Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 225 posts

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#171

Post by zepto »

fitzie wrote: post #141
m463 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a purism owner, and a long-time linux user... I think that is a fantasy statement. Theoretically, there could be an open platform like the PC (with usb + pcie + ATX case/power supply + etc..) with open interfaces. However the reason this came into existence was by microsoft's design to commoditize the hardware to drive software sales of its (closed) operating system. With cellphones all of those interfaces are bei…

totally agree. while I'm optimistic that arm chips will be more open in the data center and embedded space, looks like mobile arm id becoming more proprietary. Intel could shake things up if it starts to work on riscv and brings some of its graphics and wireless tech over to it. while it is nice to have a powerful phone, it really doesn't need to be any more powerful than what is in a tv set.

> it really doesn't need to be any more powerful than what is in a tv set.

I’d like to believe this, but if it were true, the Pinephone would be super responsive, and nobody would be complaining about iOS browser performance.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#172

Post by shakna »

gentleman11 wrote: post #26
smoldesu wrote: post #2

This is probably gonna come as a shock to some people, but I wholly think I could live with a Linux smartphone today. I really only use my phone for two things: text/calling and staying connected to my desktop/laptop. As long as it supports the KDE/GDE connect protocol (I doubt it doesn't), I could see myself actually being one of the early adopters here.

I have never heard of kde connect. Remote Desktop?

KDE Connect [0] is an integrated kind of sync between all your devices.

Things like viewing your computer files from tablet or phone, or responding to text messages from your laptop, using your phone as a trackpad, etc.

[0] https://kdeconnect.kde.org/

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#173

Post by zepto »

kelnos wrote: post #162
spankalee wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those types of driver vulnerabilities are exactly why Fuchsia's sandboxed driver model is needed.

I see that as a sort of capitulation. What is actually needed is manufacturers who remain responsible and responsive when it comes to the quality of their drivers. They need to support them much longer than they currently do, and they need to release security fixes promptly. I think having a sandboxed driver model is a great idea in general, but this will only encourage hardware manufacturers to care even less about…

> What is actually needed is manufacturers who remain responsible and responsive when it comes to the quality of their drivers. They need to support them much longer than they currently do, and they need to release security fixes promptly.

That requires a level of investment in engineering competence that they aren’t doing because there is little incentive.

How would you suggest changing that?

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#174

Post by heavyset_go »

UbrtrbNchDneRle wrote: post #47
fabrice_d wrote: post #35

The biggest threat to Linux on phones could be Fuchsia. If/when Google decides to switch to a Fuchsia base for Android, all the chipset vendors will follow suit and that will make it even harder to find chipsets that can be used with a Linux kernel - upstream or not. That will dry up the amount of effort put into making Linux a good mobile platform. Maybe the stable binary api of Fuchsia drivers will be usable on Lin…

Don’t you think we will see more general computing ARM chips with the M1’s success? Aren’t we approaching a world where your phone, tablet (hopefully eating the laptop…), desktop and server all run more or less the same chip?

No, because the M1 is like every other phone and tablet out there in that they're ARM SoCs. There are significant downsides to ARM SoCs compared to x86-64 machines in that they have no standardized architecture, nor enumerable buses.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#175

Post by zepto »

ashneo76 wrote: post #37

Using a low power phone for everyday use, for a year now. I would say the "convergence" of the android and iOS devices is creating a device that is tuned to suck you into the marketing and advertising of google, apple, etc. Android and iOS devices are tools and platforms to gather data and use the consumer as a product more than anything else. Break the slab like form factor and my addictive habits dropped, drastical…

> Break the slab like form factor and my addictive habits dropped, drastically.

I think this is an important point and one of the potential problems with the PinePhone - by having the same form factor as Android and iOS devices, it will end up being sucked into copying along with their designs the way the Linux desktop iterates towards MacOS.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#176

Post by heavyset_go »

pinkybanana wrote: post #21
georgeoliver wrote: post #18

My Pinephone doesn't work for me as a primary phone (yet), but I think it's still a very capable device at home with good integration (via KDE connect). Without millions of dollars in corporate support, hardware vendors like Pine64 and Linux on mobile developers need user support to make progress. If you want a performant Linux phone, put some skin in the game.

> If you want a performant Linux phone, put some skin in the game. The reality is that this ain't going to happen. There will be never enough volunteer-based work to enable the level of effort that it requires to develop consumer devices like smartphones. Commercial actors have so much money and power, and people have bills to pay. This is something where full open source model just doesn't work.

Disagree completely. webOS and Maemo were pretty great and open source. It took half of a decade for Android and iOS to adopt some of the principle features webOS shipped with. Both had large communities developing, often open source, software for them.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#178

Post by howaboutnope »

pjmlp wrote: post #48
testific8 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many standards on linux, but in my experience they are mostly inter-compatable. I have KDE/X11 programs running just fine in my GNOME/Wayland environment. I also have alsa, pulseaudio and pipewire playing nice on my laptop. I've heard binary distribution is a problem, with many overcomplicated methods like Appimage, Snap, and Flatpack. But it doesn't matter because linux users will prefer installing from so…

And so commercial vendors decide to apply to Android instead.

And nothing of value was lost.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#179

Post by linmob »

midwestemo wrote: post #12

I would buy a pinephone at the moment but the performance is just not that much compared to Android phones. It's not good for a daily phone to use at the moment. Until then, I'll stick with my OnePlus 7 Pro until there's a linux phone with good performance, even if it costs more.

There are a few Snapdragon 845 phones (PocoPhone F1, OnePlus 6(T) that are getting closer and to fully working with postmarketOS and/or Mobian. Maybe that’s something to look out for, currently IIRC the OnePlus 6 is the closest.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#180

Post by kaba0 »

I’ve read that open hardware is not as important as some claim — I did buy a pinephone and occasionally play with it (and I am very grateful to the small but enthusiastic community around it), but it having stale firmware which never gets updated doesn’t sound good.

Also, hardware kill switches are useless — if you can’t trust the software to not listen to you than all is lost. Also, sound can be recorded through the motion sensors as well. And my all around point: Linux’s user space’s security is a joke. If it ever wants to grow out of the niche of 5 tech enthusiast, something should be done.

Post reply on HN