151–160 of 265 posts
I wouldn't buy this, simply based on experience of their other products. I bought one of their laptops. It was terribly slow to the point of unusability for the three days it was working before a child knocked the power plug and ripped the socket assembly off the mainboard, rendering the machine unsalvageable. The whole thing felt poorly built. Contrast the ZX Spectrum Next, built by enthusiasts as a Kickstarter, whi…
And that's not slow?
The pinephone is great, in fact I'm typing this comment from mine. That said, fair warning to anyone thinking about getting one: it's slow, buggy, and flat out unreliable if you need to be able to receive / answer calls and texts for anything important (e.g. work). Once they get the software worked out over the next few years though, it'll be the best thing out there. No ads, no bullshit, just a phone with a mainline…
You have a strange definition of "great." If any other phone exhibited those characteristics, I would write it off as garbage, not excuse its faults with a promise that they'll be fixed Real Soon Now™
The fact that it has been admitted that 'it's slow, buggy, and flat out unreliable if you need to be able to receive / answer calls and texts for anything important' tells me that it is even worse than that 'Freedom Phone' since not only the PinePhone can't run the same apps as that, but it runs more sluggish than that.
I'd also write all of them off as garbage 'for now', since none of them can be recommended to the average Joe or Jane.
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And it will run smoothly, if you choose simple software: https://sr.ht/~mil/Sxmo/ .
Though from a few videos it's got an incredibly primitive UI that mainly uses the side buttons instead of the big touchscreen. The interface seems much more apt for a feature phone than a smartphone. (Though I realize there can be some niche demand for a non-touchscreen Linux phone with a hardware keyboard... Maybe that's what might be more achievable in the FOSS Linux hobbyist scene than something like the Pinephone…
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> Examples are so abundant and obvious that I'm not sure I need to mention any, but for the sake of argument. In software: Linux, Gimp, Firefox, VLC, Blender, OpenOffice If you picked an average computer user at random (read: not people on HN) and had them try out Linux, Gimp, and OpenOffice, I don't think they'd agree with you that they're as high-quality as their commercial alternatives.
Average users use Linux all the time, it’s in everything. You’d need to ask the developers writing all these router OSes, smart televisions, Android phones, … whether they chose Linux because of its high quality or, I guess, randomly?.. Try giving an average user Photoshop. See how they weep. These thought experiments are really hard to apply to software on complex domains. OpenOffice is indeed a terrible example.
The OS vendor can change the kernel being used, and those average users won't notice it all.
The only quality is being a free beer OS, that the OEM vendors can leech at will without bothering one second up-streaming their changes.
And when the community started to be too vocal about it, efforts to use MIT/BSD licensed alternatives were set in motion.
In a couple of years those router OSes, smart televisions, Android phones won't be using the Linux kernel any longer.
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In my case, I've had a few issues with screen sharing online meetings: - Webex doesn't provide screen sharing in larger meetings via WebRTC. It really sucks, since it works in smaller ones and people really get suprised by this. - The last time I used Webex via their "desktop" app, they didn't properly support pipewire. - Same with zoom, except that they don't seem to provide browser meetings at all sometimes & their…
> Webex doesn't provide screen sharing in larger meetings via WebRTC Can you not capture your screen manually and make it available to your browser as a generic web cam? (Not that you should have to, but still.) > [Zoom] don't seem to provide browser meetings at all sometimes Last time I used it they were engaging in website trickery. You had to click the link to download (and maybe do something else) before it would…
But I can confirm that it works just fine in the browser on Linux.
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> buggy, and flat out unreliable if you need to be able to receive / answer calls and texts for anything important (e.g. work). Out of curiosity, how do these bugs/unreliability manifest in realty? I've been fiddling around with making a mobile Linux distro specifically for a car navigation/entertainment system so I'm curious to get some circumstantial feedback.
I have a Pinephone. It works well most of the time, but occasionally apps crash, or it cannot connect to WiFi, or becomes very slow. Reboot usually helps. A good thing is that even if you buy it now and decide it's not reliable enough, you can be sure that the development will never stop and at some point it will be better than Android in every way. I would say in a year.
The current stage is pretty much unusable if you need a reliable phone.
So in one year already, it is supposed to be better than android in every way?
That is a very bold assumption. I mean, would be nice, but I doubt it and would be happy if it gets stable enough to simply use it as a phone and chatdevice, without hickups.
Add OpenGL ES 3 GPU and I'm sold.
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> Once they get the software worked out over the next few years though, it'll be the best thing out there. No ads, no bullshit, just a phone with a mainline linux distribution. I'm coming to the realisation that open source projects will always provide a lower quality than comerical ones. How can we honestly expect a small team of developers to compete with the larger teams a commerical project can afford? The realit…
Reading the comments, and weighing your comment, you say we need to have Android to be successful. Before that you say “we need apps”, that’s the heart of your comment. It can be successfully argued that we don’t need more of what we already have (aka closed walled, ad ridden, privacy off by default - solutions) We (as in developers) should start believing in these projects and adopt them. Blender for a long time cou…
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The common Linux interfaces are very easy to decipher and have a good usability. Usability is measurable property, so that's not a guess, just a fact. Add to that the higher task purpose you can get with Linux (partly boosted by not having annoying blockers to get work done, like Windows ads and forced reboots) and the infinitely higher customizablity (for the user's needs and wants) and for general computer usage, t…
>The common Linux interfaces are very easy to decipher and have a good usability. CLI? Absolutely. Desktop interfaces are an inconsistent mess.
If you want to branch out to less popular DEs then of course you should be prepared for it being less polished, but does any Linux newbie really expect dozens of super polished DEs?