I Used Linux-Based PinePhone Daily for a Year. Here’s What I Learned

Rather, what I have done :<p>Buy an android phone. A good one. Whichever you like.<p>Install F-droid from website.<p>Install Termux from F-droid.<p>You get a full Debian linux running inside your phone as an app. No need to even root your phone.<p>You can now :<p>Access, parse your address book, sms, call records everything from command line.<p>Access sensors on your phone from command line -- like GPS, compass or camera.<p>Access SD card and other files. rsync, scp, wget and others.<p>SSH into your server.<p>Edit some Java files, compile and install it as an app from your phone.<p>Install other packages that you need using apt-get or pkg. Like python, ruby, php, gcc.<p>And many more.

[ It’s Performance Is Like Molasses ]<p>The &quot;it&#x27;s vs its&quot; fight&#x27;s dilation is overdue: I knew that it was going to become a grammar mistake spreading throughout, reaching almost every pseudo-professional writer...<p>I guessed that anybody criticizing the trend towards the unnecessary apostrophe would be: either considered a grammar nazi; or their own writing being extraordinarily examined for mistakes (as a punishment for their criticism).<p>As a non-native speaker, my language credentials may be slim, but I can&#x27;t really stand the -quite widespread- extra apostrophe when it&#x27;s a possessive &quot;its&quot;. The reversal, though, doesnt bother me that much. I guess that it&#x27;s about character conservation.

One thing this article fails to mention is that in practice, you can mix and match and have e.g. Plasma Mobile apps on Phosh. Sadly, most distributions don’t do a good job at enabling this by default (as in preinstalling the qt5-wayland package (which usually is not in the dependency list) or setting the proper environment variables, so that people don’t have to figure these out on their own.<p>Also, video recording is (albeit obviously somewhat poorly and not up to todays standards) is possible, it‘s just that Megapixels, the de-facto default camera app, doesn’t have the feature.<p>If you wonder about Linux Phones, I try to weekly collect what has happened in the previous week on my blog [0]. If you‘re wondering about apps, check out this app list [1].<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;linmob.net" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;linmob.net</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;LinuxPhoneApps.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;LinuxPhoneApps.org</a>

The bar for all these attempts is to at least be as good as the Nokia N900, which still doesn&#x27;t seem to be happening.<p>We don&#x27;t need endless combinations of &quot;Desktop Linux&quot; on the phone.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20220205183707&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.itsfoss.com&#x2F;pinephone-review&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20220205183707&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.itsf...</a>

For me this would be the killer application for a phone. Lets say iphone 13 like hardware. Linux based system. Where you could<p>1. Use it as phone<p>2. Plug it to a dock and use it as normal linux desktop pc<p>Just wondering why it is still years out of reach...

The PinePhone in its current iteration is unfortunately unusable. It&#x27;s a shame because while I do wholeheartedly believe in the mission of the project it&#x27;s simply just not quite there yet. Nevertheless, a much better alternative in the meantime is to do what Edward Snowden did: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;snowden&#x2F;status&#x2F;1175430722733129729?lang=en" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;snowden&#x2F;status&#x2F;1175430722733129729?lang=...</a>.

As a former embedded developer, I&#x27;m surprised nobody has come up with a basic purpose-built UI that skips all of the bloat (a phone doesn&#x27;t need a WM), and just reliably performs basic functionality like voice calls and textual messages. Are the performance problems further down the stack (eg graphics driver), or are developers just too wed to the maladapted idea of running full web browsers on a phone, or what?<p>With the 4G partial shutdown I&#x27;d be in the market for a Pinephone but I just don&#x27;t have time to do extra tinkering right now. I&#x27;ll probably just limp along with my current pocket device and attempt to go VOIP-only.

I&#x27;m surprised I haven&#x27;t seen anyone mention the PinePhone Pro (became available this year) still not consumer ready but Soo much faster than pinephone (one of the main and valid complaints).<p>It honestly feels like close to being a daily driver with the only thing missing being the battery life. (Caveat: don&#x27;t care about camera and honestly don&#x27;t know what that state that is in).<p>Everything (mainly software) is still being worked on but I was surprised just how much of a difference the new hardware made

&gt; Even simple things, like opening Firefox, can take almost 20 seconds, no doubt thanks to its measly 4 cores.<p>Why do I need an 8-Core processor to open Firefox? What is it doing with all that CPU?!?!

hug-0-death’d