[HN Gopher] PostmarketOS Revolutionizes Smartphone Hacking
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PostmarketOS Revolutionizes Smartphone Hacking
Author : als0
Score : 83 points
Date : 2021-11-26 13:36 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (drewdevault.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (drewdevault.com)
| ollieparanoid wrote:
| When looking back like that, it's mind boggling to realize how
| far we've come. I sincerely thank everybody who is mainlining
| their devices, reporting bugs, sending patches, reviewing and
| testing patches, maintaining packages, updating the wiki, helping
| out others. Without such a huge and skilled community, we
| wouldn't have made it this far.
|
| And yes we have a challenging road ahead, as the blog post
| mentions. But at the same time, I believe the wider Linux Mobile
| community has reached critical mass of developers and projects.
| There are so many great projects in this space now (which
| collaborate quite a lot, Mobian developer kop316's MMS efforts is
| just one great example). Multiple phones where mainline support
| has a bright future. Even if a few of these projects or even
| phones should fail, Mobile Linux can still carry on. Let's find
| out where we all can carry this effort in 2022 and the years to
| come!
|
| Thanks for this post, Drew!
| black_puppydog wrote:
| I love to see validation from Drew of my impression ca 2014,
| trying to flash some ROMs onto a newly-unmaintained phone:
|
| "Seriously, the solution to not getting security updates anymore
| is installing a binary using totallyTrustWorthyFoneFlasher_4
| (Copy).exe?!"
| bserge wrote:
| Don't trust it? Don't use it.
| jjmellon wrote:
| I don't understand the point of this article. Why is PostmarketOS
| singled out over the 20 or so Linux distributions that run on the
| Pinephone?
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| It runs on more than just the PinePhone, enabling reuse of
| older smartphones.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Honestly, I don't think pmOS is any better than any other Linux
| on the Pinephone.
|
| However, pmOS is pretty unique in their quest to mainline
| other, closed, Android smartphones by making shitty code
| vendors put out good enough to be merged and by making their
| own drivers and shims to get hardware to work.
|
| I don't see why you'd need a Pinephone to work on pmOS, unless
| you want to develop a pmOS application or feature for an ARM
| device that has all the features up and running. It's more
| lightweight than some of its competition, for sure, but
| honestly it's not really better or worse in terms of
| hackability.
| neilv wrote:
| I was always horrified by XDA solutions, and wondered how
| apparently so many people didn't find that scene incredibly
| sketchy and suspicious. And when more credible community open
| source models were already widely known.
|
| I'd be very happy if PostmarketOS got more progress towards solid
| mainline kernel support for some devices -- including for the
| nascent 4G hard requirement of my carrier. (I tried to help a
| short while, but I can't currently. And I probably won't spend
| more time on it until I can be doing userland app and UI/UX
| development atop a solid foundation.)
| bserge wrote:
| Oh, most people do find it sketchy and suspicious. Hence they
| just stick with stock ROMs or solutions that a "big" and
| "reputable" company provides.
| nynx wrote:
| I love the ideas behind pinephone, but I think it's just not
| powerful enough. I'm not sure if there's enough access to more
| powerful mobile phone processors though.
| alexmcc81 wrote:
| The new Pro model has a significantly better processor. They're
| using a binned and underclocked 28nm Rockchip RK3399S 64bit SoC
| - 2x A72 and 4x A53 CPU cores @ 1.5GHz. The They used an A64 in
| the base model which was a 40nm Quad-Core ARM Cortex-A53.
| paulcarroty wrote:
| PostmarkerOS currently support some Snapdragon 845 and
| Snapdragon 821 devices, so you're not limited by pinephone.
| fsflover wrote:
| But AFAIK in this case, you're limited by the proprietary
| firmware tied to old Linux kernels.
| mindslight wrote:
| Powerful enough for what? Get rid of regressive virtual
| machines and surveillance framework bloat and there's much less
| computation to be done. I'd love for the Free software mobile
| ecosystem the coalesce around lower power processors and
| resource-respecting languages.
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| I bought the pinebook pro and ya it just doesnt quite have the
| power I want it to, but on flipside the lack of power gives the
| giant battery tons of runtime.
|
| But for the pinephone. I really want >= 32mp camera. Whereas
| 5MP is ridiculous and 2MP selfie? You're right it's slow, it's
| not quite figured out entirely.
|
| Pinephone pro coming soon and also doesn't quite hit the wants
| for me. It does look fast though in specs.
| onkoe wrote:
| A beefy camera would be very interesting to work with. As of
| now, our phones do a ton of proprietary processing which
| makes open source/external solutions... suck. I'd love to
| have a decent open source camera app with the capacities of
| something like GCam.
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| >A beefy camera would be very interesting to work with. As
| of now, our phones do a ton of proprietary processing which
| makes open source/external solutions... suck. I'd love to
| have a decent open source camera app with the capacities of
| something like GCam.
|
| I'm a big fan of open source, literally have open source
| projects with many stars on github. However, I'm not one of
| those 'no proprietary blobs' folks.
|
| Sony has a camera chip that's awesome, available, but comes
| with a blob? Fine with me.
| fsflover wrote:
| Librem 5 is significantly more powerful, despite the CPU is the
| same. Much faster RAM, GPU etc.
| ognarb wrote:
| The Pinephone Pro coming soon is probably a way better deal
| than the Librem 5. Pine64 is also way more trustworthy than
| Purism, who is constantly lying about their products.
| fsflover wrote:
| > who is constantly lying about their products
|
| This is a bold claim. They have a history of delays, but
| lying is not what they do.
| ognarb wrote:
| Just look at the latest post on r/Purism on how people
| have a really hard time to get some refunds.
|
| * https://www.reddit.com/r/Purism/comments/r1n6a9/this_is
| _a_pu...
|
| * https://www.reddit.com/r/Purism/comments/qyhc04/i_will_
| avoid...
|
| * https://www.reddit.com/r/Purism/comments/quz8t4/a_year_
| and_a...
| fsflover wrote:
| They've been having a hard time with the funds, so they
| probably have to delay refunds in order not to go
| bankrupt. Recently they got some inestments, so it should
| get better:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27949435. This is
| not exactly " _constantly lying about their products_ ".
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| The Librem 5 is currently $1200 after multiple price hikes
| and looks to be significantly slower than the $400
| PinePhone Pro.
| fsflover wrote:
| Of course PinePhone is cheaper: Pine64 develops no
| software for it, the software developed by Purism is used
| by more than half of the PinePhone users.
| butz wrote:
| While cellular capabilities are restricted by binary blobs or
| missing firmware, currently postmarketOS is useful for
| repurposing old Android phones and tablets into single purpose
| devices, e.g. simple photo frame, weather display, radio
| player... Possibilities are endless.
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(page generated 2021-11-26 23:02 UTC)