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PinePhone – KDE Community edition

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Re: PinePhone – KDE Community edition

#111

Post by megous »

0rjf83 wrote: post #86
megous wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably not a fire hazard any more than other regular smartphones. Battery usually only gets somewhat warm when charged at "fast charging" current. My kernel has some patches that enable battery thermal regulation in the power management chip. Battery gets too warm/cold, charging stops.

Would you be willing to share these patches? I'm interested in this.

https://megous.com/git/linux/log/?h=axp-5.10

- regulator: axp20x: Enable over-temperature protection and 16s reset function

- power: supply: axp20x_battery: Setup thermal regulation (experimental)

EDIT: I'm the author of the quoted articles on xnux.eu, just to be clear.

Re: PinePhone – KDE Community edition

#112

Post by mook »

izacus wrote: post #80
tluyben2 wrote: post #35

I got my pinephone (Manjaro) last week and tried all OSs there are for it; I really love the idea of having a real Linux device in my pocket (that's why I have the Pandora, Pyra + GPD pocket 1 as well); it is such a difference having full control and being able to change whatever how you work instead of having large corps decide. Also shows, by the 'missing apps' between ecosystems, how much we need replacements for…

I wonder if making a shell on top of Android (for compatiblity with other devices) would make community larger and get more software contributions. Not sure how technically feasible it is though.

Wasn't FirefoxOS (the defunct phone one, now there's the KaiOS fork) sort of like that? I believe Gonk took some parts from Android, but haven't dug into it.

Given that example, not sure how feasible the app ecosystem is.

Re: PinePhone – KDE Community edition

#113

Post by megous »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #77
Causality1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. The specced hardware charge controller has no thermal circuitry and only disables the battery at a 6 amp current draw.

I'm not a power electronics guy but can a charging circuit realistically be a fire hazard without an initial overcurrent? It seems like good redundancy to have thermal cut-off but theoretically a fire would have to be preceded by a massive overcurrent anyway, no?

Heat can accumulate. You just need to operate near the safety cutoff limit and over the battery spec for long enough.

Anyway, there are layers of protection. More the better.

Re: PinePhone – KDE Community edition

#114

Post by josteink »

izacus wrote: post #80
tluyben2 wrote: post #35

I got my pinephone (Manjaro) last week and tried all OSs there are for it; I really love the idea of having a real Linux device in my pocket (that's why I have the Pandora, Pyra + GPD pocket 1 as well); it is such a difference having full control and being able to change whatever how you work instead of having large corps decide. Also shows, by the 'missing apps' between ecosystems, how much we need replacements for…

I wonder if making a shell on top of Android (for compatiblity with other devices) would make community larger and get more software contributions. Not sure how technically feasible it is though.

> I wonder if making a shell on top of Android (for compatiblity with other devices) would make community larger

But then it would just be another Google-phone, based on a Google-controlled codebase. We have enough of those phones and "OSes" already.

I respect the Pine64, PinePhone and the surrounding communities for trying to make an actual, real Linux-phone based on a real Linux base.

I even bought a PinePhone myself to play with. It's definitely not there yet in terms a full replacement of my iPhone, but at the same time I can see all the pieces starting to come together: It's a real phone, with an open bootloader, running real Linux (with systemd, PulseAudio, whatever your distro rolls with) and a custom shell made for touchscreen phones.

It's just what it needs to be. It just lacks some polish, that's all.

And the community feels really vibrant, akin to the early Linux hacker-scene you had back in the 90s, where everyone is trying to do their part to help deliver something new and different.

For better, it's like a full deja back to those days. I love it!

Re: PinePhone – KDE Community edition

#115

Post by megous »

Causality1 wrote: post #102
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a power electronics guy but can a charging circuit realistically be a fire hazard without an initial overcurrent? It seems like good redundancy to have thermal cut-off but theoretically a fire would have to be preceded by a massive overcurrent anyway, no?

A chip can only detect current that's running through it or a sensor. A breached or shorted cell has a massive overcurrent between two parts of the cell and hence can only be detected by heat

Shorted cell is game over regardless of software, most probably.

Re: PinePhone – KDE Community edition

#116

Post by josteink »

mook wrote: post #112
izacus wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if making a shell on top of Android (for compatiblity with other devices) would make community larger and get more software contributions. Not sure how technically feasible it is though.

Wasn't FirefoxOS (the defunct phone one, now there's the KaiOS fork) sort of like that? I believe Gonk took some parts from Android, but haven't dug into it. Given that example, not sure how feasible the app ecosystem is.

FirefoxOS tried to ride on an Android-base to help solve device-support and being able to focus on the user-facing aspects of the platform.

As a result they were stuck with a combination of the terrible Android-build system and the complex Firefox build-system.

That alone probably wasn't the reason it failed, but it certainly didn't help people who wanted to contribute (like me).

Re: PinePhone – KDE Community edition

#117

Post by messe »

fsflover wrote: post #100
tluyben2 wrote: post #35

I got my pinephone (Manjaro) last week and tried all OSs there are for it; I really love the idea of having a real Linux device in my pocket (that's why I have the Pandora, Pyra + GPD pocket 1 as well); it is such a difference having full control and being able to change whatever how you work instead of having large corps decide. Also shows, by the 'missing apps' between ecosystems, how much we need replacements for…

> For now, this is a device for people who like freedom of their device (well, at least as much as we can get with modern circuits) Librem 5 [0] goes further than that: it's OS is endorsed by the FSF as truly free. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5

> it's OS is endorsed by the FSF as truly free.

To meet the FSF's definitions of free, they had to make the (still required) proprietary firmware read-only instead of allowing it to be loadable by the user.

EDIT: see below.

Re: PinePhone – KDE Community edition

#118

Post by megous »

josteink wrote: post #17
microtonal wrote: post #6

I don't have enough background, but I recently read that some distributions could be a fire hazard due to the lack of proper temperature regulation: https://xnux.eu/log/#017 https://xnux.eu/log/#018 If this was the case, is that still a concern and which distributions/systems address this problem?

I believe all those concerns were put to rest once the modularised design of the phone was taken into consideration. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24596248

"All those concerns" is a bit too much optimistic. There are several concerns, and while there were some ideas put forward, and some patches applied to non-mainline Linux trees, all of those are untested. Values for the NTC were taken from some random datasheet on the internet in the hopes most 10kOhm NTCs have a similar R-T characteristic (they don't), and that the random datasheet I picked matches NTC that's in the battery.

Just to give you a perspective on the level of quality of existing solution.

It's better than before, though.

Re: PinePhone – KDE Community edition

#119

Post by jraph »

_underfl0w_ wrote: post #93
alexmcc81 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plasma Mobile is the desktop and related components (open to correction). There are apparently different distributions (based on Arch, Ubuntu and others [1]). My question is what the Plasma Mobile PinePhone ships with and if it maintained by the Plasma Mobile team themselves. The Plasma Mobile says that the Ubuntu Neon based one is "official" with confusing double quotes. The blog [2] says that image has been rebased…

I think you might be confusing the Linux distribution with the desktop environment . "Plasma" and "Plasma Mobile" are examples of the latter, while "Ubuntu" is the former. One can switch desktop environments with a Linux distribution to customize its look and feel - e.g. if I install Ubuntu on my PC, I can choose Plasma (KDE's offering), Gnome, or XFCE to be my desktop environment. OTOH, I could also choose to instal…

I don't think the parent is confusing these notions. I don't know what distribution will be pre-installed on the KDE community edition, but the KDE project provides pre-built images based on Neon, which is Ubuntu with up to date KDE things on it. Plasma mobile also runs on Postmarket OS and Manjaro, and also Arch I think.

When I briefly tried Neon on Wednesday, it was based on Ubuntu 20.04 and the 5.7 kernel if I remember correctly. Mobian is using kernel 5.9. I hope the pre-installed distribution will have an up to date kernel with latest patches. I also hope that it will be possible to install the latest versions of Plasma Mobile on Mobian in the near future too.

Re: PinePhone – KDE Community edition

#120

Post by fsflover »

messe wrote: post #117
fsflover wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For now, this is a device for people who like freedom of their device (well, at least as much as we can get with modern circuits) Librem 5 [0] goes further than that: it's OS is endorsed by the FSF as truly free. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5

> it's OS is endorsed by the FSF as truly free. To meet the FSF's definitions of free, they had to make the (still required) proprietary firmware read-only instead of allowing it to be loadable by the user. EDIT: see below.

It’s not read-only. You can reflash it if it’s really necessary: https://forums.puri.sm/t/does-respects-your-freedom-certific...
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