6 ms·

Phosh 0.56.0

140 points by edward 3mo ago

jstanley 3mo ago
What are the best phones/distros to use phosh with?
- guilamu 3mo ago
  https://phosh.mobi/faq/#so-what-phones-are-supported https://phosh.mobi/faq/#so-what-phones-are-supported
- kop316 3mo ago
  I have a oneplus6 and use a mobile version of Debian called "Mobian". postmarketOS is a really good choice, and they have a wiki of supported devices: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices
challengerVIE 3mo ago
a
awestroke 3mo ago
Seemed interesting until I read that Phosh pulls in GNOME - gnome-settings, gnome-session etc. Seems like a very strange bundle to bring in for an extremely power constrained device, where every % of increased battery drain is noticed by the user
- realusername 3mo ago
  It works kind of okay for recent devices as phones are very powerful nowadays, Phosh on a <2015 device is much more painful though.
- gf000 3mo ago
  Why? What's particularly heavy in these gnome tools? Like the particular programs are no issue, but the whole UNIX-userspace as done in the mainframe era and still is. Like you definitely need cooperative program suspend/resume like on Android for any kind of sane battery life, but that's unfortunately completely missing in case of GNU/Linux.
  - tim-projects 3mo ago
    Gnomes' a massive memory hog I was looking at this and thinking maybe it would improve a cheap android phone. But now I know it's running gnome I won't even consider trying
    - gcr 3mo ago
      Every desktop environment is a massive memory hog. Do you really want something minimal like xfce on a touchscreen?
      - zzril 3mo ago
        SXMO is pretty minimal in that regard, but it doesn't force you to use the touchscreen. Can also navigate through menus via the volume buttons...
        gf000 3mo ago
        Even that will be a massive energy vampire compared to android, that had top notch engineers working on it for close to 2 decades...
        realusername 3mo ago
        Yes and no, SXMO will work without hardware acceleration, I've not tried but I doubt that Android will. Additionally, minimum requirements of Android 17 are way above what SXMO allows. With Phosh you would have a point but SXMO is lighter than a modern Android.
        gf000 3mo ago
        Lighter for what? Displaying a clock? Add a bunch of fat, semi-desktop binaries that actually provide some kind of functionality to make it remotely comparable, and then you just have a worse, fatter system that runs hot and wastes the battery. Android is a unified system working together to make the device race to sleep as fast as possible, with as few wakeups as feasible (e.g. batch together events that would wake up the device).
- Striving7340 3mo ago
  Phosh is not based on gnome-shell and has its own settings and apps, but it does use parts of gnome, no reason to reinvent the wheel. > Seems like a very strange bundle to bring in for an extremely power constrained device, where every % of increased battery drain is noticed by the user I'm sure you can make your Frankenstein version that would be 10% as usable and secure as phosh by removing everything but for most users, 100mb more ram and 1% more battery drain for an OS aiming to be a daily driver is something that's worth it.
- retatop 3mo ago
  I'm a certified gnome hater, but a phone is basically the perfect application for it. As far as resource usage goes, I have been dailying an FLX1 for a year and a half now and Firefox is the only noticeable resource hog
hirako2000 3mo ago
The fact I thought it was a custom UI over stock android means they got this well rounded.
jarbus 3mo ago
Linux has long been the most practical laptop OS for me, but I can't see it ever being competitive with mobile OSes, and that's coming from someone who wants it to succeed (I've installed postmarketOS on a OP6T). I just don't see how it will overcome the various issues (app support, tap-to-pay, camera quality, etc).
- shevy-java 3mo ago
  Oddly enough I am using Win10 right now on my laptop. On my main computer I use linux but I also got tired having to set up things specifically for the laptop or be locked down in a specific distribution; plus, I also have to run various software on the laptop and when the rest of the class or group uses Windows, and you are the sole Linux person, it feels very lonely. So I fake being a win user in that case.
- ryukafalz 3mo ago
  I've never understood tap-to-pay being a dealbreaker issue. It takes me just as long to pull out my credit card as it does to pull out my phone, and you can use them on the exact same terminals. App support and camera quality I can understand more. I'm on a Linux phone using Phosh (FLX1s), and there's Android app compatibility, but it is a little rough (and of course things that rely on Play Integrity won't work). I've managed to avoid tying myself to anything that requires Google for now, but I acknowledge that I'm lucky there.
  - chompychop 3mo ago
    With tap-to-pay, you can store multiple cards in your digital wallet, and you don't have to remember any of their PINs. You can use your fingerprint to sign transactions. I believe this makes it faster.
    - KoolKat23 3mo ago
      There's also thresholds where a simple tap of a card won't work and you need to insert the chip, not the case with the phone. Phone is much much easier, don't even have to open the wallet app, just unlock the phone with your fingerprint and tap.
shevy-java 3mo ago
The name sounds like someone driving by at high speed ...
IshKebab 3mo ago
Terrible name. It's going to fail on those grounds alone. Not that it would really succeed otherwise. You need Android app compatibility to stand a remote chance.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3mo ago
  > You need Android app compatibility That's not phosh's problem; waydroid is a pretty much independent component.
jansommer 3mo ago
I've installed this on my Surface Go 2 64GB. Runs smooth! Absolutely the best tablet experience for Linux. The support is also wild: My silly questions are answered within hours.
gorgoiler 3mo ago
[dead]
vzaliva 3mo ago
This is a good example of a poor web site design. If you, like me, do not know what Phosh is and go to their website, it will tell you not much beyond "A user interface for your mobile phone," which could mean pretty much anything. Is it a UI level on top of Android? Is it an idependent mobile OS? How it is better that competition? What are key features and design goals?
- isityettime 3mo ago
  From that same website: > About Phosh > The Phosh project aims to provide a daily-usable, robust and easy to use graphical user environment for mobile devices running mainline Linux. The name is a portmanteau of phone and shell as phosh was one of the first components developed by the project. It hence coined the whole project’s name and is still one of its core components. All of Phosh is entirely Free Software.
- afavour 3mo ago
  I think it’s more a failing of a link aggregator site like this one dropping you into a release announcement page without context. If you don’t already know what Phosh is, why would you read their 0.56.0 announcement? Normally you wouldn’t. But here we are. Putting “The Phosh project aims to provide a daily-usable, robust and easy to use graphical user environment for mobile devices running mainline Linux” on every release page feels like a waste of time. As it is I didn’t find it at all difficult to find the answers to your questions by going to the “about page”.
  - wink 3mo ago
    See, you went the extra mile. Like the person you replied to (I assume), I clicked on the home page, pondered why one would not describe the app's purpose on the home page, failed to scroll horizontally with a mouse and closed the page before noticing the about section. They didn't even lose me with the original link I couldn't make sense of.

Phosh 0.56.0

140 points by edward 3mo ago

jstanley 3mo ago

What are the best phones/distros to use phosh with?

guilamu 3mo ago
https://phosh.mobi/faq/#so-what-phones-are-supported https://phosh.mobi/faq/#so-what-phones-are-supported
kop316 3mo ago
I have a oneplus6 and use a mobile version of Debian called "Mobian". postmarketOS is a really good choice, and they have a wiki of supported devices: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices

challengerVIE 3mo ago

awestroke 3mo ago

Seemed interesting until I read that Phosh pulls in GNOME - gnome-settings, gnome-session etc. Seems like a very strange bundle to bring in for an extremely power constrained device, where every % of increased battery drain is noticed by the user

realusername 3mo ago
It works kind of okay for recent devices as phones are very powerful nowadays, Phosh on a <2015 device is much more painful though.
gf000 3mo ago
Why? What's particularly heavy in these gnome tools? Like the particular programs are no issue, but the whole UNIX-userspace as done in the mainframe era and still is. Like you definitely need cooperative program suspend/resume like on Android for any kind of sane battery life, but that's unfortunately completely missing in case of GNU/Linux.
- tim-projects 3mo ago
  Gnomes' a massive memory hog I was looking at this and thinking maybe it would improve a cheap android phone. But now I know it's running gnome I won't even consider trying
  - gcr 3mo ago
    Every desktop environment is a massive memory hog. Do you really want something minimal like xfce on a touchscreen?
    - zzril 3mo ago
      SXMO is pretty minimal in that regard, but it doesn't force you to use the touchscreen. Can also navigate through menus via the volume buttons...
      - gf000 3mo ago
        Even that will be a massive energy vampire compared to android, that had top notch engineers working on it for close to 2 decades...
        realusername 3mo ago
        Yes and no, SXMO will work without hardware acceleration, I've not tried but I doubt that Android will. Additionally, minimum requirements of Android 17 are way above what SXMO allows. With Phosh you would have a point but SXMO is lighter than a modern Android.
        gf000 3mo ago
        Lighter for what? Displaying a clock? Add a bunch of fat, semi-desktop binaries that actually provide some kind of functionality to make it remotely comparable, and then you just have a worse, fatter system that runs hot and wastes the battery. Android is a unified system working together to make the device race to sleep as fast as possible, with as few wakeups as feasible (e.g. batch together events that would wake up the device).
Striving7340 3mo ago
Phosh is not based on gnome-shell and has its own settings and apps, but it does use parts of gnome, no reason to reinvent the wheel. > Seems like a very strange bundle to bring in for an extremely power constrained device, where every % of increased battery drain is noticed by the user I'm sure you can make your Frankenstein version that would be 10% as usable and secure as phosh by removing everything but for most users, 100mb more ram and 1% more battery drain for an OS aiming to be a daily driver is something that's worth it.
retatop 3mo ago
I'm a certified gnome hater, but a phone is basically the perfect application for it. As far as resource usage goes, I have been dailying an FLX1 for a year and a half now and Firefox is the only noticeable resource hog

hirako2000 3mo ago

The fact I thought it was a custom UI over stock android means they got this well rounded.

jarbus 3mo ago

Linux has long been the most practical laptop OS for me, but I can't see it ever being competitive with mobile OSes, and that's coming from someone who wants it to succeed (I've installed postmarketOS on a OP6T). I just don't see how it will overcome the various issues (app support, tap-to-pay, camera quality, etc).

shevy-java 3mo ago
Oddly enough I am using Win10 right now on my laptop. On my main computer I use linux but I also got tired having to set up things specifically for the laptop or be locked down in a specific distribution; plus, I also have to run various software on the laptop and when the rest of the class or group uses Windows, and you are the sole Linux person, it feels very lonely. So I fake being a win user in that case.
ryukafalz 3mo ago
I've never understood tap-to-pay being a dealbreaker issue. It takes me just as long to pull out my credit card as it does to pull out my phone, and you can use them on the exact same terminals. App support and camera quality I can understand more. I'm on a Linux phone using Phosh (FLX1s), and there's Android app compatibility, but it is a little rough (and of course things that rely on Play Integrity won't work). I've managed to avoid tying myself to anything that requires Google for now, but I acknowledge that I'm lucky there.
- chompychop 3mo ago
  With tap-to-pay, you can store multiple cards in your digital wallet, and you don't have to remember any of their PINs. You can use your fingerprint to sign transactions. I believe this makes it faster.
  - KoolKat23 3mo ago
    There's also thresholds where a simple tap of a card won't work and you need to insert the chip, not the case with the phone. Phone is much much easier, don't even have to open the wallet app, just unlock the phone with your fingerprint and tap.

shevy-java 3mo ago

The name sounds like someone driving by at high speed ...

IshKebab 3mo ago

Terrible name. It's going to fail on those grounds alone. Not that it would really succeed otherwise. You need Android app compatibility to stand a remote chance.

yjftsjthsd-h 3mo ago
> You need Android app compatibility That's not phosh's problem; waydroid is a pretty much independent component.

jansommer 3mo ago

I've installed this on my Surface Go 2 64GB. Runs smooth! Absolutely the best tablet experience for Linux. The support is also wild: My silly questions are answered within hours.

gorgoiler 3mo ago

[dead]

vzaliva 3mo ago

This is a good example of a poor web site design. If you, like me, do not know what Phosh is and go to their website, it will tell you not much beyond "A user interface for your mobile phone," which could mean pretty much anything. Is it a UI level on top of Android? Is it an idependent mobile OS? How it is better that competition? What are key features and design goals?

isityettime 3mo ago
From that same website: > About Phosh > The Phosh project aims to provide a daily-usable, robust and easy to use graphical user environment for mobile devices running mainline Linux. The name is a portmanteau of phone and shell as phosh was one of the first components developed by the project. It hence coined the whole project’s name and is still one of its core components. All of Phosh is entirely Free Software.
afavour 3mo ago
I think it’s more a failing of a link aggregator site like this one dropping you into a release announcement page without context. If you don’t already know what Phosh is, why would you read their 0.56.0 announcement? Normally you wouldn’t. But here we are. Putting “The Phosh project aims to provide a daily-usable, robust and easy to use graphical user environment for mobile devices running mainline Linux” on every release page feels like a waste of time. As it is I didn’t find it at all difficult to find the answers to your questions by going to the “about page”.
- wink 3mo ago
  See, you went the extra mile. Like the person you replied to (I assume), I clicked on the home page, pondered why one would not describe the app's purpose on the home page, failed to scroll horizontally with a mouse and closed the page before noticing the about section. They didn't even lose me with the original link I couldn't make sense of.