[HN Gopher] Pine64 Februrary Update: Show and Tell
___________________________________________________________________
Pine64 Februrary Update: Show and Tell
Author : bauen1
Score : 172 points
Date : 2021-02-15 16:14 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pine64.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pine64.org)
| swiley wrote:
| I'm thoroughly convinced companies like Pine64 are going to
| completely displace Google (and perhaps even Apple) because they
| work with rather than against the developer community. I've owned
| a pinephone since the early fall of last year and have had to
| hack around and generally put up with bugs just to do normal
| stuff, but at this point everything needed to use it as a PDA
| works well and the modem related issues are being solved very
| quickly. It probably won't be long before the phone will be the
| more sensible alternative to an android.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| People today expect more from their phones than just basic PDA
| functionality. They want to consume lots of media on the phone,
| and sometimes even produce it. The Allwinner A64 CPU in the
| PinePhone is antiquated and underpowered compared to any
| midrange Android phone today, making it barely possible to even
| browse the modern web. Today many smartphones are popular
| precisely due to their camera, but the PinePhone's is low-
| quality and even with some software tweaks will remain that way
| forever. So, the PinePhone attracts its niche audience of
| technies like us, but forget about mass adoption.
|
| Reports on the PinePhone forum suggest it'll be 4-5 years
| before the next PinePhone with a better chip comes along (and
| by then, even that chip may seem old), so don't expect this
| situation to change anytime soon.
|
| Vanilla Linux on the PinePhone is also missing numerous battery
| optimizations found on Android that would give people the
| battery life they expect today.
| tw04 wrote:
| >I'm thoroughly convinced companies like Pine64 are going to
| completely displace Google (and perhaps even Apple) because
| they work with rather than against the developer community.
|
| I applaud your enthusiasm but there's no planet on which Pine64
| replaces Google or Apple. Unless they somehow convince the
| likes of someone like Samsung to make the switch, their market
| share will be measured in basis points.
|
| The average consumer doesn't care at all how Google and Apple
| treat developers. And the average developer is going to go to
| the place they make money, even if it's more painful to do
| business with those giants.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Microsoft leaving the phone market is where I'd point. They
| were also very developer friendly but far too late to the
| market.
|
| I don't even think Samsung can get away from android. They
| are trying with tizen but the ecosystem is hard to escape.
| benjohnson wrote:
| It was my understanding that Microsoft pulled the rug out
| from developers multiple times by making new OS versions
| not quite backwards compatible.
| Snitch-Thursday wrote:
| iirc the extreme TL;DR of that was this:
|
| rewrite your windows mobile 5/6 apps for windows phone 7?
| ok, its a brand new platform, i get it.
|
| rewrite wp 7 for windows phone 8? ok... (there may have
| been wp7 mango that needed tweaks but my memory is too
| fuzzy)
|
| rewrite windows phone 8 for 8.1 ? cmon now
|
| rewrite windows phone 8.1 for wm 10? no
| swiley wrote:
| They don't care who makes the phone but they do care:
|
| 1) about the phone not shipping with malware
|
| 2) about the phone not working after 2 years
|
| 3) apps no longer working because the only OS vendor for your
| phone disagrees about something with the developer
|
| As for what developers care about: commercial devs will avoid
| the pinephone and IMO that's a good thing.
| macksd wrote:
| They care, but not enough to slightly inconvenience
| themselves when shopping for a new contract. I have a lot
| of family that come to me for IT / device help and I make a
| big deal out of all these issues to them. I can't say I've
| ever had one do anything other than go ask the Verizon
| store (or equivalent) for the latest iPhone or Galaxy the
| minute their old one is paid off. The one exception is the
| relative who will buy whatever the absolute cheapest, most
| heavily subsidized device is. I don't see him buying a Pine
| either.
| tw04 wrote:
| >1) about the phone not shipping with malware
|
| Given the number of people who have no issues installing
| Zoom or TikTok, I'm not sure I buy that.
|
| >2) about the phone not working after 2 years
|
| The average consumer has to have the latest and greatest
| every 2 years whether the old phone still works or not.
|
| >3) apps no longer working because the only OS vendor for
| your phone disagrees about something with the developer
|
| The number of parler users willing to give up their iPhone
| for parler isn't even a blip on the radar. They won't even
| switch to android for it, why do you think they'd switch to
| Pine?
| war1025 wrote:
| > The average consumer has to have the latest and
| greatest every 2 years whether the old phone still works
| or not.
|
| My experience is that my older relatives get new phones
| frequently because they get their old ones so malware
| laden that they no longer function correctly.
|
| That and apps grind to a halt because the developers use
| top of the line hardware and don't notice how wasteful of
| resources they are being.
| homarp wrote:
| but your older relative also expects:
|
| a) the bank app to install
|
| b) the whatsapp or whatever "everyone my age uses that"
| they are using to install
|
| c) candycrush or whatever is the trendy game of the
| moment to install
|
| d) Netflix/Disney+/... app to install
|
| I really doubt these will ever be ported to PinePhone.
| And then, if they were, I am sure malware would also be
| ported, so back to square one.
| foolmeonce wrote:
| I'm very interested in the possibility of reusing eink screens
| from old ereaders on the Quartz64?
|
| It seems like there is only the one brand, but probably there are
| generations of EDP ports or flavors relating to maximum size,
| color/gray-scale Levels, etc?
| MayeulC wrote:
| I know nothing about this; is the connector and protocol
| standard and common to all eink devices?
| foolmeonce wrote:
| All I've found is SoC makers have their own driver, but refer
| to the interface in terms of max resolutions, etc.
|
| I hope it is very similar to the situation with HDMI, where
| the interface doesn't vary, but alternatively, it could be a
| matter of proprietary things not being discussed clearly
| because of NDAs, etc.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| Pine64 should start taking in resellers and build robust
| relationship with them in the footsteps of Raspberry Pi
| Foundation to have chance at mass adoption.
|
| Since almost almost every country have their own rules &
| compliance regarding tele-communication/radio hardware Pine64
| products with them are plagued with shipping issues if not
| straight away ban on them. Resellers have the means to get them
| resolved.
|
| I don't think selling their products only through their website
| is doing justice for their goals albeit better markup on
| relatively inexpensive devices. Raspberry Pi Foundation's ability
| to ship products to over 50 countries through their resellers _on
| the day_ of announcement is underrated.
| nrp wrote:
| Pine64 announced last year that they will be doing exactly
| that: https://www.pine64.org/2020/12/02/pine-store-community-
| prici...
| IgorPartola wrote:
| I am curious if a Pine64 board can be used as a pfsense router
| for home office use. Their hardware looks really neat.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| There are two issues I can see:
|
| * support for openbsd or freebsd (I forget which pfsense uses)
| and in particular an image for pfsense that supports the
| hardware
|
| * if you need two NICs, you will have to use the rockpro64 with
| a PCIe card or maybe a USB3 based adapter
| ac29 wrote:
| The community version of pfsense doesnt support ARM.
| syntaxing wrote:
| Super fun to read these updates. Whenever I read about their
| update, its kind of bittersweet because this is exactly what I
| expected of the Ubuntu phone that Canonical killed prematurely.
| fartcannon wrote:
| The posts are delightful. Feels like Christmas every time.
|
| As a form of advertising, these posts are spectacular. I find
| myself just buying everything they make. It feels so genuine.
|
| The marketers on this forum can learn from these guys.
| Frequent, jargon-free technically inspiring posts make me spend
| money.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > The marketers on this forum can learn from these guys.
| Frequent, jargon-free technically inspiring posts make me
| spend money.
|
| And, y'know, actually selling stuff that people want. For me,
| at least, it's the specific combination of "blog post talking
| about this neat new thing _that I want to buy_ ". Which,
| granted, is true of nearly everything that Pine sells:)
| mehdix wrote:
| To be honest, I have pinned some pine store links and refresh
| them everyday to buy as soon as there is new stock! I'm
| happily using Pinebook Pro as my portable device and have
| Pinephone with PostmarketOS which with everything working.
| Fantastic!
| slezyr wrote:
| I think that all these small factor laptops should just use JJ50
| layout[1] for the keyboard. It makes no sense to arrange them
| into old QWERTY-style, you can't use it comfortably anyway.
|
| 1: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32957204924.html
| meowster wrote:
| I'm not opposed to using a standard that's somewhat different,
| but I need an enter/return key.
| MayeulC wrote:
| I tried to raise awareness of this multiple times, in the
| forums, on their website, on the chat. I either had crickets or
| answers that fel strongly opposed to changing anything with
| their layout.
|
| Anyway, I feel like an ortholinear keyboard woukd be better,
| maybe with an enter key in the middle to space hands more, like
| I wrote in the past:
| https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=10885&pid=86112#...
|
| I might try to print an alternate case and PCB. A forum post
| mentions joycons, joycon grooves could be a fun addition :P
| canada_dry wrote:
| I can't get over how professional, thorough and measured Pine64's
| updates are (compared to the typical overblown/stretched
| promises).
| ipnon wrote:
| I suspect being "on the ground" in Southern China as opposed to
| "in the clouds" in Silicon Valley helps.
| ThenAsNow wrote:
| This team is doing "the lord's work". Anyone thinking you can use
| a "de-Googled" Android distribution, like GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, or
| LineageOS and actually be de-Googled in anything but the most
| superficial way (as I once thought possible) should actually grab
| the sources and examine them.
|
| Android is written with deep and casual connections to Google's
| systems all throughout the codebase. It's like a cockroach
| infestation. There's no concept of anyone potentially not wanting
| to connect to their services regardless of how trivial the "value
| add". It will take dozens of patches to cut these out, often
| breaking functionality. To be fair, I haven't looked at /e/
| sources to see if they've done all this, but I would be surprised
| if they got all of them. Then of course, the patches need to be
| maintained and new ones written as Google continues to
| relentlessly add more integration points with their servers in
| subsequent Android updates.
|
| Just to name a few: SUPL, WebRTC probing, automatic previews of
| YouTube in the Messenger, Google maps lookups in Dialer and in
| Photos, myriad connectivity checks, etc. And this doesn't even
| consider the unending whack-a-mole that gets played for Chromium
| privacy by projects like Bromite and un-Googled Chromium.
|
| After going down this rabbit hole, it became clear to me the only
| way to win is to not play. If the Pine64 ecosystem gets to the
| point of working as well as the Linux desktop (been daily driving
| some KDE on top of GNU/Linux for 10+ years, with only one major
| issue due to buggy drivers), it will be one of the very few ways
| to ensure your phone is not making unwanted data transfers to
| Apple and Google's servers.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Removing them all is a simple matter of blocking DNS lookups
| for Google DNS addresses. There are only ~10 hostnames to
| block.
|
| Sure, some features will break, but it won't be any worse than
| being disconnected from the internet.
| hobofan wrote:
| Ah yes, the smartphone, the invention that isn't basically
| entirely based around the concept of being connected to the
| internet.
| ThenAsNow wrote:
| This would take out a certain number of them, but there are
| hardcoded IP references ( _e.g._ , to their DNS servers), use
| of Google systems for things like NTP, and so on. These are
| findable and patchable, but you will still be building your
| own image to maintain as most of these are not exposed as
| knobs in the Android UI. And of course still no answer for
| SUPL. Going transiently without an internet connection is
| common, but going semi-permanently without one is not what
| these systems are designed to do well.
|
| Also, is this list of ~10 hostnames readily available
| somewhere?
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Google has a solution for this. By using DNS-over-HTTPS,
| Google can start deploying software that communicates solely
| with it's own DNS servers over encrypted connections.
| teekert wrote:
| I don't know why you are down voted but this is exactly why
| pihole and adguard have no effect on many devices.
| teddyh wrote:
| DNS blocking will very soon, if not already, cease to work,
| with the arrival of DoH.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Android is written with deep and casual connections to
| Google's systems all throughout the codebase. It's like a
| cockroach infestation. There's no concept of anyone potentially
| not wanting to connect to their services regardless of how
| trivial the "value add".
|
| Par for the course in embedded development. Tuere are plenty of
| bad things to be said about AOSP, but it's still _way_ better
| than any of its Linux-based forerunners. Remember the OpenMoko?
|
| (Of course, this is not to say that further improvement is not
| possible! So, I might well agree with the gist of your comment
| from that POV.)
| bisby wrote:
| There are many apps which are very sad when you use the F-Droid
| version vs the Play store version. Namely push notifications,
| or in some cases, mere existence. Element.io app for a while
| there (at least when it was riot.im) was using polling to check
| for new messages instead of push notifications. Because no
| google means no google cloud messaging (or firebase, or
| whatever it is now).
|
| Home Assistant is great and open source, but they refuse to
| publish to F-Droid over a name dispute from years ago (someone
| had an unofficial app and had refused to relinquish the name
| and F-Droid let the unofficial app keep it). Which means if you
| want the home assistant app to control your lights... Play
| store.
|
| However. My ubports pinephone which is running Arch is missing
| a few key features. Performance is one. And I can't get the
| replacement mainboard that has the extra RAM because it's been
| out of stock for the past few months. And the other is Wi-Fi
| calling. I live in an area with poor reception and need wifi
| calling.I just flashed my android phone back from LineageOS
| because lineage wifi calling wasnt working.
|
| I really really really want pinephones and librem 5s to work
| out. I acknowledge it is hard "lord's work" they are doing. but
| it's still not quite there yet. We're getting close enough that
| within a few years, I'll be using linux as my daily driver,
| even if I don't feel comfortable recommending it to my grandma.
| kop316 wrote:
| > And the other is Wi-Fi calling. I live in an area with poor
| reception and need wifi calling.I just flashed my android
| phone back from LineageOS because lineage wifi calling wasnt
| working.
|
| So you know, that is because of a proprietary library that is
| included in Android. It isn't included in the AOSP build,
| which is why it was not wokring for a while (it is wokring
| now).
|
| I am curious how WiFi calling works though. VoLTE is
| essentially VoIP (so data), I imagine that SMS on LTE is very
| similar, and I know MMS is over data too. My intuition would
| be that somehow, some sort of VPN is being established?
| bisby wrote:
| It's definitely not working in any Lineage 17.1 or 18.1
| builds I've tried. Or is it in the gapps layer? I always go
| with the minimal gapps, so that would make sense.
| kop316 wrote:
| It's not in gapps. I have it working on T mobile USA in
| the latest grapheneOS
| wiml wrote:
| From what I remember (and this was a while back), wifi
| calling establishes an IPsec tunnel to the cellular
| provider (using your SIM for auth) and tunnels GSM frames
| over it. It's intended to let you handoff between "real"
| towers and wifi networks the same way that you move between
| one tower and another, which I assume means that it has to
| implement some functionality that is normally hidden in the
| baseband processor.
| zeta0134 wrote:
| Could you elaborate on the Home Assistant thing? I'm running
| that app from the F-droid store right now, and I sorta
| blindly assumed it was the official one. Now I'm worried; is
| this some outdated clone?
| bisby wrote:
| https://github.com/home-assistant/android/issues/42
|
| > We have no interest in maintaining a branch of the app
| that doesn't depend on any proprietary services.
|
| Developers explain why they wouldn't (naming issues, and
| "the point of the android app vs just using a browser is to
| have the location tracking, which requires google
| services") and then the thread was closed. And then I
| stopped following the issue and begrudgingly installed from
| Play store (I'm not de-googled, because like the GP
| mentioned, it's very hard to do even if you think you have
| done it, so in some cases I don't even try).
|
| There are a LOT of locked threads in their github issues on
| the same topic. The F-Droid version appears to be a build
| of the appropriate repo, and the description says "This is
| the minimal flavor that does not have location tracking or
| notifications" (so the 2 things mentioned previously,
| location and push notifications are hard to do without
| Google).
|
| https://github.com/home-assistant/android/pull/682 here is
| the PR that adds in a "minimal" flavor without the Google
| features. I stand corrected. A bunch of neat things have
| happened since I stopped paying attention, and I'm pretty
| proud of the HA team for getting around to resolving this
| amicably, even if they were a bit rough about it in the
| beginning.
|
| edit: ... I just realized I installed Home Assistant from
| F-Droid when I just re-imaged my phone this weekend.
| Without even realizing it.
| johnbrodie wrote:
| For what it's worth, location services work fine in
| MicroG, at least for any app I've tried. MicroG presents
| the same API as the "real" Google version, and lets the
| user choose which backends to use for things like
| network-based location.
| 0e6cbf wrote:
| I found that the mobile interface for Home Assistant
| works great without needing an app. Just pinned my HA
| website to my home screen and there's one less piece of
| software on my device.
|
| There is some HA cloud paid service IIRC - I can't speak
| to whether an app would be needed for that. But for my
| purposes the mobile web is more than sufficient.
| rektide wrote:
| This rather is the important work I agree.
|
| Personally I'm not that afraid of Google nor what they are up
| to. I think they strike a decent balance. I tire of the
| polemics against them.
|
| What I see as critically important, as absolutely key to a
| vital, alive civilization is progress & exploration. Android is
| on version 11, and at this point, the mold has set. This world
| where you buy a phone, run the same OS you've always run, and
| wait 3 years until you have to throw it out (because it's
| running an antique kernel & security updates are ending) is an
| unexciting one, it is less than what human potential has
| available.
|
| PinePhone is one of the forebearers of a better future. Which
| future? Any of them, all of them. The future that is coming
| that doesn't look exactly like today that doesn't look exactly
| like 5 years ago. The future where hardware is supported for
| more than 3 years. The future where there are multiple
| different interfaces & operating systems available for devices.
|
| The future where people other than giant companies have a
| chance to build cool hardware. This one is a nod too to Quartz,
| their new/upcoming very-competent, expandable mid-range option,
| which they explicitly target as a featureful development kit to
| make cool hardware on. Battery charging, 12V, ePaper, camera,
| display, USB, PCIe,... just a lot of good robust well built
| features. On an open source board.
|
| The fact that everyone is so up in arms against Google
| disguises what a boring, out-of-our-hands, staid, unchanging
| future we've been lead in to. Google is not the focus. The
| actual agents that we should be looking at, attending to, are
| ourselves. We've still spinning endless stories & selling fear
| of some other, but it is our own slumbering, our own lack of
| control & competency & creative freedom that defines the last
| decade of communicative capitalism taking over. PinePhone &
| Pine64 just want the individual human spirit to have a chance
| again. (And to band together as they may with other spirited
| journeyers.)
|
| Excited as well by their last bit in the update, embracing
| LoRaWAN. Not just opening the door to innovation in cellular
| phones, but blowing open decentralized, user-empowering new
| means of communication.
| teekert wrote:
| Yes LoraWAN is so cool, with a couple of enthusiasts you can
| cover a city with an open network that can handle small
| messages and many sensors that run for years on batteries.
| Youden wrote:
| The GrapheneOS FAQ [0] enumerates all the connections the OS
| and default apps will make and notably absent is anything
| Google-related.
|
| Your claims seem to contradict the FAQ (e.g. you mention
| connectivity checks which are mentioned explicitly). Have you
| reported any of these issues (e.g. [1])? What was the response?
| Can you point to any specifically problematic code?
|
| I'm not involved with GrapheneOS in any way but these seem like
| easily-verifiable claims if true.
|
| [0]: https://grapheneos.org/faq#default-connections
|
| [1]: https://grapheneos.org/contact#reporting-issues
| user3939382 wrote:
| I regret that I didn't do a detailed write up at the time,
| and that since I didn't I only have some abstract anecdata to
| offer but for what it's worth:
|
| A couple years ago I rooted Android (Planet Gemini),
| installed my own root CA, forced all network through USB-C
| --> ethernet, connected the ethernet to a physical network
| tap, and decrypted almost all the traffic. With only a
| handful of common apps installed the (idle state, no UI
| interaction) phone-home traffic and telemetry was non-stop. A
| majority of it was to Google, blocking it made the phone
| basically non-functional.
|
| There were also inexplicable calls to strange Chinese IP
| addresses that would only emerge every one or two weeks that
| I couldn't hunt down the source of and Planet said they
| didn't recognize.
|
| I want network activity to be 100% correlated with my UI
| interactions including updates. I feel power users should be
| given that right and option. Windows and macOS (and sadly
| Firefox) are also miles away from this but Android was
| ridiculous. I haven't tested iOS but I assume it's about the
| same.
| ThenAsNow wrote:
| I have spent time on the IRC channel and it is clear the
| founder/project lead (whom I'm not criticizing) has a
| different idea of what privacy means than what I do. He
| doesn't necessarily view connections to Google servers that
| take place without explicit user intention/confirmation as
| problematic. Based on his strong personality, I did not think
| it likely any patches I wrote would be accepted by him.
| Indeed, he thinks it best to "blend in" with other Android
| traffic. He is also, in my opinion, overworked.
|
| I'm looking at my abortive patchset against GrapheneOS from
| last year, which I never bothered to finish up to post, and
| will just pick a couple of random samples:
| packages/apps/Gallery/src/com/android/camera/MenuHelper.java
| (calls maps.google.com)
| packages/apps/Settings/src/com/android/RadioInfo.java
| (multiple connectivity checks pinging Google servers)
| external/webrtc/webrtc/p2p/stunprober/main.cc (uses a Google
| STUN server)
| packages/apps/Nfc/src/com/android/nfc/P2pLinkManager.java
| (calls to the play store)
|
| That's a random sampling, not trying to assess for
| "severity". You can rationalize away each of these
| individually, but I was at 41 patches when I stopped
| (including changes that address Google connections that
| GrapheneOS acknowledges). The cockroach infestation analogy
| is pretty apt. They are everywhere, and if you try to follow
| the code to assess for severity, it will be hugely time-
| consuming, so unless you have a team developing the patches,
| the safest thing is to pre-emptively patch out.
|
| I'm not saying any of these is malicious, my point is there
| are tons of these kinds of things littering the code. It will
| be extremely time-consuming to find and cut this stuff out of
| the base applications and libraries underlying installed
| applications.
|
| And BTW again, this says nothing about SUPL, which is still
| tracked as an issue about which there isn't a lot of clarity:
| https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os_issue_tracker/issues/96
|
| You can also see in that issue thread that the project lead
| does not see the project as focusing on de-Googling which is,
| in fact, what many of us want, and are wrongly projecting as
| a GrapheneOS project goal.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I mean, it almost sounds like you want a phone that doesn't
| connect to anything. If I may ask, what's the point. Just
| don't carry a phone.
| monocasa wrote:
| It sounds like they primarily don't want their phone to
| connect to Google without asking the user, not that they
| don't want it to connect to anything. Google has not
| become the whole internet yet.
| ThenAsNow wrote:
| Exactly this. I'm not sure how wanting a device that can
| connect as per my requests/configuration requires that I
| must also be OK with it willy-nilly connecting to
| whatever it wants.
| elipsey wrote:
| Anyone know what DE is used in the picture of the pinebook pro?
|
| some of the other screenshots look like gnome, but that one has
| miraculously not giant widgets/windowbars.
|
| also, does anyone know what those earbuds are?
| djclay wrote:
| If I'm looking at the same image that you are, the DE looks a
| lot like Lomiri (AKA Unity 8) but I'm not 100% sure.
| ThatGeoGuy wrote:
| Yup, this is Lomiri on Manjaro.
| krastanov wrote:
| Some of the pictures seem to use the phosh DE from Librem 5 (at
| least it looks the same as the Librem I have).
| christkv wrote:
| PCI x4 I wonder if it will be able to accommodate a GPU
| MartijnBraam wrote:
| Well it doesn't work on rk3399. Maybe it's fixed on the new
| ones
| pickle-wizard wrote:
| I'm excited for the upcoming RISC-V SBCs. I don't have a use case
| for it, but it will be interesting to mess around with.
| nightowl_games wrote:
| Pine64 really seems to have values and communications that I
| would associate with a European company. How are they so
| different than their Chinese colleagues?
| jjice wrote:
| An affordable RISC-V board sounds incredible. Sub $15 is
| something to write home about and I'll definitely pick on up when
| it releases. Playing with a new(ish) architecture sounds like a
| good time and this will hopefully get some more CS/CE/EE courses
| switching over to using RISC-V boards.
| marcodiego wrote:
| "... about 150 closed source binaries and libraries that make the
| modem work. Biktor is working on replacing all of them with 3
| open source alternatives ..."
|
| That means we can dream with proprietary blob-free phones in the
| not too distant future?
| kop316 wrote:
| Totally blob free? Unfortunately not: "We aren't touching the
| modem's ADSP firmware, because in addition to the inherent
| difficulties that come with it, modifying the ADSP firmware
| could lead to problems with RF regulations or certifications."
|
| The ADSP firmware is the firmware that does all of the heavy
| lifting for physical communications.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Close enough for me. I don't know how (un)reasonable it may
| be, but I think the "put it on a read-only chip and run on a
| 'secondary processor'" maneuver would be enough for fsf ryf
| certification[1]. The way it is now is free and open enough
| for me nevertheless.
|
| [1] https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-solving-the-first-fsf-ryf-
| hurd...
| megous wrote:
| It may have 150 binaries on the ARM side, but most are a) not
| used, b) don't don anything interesting or very involved c)
| some are FOSS already, like busybox, or have some code
| available if you look hard enough on github.
|
| That's also why it's feasible to re-create userspace from
| scratch.
|
| Anyway, it's gonna be nice having a lot of space to do
| interesting stuff in the modem's SoC.
| biktor_gj wrote:
| That count is only of quectel and qualcomm binaries and
| libraries, busybox, sysvinit, scripts, config files etc.
| where not in that pack.
|
| True though, most of them don't do anything interesting, or
| only one interesting thing for the thousand that could do in
| a typical scenario
| neilv wrote:
| Having played with postmarketOS (pmOS) on and off for a while on
| various devices, as well as countless other Linux handheld
| efforts, I was pleasantly surprised with how well pmOS + Phosh
| (the Purism Librem 5 userland) worked on my new PinePhone. I
| haven't yet tested the cellular functionality.
|
| https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/PINE64_PinePhone_(pine64-...
|
| (My older, pre-Phosh notes:
| https://www.neilvandyke.org/postmarketos/ )
|
| If I end up moving to pmOS+Phosh for a daily driver phone, I'll
| have to see what the Librem 5 pricing and availability is at that
| time. I'd like to support Purism, and their hardware might turn
| out to be more trustworthy, but it's pricier, so it'd have to be
| a daily driver that I need.
|
| One backup/stopgap option (besides my iPhone and collection of a
| few developer devices) is Replicant (FSF-blessed Android fork),
| and I have a couple of i9300 phones for that. Practically, it's
| Android that's been gravely crippled, for better or worse.
| pmOS+Phosh seems a more desirable ultimate destination, than
| Replicant trying to maintain a fork of someone else's massive
| codebase that's developed with philosophical differences and
| vastly more resources. But Replicant does have more mobile polish
| right now that's expensive to recreate, plus some nice open
| source Android apps like K-9 Mail.
|
| https://www.neilvandyke.org/replicant/
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