[HN Gopher] PinePhone multi-distro demo image
___________________________________________________________________
PinePhone multi-distro demo image
Author : capableweb
Score : 67 points
Date : 2022-05-02 11:36 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (xnux.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (xnux.eu)
| gundamdoubleO wrote:
| Can anyone who has extensively tried out most of the available
| distros for PinePhone comment on how close any of them are to a
| "daily driver" state?
|
| I suspect they're all still far from it but it'd be interesting
| to know which are worth keeping an eye on.
| nekomorphism wrote:
| kop316 wrote:
| I have personally used Mobian and PostmarketOS as a daily
| driver. The "Phone" aspect works pretty well (Calls, SMS/MMS,
| voicemail, VoLTE, no Wifi Calling). The base model Pinephone
| works fine for very basic tasks, but is very slow for anything
| else. I would assume that most of the other "mainstream" Phone
| distros have a similar/the same feature parity.
|
| I personally have moved to a Librem 5 with PureOS, mainly since
| it is much faster, and I like the user accessible HW kill
| switches. I use it for "Phone" tasks, email, web browsing, 2FA,
| Telegram, Signal, the occasional camera picture, and Matrix.
| capableweb wrote:
| I just received my PinePhone (not the pro one), and buying the
| SD card later today to try out this demo image (hence I posted
| it here as I came across it :) ). Can leave a status report
| once I've tried them out. Even from before trying it out, seems
| I'll try at least the updated images of the Majaro Phosh as
| I've heard it's the most stable and responsive one of the
| bunch, together with the Arch Linux Arm edition. Then we'll see
| what comes next.
|
| The phone ships with Manjaro Plasma, and it's definitely not
| ready as a daily driver. Maybe it's the hardware, we'll see
| when I can try out the other OSes, but it's very laggy and very
| buggy (which to be fair, is exactly what I expect from a phone
| labeled "beta"), would not trust it as a daily driver.
| cevn wrote:
| Try Danctnix w/ sxmo or the other sxmo one, it works a lot
| better for me. Everything works predictably, just takes a
| little time to get used to.
| generic-husky wrote:
| Honestly none of them will be daily driver ready, given how
| broken the Quectel EG25 modem is. I would never want to, have
| to call emergency services with my Pinephone while the modem is
| down
| [deleted]
| capableweb wrote:
| What exactly went wrong in your experience when you tried out
| the PinePhone? Did the modem randomly die without you doing
| anything? Or under high load it gave out sometimes? Some more
| details would be wonderful.
|
| Maybe you could share if you tried it with the normal
| PinePhone or the PinePhone Pro as well.
| blendergeek wrote:
| Have you tried replacing the modem firmware? The community
| firmware is supposed to be much more stable.
| Arnavion wrote:
| It appears top be a luck of the draw in either case.
|
| For me the Quectel firmware was very stable whereas the OSS
| firmware wasn't. "Stable" as in it would periodically
| crash, but would come back on its own within a minute. The
| OSS firmware would also crash but would usually not come
| back until a reboot.
|
| This was with v0.5.5 IIRC. It seems to have gotten better
| since the 0.6.x versions of the OSS firmware.
|
| Really the bigger reason to switch to the OSS firmware is
| that there's a privilege escalation vulnerability in the
| Quectel firmware that IIRC they still haven't fixed. In any
| case even if they fixed it in a new firmware release you
| wouldn't hear about it to know you should install it,
| whereas the OSS firmware is now being distributed through
| fwupd so it could be almost as mindless as updating your
| distro.
| fsflover wrote:
| https://teddit.net/r/pinephone/comments/u6zzyc/how_pinephone...
| increscent wrote:
| I use Arch on my Pinephone (https://github.com/dreemurrs-
| embedded/Pine64-Arch) and I have used it for the last year.
| Call audio quality (outgoing) is very poor for me (I think I
| need to configure ALSA or something). SMS and MMS now work
| well. Web browsing works. Everything is quite slow (2-10 second
| delay to open calls/messages/web browser).
|
| Previously I used SXMO and Mobian. SXMO is fun to script. I got
| tired of having to script everything after a while. Mobian
| works out of the box. But they don't have the newest software,
| so I switched to Arch.
| goodpoint wrote:
| It depends on what applications you need, but Mobian is very
| stable and usable.
| Arnavion wrote:
| Every time this topic comes up I have to remind people that the
| definition of "daily driver" is different for everyone. I've
| been daily-driving the phone for a year without problems
| because it does everything _I_ need it to do. That doesn 't
| mean _you 'd_ have no problems with it.
|
| Instead, please ask what it is you want the phone to do, and
| then people can give you a clear answer.
| jancsika wrote:
| I feel like your comment should be locked until the following
| "beginner's quest" is finished:
|
| + phone call audio quality is as good as some cheapo Android
| phone I can buy at Walmart, across all the distros in this
| multi-distro image
|
| I mean, you have a report above that the Pinephone can't even
| achieve that. (And worse, the user is considering diving into
| ALSA configuration to fix this!)
|
| If it's true that a phone device cannot be depended on to
| achieve bog standard audio quality for a phone call, then the
| player isn't ready to fight in the "daily driver" quest.
|
| I'm willing to write a command line prog that plays the
| Legend of Zelda secret discovery melody and prints your
| comment when the the Pinephone achieves bog standard "phone-
| ness."
| Arnavion wrote:
| I have no problem with the phone call quality for the year
| that I've owned my PinePhone. I can hear people fine and
| they can hear me fine.
|
| Next question? Although it looks like you're not interested
| in asking questions, just insulting people who actually
| know what they're talking about.
|
| BTW not everyone who gets the PinePhone uses it for calls;
| the number of people who brought the keyboard case in order
| to use it as a PDA or laptop should be proof of that. So I
| say again that "daily driver" is not a well-defined term
| with a single globally-recognized meaning, and people
| should ask precisely what they want from the phone.
| necovek wrote:
| This is akin to saying that an Android phone is not a
| candidate for a daily driver as long as all the Android
| mods on XDA are not of a sufficient base quality.
|
| An open phone will inevitably have incomplete distributions
| for it: that's the entire goal of an open phone.
|
| The problem is if there is not a single option that covers
| the basics well, or if that option is non-obvious (i.e. you
| don't know which is it).
|
| I've personally used Meizu MX4 with Ubuntu for years as a
| daily driver, but I was happy to give up on Android apps.
| That was slightly more powerful hardware but also 5-8 years
| ago.
| jlkuester7 wrote:
| Question for any US-based PinePhone aficionados: what carrier are
| you using (where/how did you get a SIM card)?
|
| I recently got an ATT pre-paid SIM (that I was planning on
| putting in an Android phone eventually). I thought I would give
| it a try in the PinePhone just to see what happens and found that
| it would not activate... (Note that this was just a normal pre-
| paid SIM direct from ATT and not from some 3rd-party MNVO that
| might require an app to activate. When I eventually installed the
| SIM in the Android phone it was able to activate as expected
| without installing any apps).
| increscent wrote:
| I use US Mobile (https://www.usmobile.com). They're an MVNO on
| the T-Mobile and Verizon networks. I use their T-Mobile
| offering because I couldn't get MMS to work on Verizon. To
| fetch MMS, I use the T-Mobile APN (fast.t-mobile.com) instead
| of US Mobile's APN.
| hcal wrote:
| I use t-mobile. The SIM they sent me worked out of the box.
| Arnavion wrote:
| Same, but through an MVNO (Ting). This way I don't have my
| details leaked in T-Mobile's annual data breach.
|
| General info is documented at
| https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Carrier_Support
| unpixer wrote:
| Stock AT&T SIM. Been using it for over a year, has never not
| worked, but based on what I see online YMMV.
| tpoacher wrote:
| i found out the hard way this does not work on the pinephone pro
| :(
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-05-02 23:02 UTC)