[HN Gopher] Fedora on the PinePhone: Pipewire Calling
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Fedora on the PinePhone: Pipewire Calling
        
       Author : ashitlerferad
       Score  : 111 points
       Date   : 2021-02-09 17:29 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (odysee.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (odysee.com)
        
       | worik wrote:
       | I have a pine phone.
       | 
       | Have had it a week.
       | 
       | Still excited, thrilled!
       | 
       | But it is not a useable phone in day to day life. I have
       | successfully made one call so far.
       | 
       | I recommend going out and buying one today.
        
         | jcun4128 wrote:
         | Yeah I have one too, using Mobian right now.
         | 
         | I got VS Code ARM to run on it haha it's so slow 3-5 second
         | lag... still. Also going to try running a small VM through QEMU
         | on it.
        
       | drocer88 wrote:
       | Can these Linux phones prevent the mobile phone company ( i.e.
       | Verizon, AT&T or the owner of the tower) from tracking you and
       | selling ( or "renting" ) your location information?
        
         | LinuxBender wrote:
         | No. Cell sites will always know your location. Additionally, in
         | the U.S. all cellphone are required to support E911 which
         | requires GPS location. Any phone out of compliance can have its
         | IMEI blocked on that network.
         | 
         | The benefit of open source phones in this regard could
         | potentially be additional control over which apps can access
         | GPS or additional visibility into which apps are requesting it.
         | This already exists on closed source phones, but the devs could
         | make permissions more obvious and potentially give more privacy
         | tips if they so desired. Maybe even do something cool like have
         | a red icon on your home screen that warns you may be giving
         | apps too many permissions or if permissions changed without
         | your interaction.
        
           | tinus_hn wrote:
           | Cell sites have coarse location information only.
           | 
           | E911 does not mean your phone is using GPS all the time, only
           | while calling emergency services.
        
             | LinuxBender wrote:
             | Agreed, I just meant that the phones baseband is required
             | to be connected to a GPS receiver. With an open hardware /
             | open source phone, you might have more visibility into what
             | is going on.
        
         | gsich wrote:
         | Location from cell towers is not as accurate as GPS. I wonder
         | for what purpose they sell the data. They need to track you,
         | that's a technical requirement of a mobile network. (Ie someone
         | calls you, the network needs to know where your mobile device
         | is to forward the call)
        
         | marcodiego wrote:
         | I think it has nothing to do with privacy. Pipewire is like the
         | 'new soundserver" for linux distros. Just that.
        
         | fsflover wrote:
         | Yes, if you use the kill switches (but then you will not have
         | mobile connection).
        
       | marcodiego wrote:
       | Wouldn't it be possible for Pine64, Purism and Fairphone agree on
       | a common chassis to reduce costs of their phones?
       | 
       | Why can't it be like PC's where the user can buy a bunch of
       | separate parts from different manufacturers and build his/her own
       | computer?
        
         | notRobot wrote:
         | You're not the first one to think of this. See: Phonebloks [1].
         | It failed mostly because there wasn't enough demand, but I
         | wonder if they could make a comeback.
         | 
         | [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonebloks
        
           | marcodiego wrote:
           | The librem 5 is somewhat modular. IIRC, you can disconnect
           | and replace the modem and wifi card. So, I think a common
           | chassis could have a screen, IMU, PMIC, battery, cameras,
           | speakers, mics, leds, buttons, headphone jack, usb port and
           | sensors (barometer, thermometers, light sensor,
           | proximity...).
           | 
           | The mainboard could connect to the chassis using some
           | standardized common connectors for the devices provided by
           | the chassis. Other devices could be connected to the
           | mainboard: modem, wifi card, bluetooth and sd-card.
           | 
           | That is not a giant leap from what librem 5 is.
        
           | eeZah7Ux wrote:
           | Phonebloks has a questionable design:
           | 
           | Each component had its own shell - making it bulky and very
           | expensive.
        
         | gggtt wrote:
         | Because this era of "separate parts" comes to an end. Now
         | everything is single SoC that are only compatible with big tech
         | proprietary OS.
         | 
         | Google has on purpose made Android different enough so that no
         | Android SoC could run mainline Linux.
         | 
         | Today, no decent SoC can run real Linux, the "best" SoC that
         | can run mainline Linux are :
         | 
         | - Rockship (PinePhone) which is reversed engineered so only old
         | SoC have support and it require massive effort from the
         | community.
         | 
         | - NXP (Librem 5) which are thick power hungry slow SoC (because
         | they are made for automobile I guess)
         | 
         | - Broadcom (Raspberry Pi) which is still super slow compared to
         | most modern smartphone.
         | 
         | In any case the manufacturers of decent SoC don't give a crap
         | about Linux, they only support Android and any Linux support
         | must be done by someone else, often through reverse
         | engineering.
         | 
         | This is a totally anticompetitive situation which is far from
         | what we had on the desktop side.
         | 
         | But even on the laptop/desktop side, this is also coming to an
         | end : Microsoft custom chip & Surfaces, Apple M1, etc. Soon
         | this will be the same as on mobile.
         | 
         | FairPhone makes no special effort about the choice SoC, they
         | just use a SoC which supports Android and which obviously
         | doesn't support Linux.
         | 
         | On the other hand Librem & PinePhone use the only SoC that have
         | Linux support, and they often must develop support themselves
         | through reverse eng. because the manufacturer doesn't care.
         | 
         | Unless we pass laws about it or unless Pine64/Purism become
         | very successful, it is the end of any hope for alternative as
         | no mobile device is able to run anything else than IOS &
         | Android (or HarmonyOS, Fushia or whatever next privacy hell OS
         | is coming from those big tech)
         | 
         | Even in Planes & Cars , the entertainment systems are now
         | powered by Android and not Linux.
         | 
         | Mainline Linux will disappear until it only exist in a emulated
         | VM running on a M1 mac, or on a headless datacenter server.
         | 
         | Purism & Pine64 are currently our only hope for alternative and
         | I encourage anyone to support them. They represent the ugly
         | reality of what is available to the competition, it is slow,
         | thick, power hungry and old but that's all we have.
        
           | gcblkjaidfj wrote:
           | > Google has on purpose made Android different enough so that
           | no Android SoC could run mainline Linux.
           | 
           | daily reminder that this is only possible because the very
           | people in this site, "did not care about GPL or tainted
           | kernel" as long as they had their nvidia GTX working to play
           | quake.
           | 
           | ha!
        
           | fsflover wrote:
           | > Purism & Pine64 are currently our only hope for alternative
           | and I encourage anyone to support them.
           | 
           | Detailed comparison: https://forums.puri.sm/t/comparing-
           | specs-of-upcoming-linux-p...
        
           | mswann wrote:
           | > Rockship (PinePhone) which is reversed engineered so only
           | old SoC have support and it require massive effort from the
           | community.
           | 
           | PinePhone has Allwinner A64. [0]
           | 
           | And Rockchip SoCs have a quite decent track record of not
           | only supporting mainline linux but even running without
           | proprietary firmware - as does their current top level SoC
           | (RK3399, featured in Pine64's ROCKPro64).
           | 
           | [0] https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone#Specifications
        
             | StillBored wrote:
             | But the point is your looking at a SoC with A53's which is
             | a 9 year old in order design. Or for that matter the
             | rk3399's A72's which is a 5 year old design. That puts them
             | at somewhere between an 6x->4x (geekbench) slower per core
             | vs a modern smartphone depending on which benchmark you
             | compare.
             | 
             | Then you add in the overhead of not being a mobile
             | optimized OS, and your also burning massively more power.
             | 
             | The marketshare for these phones will remain geeks who want
             | to have a more "open" phone and are willing to deal with a
             | slow, buggy, inefficient device.
             | 
             | Frankly, this won't change until Qualcomm/etc decide to
             | make their SoC's more open, so that smaller companies can
             | build products like these without signing piles of NDAs and
             | shipping android BSP kernels. But then again, that might
             | cut into their business because they won't be able to
             | deprecate 2 year old phones by simply refusing to provide
             | security updates.
             | 
             | But then again, most geeks would be better off picking up a
             | year or two old phone and running lineageOs. At least the
             | devices tend to work, even if they have a dozen or so
             | proprietary blobs.
        
             | megous wrote:
             | > And Rockchip SoCs have a quite decent track record of not
             | only supporting mainline linux but even running without
             | proprietary firmware - as does their current top level SoC
             | (RK3399, featured in Pine64's ROCKPro64).
             | 
             | Last time I tried, RK3399 was dog slow to boot on Pinebook
             | Pro (only thanks to https://gitlab.com/DeltaGem/levinboot
             | is this changing) and development once Google stopped doing
             | it seems almost entirely stagnant. Just look at ATF
             | history, or U-Boot history, etc.
             | 
             | Pinebook Pro doesn't suspend to ram to this day. Only
             | whatever Google implemented for their chromebooks works.
        
         | thepete2 wrote:
         | Once you separate the phone into its parts you can only improve
         | the parts, not the whole phone. I would think that's the
         | problem from the manufacturer's side.
        
         | Mediterraneo10 wrote:
         | Why would they agree on a common chassis when they have already
         | been focusing on different market segments? Purism's offering
         | is rather higher-end, so the feel of its products will be
         | superior to PinePhone, which is aiming at pretty rock-bottom
         | prices.
         | 
         | Purism and Mobian-Pine64 are already collaborating on software
         | development, so the projects aren't intentionally ignoring one
         | another.
        
           | marcodiego wrote:
           | > Why would they agree on a common chassis when they have
           | already been focusing on different market segments?
           | 
           | Because a common chassis could be good for such targeted
           | market and it could reduce prices.
        
         | m463 wrote:
         | they do use m.2 cards afaik. The chassis might be harder.
         | 
         | That's like trying to standardize on one motherboard / case too
         | early on.
        
       | bArray wrote:
       | I own a PineTab (based on similar hardware - A64 and 2GB RAM).
       | These devices are very cool, if not a little under-powered [1].
       | For the price point, there is no competition in this space in
       | terms of what is offered in value and quality. I really hope Pine
       | continue to fight the good fight!
       | 
       | [1] https://coffeespace.org.uk/projects/review-pinetab.html
        
       | ninjha wrote:
       | Oh hey, this is a project I started a while ago. It's a little
       | buggier than the other PinePhone distributions because most of
       | our apps are straight from the "Real" Fedora repository and
       | aren't patched. [1]
       | 
       | General sentiment in the thread is that this is not a replacement
       | for Android or iOS: you are correct.
       | 
       | I can answer questions if people have any.
       | 
       | [1]: https://github.com/nikhiljha/pp-fedora-sdsetup
        
         | nousermane wrote:
         | Given proximity to "real" fedora, is this any good with USB-C
         | dock (and external keyboard, mouse, and monitor)?
         | 
         | Stretch question - any apps that work well between both
         | "desktop" i.e. dock and "phone", i.e. dock-less modes?
        
           | kop316 wrote:
           | I can't answer for Fedora, but for Mobian (Mobile Debian). It
           | works reasonably well with a USB-C dock and external
           | keyboard/mouse/monitor.
           | 
           | A lot of apps works well between both of you use phosh.
           | Purism (the software dev behind phosh) developed libraries to
           | enable apps to switch between desktop and phone mode (it's
           | called libhandy).
        
           | ninjha wrote:
           | Yup, others have done the docked thing after installing
           | gnome-shell. Haven't tested it myself since I have an older
           | PinePhone where this wasn't functional.
           | 
           | I wouldn't say _any_ apps work "well" on mobile - but
           | everything that works on mobile is usable on desktop.
        
       | 3np wrote:
       | UI responsiveness and polish is a lot better than what I would
       | have expected. Pinephone and mobile Linux are coming a long way!
        
         | twodave wrote:
         | Funny how perspectives can differ. I was just coming to comment
         | how the UI was clearly not as polished as the competition. It's
         | just the obvious stuff:
         | 
         | Typing in a passcode: dots are too small, not spaced out enough
         | 
         | Keyboard: it feels like the characters are about to run into
         | the borders
         | 
         | Camera: lots of just empty black space around the picture--I'd
         | rather they just overscan it a bit to fill up the entire
         | screen.
         | 
         | Lack of a splash screen, icons in the app drawer are a bit too
         | large, many of the prompts obviously expecting a mouse input,
         | screens where responsiveness to the screen form factor is just
         | broken.
         | 
         | I am overall impressed with how far Linux on a phone has come--
         | it's also still a long way to the top.
        
           | izacus wrote:
           | The most jarring thing is probably the lack of touch feedback
           | when you tap on screen. There's no confirmation that phone
           | actually registered the tap.
        
             | jraph wrote:
             | Interesting, I hadn't noticed this because haptic feedback
             | using the vibrator is the first thing I disable on any
             | phone (because of the noise).
        
               | izacus wrote:
               | I didn't mean haptic, but visual feedback.
               | 
               | On most OSes when you press your mouse or finger on an
               | interactive element, that element highlights in some
               | manner (e.g. text color changes, ripple appears,
               | background color changes).
               | 
               | That's critical for proper feedback and feel of a UI.
               | It's almost entirely missing in that demo video.
        
               | jraph wrote:
               | Oh, ok. I'm quite sensitive to having feedback and that
               | does not seem to be an issue on the PinePhone. Except for
               | when you open an app on Phosh. Then, no clue that the app
               | is loading.
        
               | choward wrote:
               | I do it because I find it annoying and distracting. It
               | feels like I did something wrong. I'm already staring at
               | the screen so visual feedback is all I need.
        
         | Mediterraneo10 wrote:
         | I unfortunately must disagree. I have had a Pinephone for over
         | six months and I really dislike using it, in spite of my
         | looking forward to getting a nearly completely libre phone.
         | First of all, the UI is much less responsive than my old Nokia
         | N900 that uses 12-year-old technology. On Phosh, it takes about
         | five seconds just to show the screen where you can turn wifi on
         | or off, for example.
         | 
         | Battery life is also a shambles; I thought about using my
         | Pinephone at least as a music player, streaming the music to my
         | Bluetooth headphone amp, but it often happens that playing a
         | single album with the screen off completely depletes the
         | battery.
        
           | 3np wrote:
           | I wonder why the video makes it seem otherwise... Did he just
           | cut every time he performed a UI action? :P
           | 
           | Your experience sounds more like what I would have expected
           | at this stage - we'll get there though!
        
             | kop316 wrote:
             | I have found that the UI is sluggish when one first boots
             | up the Pinephone, and the experience seems to vary greatly
             | between distros. My experience on Mobian is the same as the
             | video (with the exception of start up).
        
           | m463 wrote:
           | I tried the purism phone and it was fine. Really, it was
           | snappy and responsive and h/w accelerated.
           | 
           | What I did notice is that gnome isn't dialed into phones (so
           | to speak). For example I tried setting the date/time and you
           | have to press +/- on the hour and minute to get to the time
           | you want. The popup for month had a long list of months, but
           | it put jan-mar off the top of the screen.
        
       | butz wrote:
       | Is there any way to squeeze a bit more performance from current
       | applications on PinePhone, or do we have to wait for better
       | hardware?
        
         | caseyavila wrote:
         | Well I don't think waiting for better hardware take any less
         | time than improving the software that these phones run. In the
         | video, you can see that these phones are still running desktop
         | versions of these applications, so there is a lot of room for
         | improvement and optimizations for these mobile Linux platforms
         | (things like Firefox running at the right size, better GTK and
         | touchscreen support, etc.).
         | 
         | One of the cool things about these phones is that the battery
         | is removable, so I would imagine these phones will last a while
         | and only get better over time, as their operating systems
         | mature.
        
         | opencl wrote:
         | Supposedly a lot of the performance issues are down to GTK3 not
         | really making much use of GPU acceleration and apps getting
         | ported to GTK4 should improve things.
         | 
         | Plasma mobile does seem to run a bit better than GNOME/Phosh:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz_hRfkBnic
        
       | asjkaehauisa wrote:
       | Why will someone use it? It looks like first android phones. I
       | mean usability and security.
        
         | thepete2 wrote:
         | It's a handy portable linux device. A phone that lets you treat
         | it like a real computer, not a locked down consumer device.
        
         | eeZah7Ux wrote:
         | Usability: being able to do apt-get and write Python scripts on
         | my phone makes it a portable automation and computing tool
         | rather than a phone.
         | 
         | Security: Android is choke-full of spyware.
        
         | jraph wrote:
         | I use a PinePhone as a daily driver.
         | 
         | - its camera is not good
         | 
         | - its battery life is not good
         | 
         | - its call quality is not good
         | 
         | - SMSes are not completely reliable
         | 
         | - receiving MMSes works, but you need to use a custom command
         | line tool that you might have written yourself for that
         | 
         | - sending MMSes, I have not even tried. Probably possible, but
         | impractical
         | 
         | - it's barely usable for GPS navigation
         | 
         | - it's a bit slow
         | 
         | - Web browsing is a bit clunky but is largely usable
         | 
         | - its overall usability is not very good
         | 
         | It's a prototype.
         | 
         | But it is a bet for the future. A future in which there are
         | usable phones running OSes whose roadmap do not depend on
         | corporations that close everything in a walled garden or who
         | depend on massively tracking people. A future in which every
         | single line of code running on the phone can be studied,
         | improved and shared. A future in which updates are not at the
         | mercy of the manufacturer.
         | 
         | Actually, you can already have one foot in this future thanks
         | to this phone, and many things are being fixed at a remarkable
         | pace. I hope we will see higher-end hardware for the OSes
         | running on the PinePhone soon.
        
           | Mediterraneo10 wrote:
           | > I hope we will see higher-end hardware for the OSes running
           | on the Pinephone soon.
           | 
           | According to discussions on the Pine64 boards, it will
           | probably take 4-5 years before we see an upgrade to the
           | underpowered and obsolete A64 chip inside the PinePhone, and
           | when that happens, even that new chip may already seem
           | antiquated.
        
             | jraph wrote:
             | Yeah, this sucks a bit. Those phones need hardware that
             | does not depend on proprietary blobs to work, and such
             | hardware is not very common. Even the hardware in the
             | PinePhone is not perfect in this regard: the modem runs a
             | closed firmware (though people are getting mainline Linux
             | to run on the modem so there's hope!), and the Wi-
             | Fi/Bluetooth chip too (like in most regular laptops
             | anyway...)
             | 
             | In the meantime though, I would be happy with an outdated
             | SoC but a decent camera and good call quality for people
             | you call. 5 GHz Wi-Fi would be wonderful. 3G of RAM is
             | already comfortable. A better screen would be fantastic but
             | the one on the PinePhone is more than usable.
             | 
             | Better battery life would be nice too, but it is coming to
             | the PinePhone with a custom case that will also provide a
             | keyboard, and you can always carry a power tank or a spare
             | battery since the one in the PinePhone is removable!
        
               | fsflover wrote:
               | Sounds like you are searching for
               | https://puri.sm/products/librem-5
        
               | Mediterraneo10 wrote:
               | I don't agree that 3G of RAM is comfortable. The problem
               | with phones these days is that many people don't really
               | use them for calling over the public telephone network,
               | instead they are running chat apps like Signal. Launching
               | Signal's desktop app (which is Electron-based) or trying
               | to emulate Signal's Android app through Anbox already
               | places big demands on RAM, and a person can reasonably
               | expect from a phone that they can also use their browser
               | and their map app at the same time.
               | 
               | The same is also true of map apps. There just isn't
               | enough developer manpower to make vanilla-Linux mapping
               | apps as featureful as OSMAnd or Maps.me's open-source
               | fork, and therefore the best thing to do would be to
               | emulate them using Anbox, but the Pinephone's hardware is
               | just too underpowered to comfortably do this.
        
               | jraph wrote:
               | I agree with electron apps and Anbox being slow to the
               | point of being unusable.
               | 
               | Anbox being slow is not a big surprise though: it
               | literally runs a complete Android system on top of your
               | OS.
               | 
               | We need native, lightweight apps for the phone and that
               | requires a big amount of work for sure.
               | 
               | There's an Android port for the PinePhone that I want to
               | try one of these days. Back to an OS whose roadmap
               | depends on Google, but at least without the proprietary
               | blobs. But I don't plan to settle on it. As someone said
               | elsewhere in this thread, it's less and less hackable,
               | and I hope that GNU/Linux-based OSes work out.
        
           | horsawlarway wrote:
           | Mine is out for delivery today - I share your sentiments.
           | 
           | I don't expect it to be a great phone. I do think it's fairly
           | incredibly that it exists at all, and I want to support both
           | the manufacturers putting it out, as well as pick up some
           | slack and add some of my spare time as development hours
           | towards making the experience better.
           | 
           | This is one of the very, _very_ few mobile devices on the
           | market right now that places the user in the driver 's seat,
           | instead of treating them merely like a wallet to suck money
           | from in any way possible.
        
             | jraph wrote:
             | There are a few things that are already better than on an
             | Android or iOS phone that you could appreciate as a
             | developer / advanced user:
             | 
             | - No heavy SDK. Just use whatever you want to build
             | software for it, it's not complicated.
             | 
             | - on $distro, you access any package provided by $distro.
             | And when $distro is Mobian, you have everything Debian has.
             | 
             | - You can script anything with a regular shell script.
             | 
             | - There's Avahi, so you can discover things on your network
             | and your computers can access services running on the
             | phone.
             | 
             | - You can display the SMS app on your computer screen
             | through ssh -Y, and this is amazing.
             | 
             | - Since the sound is managed by PulseAudio, you can use its
             | networking features. Play sound from your phone on your
             | computer or vice versa.
             | 
             | The dock is pretty cool too, and allows running things like
             | on a regular computer, though the phone is a bit slow.
        
           | marcodiego wrote:
           | Best pro argument I ever read about it. Will try to re-use it
           | when people complain that I'm paying more for a hardware that
           | does less.
        
           | person3 wrote:
           | I never really got this... Surely just forking Android and
           | replacing all the closed source Google apps with open source
           | alternatives would be easier? Why build an entirely new
           | operating system, when Android already uses the Linux kernel
           | and is open source. A free software fork of Android could
           | accomplish all the of the same goals as PinePhone while
           | providing all the benefits of the existing support and
           | ecosystem.
           | 
           | edit: apparently this already exists: https://replicant.us
        
             | kop316 wrote:
             | A few reasons:
             | 
             | After a few years (3 if you are lucky), your phone will
             | stop getting updates. I have a Nexus 5 with the last
             | "official" update over 4 years ago. I have a Nexus 5x that
             | stopped getting updates 2 years ago.
             | 
             | https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705
             | 
             | To compare, I have a laptop from 2008 (A Thinkpad x200)
             | that runs mainline Debian no problems, and bit the thing
             | will die before it stops getting mainline support. I want a
             | phone where I can like that too.
             | 
             | In all but a select, very few devices, Android is not fully
             | open source, nor will it ever be.
             | 
             | On a Pixel 3a, if you follow the offical compiling guide,
             | there is a HUGE (~400 MB) vendor.img file you are forced to
             | install, and you have to integrate several other
             | proprietary libraries to get the Pixel 3a to even boot.
             | 
             | On top of that, pure AOSP cripples the phone (and by that
             | mean SMS breaks with LTE, you lose voLTE, Wi-Fi calling,
             | etc.) A lot of Android ROMS have to scrape official images
             | to get the binary bits (and it is nor a fun needle in a
             | haystack excerise) to get basically phone functionality in
             | Android.
             | 
             | Running Android without Play Services cripples your phone
             | in a number of ways.
        
               | jraph wrote:
               | And anyway, Android, even the free software part, will
               | always do what Google wants to do. One may fork Android,
               | but maintaining an ever diverging fork would have an ever
               | growing cost.
               | 
               | And there are aspects of newer Android versions that are
               | less than ideal. For instance, one can see how Termux is
               | struggling to keep working: it is not possible to run
               | binaries that are not part of an Android package (APK)
               | anymore. This is a security feature, but it's not always
               | relevant depending on how you use and manage your OS.
               | 
               | Plus, developing for Android is a pain. You need to
               | download, setup and use a bloated SDK with a non-free
               | license. There's Android Rebuilds [1], but it's not
               | complete.
               | 
               | I trust GNU/Linux distros like Debian, Fedora, openSUSE,
               | Arch, Manjaro to evolve in a direction I like.
               | postmarketOS probably too, but I'm not familiar with it
               | as well.
               | 
               | [1] https://android-rebuilds.beuc.net/
        
               | kop316 wrote:
               | All good points too.
               | 
               | Developing for the Pinephone has been nice! I have been
               | using Mobian for it over SSH, and I am pretty happy with
               | how well it has been going.
        
             | megous wrote:
             | Why would you run Android on an old underpowered SoC if you
             | can buy a new Android phone with much better specs for the
             | same price or cheaper locally, with much easier to attain
             | warranty and better delivery times?
             | 
             | Pinephone is only interesting because it is getting a
             | progressively better mainline Linux support every day, can
             | run normal Linux distros, has fairly open hardware and a
             | manufacturer that accepts feedback, and works on
             | interesting stuff, like a kinda unique planned external
             | keyboard+battery shell for it.
             | 
             | It's a real pocket computer with HW that I can control
             | without restrictions, SW that I can trust, and don't have
             | to run everything in a sandbox, just like on my
             | workstation.
        
             | gggtt wrote:
             | The same reason Firefox and Safari don't use Google V8 &
             | Blink. They (mostly Safari) are the only opposition to
             | Google monopolistic control on the web.
             | 
             | You will always be under control of others if you don't
             | take your independence and open-source means little when it
             | is in practice controlled by only one entity.
             | 
             | If you build an OS on top of Android like /e/, replicant &
             | Lineage & etc. , you are doomed to be living in Google'
             | shadow . They'll shut you down anytime you do something
             | they don't like. And even if it is open-source, if you
             | disagree, you'll never have the financial means to maintain
             | an up to date Android fork. Once/if they abandon Android
             | for Fushia, it's going to be hard maintaining all abandoned
             | Android legacy code alone.
             | 
             | Then, there are also technical reasons. We could ask "why
             | create a new UI lib from scratch when we have QT ?". Yes
             | for the end-user it's mostly the same (a bunch of text and
             | buttons), yet people are developing custom UI lib (eg.
             | Blender/Godot), Flutter, React, Svelte, Druid, Moxie,
             | Makepad, etc. This is needed for innovation and/or to fit
             | your own needs.
             | 
             | Real Linux has lots of potential : it can run Blender,
             | Krita, Godot, VsCode, Steam games, any language, FreeCad,
             | KiCad, Matlab, etc. (None of them have mobile UIs, but
             | still are an asset for tablets & convergence). It is not
             | governed by Google or Apple and it has already quite some
             | drivers for several devices (I could just install Bitwig on
             | a Linux tablet, plug a MIDI keyboard and make music).
             | 
             | So there are definitely reasons to take this path and
             | personally I find this far more exciting than Lineage
             | (although I use Lineage daily & I'm super grateful to that
             | it exists)
        
         | freedomben wrote:
         | Aside from the standard reason of ideals regarding FOSS and
         | freedom-respecting hardware/software, Android is getting less
         | and less hacker friendly in many ways. I won't likely switch as
         | a daily driver for some time as my phone is critical to my
         | business, but I'll support these efforts and plan to switch
         | eventually. Until then I'll probably have two phones :-D
        
         | admax88q wrote:
         | And yet people used the first android phones.
        
           | kelnos wrote:
           | Tables stakes is now a lot higher than what was offered by
           | the first Android phones. Unfortunately the barrier to entry
           | into the mobile phone market has risen considerably since
           | then.
        
           | StavrosK wrote:
           | "Back when they were the pinnacle of technology", he thought
           | but didn't say.
        
             | marcodiego wrote:
             | The computer in my pocket doesn't needs to be the "pinnacle
             | of technology". It just needs to be "good enough". But,
             | until we arrive there, some people will have to be willing
             | to accept options which are still not "good enough" or else
             | we'll never arrive there.
             | 
             | It is sad that pioneers and early adopters often suffer
             | more and are anonymous heroes that enable advanced user-
             | respecting technology for the rest of the people.
             | 
             | Think of this like the people who used KHTML based
             | browsers. Their compromise allowed us to have the quick
             | browsers we enjoy today but they had to endure broken
             | websites for years.
        
       | mPReDiToR wrote:
       | I've just got my KDE CE PinePhone.
       | 
       | I love it because of what it represents, but as a phone it's not
       | there yet.
       | 
       | The more "eyes" on this device, the better.
       | 
       | I have seen phones want to succeed and fail so many times.
       | 
       | It isn't the distro that matters, it's the software running on
       | that distro which can then be a universal package for all Linux
       | devices.
       | 
       | It's OK making ofono or Wayland run great on device A, but don't
       | forget that wpa_supplicant and X11 run on every Thinkpad and
       | Raspberry Pi we install on.
       | 
       | The work we do today benefits the ecosystem, not just the
       | community.
       | 
       | Sorry for just saying thank you to everyone. I guess I should
       | have had a point?
        
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       (page generated 2021-02-09 23:00 UTC)