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PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available

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Re: PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available

#91

Post by stazz1 »

hobofan wrote: post #79
jegea wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own the 3GB Manjaro edition of the PinePhone (same hardware as this one, AFAIK) and, while in theory you can do everything that you describe with it, it is hardly something you could use as your only smartphone for the day. (I still love it, though, and love hacking away with it!!) However, as of today, there's a much better way of achieving what you're describing in an Android phone: Termux (1) With Termux you can…

As of today yes, but who knows about tomorrow. Termux might be facing a harsh future given the changes in Android 10.[0] Actually switching to a pure Linux phone and might be the more viable long-term solution. [0]: https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/wiki/Termux-and-An...

"Linux Phone"... music to my ears!

Re: PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available

#92

Post by enos_feedler »

blihp wrote: post #76
enos_feedler wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been using Mobian on the UBport edition for the last month. Sluggish doesn’t even describe the usability. I bought a few data only sims in hopes of leaving the house for short errands with different devices. There is no way I could leave the house with the pinephone. It isn’t usable yet. Could an extra gig of RAM solve this? It seems like it needs years of work.

As you noticed, it's not just a RAM issue. The problem is that Linux GUI and apps generally expect laptop/desktop-ish levels of hardware capabilities because that's what they were developed on/for. You're literally running the same code base that the x86 versions run, just recompiled for ARM. Most mobile SoCs, especially the ones that are Linux-friendly in terms of being open enough to be viable, are not even remotel…

Is it possible the Raspberry Pi ecosystem could move things forward for ARM based linux devices? I know they aren’t mobile, but it is a strong ecosystem with some traction.

Re: PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available

#93

Post by black_puppydog »

I've been trying to run my pinephone (mobian) for more things.

Since I work from home, this means mostly podcasts, and the occasional call.

Well... calls don't work for me, but that might be my (secondary) SIM. I'll try it with the primary soon.

Podcasts... I set up gPodder (while docked, because the UI doesn't adapt to the screen) and then use mpv to actually play the episodes which... is surprisingly usable. Next I'll see if I can adapt Podbird or such. It should work, really...

I also find myself late-night hacking in vim (again, surprisingly usable with onscreen keyboard, with minor tweaks) at night-time. xD

In a nutshell: I love the project. It's not "there" yet, but it's making progress, and I'm finally happy again to get update notifications to my phone.

Edit: also chat of course. The reason I didn't mention that is that I simply didn't think about chat as an issue. 99% of my chats are on telegram these days and that works pretty flawlessly on the pinephone, since it runs the exact same (efficient) codebase as the desktop app. In fact, just resize the (Qt) desktop app to simulate how it behaves on the phone. :)

Re: PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available

#94

Post by blihp »

enos_feedler wrote: post #92
blihp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you noticed, it's not just a RAM issue. The problem is that Linux GUI and apps generally expect laptop/desktop-ish levels of hardware capabilities because that's what they were developed on/for. You're literally running the same code base that the x86 versions run, just recompiled for ARM. Most mobile SoCs, especially the ones that are Linux-friendly in terms of being open enough to be viable, are not even remotel…

Is it possible the Raspberry Pi ecosystem could move things forward for ARM based linux devices? I know they aren’t mobile, but it is a strong ecosystem with some traction.

In a sense it already has. I suspect the reason that Linux ARM support is as good as it is currently has a lot to do with devices like the Raspberry Pi. In 2010 (i.e. before the Pi) I was using a BeagleBoard-xM and things were both rough and spartan. Today the ARM packages in the repos are nearly at parity and things work much better.

However, the Pi has never gotten much beyond being a forky port of Linux software (back then they had to: they were an arm6hf device in an arm7hf world) and since they seem determined to stay forked (i.e. they no longer need to be a fork, but rather seem to want to be), I don't expect much more from the project in terms of broader Linux enhancements. I'd love to be proven wrong on this.

Re: PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available

#95

Post by squarefoot »

blihp wrote: post #83
antoineMoPa wrote: post #45

> $199 — 3GB RAM; 32GB eMMC (includes a bundled USB-C dock) This could basically be a daily use PC + Phone for 199$? Quite impressive.

Unless you're used to running on a low-end Chromebook as a daily driver, no.

I'd like to be optimistic wrt future software performance on this model as well. Linux isn't Android where user apps are written to run under a virtual machine and development has to deal with the Java monoculture (Android still doesn't have low latency audio for this exact reason). However, some Python apps that on a powerful desktop run at high speed might be taxed by the Pinephone comparatively slow hardware, so native compiled code would be the solution to give a significant speed bump to most Pinephone userland applications.

Re: PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available

#96

Post by ekianjo »

LeonM wrote: post #58

Does anyone here have experience with actually using the pinephone as a daily driver? I know plenty of people that ordered one, but they are all laying on a drawer somewhere with the intention to play with it a bit. Basically how most RPi's end up. Just curious if this phone is actually competitive with android devices in the same price class.

here's a recent review: https://boilingsteam.com/pinephone-community-edition-ce-revi...

Re: PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available

#97

Post by hutzlibu »

kleiba wrote: post #42
oriesdan wrote: post #9

For the record, I received yesterday the new mainboard that will be in those phones to replace the one of my pinephone UBport edition. The boost in RAM (3gb instead of 2gb) does the trick for me, allowing to use firefox. Not to the point that the experience is even close to android, but at least usable (before that, I used elinks on the phone). The system I use (mobian/phosh) still feels sluggish, but I suspect it's…

I grew up in the C64 days - I still can't get my head around the fact that you need 3gb of RAM because 2gb is not enough to run a webbrowser these days. I know that what's going on on a typical website these days requires an enormous amount of computational power, but I mean, come on. That shouldn't be the explanation, it's part of the problem.

I did not know, that in C64 days you had a browser, with x WebAPIs to do various networking stuff, p2p, soundAPI, database, payment processing, complex - hardware accelerated styling and composite of layout, plattform irrelevant assembler subset, with a integrated IDE etc. etc.

A Webbrowser these days is simply much, much more than a static document viewer, despite this might be, what you want it to be.

Re: PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available

#98

Post by troyvit »

p4bl0 wrote: post #22
vorticalbox wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same I also dislike activities I would much rather hack actual desktops or workspaces I can switch between.

You can have desktops that you can switch between in KDE. How are activities different from workspaces? I've never really used any of the two.

Activities are like a new set of workspaces for you to switch to. Like let's say you use your laptop for work and for fun at home. At work you use 4 workspaces and plain desktop backgrounds and conky to watch processes. Then when you punch out at work and want to relax you want just one workspace with cycling wallpapers or whatever. You can set up a "work" activity that fits those needs and then a "home" activity that is much simpler for at home. I think of it as like a third dimension for workspaces.

Re: PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available

#99

Post by [deleted] »

kleiba wrote: post #42
oriesdan wrote: post #9

For the record, I received yesterday the new mainboard that will be in those phones to replace the one of my pinephone UBport edition. The boost in RAM (3gb instead of 2gb) does the trick for me, allowing to use firefox. Not to the point that the experience is even close to android, but at least usable (before that, I used elinks on the phone). The system I use (mobian/phosh) still feels sluggish, but I suspect it's…

I grew up in the C64 days - I still can't get my head around the fact that you need 3gb of RAM because 2gb is not enough to run a webbrowser these days. I know that what's going on on a typical website these days requires an enormous amount of computational power, but I mean, come on. That shouldn't be the explanation, it's part of the problem.

[deleted]

Re: PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available

#100

Post by jegea »

hobofan wrote: post #79
jegea wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own the 3GB Manjaro edition of the PinePhone (same hardware as this one, AFAIK) and, while in theory you can do everything that you describe with it, it is hardly something you could use as your only smartphone for the day. (I still love it, though, and love hacking away with it!!) However, as of today, there's a much better way of achieving what you're describing in an Android phone: Termux (1) With Termux you can…

As of today yes, but who knows about tomorrow. Termux might be facing a harsh future given the changes in Android 10.[0] Actually switching to a pure Linux phone and might be the more viable long-term solution. [0]: https://github.com/termux/termux-packages/wiki/Termux-and-An...

Sadly true, indeed.

It's a shame we're losing so much useful functionality there.

Security is a worthy goal but getting rid of useful features just because Google wants to handhold Android users so much seems to me like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

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