working just as on the desktop is great too. But the total experience still leaves the impression of a very subpar iOS/Android copy. sxmo though, that has decided to not compete with Apple and Google on what they do best, but rather do their own thing and re-envision what a Linux smartphone should/could be. And I like it. I like it a lot. It’s by far my favourite Linux smart-phone experience so far. I just need a better phone to run it on, and the Pinephone Pro could be that phone. New phone or not, I’d also appreciate if sxmo managed to rebase on/ship for Mobian too. The package selection for pmOS and Alpine is pretty weak in comparison.

officeplant 5y ago

>Doesn't that mean the core development is divided 14 times? Honestly I don't think personally that it hurts things as much as one might expect. There is a lot of work from each distro that benefits all of the others. For example the Mobian dev was one of the first to really tackle the issue of battery life and their work benefited all the other teams. That being said it might be better to have a few larger dev teams, but as long as their works contribute back to the community there is always benefit to the whole.

29083011397778 5y ago
I'd second your assumption. Geary, MegaPixels (the camera app), Phosh (one of the few window managers), the modem firmware, and more are mostly shared between all the distros. Doubly so for upstreamed SoC firmware, battery efficiency improvements, and more that I'm sure I'm overlooking. Frankly, it makes me question anyone who says desktop Linux is divided because we have options - at this point, it's more like there's no large corporate backer with a vested interest in making the desktop experience mainstream.
- abacadaba 5y ago
  SteamOS?
  - 29083011397778 5y ago
    Good catch, thank you. While Steam currently prints money AFAIK, they're simultaneously 30 years behind Apple and Microsoft (as far as being the driving force of a desktop) and the reason Steam (and gaming on Linux) has come so far, so fast recently.
- reginold 5y ago
  Asking for clarity since I'm one month into my Linux journey: Are you saying that most of the distros are really just more surface level changes rather than deep "divisions"? I've been struggling to understand.
  - opan 5y ago
    They ship different things out of the box but can largely use the same exact software. They may update at different rates and thus have different versions of things. They are not entirely different operating system like Mac OS vs Windows.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Mostly. There are a half dozen different desktops to choose from. Same for ways to package software. Most of what a distribution does is make some choices and configure it. Most distributions learn from each other in some way. Most distributions fix things upstream so that other distributions can take advantage for their useful changes.
  - TobTobXX 5y ago
    Most distributions are derivations and arise because some skilled people wished some core functionality would be different. And other distributions started from scratch, but obviously don't want to do really everything on their own, so they took other software. The result is that a lot of established software is shared.

idle_zealot 5y ago

> Doesn't that mean the core development is divided 14 times? I don’t think it’s quite that simple. A lot of these competing mobile distros are using and working on the same libraries and porting desktop applications to mobile in similar ways. The biggest differences are usually the desktop distro that they’ve made their base and their desktop environment of choice. It’s common to see enhancements to an application or even core functionality like battery utilization or suspend improvements land in one distro and then be quickly adopted by others. As someone who’s mostly a bystander, the outliers seem to be the people working on the distros that aren’t ports of desktop Linux, like Sailfish, Nemo, and Ubuntu Touch. Of the main desktop-Linux-ports cluster the biggest divide seems to exist between launcher/DE development. Developers are split between the Gnome-based Phosh interface and the Plasma mobile interface. But a similar dichotomy exists on desktop. I’ll also throw in an honorable mention of sxmo and its wayland port, which I consider the equivalent to the underdog tiling window managers on the desktop; which is to say its only option good enough to consider using.

reginold 5y ago
good to know, appreciate the clarification! Glad to hear the work is cumulative.
josteink 5y ago
> I’ll also throw in an honorable mention of sxmo and its wayland port, which I consider the equivalent to the underdog tiling window managers on the desktop; which is to say its only option good enough to consider using. It’s a funny thing indeed. sxmo seems to be the only option not focusing on competing with Apple and Google on a “good enough for mainstream” ux. I mean Phosh is nice and all. Having frameworks for contacts and calendars just like in Gnome is nice. Pulseaudio working just as on the desktop is great too. But the total experience still leaves the impression of a very subpar iOS/Android copy. sxmo though, that has decided to not compete with Apple and Google on what they do best, but rather do their own thing and re-envision what a Linux smartphone should/could be. And I like it. I like it a lot. It’s by far my favourite Linux smart-phone experience so far. I just need a better phone to run it on, and the Pinephone Pro could be that phone. New phone or not, I’d also appreciate if sxmo managed to rebase on/ship for Mobian too. The package selection for pmOS and Alpine is pretty weak in comparison.