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PinePhone Pro Announced

pine64.org

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Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#241

Post by md8z »

josteink wrote: post #232
idle_zealot wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doesn't that mean the core development is divided 14 times? I don’t think it’s quite that simple. A lot of these competing mobile distros are using and working on the same libraries and porting desktop applications to mobile in similar ways. The biggest differences are usually the desktop distro that they’ve made their base and their desktop environment of choice. It’s common to see enhancements to an application o…

> I’ll also throw in an honorable mention of sxmo and its wayland port, which I consider the equivalent to the underdog tiling window managers on the desktop; which is to say its only option good enough to consider using. It’s a funny thing indeed. sxmo seems to be the only option not focusing on competing with Apple and Google on a “good enough for mainstream” ux. I mean Phosh is nice and all. Having frameworks for…

I looked into sxmo and I think it falls clearly into the "clever hack" category and not in the "actually usable" category. There is only so far you can get on a touchscreen device without actually programming any of the apps to support touch. The lack of hardware acceleration in anything X related is also basically going to ensure that it always has poor performance, everything needs to be moved to use GLES based rendering.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#242

Post by megous »

Klasiaster wrote: post #179
megous wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wifi is different, with mainline driver and regularly updated firmware from cypress (same as Rpi4 wifi chip). Type-C stuff is different, more sane. Main camera is different and selected to already have mainline linux support... I don't think this complaint is fair. Only major thing that's the same is the modem, but that would be quite annoying thing to change, because it would void the hard work of people working on…

Great to hear about the USB-C situation improving and confirmation about better WiFi! Do both cameras already work with common V4L2 applications like Firefox, Cheese etc? Yes, it's sane to keep the EG25-G modem only because there is one guy doing an enormous work with https://github.com/Biktorgj/pinephone_modem_sdk

That's not a problem with camera drivers but with firefox and cheese using old APIs. Cameras are v4l2 subdevices, cheese ignores all that. Firefox is the same I guess.

It will improve once these big apps switch to libcamera, like Chrome is doing.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#243

Post by blihp »

officeplant wrote: post #176
djent wrote: post #163

It is frustrating to me that despite the blunt verbiage about it being a beta device for software and hardware developers, people even here are griping about it being not ready for everyday use. If a free and open-source mobile operating system is missing software support for a feature you want, please contribute to its development.

As a owner of many pine64 products I wish there was a clear path to learning how to contribute. My last time coding was C++ class over 16 years ago and I wish I had some sort of idea on how to get started with hobby programming in my spare time as an adult. Edit// Especially since I've jumped on the ARM bandwagon and replaced my desktop with an M1 mac and my laptop with a Pinebook Pro.

Just pick something that bothers you or you think is missing and start working on it. I'd recommend something application, as opposed to system, level to get started. That way you can develop using something like Python and not worry about lots of other dependencies on whatever you're working on.

There generally isn't much in the way of formal organization in the open source world... just scratch an itch that you have. There are relatively few people working on things specific to Linux on mobile so even a modest contribution can have a big impact. For example, the developer of the Megapixels camera app, which is a vast improvement over what existed previously but still needs much work, just wanted a better camera app.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#244

Post by nottaylorswift »

necrotic_comp wrote: post #205
nottaylorswift wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then buy any of the 3 billion Android handsets. Most average $100 and were out of beta in 08'.

Android handsets aren't really linux boxes. I can't ssh into them, I can't write little python scripts, etc. An actual, general purpose, real foss portable phone factor computer will be amazing as it matures.

There's nothing new here. I remember having those features in the Nokia N900 in 09. I think this product is grossly overpriced for a cheap generic Android phone loaded with a beta Linux distro. In Shenzhen they'll sell you a case of 50 for $400. Save your money or buy a Quest 2.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#245

Post by ocdtrekkie »

CameronNemo wrote: post #227
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the Fairphone 3 is running a hostile OS that has already done most of the work, and the PinePhone is still very much an early development platform.

What is hostile about the OS? Early development or not, the rk3399 is a 5 year old SoC.

An advertising company has a root-level backdoor to the device?

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#246

Post by dylan604 »

no_time wrote: post #184
unexpected wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like programmers have become "soft". I bet the old guard is okay with something like this - a lot of C, C++, assembly skills - this is what it meant to mess around with computers! Now, you can just be modifying CSS and call yourself a programmer. You get one of these devices, and you're sorely disappointed!

As the complexity of our every day devices increase, less and less people are capable of contributing anything meaningful to an OS like Linux, let alone in their free time. It also doesn't help that the abundance of high level languages discourages learning about computer internals in younger generations. Or that we indeed became softies lol.

Those harder classes used to be referred to as weed out courses. Incoming class of 100+ students to Assembler. After 2 weeks, 60%+ drop the class.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#247

Post by rjsw »

busymom0 wrote: post #145
nightski wrote: post #126

Nokia is re-releasing their 6310 phone this year and honestly I'm more tempted to go down that path at this point. Just a regular, reliable phone. The most painful thing for me at this point will probably be authenticator apps. That said the pine phone looks really cool and I hope they succeed. Mobile Linux is going to be such a large uphill battle without huge investments. But with Google/Apple having compensation p…

Does the Nokia allow you to load mp3 files and play them? That would solve it for me.

All of the HMD/Nokia feature phones can play mp3 files.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#248

Post by ognarb »

officeplant wrote: post #176
djent wrote: post #163

It is frustrating to me that despite the blunt verbiage about it being a beta device for software and hardware developers, people even here are griping about it being not ready for everyday use. If a free and open-source mobile operating system is missing software support for a feature you want, please contribute to its development.

As a owner of many pine64 products I wish there was a clear path to learning how to contribute. My last time coding was C++ class over 16 years ago and I wish I had some sort of idea on how to get started with hobby programming in my spare time as an adult. Edit// Especially since I've jumped on the ARM bandwagon and replaced my desktop with an M1 mac and my laptop with a Pinebook Pro.

Create apps! This is the most needed. We created a tutorial for Kirigami here: https://develop.kde.org/docs/kirigami/. There are also a few tutorials for GTK/libhandy with e.g. https://tuxphones.com/tutorial-developing-responsive-linux-s...

Also join the developer channels on matrix: #plasmamobile:kde.org (not sure that the address for the GNOME one)

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#249

Post by don-code »

robbedpeter wrote: post #218
djent wrote: post #163

It is frustrating to me that despite the blunt verbiage about it being a beta device for software and hardware developers, people even here are griping about it being not ready for everyday use. If a free and open-source mobile operating system is missing software support for a feature you want, please contribute to its development.

How many hundreds or thousands of enthusiasts are needed before it's suitable to be a daily driver? I see the fragmented approach on the software side as a major hindrance to the goal of achieving a device that can be used by a normal person as a reasonable replacement for other smart phones. I check in on it every l every 6 months or so, update my pinephone and give it a few days. So far, it doesn't meet reliability…

> How many hundreds or thousands of enthusiasts are needed before it's suitable to be a daily driver?

I know your question was rhetorical, but when I think about this, it took close to 20 years of Linux maturing on the desktop before I felt comfortable handing a family member a laptop running Linux. As an enthusiast, I started running it much earlier, but everyday tasks like "printing" or "using Wi-Fi" prevented it from being a daily driver.

Personal computing, though, had a much deeper hacker culture, that encouraged pushing the hardware to its limits, and doing new and novel things with it. Progress stemmed from that (Windows including BSD sockets, for instance). I've never seen anything similar in the phone ecosystem - as soon as you play outside of the walled garden, you drop off into fringe territory. And the PinePhone, as much as I love it, is by definition outside of the walled garden.

I'm not sure, given the culture around phones, we might ever get to the point of it being viable.

Re: PinePhone Pro Announced

#250

Post by RealStickman_ »

TheUnelisted wrote: post #154
CameronNemo wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect Pine ships Manjaro ARM because that distro will apply nearly any patch to the kernel if it makes something work, no matter how hacky or unsustainable the patch is. Right now their kernel has 43 patches, and they are not even organized or annotated well. https://gitlab.manjaro.org/manjaro-arm/packages/core/linux

They ship Manjaro ARM because the people behind PINE64 are manjaro fans and they think that Manjaro has a good business setup. It would have been much nicer to have PostmarketOS shipped stock.

Afaik Manjaro have their own company, so it's easier to make contracts about software support.

Additionally, pine64 have already worked with them on the pinebook and pinebook pro as default distro.

Personally, I don't like Manjaro either, but it's easy enough to use a different distro and is probably good enough for most.

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