Mastodawn

EdTheDev Jun 15

Have you ever wanted to learn a new variant of Linux, but felt that the efficiency of the Linux kernel was just too snappy and responsive on modern hardware - such that your learning iterations were destined to be too quick and successful?

If so, let me tell you about the current state of Linux phones!

Sorry, for the sarcasm. I am #boredomposting while I wait for my Linux phone to update some packages.

The graphical updater has been rubbish for me on the #PinePhone (on #ManjeroLinux), but the #cli is seems to be (slowly) succeeding in applying udpates, right now.

I'm tempering my expectations, but the CLI works fine most of the time.

I really hope this works!

update: it did not work.

I'll try flashing a version of Linux I'm more familiar with, next.

#Linux #LinuxPhone #cli #there_was_an_attempt #JustKeepSwimmingJustKeepSwimming

EdTheDev 5d ago

Linux Phone update:

I messed around trying to flash Mobian (mobile Debian) on my PinePhone, but I got a flashing light error code, and could not find any documentation for error codes in TowBoot.

"But, Edward!", you say, "If lack of documentation stopped your project, why not see if the famously excellent Arch Wiki can solve it?!"

Well, I tried that too!

And what happened is - I now have a snappy responsive Linux phone running Arch!

#Linux #mobile #archlinux #mobian #pinephone #floss #privacy #ivoidwarranties

EdTheDev 5d ago

I constantly hear that the Arch Wiki is impressively comprehensive while user friendly.

But yesterday, I experienced it first hand - in a weird little corner - trying to run Arch on my PinePhone.

The documentation for most OSes for PinePhone are sparse, since really only contributing developers are expected to even have their hands on this phone, today.

But the Arch Linux wiki article was robust and guideded me past several possible pitfalls to a successful install.

The hype is real!

Thank you Arch community!

#arch #linux #archlinux #pinephone #kudos #thankyou

EdTheDev 3d ago

I spent this evening trying to get `pacman` to install a Matrix client on my PinePhone without any luck.

There's two strong possibilities:

1. The Matrix clients I tried simply aren't available for my PinePhone's ARM chipset
2. I have no idea what i am doing with `pacman`

I will probably switch to compiling things from source code soon, but I'm nervous as my base model PinePhone doesn't have much processor or memory.

I've had very good luck compiling various ARM binaries from source on my Raspberry Pi.

Anyone know if that's likely to work if I build on a Pi and copy it over?

#linux #arm #pinephone #devops #ivoidwarranties

@EdTheDev My experience with mobile linux (Manjaro-Ubuntu-Postmarket) has suggested that console on mobile is almost useless. It's generally not worth the hastle to install something that's not in the app distibutor. Even if you do get it installed, there will be no support. Sorry to be a downer :(

EdTheDev 3d ago

@WhereTheFraserRiverFlows Thanks for sharing your experience.

I'm either very bad at `pacman` or there's very little packaged for Arch on ARM. I'm betting it's the first one, but it could be both.

I do know I'm well into the "submit a fix if I want a fix" corner of open source early adotpion, haha.

I may try to build some apps I want on my Pi and see what happens when I copy them onto my PinePhone. I am pretty good to at getting things to work from source code, on ARM.

But I guess I probably need to get a better handle on `pacman` first, to make sure I'm not duplicating someone else's efforts.

#pinephone #linux #arch #linuxphone #devops #makefiles #armchips #ivoidwarranties

UndeadLeech 3d ago

@EdTheDev I'm not sure what Matrix clients you're trying to install, but one of the most popular ones should be easily installable using just `pacman -S chatty`.

EdTheDev 3d ago

@UndeadLeech Thank you! I haven't tried that one.

Knowing a package to try that has worked for someone else may be a big help to me while I diagnose whatever else I've been doing wrong.

I'm 99% I'm introducing a few of my own problems, just by being very unfamiliar with Arch.

I will try chatty.

Thanks!

poleguy looking for lost tools 3d ago

@EdTheDev Cross compilation is also a thing. I have not tried on pinephone, but in theory you can compile on a regular amd/PC machine but target arm.

@EdTheDev I'm just using Cinny in Firefox. No need for native apps. Even the notifications are working fine.

EdTheDev 2d ago

@chebra Oh! I honestly didn't even think to try that.

That could be what gets me to start carrying my PinePhone with me part of the day.

Thank you!

YankeeDoodleAndy 5d ago

@EdTheDev Would you really say Arch on a pine phone is snappy? I tried it some time ago and it was okay. I tried postmarket the other day and it has about the same performance I remember Arch having.

Every app takes a couple seconds at least to load, which isn't too bad, but Firefox can really drag. It's much better when using an HTML-only search engine, but I have yet to find a way to set that as a default in mobile Firefox.

If things are better on Arch though maybe I should give it another shot on my pine phone.

EdTheDev 3d ago

@ablatedsprocket I'm not as far as anything as aggressive as browsing the web. Haha.

I'm just relieved that basic tasks like switching windows, changing settings, and opening a terminal are snappy with Arch Linux, on my PinePhone64 (with the default settings).

The Manjero Linux configuration that it shipped with had multi-second delays for most actions, ad was effectively unusable.

I will provide further updates here as I try more things.

#pinephone #archlinux #linuxphone #floss

YankeeDoodleAndy 3d ago

@EdTheDev I'll try it out, too then. Are you using phosh? The best experience I had in terms of snappiness was with sxmo, but that's a lot more config and a very different experience IMO.

EdTheDev 3d ago

@ablatedsprocket Yes. I believe I'm using Phosh on Arch.

Thanks for the tip on sxmo. It looks promising. I have added it to my list to try out. I think I am going to need a lighter window manager than Phosh if I ever want to use my (not pro model) PinePhone as a daily driver.

I'm having such a nice time being in completely over my head with all this.

YankeeDoodleAndy 3d ago

@EdTheDev good luck with sxmo if you try it. I personally don't recommend it, too many things I didn't realize I would have to set up myself, for example a power menu.

EdTheDev 3d ago

@ablatedsprocket Oh yes. I'm probably too busy to mess with manually setting up separate common applets, this year. Thanks for the pointer.