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PinePhone Manjaro Community Edition

pine64.org

51–60 of 169 posts

Re: PinePhone Manjaro Community Edition

#51

I personally would avoid anything Manjaro related due to recurring controversies around the project leadership: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/hxpj87/change_in_man... I wish PinePhone would partner with Arch or Debian instead.

Not having used Manjaro personally, what's the advantage here? My impression was that it was essentially Arch with a user friendly installer and possibly some nicer defaults.

This seems desirable if you're setting up a PC, but is there really added value there if you're building a ROM image for a phone? It seems like you'd be doing a ton of manual installing and configuring anyway, since it's such an unusual target compared to a typical desktop, regardless of cpu architecture...

Re: PinePhone Manjaro Community Edition

#52
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do these support Android apps? They do not, at least not yet. They may support anbox at some point, but that's not a given. > How would I develop a native app for one of these? The same as you would for any Linux distro. I would check out Plasma Mobile, as they have toolkit's and a workflow already in place is my understanding.

> They do not, at least not yet. And hopefully never. Almost all Android apps rely on the closed-source GMS for essential functionality (eg: push notifications). There will need to be an open alternative to GMS if the goal is to support Android apps but a better idea would be to abandon Android as template basis going forward.

Is that not what mods like MicroG provide?

Re: PinePhone Manjaro Community Edition

#53

Do these support Android apps? How would I develop a native app for one of these?

> How would I develop a native app for one of these?

I would recommend using GTK and LibHandy. Purism has written some tutorials on their blog about writing apps for mobile GNU/Linux systems [1].

[1] https://puri.sm/posts/tag/advanced-readers/

Re: PinePhone Manjaro Community Edition

#54
Does anyone know if you can heavily customize the user interface of the PinePhone?

The reason why I'm asking is that I have yet to find a feature phone or smartphone that my father (in his 80s) can use. He basically doesn't want to learn new things, and he's more interested in learning/memorizing repeatable steps than intuiting how to do things by reading text on the screen.

All he needs is the ability to make/receive calls, and easily get the bluetooth built into his car to connect to the phone. The bluetooth is a nice-to-have though.

I haven't had much luck with feature phones because he doesn't (want to) understand rocker switches or navigation using arrow keys. I also tried the "dummy" launchers on Android, but didn't get very far with him. He's also tried iPhones, but didn't get very far.

The funny thing is that he's pretty good with the Nortel phone he uses with his land line in terms of dialing favorites, etc.

Re: PinePhone Manjaro Community Edition

#55
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish PinePhone would partner with Arch or Debian instead. Word. Debian is great! In the past when I see people using Ubuntu, I always wondered why? It is so interesting how people in tech just fall into the fashion trap.

> In the past when I see people using Ubuntu, I always wondered why? Because I don't have a wired internet connection, and my wifi adapter requires proprietary drivers. If I could just download and install from an ISO like I can with Ubuntu, I'd switch to Debian in a heartbeat, but I don't feel like having to do manual workarounds just to get a running Linux distro.

Installing Debian 11 on a seven year old laptop to test something involved Debian helpfully mentioning it was missing network drivers and couldn't continue (okay), which effectively meant searching the internet for the files mentioned on another computer (dubious). Because this laptop was being used exclusively to test something on Debian 11 (openssh-server with U2F support) I just settled for some random GitHub repo with the driver binary (the only place I could find it). Not a great user experience.

The Ubuntu way is to suggest installing non-free drivers from the same reputable source as the rest of the distro: by clicking your assent right there in the installer.

Re: PinePhone Manjaro Community Edition

#56
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish PinePhone would partner with Arch or Debian instead. Word. Debian is great! In the past when I see people using Ubuntu, I always wondered why? It is so interesting how people in tech just fall into the fashion trap.

> In the past when I see people using Ubuntu, I always wondered why? Because I don't have a wired internet connection, and my wifi adapter requires proprietary drivers. If I could just download and install from an ISO like I can with Ubuntu, I'd switch to Debian in a heartbeat, but I don't feel like having to do manual workarounds just to get a running Linux distro.

The Debian site makes hard to find the operating system images containing binary firmware for various devices, but they're all there. Another poster published the right link, however should you some day not have it handy, a search for "debian firmware image" will lead you to it both on DuckDuckGo and Google.

Re: PinePhone Manjaro Community Edition

#57

Do these support Android apps? How would I develop a native app for one of these?

To develop native apps for UBports (Ubuntu Touch) you can use https://clickable-ut.dev/en/latest/

About Android apps, there's the Anbox project but it needs a lot of work yet.

Re: PinePhone Manjaro Community Edition

#58

I pre-ordered the PmOS community edition, and it's getting delivered tomorrow. From what I can tell, this is the same HW, but without a different distro pre-loaded. I'm super-stoked to try out the different distros, and will definitely give Manjaro a shot too :)

Yes, it's the same hardware with a different distro pre-installed, and a different back cover.

Re: PinePhone Manjaro Community Edition

#59

I personally would avoid anything Manjaro related due to recurring controversies around the project leadership: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/hxpj87/change_in_man... I wish PinePhone would partner with Arch or Debian instead.

I wish PinePhone would partner with Arch or Debian instead. Word. Debian is great! In the past when I see people using Ubuntu, I always wondered why? It is so interesting how people in tech just fall into the fashion trap.

> I see people using Ubuntu, I always wondered why? It is so interesting how people in tech just fall into the fashion trap.

I would rather attribute it to advertising, and probably some contracts with the right people. Canonical did a lot of advertising in the past years, and contracts can mean a school mandates the installation of Ubuntu, which translates in hundreds of students becoming accustomed to it, together with some of their parents and friends, and so on. This is something completely out of the reach for a community supported distribution like Debian; attempting to change it would mean putting a corporation behind it, which would be a recipe for destruction of its principles.

Re: PinePhone Manjaro Community Edition

#60
I have a spare phone which I would like to flash but I have not been able to find any device specific information on how to do it.

I checked XDA but they don't have any device specific info. Google returns sketchy pages wanting to install software. The phone is not on the list of supported devices on lineage OS website. And I have been unable to find a how-to do it yourself guide.

I followed a guide on how to do it over a decade ago and that is as far as my knowledge goes. I suspect things have changed since???

I would appreciate if someone could point me in the right direction. The device, a blu G5 plus (which when I search on XDA it returns Moto G5 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

Edit: Nevermind, I believe I've got it.

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