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Why I left Pine64

blog.brixit.nl

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Re: Why I left Pine64

#81

Post by jcul »

_chu1 wrote: post #75
MartijnBraam wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've spend a lot of time optimizing the developer experience in postmarketOS by making easier tooling and writing more documentation, I'm glad it helps. While Debian has more strict policies on software licensing etc the musl component of postmarketOS pretty much makes sure that no closed source software will ever run in userspace. The main difference is that postmarketOS does deal with firmware for hardware while D…

Why prevent closed source software from running in userspace? Even in Fedora Linux I find myself having to use closed source software a lot for daily tasks.

It's not intentional, just a side effect of using musl libc instead of glibc (GNU C library).

Some distros, such as alpine Linux, use musl libc as their system wide C library.

glibc is pretty much ubiquitous, so any closed source software will be compiled against glibc and will not work with musl c libraries.

That's not to say a vendor couldn't do a muslc build of a closed source software, just that it's pretty much unheard of.

I believe binary compatibility is a goal of musl, being able to run a glibc binary against a musl libc library, but I think that's a long way off.

So an alternative on a musl libc distro is to use something like flatpak that bundles glibc libraries in a sandbox / container.

The side effect the grandparent comment is referring to, is that you have a good idea all the software on your system is open source, other than what you are running in flatpak, as closed source binaries are unlikely to run on your musl system.

Re: Why I left Pine64

#82

Post by freedomben »

MartijnBraam wrote: post #42
preisschild wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The soldering iron pine64 made is also great. They released a upgraded version a few weeks ago. They also announced a RISC-V SBC, and its great to see them at least continuing to improve the SBC situation.

The devices they make that don't ship with Linux on them are pretty good, those are also easier to get fully functional software since the scope is so much smaller. The whole linux side is just a bit of a mess

Do you think RISC-V will make any difference for the Pine64 situation (especially the SPI flash)? I remember seeing something about a UEFI standard. Would that help?

Re: Why I left Pine64

#83

Post by freedomben »

3np wrote: post #45
preisschild wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The soldering iron pine64 made is also great. They released a upgraded version a few weeks ago. They also announced a RISC-V SBC, and its great to see them at least continuing to improve the SBC situation.

Oh yeah. I never thought I'd have the warm fuzzies for a USB PSU until the PinePower.

wow... I hadn't seen that before but the PinePower looks absolutely incredible

Re: Why I left Pine64

#84

Post by freedomben »

johnklos wrote: post #76
criddell wrote: post #41

> The original PinePhone was brought up on the existing Linux Mobile projects like Ubuntu Touch, postmarketOS, and Maemo Leste, and also spawned new Linux distributions like Mobian and Danctnix ARM. This grew until there were 25 different projects working on the PinePhone — an apparently thriving community. What you see as a thriving community, others might see as a fragmented market. I don't know if this makes sense…

> others might see as a fragmented market So uneducated outside views matter more than the communities themselves? > multiple distributions and overlapping projects trades off deep development for broad development So volunteers are supposed to - I don't know - know better, stop working on what they want to work on, and coordinate? And it's the fault of these volunteers that there's "fragmentation"? You think this is…

I agree with your positions, but the level of snark was exceeding uncalled for.

Re: Why I left Pine64

#85

Post by twiclo »

Martin, if you're still around, could you tell us what phone you would recommend to someone if they were wanting to switch to daily driving PostmarketOS? Do you still see that as the pinephone or do you consider another device as having a more promising future/better hardware/better support?

Re: Why I left Pine64

#86

Post by bioemerl »

If I want a phone locked to a single Linux distro controlled by the vendor I will buy an Android phone and it will beat the pine phone in about every single way.

Re: Why I left Pine64

#87

Post by sho_hn »

freedomben wrote: post #83
3np wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah. I never thought I'd have the warm fuzzies for a USB PSU until the PinePower.

wow... I hadn't seen that before but the PinePower looks absolutely incredible

Having one, I don't feel as good about the PinePower. I bought it together with their Pinecil soldering iron (which is great!) as it seemed like the ideal way to provide power to it, but unfortunately it's a very unreliable combo, with the iron rebooting frequently. Discussion around many similar issue reports online suggests the possibility of bad implementations of USB PD. Perhaps this is more a criticism of the complexities inherent in USB power supply in general, though.

Running the Pinecil off a Riden bench PSU with a simple DC power plug is rock solid, for comparison.

Re: Why I left Pine64

#88

Post by cycomanic »

I am a big FOSS proponent (I almost exclusively use FOSS), but I find it difficult to not become disillusioned recently. It seems the large corporations like FANGs are largely pushing OSS to use volunteer work to make software a commodity, while trying to accumulate more and more data, which they consider their main value.

At the same time we have companies like pine, who seem to support FOSS through relatively open hardware, but which to me seem increasingly more about a way to make a profit of the FOSS trend by using volunteer work without any investment from their end. I question if they are actually interested in their devices actually being functional for regular use. See also this article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32330043

Finally we have distributions like Manjaro who seem more interested in growing their slice of the pie at the cost of other distributions instead of growing the whole Linux ecosystem. https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/hxpj87/change_in_man...

Re: Why I left Pine64

#89

Post by dbeley »

zozbot234 wrote: post #60
dbeley wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AOSP is still a google-controlled project that requires a ton of blobs, whereas the Pinephone (and other linux compatible smartphones like the Librem 5) has an entire ecosystem of healthy linux distros (from Mobian to Archlinux) running as close as possible to mainline linux. > GrapheneOS have put huge effort into de-googling They are doing great work but they're still depending on google for maintaining Android (Can…

The blobs are required by hardware OEMs, not by google themselves. You'd have the exact same issue when trying to run pmOS on the same hardware; it actually crops up throughout the embedded ecosystem. Pinephone and Librem 5 are quite exceptional wrt. minimizing the amounts of hardware-specific blobs that they require.

Yeah indeed I should have specified that the whole "mainline linux compatible" is mostly because the Pinephone and the Librem don't use Qualcomm (or worse Mediatek) SoCs.

Re: Why I left Pine64

#90

Post by CivBase »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #72
detaro wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does making booting alternatives harder and pissing of people developing software components they themselves want to use in their "get started quickly" distro help Pine64? Prioritizing their own efforts towards one distro doesn't have to mean harming the rest of the ecosystem they benefit from .

When you’re trying to make a mass-market hardware product at bare-bones pricing, you have to be ruthless about simplifying the hardware and cutting costs. A single SPI chip isn’t a huge investment in absolute terms, but it adds one more sourcing complication (in the middle of a chip shortage) and creates significantly more RMA complexity (for the reasons that the Pine64 organization accurately explained from their pa…

> When you’re trying to make a mass-market hardware product at bare-bones pricing, you have to be ruthless about simplifying the hardware and cutting costs.

But is that really what PINE64 should be trying to do? So far their support hasn't come from the "mass market". It's come from a niche market of open source hackers trying to build and support various Linux distros for mobile devices. Why does improving mass market appeal have to mean alienating your existing supporters?

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