11–20 of 21 posts
Maybe I have unrealistic expectations, but I was surprised not to see the PinePhone Pro on the list of supported devices. Was that a mistake or does it get lumped together with the OG PunePhone?
Just curious as to what the use cases for this are from any current users. Is anyone using postmarked as a daily driver replacement for their phone ? Do people use it as a mobile low power server or just a fun handheld Linux computer ?
I think I will continue using AOSP on a pixel phone until waydroid support gets a bit better. It takes a while to start waydroid, and by then I'm already down like 25% battery.
The "selling point" of postmarketOS is that it is based on the lightweight Alpine Linux, and it has a toolkit (called pmbootstrap) which is designed to make it easy to port it to stock-android phones, not just pinephone/librem5's. So whatever contributions you make to the OS will survive beyond this generation of phones. Also, other distros like Ubuntu Touch try to make their own weird userspace, but postmarketOS is nice because it behaves a lot more like the desktop linux userspace. Also, it's easy to run their pmbootstrap program to make your own image- it gives you a selection of DE's to choose from for example sxmo or kde mobile or phosh, and you can even set up FDE. What I'm getting at here is that it's a lot more "standard" and extensible than the other linux phone distros out there: they try to build on top of a minimal alpine linux instead of just porting a bigger distro like manjaro or reinventing the wheel.
Hopefully we will eventually see postmarketOS ported to a more powerful (probably stock-android) phone that has feature-parity with the pinephone (see https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices#Community). I would definitely miss the extensibility and open-ness of the pinephone; ideally a company like pine64 just iterates on the pinephone until the hardware is usable, and the software meets it in the middle.
Just curious as to what the use cases for this are from any current users. Is anyone using postmarked as a daily driver replacement for their phone ? Do people use it as a mobile low power server or just a fun handheld Linux computer ?
> Is anyone using postmarked as a daily driver replacement for their phone? Yes. I'm not sure I understand your question though. A big use case for PostmarketOS is software for a mobile phone, so that's my use case.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is anyone using postmarked as a daily driver replacement for their phone? Yes. I'm not sure I understand your question though. A big use case for PostmarketOS is software for a mobile phone, so that's my use case.
Yes but how much do you depend on your phone? As in, what functions does it fill in your day-to-day life?
I think it has some apps for social media, but I only have a mastodon acccount for social media.
The only thing really lacking in it is a decent maps app, but for the most part I get by just fine without that.
To those who are curious - I'm working on a PostmarketOS / AwesomeWM based interface for e-readers, currently happily running it as a daily driver on my Kobo Clara HD. https://github.com/bjesus/air . It's very fun to have an e-ink device running modern Linux, and it's also very cheap :)
KOReader has plain Linux builds, so running that ought to be a perfect match. I might get a Kobo to try this out, thanks!
The only weird choice is not having systemd and also using musl due to being based on Alpine ;)
- Displays text on screen
- Responds to touch input for navigating a contact list and call functions
- Initiates and terminates calls
- Operates the handsfree speaker
- Shows battery status
- Basic text input
- Provides gsm connectivity, no internet, no bluetooth
- Its a dumb os doing nothing more than the above - nada, nil.
I am not being sarcastic, but i would install such an “os” on spare smartphones in a heartbeat. It would save on battery, reduce waste and enhance my privacy. I am not knowledgeable on the topic otherwise i’d do it myself. Hopefully someone with experience can make it happen.
Tangentially here is my wishlist for a phone os: - Displays text on screen - Responds to touch input for navigating a contact list and call functions - Initiates and terminates calls - Operates the handsfree speaker - Shows battery status - Basic text input - Provides gsm connectivity, no internet, no bluetooth - Its a dumb os doing nothing more than the above - nada, nil. I am not being sarcastic, but i would instal…
Tangentially here is my wishlist for a phone os: - Displays text on screen - Responds to touch input for navigating a contact list and call functions - Initiates and terminates calls - Operates the handsfree speaker - Shows battery status - Basic text input - Provides gsm connectivity, no internet, no bluetooth - Its a dumb os doing nothing more than the above - nada, nil. I am not being sarcastic, but i would instal…
It seems like the easiest way to get there is to just sell the smartphone and use the money to buy a (possibly used) dumbphone.