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Just curious as to what the use cases for this are from any current users. Is anyone using postmarked as a daily driver replacement for their phone ? Do people

Just curious as to what the use cases for this are from any current users. Is anyone using postmarked as a daily driver replacement for their phone ? Do people use it as a mobile low power server or just a fun handheld Linux computer ?

kop316 4y ago
> Is anyone using postmarked as a daily driver replacement for their phone? Yes. I'm not sure I understand your question though. A big use case for PostmarketOS is software for a mobile phone, so that's my use case.
- npteljes 4y ago
  Yes but how much do you depend on your phone? As in, what functions does it fill in your day-to-day life?
  - kop316 4y ago
    I use it for Calls, SMS/MMS, Email, Calendar, tasks/TODOs, various chat applications, 2FA, password manager, and internet. So it fills the functions I expect in a smartphone. I think it has some apps for social media, but I only have a mastodon acccount for social media. The only thing really lacking in it is a decent maps app, but for the most part I get by just fine without that.
    - linmob 4y ago
      Regarding maps apps: Arguably, Pure Maps is decent (in a Mainstream Smartphone way), and Mepo is great in a nerdy way. I really need to look into packaging Osmin for postmarketOS, it‘s almost upsetting that it’s only available on Manjaro ARM. For more info on these and other apps, check out https://linuxphoneapps.org/apps/ https://linuxphoneapps.org/apps/ - contributions welcome!
cowtools 4y ago
I've used it for a couple months. Battery life and CPU power are a major hurdle, but it is promising because calling and SMS works just fine with the open-source modem firmware. I might try it again in 6 months, as I heard the next release of Phosh is supposed to have GPU acceleration or something and is much smoother. I think I will continue using AOSP on a pixel phone until waydroid support gets a bit better. It takes a while to start waydroid, and by then I'm already down like 25% battery. The "selling point" of postmarketOS is that it is based on the lightweight Alpine Linux, and it has a toolkit (called pmbootstrap) which is designed to make it easy to port it to stock-android phones, not just pinephone/librem5's. So whatever contributions you make to the OS will survive beyond this generation of phones. Also, other distros like Ubuntu Touch try to make their own weird userspace, but postmarketOS is nice because it behaves a lot more like the desktop linux userspace. Also, it's easy to run their pmbootstrap program to make your own image- it gives you a selection of DE's to choose from for example sxmo or kde mobile or phosh, and you can even set up FDE. What I'm getting at here is that it's a lot more "standard" and extensible than the other linux phone distros out there: they try to build on top of a minimal alpine linux instead of just porting a bigger distro like manjaro or reinventing the wheel. Hopefully we will eventually see postmarketOS ported to a more powerful (probably stock-android) phone that has feature-parity with the pinephone (see https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices#Community https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices#Community). I would definitely miss the extensibility and open-ness of the pinephone; ideally a company like pine64 just iterates on the pinephone until the hardware is usable, and the software meets it in the middle.

kop316 4y ago

> Is anyone using postmarked as a daily driver replacement for their phone? Yes. I'm not sure I understand your question though. A big use case for PostmarketOS is software for a mobile phone, so that's my use case.

npteljes 4y ago
Yes but how much do you depend on your phone? As in, what functions does it fill in your day-to-day life?
- kop316 4y ago
  I use it for Calls, SMS/MMS, Email, Calendar, tasks/TODOs, various chat applications, 2FA, password manager, and internet. So it fills the functions I expect in a smartphone. I think it has some apps for social media, but I only have a mastodon acccount for social media. The only thing really lacking in it is a decent maps app, but for the most part I get by just fine without that.
  - linmob 4y ago
    Regarding maps apps: Arguably, Pure Maps is decent (in a Mainstream Smartphone way), and Mepo is great in a nerdy way. I really need to look into packaging Osmin for postmarketOS, it‘s almost upsetting that it’s only available on Manjaro ARM. For more info on these and other apps, check out https://linuxphoneapps.org/apps/ https://linuxphoneapps.org/apps/ - contributions welcome!

cowtools 4y ago

I've used it for a couple months. Battery life and CPU power are a major hurdle, but it is promising because calling and SMS works just fine with the open-source modem firmware. I might try it again in 6 months, as I heard the next release of Phosh is supposed to have GPU acceleration or something and is much smoother. I think I will continue using AOSP on a pixel phone until waydroid support gets a bit better. It takes a while to start waydroid, and by then I'm already down like 25% battery. The "selling point" of postmarketOS is that it is based on the lightweight Alpine Linux, and it has a toolkit (called pmbootstrap) which is designed to make it easy to port it to stock-android phones, not just pinephone/librem5's. So whatever contributions you make to the OS will survive beyond this generation of phones. Also, other distros like Ubuntu Touch try to make their own weird userspace, but postmarketOS is nice because it behaves a lot more like the desktop linux userspace. Also, it's easy to run their pmbootstrap program to make your own image- it gives you a selection of DE's to choose from for example sxmo or kde mobile or phosh, and you can even set up FDE. What I'm getting at here is that it's a lot more "standard" and extensible than the other linux phone distros out there: they try to build on top of a minimal alpine linux instead of just porting a bigger distro like manjaro or reinventing the wheel. Hopefully we will eventually see postmarketOS ported to a more powerful (probably stock-android) phone that has feature-parity with the pinephone (see https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices#Community https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices#Community). I would definitely miss the extensibility and open-ness of the pinephone; ideally a company like pine64 just iterates on the pinephone until the hardware is usable, and the software meets it in the middle.