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Why I left Pine64

blog.brixit.nl

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Re: Why I left Pine64

#151

Post by zozbot234 »

nexthash wrote: post #149
igneo676 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a huge overstatement of how much duplicated effort is involved. The process is much more akin to: * OS 1 finds a bug in Gnome, reports it and perhaps fixes it * OS 2 benefits from pulling in the new code as well, fixing bugs * OS 3 writes a driver for the camera and publishes it as part of their kernel * OS 4 finds a bug in the camera driver they started using, publishes their fix Yes, there's some ove…

I guess it comes down to that: will Pine64 take an OSS development approach or a commercial development approach? I've been swimming on the question of why Linux isn't more accessible to more people for a while, and have come to believe that a commercial approach is the only way Linux can achieve the work-out-of-the-box dream. Commercial development allows you to afford to control the hardware, make deals with other…

Historically, "works out of the box" has largely been a matter of low-level hardware bringup. That's one part of FLOSS development where there is already a natural "center of development and revenue", namely ODM's and OEM's. They just need to stop pushing hacked-together, barely-working downstream BSP's tied to a single software configuration, and start cooperating with projects at relevant levels of the stack. Pine64 is actually a lot better at doing this than your average hardware vendor, the OP is mostly complaining about relatively minor quibbles (though important quibbles nonetheless, because they directly impact OP's work).

Re: Why I left Pine64

#152

Post by zozbot234 »

nexthash wrote: post #150
asdfasdf23r23r wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. This is non-sense speak by non-developers. Greedy non-developers. they "sell" it as "25x duplicated effort" but in reality, there's 25x little tweaks to a build system, that give thousands of people zero effort to port their known platform right away. Now those thousands of people will have REAL effort to adapt their knowledge and existing ways to fit that one holy way enforced by the device true owners. In…

I would like to disagree with your characterization. I use Linux distros regularly at work (Amazon Linux), in school (Rocky Linux, currently studying), and at home (Ubuntu) when hacking together various projects. I've seen firsthand the issues that come with trying to get a distro to interop with Bluetooth, sound, and software not quite designed for it. This is not a zero sum game: I believe we can have both an OSS a…

> I've seen firsthand the issues that come with trying to get a distro to interop with Bluetooth, sound, and software not quite designed for it.

These issues crop up on bleeding-edge hardware due to different distros running differently-timed versions of the same underlying components. They fade away over time as software versions start supporting the formerly-bleeding-edge hardware across the board, and the issues invariably shift to the next bleeding-edge hardware release. This is not an immutable fact about the ecosystem, it's a consequence of wanting something to function before it's fully ready for serious use.

Re: Why I left Pine64

#153

Post by iuugh0098fghdf »

CivBase wrote: post #112

As an outsider, it sounds to me like Pine64 has failed to explicitly state how much support they are willing to offer each of the popular distro projects. The Community Edition releases implied a pretty high level of support for each of those projects at the time, but now that support has been dropped and the project developers feel lead on. I don't think it's too late for Pine64 to recover from this, though. IMO, th…

I own one ( community edition ), am currently using one, and still am somewhat optimistic. I should disclose those that I am running PostmarketOS though ( and it makes me glad author will still contribute to that project ).

I am not sure Pine was ever about mass appeal. It was supposed to be for people, who want control over the hardware they own. That seems a little different from mass appeal.

Maybe I misunderstood their value proposition.

Re: Why I left Pine64

#154

Post by p1mrx »

mindslight wrote: post #71
skymer wrote: post #50

At best, the Pinephone is buggy software on low priced but mediocre hardware. It has always been like this, and it is not going to change. There is nobody willing to spend the millions of dollars it would take to make it otherwise. Meanwhile, AOSP is fully working, open source Linux-based phone software that runs on lots of modern hardware from a variety of manufacturers. Distributions like GrapheneOS have put huge e…

On my laptops/desktops/servers, I can rebuild all of my many systems from source, with config kept in git, with a few commands using Nix, and it basically Just Works. Before using Nix, I could reproducibly reinstall my personal Debian environment in 15 minutes with similar uniformly-managed config. When I upgrade software, there's no wondering if I'm going to be forced to upgrade hardware. I'll routinely keep machine…

What is "4G deprecation"? You seem to be the only person talking about it:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%224g+deprecation%22

Re: Why I left Pine64

#155

Post by mindslight »

p1mrx wrote: post #154
mindslight wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On my laptops/desktops/servers, I can rebuild all of my many systems from source, with config kept in git, with a few commands using Nix, and it basically Just Works. Before using Nix, I could reproducibly reinstall my personal Debian environment in 15 minutes with similar uniformly-managed config. When I upgrade software, there's no wondering if I'm going to be forced to upgrade hardware. I'll routinely keep machine…

What is "4G deprecation"? You seem to be the only person talking about it: https://www.google.com/search?q=%224g+deprecation%22

The carriers are calling it the "3G shutdown" to downplay the fact they're obsoleting relatively new 4G LTE phones that simply don't do VoLTE. Hell, I even continued using mine without carrier voice service, but they eventually blacklisted the whole thing from the network.

Re: Why I left Pine64

#156

Post by Fnoord »

Lack of warranty is the reason why I don't like this project. I still got some of their devices (PinePower is neat for its price, but again: without warranty).

Re: Why I left Pine64

#157

Post by Klasiaster »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #121
MartijnBraam wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PINE64 hardware is not open hardware and it has never been marketed as such.

Open in the sense of letting the user run whatever they want, not open-sourcing the hardware itself.

Many Android phones are also open like this as shown by pmOS: someone somewhere has to work on mainline Linux support and normally mainline doesn't really work and there are still some downstream patches left, meaning you can't run what you want unless you have a patched kernel (the same it true for the PinePhone and PinePhone Pro).

Re: Why I left Pine64

#158

Post by Fnoord »

3np wrote: post #49
MartijnBraam wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like the process for android phones with postmarketOS to be easier. In the end for a lot of these devices you have to work around vendor weirdness. Luckily it seems like SHIFT Phones is actually improving the situation, they actually have one of their developers helping out with the kernel development and the device is not terribly hard to get postmarketOS on and I think it'll only get easier to dual boot tha…

Damn, somehow SHiFT phones have been flying completely under my radar. The SHiFT 6mq looks amazing if it'd be feasible to get pmOS running on it. A quick search yield a lot of results, all in German. Do you think it's realistic to expect the power situation to be(come) better than it is on the PPP today?

See [1]. You can use Firefox Translations to translate the website locally.

It goes for 655 EUR and has AMOLED, a feature I miss with my FP4. Both are popular smartphones in Germany but Fairphone is more internationally oriented. If you can wait a year you might wanna check the successor Shiftmu [2]

[1] https://shop.shiftphones.com/shift6mq.html

[2] https://shop.shiftphones.com/shiftmu.html

Re: Why I left Pine64

#159

Post by matkoniecz »

analognoise wrote: post #143
cycomanic wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel like you're inferring qualities in OSS that don't (explicitly) exist. This is not uncommon. Specifically; > >> It seems the large corporations like FANGs are largely pushing OSS to use volunteer work to make software a commodity > Why would you expect them to do anything different? Companies are driven by profit, not some sense of morality. OSS licenses allow them, even encourage them, to trade volunteer (ak…

I mean I think FOSS is objectively bad for humanity. But I'm an outlier.

why?

Re: Why I left Pine64

#160

Post by desertraven »

I’ve read that in espionage, open source companies are disrupted from the inside. Is an open source, non trackable device with future potential to replace the current situation worth that level of action? Pure speculation!
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