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The case for LineageOS and the PinePhone

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211–220 of 277 posts

Re: The case for LineageOS and the PinePhone

#211
post #97

I like the idea of a more open phone a lot but dispute the "Smartphones are shit" premise. I think modern smart phones are an unbelievably awesome value. Battery, display, wireless and processing power have advanced at such an unbelievable rate that we have something in our pockets that far exceeds predictions of 20, 30, 100 years ago. The problem is that we don't want to pay what it really costs to have such a great…

As someone who had a few pre-smartphone PDAs: Smartphones absolutely are high powered shit. On paper they're amazing but the ecosystem limits you to scrolling instagram and only a handfull of accepted IMs (iOS struggles with XMPP and IRC for example, something even my hacked DS could do fine with 4MB of ram and a 60Mhz ARM9.) Just editing fucking textfiles and copying it back to a normal PC (that isn't a mac) is a re…

That's all iOS, though? You can do a lot with a rooted custom Android installation, modders never disappeared. Pretty much any file explorer can connect to network locations.

The display is the biggest battery eater, but you can significantly extend lifetime by disabling mobile data and Wifi (use Bluetooth PAN kind of like on a PDA lol) and either undervolting, locking clocks low or disabling the performance cores, there are options. 10-12 hours screen on time even with Wifi on can be achieved.

Re: The case for LineageOS and the PinePhone

#212
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just editing fucking textfiles and copying it back to a normal PC (that isn't a mac) is a real bitch. Especially if you don't have an internet connection. It's almost as bad as a ti84+ honestly. If you're on Android, I suggest looking at F-Droid; there exist decent text editors and file managers, and failing all else Termux manages to drag a decent amount of sanity in.

I had an Android. Every update made Termux less and less capable (IIRC exec is very complex or impossible in a recent one.) Now I have a Pinephone running a normal X11 DE and I don't have to tolerate an ounce of stupidity. Sure there are legitimate good faith defects in the software but nothing is intentionally broken just for the sake of it. ssh just works (the phone shipped with it preinstalled) vim just works scp…

Sounds pretty nice, actually. I don't have a phone that can run Linux, would love to try it.

Re: The case for LineageOS and the PinePhone

#213
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually don't share your experience. My Linux machines are all more reliable than the best smartphones I've had. Flagship Android phones have been the worst in my experience, most can't make it a week without crashing, not to mention the awful battery life. Maybe it's because I know to be picky about PC hardware and don't run things like Chrome. >I don't want a browser that's described as just "usable". I have to…

I've been daily-drivering on Linux for Desktop and Laptop for months and Linux across 4 different distros has made me feel more helpless than Windows ever did. Sure, the Windows "police" would come in and straighten my update settings (which is ultimately why I abandoned Windows), but Linux you get the helplessness of sometimes having something break and the only answer you can find after spending half of your weeken…

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Re: The case for LineageOS and the PinePhone

#214
post #110
post #58

> Don't smartphones... kind of suck? How many times have you had to replace a phone in the past 10 years? Do you have a drawer of random crap with a growing pile of phones? I simply cannot relate with this hook. > Don't smartphones... kind of suck? No, smartphones are kinda magical. They take better snapshots than my first DSLR, they play games at higher fidelity than my first gaming PC, and they’re general purpose c…

You completely lost me at "they're general purpose computing devices." This is not even remotely a reasonable definition of today's smartphones.

Many phones are very much unlocked, even though support for other operating systems is limited. However, even Android can be installed as a standalone OS with no Google crap.

If you want them to be general purpose computers straight from the store, yeah, that's not happening. But you still own the hardware and can change the software, again, on many, sadly not all, devices.

Re: The case for LineageOS and the PinePhone

#215
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"general purpose" for me means I can set the program counter somewhere and run my code in general the term vaguely means 'this computer can perform many different tasks' but can an iphone perform a task you want, but apple did not allow?

Yes, you can run your own code on an iPhone. You can't run arbitrary binaries, but you can run whatever code you want.

> You can't run arbitrary binaries, but you can run whatever code you want.

...isn't the definition of "running whatever code you want" equivalent to "running arbitrary binaries"? How else could you "run code" if not as an "arbitrary binary"?

Re: The case for LineageOS and the PinePhone

#216
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you can run your own code on an iPhone. You can't run arbitrary binaries, but you can run whatever code you want.

> You can't run arbitrary binaries, but you can run whatever code you want. ...isn't the definition of "running whatever code you want" equivalent to "running arbitrary binaries"? How else could you "run code" if not as an "arbitrary binary"?

Is this drawing a distinction between "you can run any code you build yourself and sign using the elaborate Apple toolchain" vs "you can run arbitrary binaries"?

Re: The case for LineageOS and the PinePhone

#217
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Especially if you don't want graphics Who in 2022 doesn’t “want graphics”?

People who don't want to redo their Xorg config.

A quarter of a century ago, the Xorg config was indeed the major problem of any Linux installation.

Nevertheless, now that is extremely ancient history.

During the last 20 years, I have been using Linux on all my desktops and laptops, without needing any Xorg config.

The only exception is that now I have a couple of lines of Xorg config, which describe how my 3 monitors must be positioned.

Without an Xorg config all would be OK, except that I would have to rearrange the monitors after each power-on.

Of course, there was no need to write those lines of Xorg config, I have just given the command to save the current monitor configuration.

So I cannot imagine what problems still exist nowadays that may require "to redo their Xorg config".

All the problems that I have seen in recent years with Xorg had been caused by either a kernel compiled without some modules needed by the hardware, or by an Xorg server that was installed without some X device drivers needed by the hardware.

With a complete kernel and X server, things should just work.

Re: The case for LineageOS and the PinePhone

#218
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't run arbitrary binaries, but you can run whatever code you want. ...isn't the definition of "running whatever code you want" equivalent to "running arbitrary binaries"? How else could you "run code" if not as an "arbitrary binary"?

Is this drawing a distinction between "you can run any code you build yourself and sign using the elaborate Apple toolchain" vs "you can run arbitrary binaries"?

you also have to be approved apple developer to do that

Re: The case for LineageOS and the PinePhone

#219
post #2

Why LineageOS and not GrapheneOS? I have a Pixel 4a with GrapheneOS and really like it. The lack of Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google's push notifications service) isn't an issue for personal usage; for work I still use an iPhone because I don't want to put things like MS Teams on Graphene OS. As for PinePhone: it's interesting that this article puts LineageOS and PinePhone together since the latter cannot run the for…

Because GrapheneOS supports a handful of devices (https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices), where LineageOS supports hundreds of devices (https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/).

Re: The case for LineageOS and the PinePhone

#220
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't WANT to redo my Xorg config, but I don't have much choice if I want Linux to behave like an OS from this century.

Wayland is here without any need to tinker for modern features.

Modern features like screenshots? Wayland is a nightmare of second system syndrome for most users.
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