14 ms·

My Pinephone Setup

291 points by georgeoliver 5y ago

lala_wisener 5y ago
megous 5y ago
It's so nice that you can replace the mainboard as a regular user, if it's broken... or even fix it yourself, since the level of integration is not terribly dense and there's no epoxy/glue anywhere, and the shielding is not soldered to the board.
emptyparadise 5y ago
I don't think I can handle a CLI-based phone.
- necrotic_comp 5y ago
  The external keyboard probably makes it tolerable, but yeah, it's likely hard to deal with. I'd love to see how it works in practice, and how long the author keeps it up.
  - moltke 5y ago
    Personally I far prefer the CLI even on a touch screen because I don't get controls popping/sliding/whizzing underneath my fingers when I'm trying to do something else.
- 3np 5y ago
  SXMO users like OP are a minority of PinePhone users. The two more popular alternatives are Plasma Mobile and Phosh. https://plasma-mobile.org/ https://plasma-mobile.org/ https://developer.puri.sm/Librem5/Software_Reference/Environments/Phosh.html https://developer.puri.sm/Librem5/Software_Reference/Environ...
- billybuckwheat 5y ago
  It's only CLI-based because the writer seems to be using the phone that way. That's how it appears to me anyway. Kind of like Linux on the desktop ... Everything I've seen about the PinePhone suggests that you can go full GUI.
  - Enginerrrd 5y ago
    Not in my experience with Arch on the pine phone. Arch was the only distro where almost everything worked, but I have to do CLI updates. The GUI isn't really there yet for all of the basic and necessary administration activities.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
      Okay, perhaps some qualification needed: There are Linux distros, both for mobile and desktop, that can probably be run completely from the GUI. Arch Linux is not one of them, and is vanishingly unlikely to ever be one of them - consider that on desktop, Arch doesn't even install a GUI by default, and this is not considered even remotely a bug.
      - OJFord 5y ago
        Arch can be run entirely from GUIs if you want that and so install them. There isn't one 'Arch GUI' no, but there's not really one '<distro> GUI' either, for your choice of value for distro. (At most some more exotic/niche ones might limit what can be easily installed?)
        yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
        My point is that Arch culturally has an expectation that users will be comfortable with the shell. Perhaps you can run the system from the GUI once it's set up, but you have to get there which means setting the system up starting from a shell.
        OJFord 5y ago
- jcun4128 5y ago
  I want it to be a dockable computer [0] This is Pinephone Pro Explorer Edition able to run VS Code. External display is buggy though. On Pinephone the lag is really bad for VSC but not so on PPP. Mobian Phosh has best external display performance I found KDE Plasma Mobile is the one that is closest to a phone IMO regarding UI/UX. [0] https://i.imgur.com/MhSB1us.jpg https://i.imgur.com/MhSB1us.jpg
- hpcoke 5y ago
  +1 https://www.pine64.org/2022/01/31/pinephone-community-poll-results/ https://www.pine64.org/2022/01/31/pinephone-community-poll-r... shows most PinePhone users don't use the CLI-based interface.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  Use Mobian. It ships Phosh and plenty of phone-friendly applications.
georgeoliver 5y ago
By the way, I found this link via https://linmob.net/ https://linmob.net/, they're doing nice weekly summaries of Linux on mobile news/links.
- hpcoke 5y ago
  +1. This is my primary source for keeping up to date, along with https://www.pine64.org/blog/ https://www.pine64.org/blog/
blendergeek 5y ago
> All this time I was aware that the core of my phone, it's kernel, was closed source and probably out-of-date. Android runs the Linux kernel which is GPLv2 (and thus open source). For a couple reasons this isn't seen as "true" Linux or open source. 1. Drivers are often proprietary 2. SoC manufactures release their versions of the Linux kernel without integrating them into the "upstream" manage by Linus Torvalds so even open source drivers are hard to use. 3. Android uses an non-standard user-space and UI (running apps in the DalvikVM). "Normal" or "desktop" Linux tends to use the GNU userspace with one of several Freedesktop.org compliant desktop interfaces on top. The use of the GNU userspace leads the FSF to call this GNU/Linux lead to the GNU/Linux naming controversy [0]. However, because Android uses the Linux kernel, it is possible to bring "real" or "desktop" Linux to old Android handsets. postmarketOS [1] is a project intending to do this. Several old Android SoCs now run a "close to mainline" "normal" Linux kernel and can be used as Linux phones. I actually use a OnePlus 6 running postmarketOS. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy [1] https://postmarketos.org/ https://postmarketos.org/
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Note that both PinePhone and pmOS have yet to reach "daily driver" status, especially if you actually care about using the phone featureset, want to run a proper mainline (not vendor) kernel and (as for pmOS) want to go outside the narrow subset of hardware that's endorsed by that project as 'working properly'. Also, many users have noticed that phone/tablet/mobile hardware in general tends to become super flaky when you actively try to use it for intensive general-purpose workloads, as with mainstream Linux apps. It seems that some power and/or thermal limits are easily exceeded with no real warning, and lockups/reboots can result. Dealing with this would require extra features in the kernel and/or the basic system software to assess indicators of available resources, and throttle the system if it seems to be running outside "reasonable" conditions. Implementing this in a way that can work generally on different kinds of hardware is of course possible, but not easy by any means.
  - chrismorgan 5y ago
    As an example of the flakiness: if I use my PinePhone heavily, the screen tends to stop working spontaneously, so that if on at the time of failure, it ceases to update, and when turned off and on again it will be black. Touch input still works. Restarting the graphical session (e.g. ssh in and run `systemctl restart phosh` for phosh or `systemctl restart tinydm` for sxmo) fixes it. “Heavily” tends to mean at least three of (a) heavy hotspot usage, (b) heavy CPU usage, (c) plugged in/charging, and (d) screen on, but if I’m physically using it it seems less likely to happen. Note that this is mostly with ambient temperatures of 25–30°C; come winter, I suspect it will happen less often. Plus there’s also the screen flickering thing, that sometimes, mostly when it’s been being used heavily but sometimes when it’s been idle and barely even warm, the screen is all flickery and ghosty when you turn it on one time, in which case it will normally stay like that for quite some time. That I observed right from the very start, under whatever the default OS was (Alpine, I think?, with Plasma; I subsequently switched to DanctNIX Arch with Phosh, and more recently from Phosh to sxmo). I have no idea if these things are typical or not, or if there are known solutions. I haven’t looked. They don’t tend to bother me much, I don’t really depend on a phone except for my internet supply.
Shared404 5y ago
> The Pine64 Pinephone[0] is my first Linux device. Not what I was expecting to see when I opened this link! Good write up, I'll have to grab one of these soon.
h4waii 5y ago
While PinePhone is definitely an interesting product, GrapheneOS + Termux is such a versatile combination I've stopped looking at these "real Linux" phones. You get access to modern power-efficient hardware with a Google Pixel, a proper touch interface, a ton of hardening under the hood, and then to top it all off, Termux offers a very usable Linux environment.
- superkuh 5y ago
  That's hardening against the user being able to do things, not against corporate or government threat models. Software can only do a little bit on megacorp smartphone hardware even if it tries to help the user instead of locking them out.
  - xvector 5y ago
    > Software can only do a little bit on megacorp smartphone hardware That isn't true at all. Do you have a source for your implication that the Pixel's trusted boot chain is compromised, or that remote attestation of software+hardware is backdoored?
    - megous 5y ago
      So who controls the keys?
    - superkuh 5y ago
      Google has attempted to make sure the Pixel's hardware baseband modem is properly isolated from user space. But you can't trust it completely because the Pixel's baseband computer does have access to userspace RAM in terms of physical ability in the hardware. The GraphemeOS FAQ explains it here: https://grapheneos.org/faq#baseband-isolation https://grapheneos.org/faq#baseband-isolation But the pinephone baseband literally does not have the physical/hardware capability. You don't have to trust software from Google or Qualcomm or Pine. https://www.pine64.org/2020/01/24/setting-the-record-straight-pinephone-misconceptions/ https://www.pine64.org/2020/01/24/setting-the-record-straigh... Your request for proof that Pixel's trusted boot chain is compromised or other things is irrelevant both because of the above, and because it's all controlled by the very company you have to worry about. The fox has the keys to the henhouse. It owns the henhouse.
hpcoke 5y ago
Advice for anyone considering it: * There are rough edges, but the basics are there: calling/SMS/4G/WiFi/audio/browsing/suspend. * If you want to try it, put https://xnux.eu/p-boot-demo/ https://xnux.eu/p-boot-demo/ on an SD card and plug that into your PinePhone. That has a bunch of different distros and UIs on it. * To keep up to date, follow https://www.pine64.org/blog/ https://www.pine64.org/blog/ and https://linmob.net/ https://linmob.net/ I'm excited to use a community driven phone!
- moltke 5y ago
  Did they ever fix the modem disappearing on suspend? I have the latest kernel (as of a month ago) and a build of bitkorgii's modem firmware from last year but I still need to reboot the phone every time I pull it out to check my texts. EDIT (I'm throttled and can't reply): I already have a script/service/runlevel that handles periodically waking the phone for notifications (I wrote it fall 2020 when I got mine.) I'm talking about the bug that causes the modem USB device to disappear and not get probed again after a random number of wakes from suspend. It's not an issue if you're only on WiFi and use VOIP but some people get annoyed that they can't call me while I'm driving.
  - georgeoliver 5y ago
    Yes, it works, but I think the situation is fluid at the moment depending on distro, config, etcetera. Latest Sxmo on pmOS it works OOTB. You can find many other reports in the wild, for example https://www.reddit.com/r/pinephone/comments/rp3c14/deep_sleep_and_nonmodem_notifications/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pinephone/comments/rp3c14/deep_slee...
  - hpcoke 5y ago
    Yes. The state of the art is: * biktorg's firmware (now flash able via GNOME Firmware or fwupdmgr) * NetworkManager with --test-quick-resume-suspend flag. * Crust/ATF as platform firmware (e.g. Tow-Boot) * eg25-manager to manage the modem This will be available transparently to most users, but some distros might not be there yet. PostmarketOS and Mobian are safe bets.
ryukafalz 5y ago
> Gomuks: Ever wanted to get Matrix protocol notifications on your Pinephone, without the sluggishness of an Electron UI? Now you can! AFAIK: not without draining the battery you can't. You have to either disable the deep sleep mode ("CRUST") while the screen is blanked or leave the screen on, otherwise any Matrix client including gomuks won't run at all once you turn the screen off. (So no notifications for incoming messages.) Maybe this isn't a problem if you're a very occasional Matrix user, and the battery drain even with everything running isn't too bad, but if you've been using it as long as I have and are in a lot of active rooms it's just not workable.
- moltke 5y ago
  That's not necessarily true. Instead of just suspending you can make "suspend" a runlevel which includes a service that periodically wakes the phone up so apps can manage connections to servers that might push data to them. I wrote my own stuff that does that and I think many distros include something similar now.
- linmob 5y ago
  There‘s a script for waking the PinePhone up regularly to mitigate this: https://codeberg.org/Silmathoron/pinephone-autowake https://codeberg.org/Silmathoron/pinephone-autowake
  - James-Livesey 5y ago
    How can one make the PinePhone detect incoming calls on a regular basis using this method? It looks like the code sleeps for minutes at a time, which is ideal for fetching notifications for IM apps etc. but not for detecting incoming calls (which usually last about 30 seconds iirc before timing out/going to voicemail). I would assume that suspending and waking, say, every 10 seconds could allow for detecting incoming calls but not be as energy efficient (or in the worst case, more detrimental than just keeping the phone on)? imo I'd implement this by not suspending (except for some kind of 'battery saver' mode) and just keeping the screen at 0% brightness (which I assume is one of the primary consumers of energy from the battery cell)...
branon 5y ago
Nice. Recently received my PinePhone keyboard add-on and am looking to replace my Android phone as a daily driver quite soon. This information will prove useful.
cookiengineer 5y ago
OP's setup looks actually pretty similar to my one, though where the pinephone really - really - shines is pentesting. The compatibility with external Wifi USB adapters and BT hardware like the ones from scott's gadgets make it an amazing pentesting device. For serious mobile-friendly usage I don't think that we can build UIs the way they're built on Linux systems anymore. I challenge every defender of that GTK/QT crap to build a swipeable sidebar into their native and responsive UI. If it takes more than 10 minutes, you lost, cause that's what it takes to use CSS, even without any IDE or toolkit. I wish GTK wasn't built inhouse and would focus on using established toolchains instead of reinventing their own programming language ecosystem with every new release. Nobody wants to use vala. Nobody wants to use glade. Nobody wants to use any of the ecosystem, because it's much more pain than any established UI framework's methodology. There's a reason why everyone uses electron, and the reasons are not the same why you think your GNOMey toolchains matter. And this has to stop. Otherwise everybody will hop on QT at some point. I still hope that webkit, javascriptcore and nodejs can be combined into something that allows to easily call C-ABI compatible libraries without 300MB of build size like electron. [1] [1] https://github.com/tholian-network/retrokit https://github.com/tholian-network/retrokit
- OJFord 5y ago
  > I still hope that webkit, javascriptcore and nodejs can be combined into something that allows to easily call C-ABI compatible libraries without 300MB of build size like electron. Have you seen Tauri? (Happy user, for a couple of side tinkerings, not otherwise affiliated.)
  - cookiengineer 5y ago
    Yeah I've seen tauri, but they're just using the glib bindings for webkit-gtk. So they're just sharing the preinstalled browser for rendering inside a webview. My goal, compared to tauri (or webview/webview), is to offer an alternative, slimmed-down version that can be used to bundle apps on mobile and embedded devices. I mean, from a security point of view you have to assume that Edge and Chrome are compromised, so all your tauri apps will be compromised too. So in retrokit I removed things like the massive plugin legacy in webkit, or pdfkit integrations and other stuff that was unnecessary, or webgl, or canvas, or the static geolocation API (which comes with a static copy of the ip<>geolocation database) etc.
teekert 5y ago
Ah, that feels like inux 20 years ago, and it feels good, in a geeky, brave, new world kind of way.
joeberon 5y ago
DeathArrow 5y ago
Why does Google hate the regular Linux Kernel and the regular Linux userland so much that Android doesn't have much Linux resemblance? I remember that wen Nokia did N900, it was pretty compatible with mainline Linux.
- nunobrito 5y ago
  There is usually an effort on their side to distance from GPL-2.0 and GPL-3.0 code. Usually replacing with some equivalents under Apache-2.0 or MIT.
- aj3 5y ago
  Android has different security guarantees compared to desktop/server Linux. E.g. people should expect that none of the installed software can hijack the phone completely and that most damage from malware should be mitigateable by uninstalling malicious app.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    People would be right to expect that no installed software can hijack the desktop completely as well, but unfortunately that is very much not the case.
- kaba0 5y ago
  Because Linux userspace arguably sucks. While the kernel is excellent, there is no sane sandboxing (and I can’t communicate enough how truly terrible linux desktop’s “security” is. A single bash script could break absolute havoc), the IPC mechanism used to communicate between programs is fragmented and in my opinion the insistence that C should be used everywhere really holds back the platform. Compared to that, android has a well-architected sandboxing with very gradual permissions, SELinux for the remaining features (sure, mainline linux distros also have it from time-to-time but it is not used there to its full extent. Android runs every application as a different user for example, making security boundaries much more explicit), so I would rather ask, why doesn’t mainline linux copy some things from android? Also, don’t get me wrong, I really like using linux OSs, but they do have plenty of space to improve.
pedro2 5y ago
I have too many side-projects to add another one but I'm happy that there is a medium-priced Linux phone available.
nunobrito 5y ago
Any news about running Android apps inside Pinephone? It was more than an year since I've last followed the progress on this topic. If someone here has some pratical experience on the topic, would love to hear your thoughts.
- pedro2 5y ago
  Not pratical: I'm using Waydroid on Fedora. Compared to Anbox, the only requirement that changed is the need for a Wayland compositor. Google Apps: installed but not approved by Google. I am supposed to request access to Google but 30s after I made the request the error was still there. Will try again next weekend, hoping it was just a cache issue.
  - nunobrito 5y ago
    Thanks, that is still progress. You mean the Play Store? A possible alternative is to use Aptoide for downloading APKs or maybe simply getting them directly from a cellphone.
    - pedro2 5y ago
      The PlayStore is now usable: I just needed to clear its cache.
satysin 5y ago
> Lately, I've been learning C programming solely on my Pinephone. Ha I like this guy already. That’s my kind of crazy :) It is an interesting experiment to be sure. I’m a big geek and love Linux but not sure I would go so far as to run i3 on my phone like this but more power to him and I’m glad there are people trying different things out and seeing how it goes. I know I’m getting old because every year I appreciate a simpler phone. On the desktop sure I like to mix it up with less common approaches that give me more flexibility but for my phone I keep it simple. I don’t really want my phone to be a full on desktop computer experience tbh. I use my phone for pretty basic tasks. Podcasts and music mostly. Some very casual web use and maybe a dozen apps. I don’t email on my phone (other than reading). I don’t message much on it either instead using a desktop app as I feel I have more “room to breath” and compose my messages more slowly unless it’s a short reply. And some light in the moment photography. This is why I stick to an iPhone. It doesn’t allow me to tweak it to the max. It does what I want just fine and I am grateful for the restrictions rather than allowing me to build some handheld Frankenstein second computer. Right tool for the job and all that. For me anyway :) But I am glad things like the PinePhone exist even if I don’t use them personally.
- MartijnBraam 5y ago
  Hah I do most of my C programming directly on the pinephone, mostly in convergence mode :)
  - hpcoke 5y ago
    Interesting. What's your setup for sharing peripherals between your PinePhone dock and your laptop/desktop?
    - MartijnBraam 5y ago
      The trick is having seperate peripherals :D
  - moltke 5y ago
    It's pretty fantastic for it. I've never had a better dev environment on a PDA.
FrostKiwi 5y ago
> With the convenient icon next to the clock in Sway Wait what? I never even considered this. I am in love with Sway. Having a tiling window manager on a phone might be quite the facinating use-case, mapping swipes to tiling actions similar to [1]. I think this article just won me over to try a linux phone. [1] https://v.redd.it/n3a1jk05p0211/DASH_9_6_M https://v.redd.it/n3a1jk05p0211/DASH_9_6_M
nivenkos 5y ago
How is this all legible on such a small screen though?
uhtred 5y ago
I'll be switching to a linux phone as soon as there is a decent way to run whatsapp on it. I hate whatsapp but I need it.
- aerique 5y ago
  WhatsApp runs fine on SailfishOS.
  - uhtred 5y ago
    Does SailfishOS run on phones available in America? I seem to remember considering it but then realizing it wouldn't be feasible for me (I'm in US)
    - aerique 5y ago
      Ah yes, the US situation is a bummer. I know it runs on some phones but you'd really have to check and/or ask on the forums: https://forum.sailfishos.org/ https://forum.sailfishos.org/ Maybe this thread is helpful: https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/sailfish-in-the-usa/5307 https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/sailfish-in-the-usa/5307
lostgame 5y ago
I actually was not aware of the PineTime. As a huge Apple Watch/WatchOS fangirl, I'd honestly love to check out a far less restrictive smartwatch environment to mess around with. I have a lot of interesting ideas that I've unfortunately been waiting for the WatchOS API's to catch up to, and I'd maybe be interested in getting on that PineTime train. Has anyone purchased a PineTime? Can anyone give a bit of first-hand experience on what the experience is like? :)
olaki-dev 5y ago
If you'd like to know what other phones Linux can be installed on, you can check out this list I've created. Look at the columns named "postmarketOS", "Kali Linux" and "Ubuntu Touch". https://olaki-android.github.io/olaki/ https://olaki-android.github.io/olaki/
MrWiffles 5y ago
Somewhat related to this, I’m planning a full switch away from Apple *OS to Linux this year, and am looking for a good replacement for my iPhone. I’m aware of the Pine Phone of course, but what other mobile phone players are in the market these days that are not android based? A robust, solid and stable Linux phone that can do at least the basics (calls, MMS, internet, Bluetooth audio, and camera) would be AWESOME. I’d just like to know what my options are before settling on what to buy.
- MrWiffles 5y ago
  Reply since for some reason it won’t let me edit - I’m just trying to assess what the options are before settling on what to buy.
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    You can try one of many non-Google variants of Android (LineageOS, Calyx, /e/, Graphene) or go for Sailfish OS (the successor to Meego/Maemo). There's also postmarketOS, and Ubuntu Touch, but I'm unaware as to how well they're supported.
Havoc 5y ago
This is the kind of thing I wouldn't do but I'm glad someone out there is
hamblingreen 5y ago
Hello there! Thank you all for discussing my article in such great detail, I'm glad to have sparked healthy discussion around mobile linux. That being said, I'm aware that I represent a minority of mobile linux users, as can be seen by the community poll on Pine64's blog [1], and that is one of many reasons I decided to publish my ideas. I've added a few things to my website, like images to my first post and a todo list page so that you can see what i'm working on and give feedback. Thanks for your support. Oh, and if you have any questions at all, feel free to ask below or contact me through any means listed on my website. (email: hamblingreen@hotmail.com)

291 points by georgeoliver 5y ago

It's so nice that you can replace the mainboard as a regular user, if it's broken... or even fix it yourself, since the level of integration is not terribly dense and there's no epoxy/glue anywhere, and the shielding is not soldered to the board.

emptyparadise 5y ago

I don't think I can handle a CLI-based phone.

necrotic_comp 5y ago
The external keyboard probably makes it tolerable, but yeah, it's likely hard to deal with. I'd love to see how it works in practice, and how long the author keeps it up.
- moltke 5y ago
  Personally I far prefer the CLI even on a touch screen because I don't get controls popping/sliding/whizzing underneath my fingers when I'm trying to do something else.
3np 5y ago
SXMO users like OP are a minority of PinePhone users. The two more popular alternatives are Plasma Mobile and Phosh. https://plasma-mobile.org/ https://plasma-mobile.org/ https://developer.puri.sm/Librem5/Software_Reference/Environments/Phosh.html https://developer.puri.sm/Librem5/Software_Reference/Environ...
billybuckwheat 5y ago
It's only CLI-based because the writer seems to be using the phone that way. That's how it appears to me anyway. Kind of like Linux on the desktop ... Everything I've seen about the PinePhone suggests that you can go full GUI.
- Enginerrrd 5y ago
  Not in my experience with Arch on the pine phone. Arch was the only distro where almost everything worked, but I have to do CLI updates. The GUI isn't really there yet for all of the basic and necessary administration activities.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    Okay, perhaps some qualification needed: There are Linux distros, both for mobile and desktop, that can probably be run completely from the GUI. Arch Linux is not one of them, and is vanishingly unlikely to ever be one of them - consider that on desktop, Arch doesn't even install a GUI by default, and this is not considered even remotely a bug.
    - OJFord 5y ago
      Arch can be run entirely from GUIs if you want that and so install them. There isn't one 'Arch GUI' no, but there's not really one '<distro> GUI' either, for your choice of value for distro. (At most some more exotic/niche ones might limit what can be easily installed?)
      - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
        My point is that Arch culturally has an expectation that users will be comfortable with the shell. Perhaps you can run the system from the GUI once it's set up, but you have to get there which means setting the system up starting from a shell.
        OJFord 5y ago
jcun4128 5y ago
I want it to be a dockable computer [0] This is Pinephone Pro Explorer Edition able to run VS Code. External display is buggy though. On Pinephone the lag is really bad for VSC but not so on PPP. Mobian Phosh has best external display performance I found KDE Plasma Mobile is the one that is closest to a phone IMO regarding UI/UX. [0] https://i.imgur.com/MhSB1us.jpg https://i.imgur.com/MhSB1us.jpg
hpcoke 5y ago
+1 https://www.pine64.org/2022/01/31/pinephone-community-poll-results/ https://www.pine64.org/2022/01/31/pinephone-community-poll-r... shows most PinePhone users don't use the CLI-based interface.
goodpoint 5y ago
Use Mobian. It ships Phosh and plenty of phone-friendly applications.

georgeoliver 5y ago

By the way, I found this link via https://linmob.net/ https://linmob.net/, they're doing nice weekly summaries of Linux on mobile news/links.

hpcoke 5y ago
+1. This is my primary source for keeping up to date, along with https://www.pine64.org/blog/ https://www.pine64.org/blog/

blendergeek 5y ago

> All this time I was aware that the core of my phone, it's kernel, was closed source and probably out-of-date. Android runs the Linux kernel which is GPLv2 (and thus open source). For a couple reasons this isn't seen as "true" Linux or open source. 1. Drivers are often proprietary 2. SoC manufactures release their versions of the Linux kernel without integrating them into the "upstream" manage by Linus Torvalds so even open source drivers are hard to use. 3. Android uses an non-standard user-space and UI (running apps in the DalvikVM). "Normal" or "desktop" Linux tends to use the GNU userspace with one of several Freedesktop.org compliant desktop interfaces on top. The use of the GNU userspace leads the FSF to call this GNU/Linux lead to the GNU/Linux naming controversy [0]. However, because Android uses the Linux kernel, it is possible to bring "real" or "desktop" Linux to old Android handsets. postmarketOS [1] is a project intending to do this. Several old Android SoCs now run a "close to mainline" "normal" Linux kernel and can be used as Linux phones. I actually use a OnePlus 6 running postmarketOS. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy [1] https://postmarketos.org/ https://postmarketos.org/

zozbot234 5y ago
Note that both PinePhone and pmOS have yet to reach "daily driver" status, especially if you actually care about using the phone featureset, want to run a proper mainline (not vendor) kernel and (as for pmOS) want to go outside the narrow subset of hardware that's endorsed by that project as 'working properly'. Also, many users have noticed that phone/tablet/mobile hardware in general tends to become super flaky when you actively try to use it for intensive general-purpose workloads, as with mainstream Linux apps. It seems that some power and/or thermal limits are easily exceeded with no real warning, and lockups/reboots can result. Dealing with this would require extra features in the kernel and/or the basic system software to assess indicators of available resources, and throttle the system if it seems to be running outside "reasonable" conditions. Implementing this in a way that can work generally on different kinds of hardware is of course possible, but not easy by any means.
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  As an example of the flakiness: if I use my PinePhone heavily, the screen tends to stop working spontaneously, so that if on at the time of failure, it ceases to update, and when turned off and on again it will be black. Touch input still works. Restarting the graphical session (e.g. ssh in and run `systemctl restart phosh` for phosh or `systemctl restart tinydm` for sxmo) fixes it. “Heavily” tends to mean at least three of (a) heavy hotspot usage, (b) heavy CPU usage, (c) plugged in/charging, and (d) screen on, but if I’m physically using it it seems less likely to happen. Note that this is mostly with ambient temperatures of 25–30°C; come winter, I suspect it will happen less often. Plus there’s also the screen flickering thing, that sometimes, mostly when it’s been being used heavily but sometimes when it’s been idle and barely even warm, the screen is all flickery and ghosty when you turn it on one time, in which case it will normally stay like that for quite some time. That I observed right from the very start, under whatever the default OS was (Alpine, I think?, with Plasma; I subsequently switched to DanctNIX Arch with Phosh, and more recently from Phosh to sxmo). I have no idea if these things are typical or not, or if there are known solutions. I haven’t looked. They don’t tend to bother me much, I don’t really depend on a phone except for my internet supply.

Shared404 5y ago

> The Pine64 Pinephone[0] is my first Linux device. Not what I was expecting to see when I opened this link! Good write up, I'll have to grab one of these soon.

h4waii 5y ago

While PinePhone is definitely an interesting product, GrapheneOS + Termux is such a versatile combination I've stopped looking at these "real Linux" phones. You get access to modern power-efficient hardware with a Google Pixel, a proper touch interface, a ton of hardening under the hood, and then to top it all off, Termux offers a very usable Linux environment.

superkuh 5y ago
That's hardening against the user being able to do things, not against corporate or government threat models. Software can only do a little bit on megacorp smartphone hardware even if it tries to help the user instead of locking them out.
- xvector 5y ago
  > Software can only do a little bit on megacorp smartphone hardware That isn't true at all. Do you have a source for your implication that the Pixel's trusted boot chain is compromised, or that remote attestation of software+hardware is backdoored?
  - megous 5y ago
    So who controls the keys?
  - superkuh 5y ago
    Google has attempted to make sure the Pixel's hardware baseband modem is properly isolated from user space. But you can't trust it completely because the Pixel's baseband computer does have access to userspace RAM in terms of physical ability in the hardware. The GraphemeOS FAQ explains it here: https://grapheneos.org/faq#baseband-isolation https://grapheneos.org/faq#baseband-isolation But the pinephone baseband literally does not have the physical/hardware capability. You don't have to trust software from Google or Qualcomm or Pine. https://www.pine64.org/2020/01/24/setting-the-record-straight-pinephone-misconceptions/ https://www.pine64.org/2020/01/24/setting-the-record-straigh... Your request for proof that Pixel's trusted boot chain is compromised or other things is irrelevant both because of the above, and because it's all controlled by the very company you have to worry about. The fox has the keys to the henhouse. It owns the henhouse.

hpcoke 5y ago

Advice for anyone considering it: * There are rough edges, but the basics are there: calling/SMS/4G/WiFi/audio/browsing/suspend. * If you want to try it, put https://xnux.eu/p-boot-demo/ https://xnux.eu/p-boot-demo/ on an SD card and plug that into your PinePhone. That has a bunch of different distros and UIs on it. * To keep up to date, follow https://www.pine64.org/blog/ https://www.pine64.org/blog/ and https://linmob.net/ https://linmob.net/ I'm excited to use a community driven phone!

moltke 5y ago
Did they ever fix the modem disappearing on suspend? I have the latest kernel (as of a month ago) and a build of bitkorgii's modem firmware from last year but I still need to reboot the phone every time I pull it out to check my texts. EDIT (I'm throttled and can't reply): I already have a script/service/runlevel that handles periodically waking the phone for notifications (I wrote it fall 2020 when I got mine.) I'm talking about the bug that causes the modem USB device to disappear and not get probed again after a random number of wakes from suspend. It's not an issue if you're only on WiFi and use VOIP but some people get annoyed that they can't call me while I'm driving.
- georgeoliver 5y ago
  Yes, it works, but I think the situation is fluid at the moment depending on distro, config, etcetera. Latest Sxmo on pmOS it works OOTB. You can find many other reports in the wild, for example https://www.reddit.com/r/pinephone/comments/rp3c14/deep_sleep_and_nonmodem_notifications/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pinephone/comments/rp3c14/deep_slee...
- hpcoke 5y ago
  Yes. The state of the art is: * biktorg's firmware (now flash able via GNOME Firmware or fwupdmgr) * NetworkManager with --test-quick-resume-suspend flag. * Crust/ATF as platform firmware (e.g. Tow-Boot) * eg25-manager to manage the modem This will be available transparently to most users, but some distros might not be there yet. PostmarketOS and Mobian are safe bets.

ryukafalz 5y ago

> Gomuks: Ever wanted to get Matrix protocol notifications on your Pinephone, without the sluggishness of an Electron UI? Now you can! AFAIK: not without draining the battery you can't. You have to either disable the deep sleep mode ("CRUST") while the screen is blanked or leave the screen on, otherwise any Matrix client including gomuks won't run at all once you turn the screen off. (So no notifications for incoming messages.) Maybe this isn't a problem if you're a very occasional Matrix user, and the battery drain even with everything running isn't too bad, but if you've been using it as long as I have and are in a lot of active rooms it's just not workable.

moltke 5y ago
That's not necessarily true. Instead of just suspending you can make "suspend" a runlevel which includes a service that periodically wakes the phone up so apps can manage connections to servers that might push data to them. I wrote my own stuff that does that and I think many distros include something similar now.
linmob 5y ago
There‘s a script for waking the PinePhone up regularly to mitigate this: https://codeberg.org/Silmathoron/pinephone-autowake https://codeberg.org/Silmathoron/pinephone-autowake
- James-Livesey 5y ago
  How can one make the PinePhone detect incoming calls on a regular basis using this method? It looks like the code sleeps for minutes at a time, which is ideal for fetching notifications for IM apps etc. but not for detecting incoming calls (which usually last about 30 seconds iirc before timing out/going to voicemail). I would assume that suspending and waking, say, every 10 seconds could allow for detecting incoming calls but not be as energy efficient (or in the worst case, more detrimental than just keeping the phone on)? imo I'd implement this by not suspending (except for some kind of 'battery saver' mode) and just keeping the screen at 0% brightness (which I assume is one of the primary consumers of energy from the battery cell)...

branon 5y ago

Nice. Recently received my PinePhone keyboard add-on and am looking to replace my Android phone as a daily driver quite soon. This information will prove useful.

cookiengineer 5y ago

OP's setup looks actually pretty similar to my one, though where the pinephone really - really - shines is pentesting. The compatibility with external Wifi USB adapters and BT hardware like the ones from scott's gadgets make it an amazing pentesting device. For serious mobile-friendly usage I don't think that we can build UIs the way they're built on Linux systems anymore. I challenge every defender of that GTK/QT crap to build a swipeable sidebar into their native and responsive UI. If it takes more than 10 minutes, you lost, cause that's what it takes to use CSS, even without any IDE or toolkit. I wish GTK wasn't built inhouse and would focus on using established toolchains instead of reinventing their own programming language ecosystem with every new release. Nobody wants to use vala. Nobody wants to use glade. Nobody wants to use any of the ecosystem, because it's much more pain than any established UI framework's methodology. There's a reason why everyone uses electron, and the reasons are not the same why you think your GNOMey toolchains matter. And this has to stop. Otherwise everybody will hop on QT at some point. I still hope that webkit, javascriptcore and nodejs can be combined into something that allows to easily call C-ABI compatible libraries without 300MB of build size like electron. [1] [1] https://github.com/tholian-network/retrokit https://github.com/tholian-network/retrokit

OJFord 5y ago
> I still hope that webkit, javascriptcore and nodejs can be combined into something that allows to easily call C-ABI compatible libraries without 300MB of build size like electron. Have you seen Tauri? (Happy user, for a couple of side tinkerings, not otherwise affiliated.)
- cookiengineer 5y ago
  Yeah I've seen tauri, but they're just using the glib bindings for webkit-gtk. So they're just sharing the preinstalled browser for rendering inside a webview. My goal, compared to tauri (or webview/webview), is to offer an alternative, slimmed-down version that can be used to bundle apps on mobile and embedded devices. I mean, from a security point of view you have to assume that Edge and Chrome are compromised, so all your tauri apps will be compromised too. So in retrokit I removed things like the massive plugin legacy in webkit, or pdfkit integrations and other stuff that was unnecessary, or webgl, or canvas, or the static geolocation API (which comes with a static copy of the ip<>geolocation database) etc.

teekert 5y ago

Ah, that feels like inux 20 years ago, and it feels good, in a geeky, brave, new world kind of way.

joeberon 5y ago

DeathArrow 5y ago

Why does Google hate the regular Linux Kernel and the regular Linux userland so much that Android doesn't have much Linux resemblance? I remember that wen Nokia did N900, it was pretty compatible with mainline Linux.

nunobrito 5y ago
There is usually an effort on their side to distance from GPL-2.0 and GPL-3.0 code. Usually replacing with some equivalents under Apache-2.0 or MIT.
aj3 5y ago
Android has different security guarantees compared to desktop/server Linux. E.g. people should expect that none of the installed software can hijack the phone completely and that most damage from malware should be mitigateable by uninstalling malicious app.
- kaba0 5y ago
  People would be right to expect that no installed software can hijack the desktop completely as well, but unfortunately that is very much not the case.
kaba0 5y ago
Because Linux userspace arguably sucks. While the kernel is excellent, there is no sane sandboxing (and I can’t communicate enough how truly terrible linux desktop’s “security” is. A single bash script could break absolute havoc), the IPC mechanism used to communicate between programs is fragmented and in my opinion the insistence that C should be used everywhere really holds back the platform. Compared to that, android has a well-architected sandboxing with very gradual permissions, SELinux for the remaining features (sure, mainline linux distros also have it from time-to-time but it is not used there to its full extent. Android runs every application as a different user for example, making security boundaries much more explicit), so I would rather ask, why doesn’t mainline linux copy some things from android? Also, don’t get me wrong, I really like using linux OSs, but they do have plenty of space to improve.

pedro2 5y ago

I have too many side-projects to add another one but I'm happy that there is a medium-priced Linux phone available.

nunobrito 5y ago

Any news about running Android apps inside Pinephone? It was more than an year since I've last followed the progress on this topic. If someone here has some pratical experience on the topic, would love to hear your thoughts.

pedro2 5y ago
Not pratical: I'm using Waydroid on Fedora. Compared to Anbox, the only requirement that changed is the need for a Wayland compositor. Google Apps: installed but not approved by Google. I am supposed to request access to Google but 30s after I made the request the error was still there. Will try again next weekend, hoping it was just a cache issue.
- nunobrito 5y ago
  Thanks, that is still progress. You mean the Play Store? A possible alternative is to use Aptoide for downloading APKs or maybe simply getting them directly from a cellphone.
  - pedro2 5y ago
    The PlayStore is now usable: I just needed to clear its cache.

satysin 5y ago

> Lately, I've been learning C programming solely on my Pinephone. Ha I like this guy already. That’s my kind of crazy :) It is an interesting experiment to be sure. I’m a big geek and love Linux but not sure I would go so far as to run i3 on my phone like this but more power to him and I’m glad there are people trying different things out and seeing how it goes. I know I’m getting old because every year I appreciate a simpler phone. On the desktop sure I like to mix it up with less common approaches that give me more flexibility but for my phone I keep it simple. I don’t really want my phone to be a full on desktop computer experience tbh. I use my phone for pretty basic tasks. Podcasts and music mostly. Some very casual web use and maybe a dozen apps. I don’t email on my phone (other than reading). I don’t message much on it either instead using a desktop app as I feel I have more “room to breath” and compose my messages more slowly unless it’s a short reply. And some light in the moment photography. This is why I stick to an iPhone. It doesn’t allow me to tweak it to the max. It does what I want just fine and I am grateful for the restrictions rather than allowing me to build some handheld Frankenstein second computer. Right tool for the job and all that. For me anyway :) But I am glad things like the PinePhone exist even if I don’t use them personally.

MartijnBraam 5y ago
Hah I do most of my C programming directly on the pinephone, mostly in convergence mode :)
- hpcoke 5y ago
  Interesting. What's your setup for sharing peripherals between your PinePhone dock and your laptop/desktop?
  - MartijnBraam 5y ago
    The trick is having seperate peripherals :D
- moltke 5y ago
  It's pretty fantastic for it. I've never had a better dev environment on a PDA.

FrostKiwi 5y ago

> With the convenient icon next to the clock in Sway Wait what? I never even considered this. I am in love with Sway. Having a tiling window manager on a phone might be quite the facinating use-case, mapping swipes to tiling actions similar to [1]. I think this article just won me over to try a linux phone. [1] https://v.redd.it/n3a1jk05p0211/DASH_9_6_M https://v.redd.it/n3a1jk05p0211/DASH_9_6_M

nivenkos 5y ago

How is this all legible on such a small screen though?

uhtred 5y ago

I'll be switching to a linux phone as soon as there is a decent way to run whatsapp on it. I hate whatsapp but I need it.

aerique 5y ago
WhatsApp runs fine on SailfishOS.
- uhtred 5y ago
  Does SailfishOS run on phones available in America? I seem to remember considering it but then realizing it wouldn't be feasible for me (I'm in US)
  - aerique 5y ago
    Ah yes, the US situation is a bummer. I know it runs on some phones but you'd really have to check and/or ask on the forums: https://forum.sailfishos.org/ https://forum.sailfishos.org/ Maybe this thread is helpful: https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/sailfish-in-the-usa/5307 https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/sailfish-in-the-usa/5307

lostgame 5y ago

I actually was not aware of the PineTime. As a huge Apple Watch/WatchOS fangirl, I'd honestly love to check out a far less restrictive smartwatch environment to mess around with. I have a lot of interesting ideas that I've unfortunately been waiting for the WatchOS API's to catch up to, and I'd maybe be interested in getting on that PineTime train. Has anyone purchased a PineTime? Can anyone give a bit of first-hand experience on what the experience is like? :)

olaki-dev 5y ago

If you'd like to know what other phones Linux can be installed on, you can check out this list I've created. Look at the columns named "postmarketOS", "Kali Linux" and "Ubuntu Touch". https://olaki-android.github.io/olaki/ https://olaki-android.github.io/olaki/

MrWiffles 5y ago

Somewhat related to this, I’m planning a full switch away from Apple *OS to Linux this year, and am looking for a good replacement for my iPhone. I’m aware of the Pine Phone of course, but what other mobile phone players are in the market these days that are not android based? A robust, solid and stable Linux phone that can do at least the basics (calls, MMS, internet, Bluetooth audio, and camera) would be AWESOME. I’d just like to know what my options are before settling on what to buy.

MrWiffles 5y ago
Reply since for some reason it won’t let me edit - I’m just trying to assess what the options are before settling on what to buy.
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  You can try one of many non-Google variants of Android (LineageOS, Calyx, /e/, Graphene) or go for Sailfish OS (the successor to Meego/Maemo). There's also postmarketOS, and Ubuntu Touch, but I'm unaware as to how well they're supported.

Havoc 5y ago

This is the kind of thing I wouldn't do but I'm glad someone out there is

hamblingreen 5y ago

Hello there! Thank you all for discussing my article in such great detail, I'm glad to have sparked healthy discussion around mobile linux. That being said, I'm aware that I represent a minority of mobile linux users, as can be seen by the community poll on Pine64's blog [1], and that is one of many reasons I decided to publish my ideas. I've added a few things to my website, like images to my first post and a todo list page so that you can see what i'm working on and give feedback. Thanks for your support. Oh, and if you have any questions at all, feel free to ask below or contact me through any means listed on my website. (email: hamblingreen@hotmail.com)