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PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available

pine64.org

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Re: PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available

#61

Post by [deleted] »

enos_feedler wrote: post #59
oriesdan wrote: post #9

For the record, I received yesterday the new mainboard that will be in those phones to replace the one of my pinephone UBport edition. The boost in RAM (3gb instead of 2gb) does the trick for me, allowing to use firefox. Not to the point that the experience is even close to android, but at least usable (before that, I used elinks on the phone). The system I use (mobian/phosh) still feels sluggish, but I suspect it's…

I’ve been using Mobian on the UBport edition for the last month. Sluggish doesn’t even describe the usability. I bought a few data only sims in hopes of leaving the house for short errands with different devices. There is no way I could leave the house with the pinephone. It isn’t usable yet. Could an extra gig of RAM solve this? It seems like it needs years of work.

[deleted]

Re: PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available

#62

Post by jraph »

stinkytaco wrote: post #55
seniorivn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

did you use mms in 2019-2020? where are you?

If you're in the US, you are using MMS in 2020.

In France too, you might. These discussions about how strange it is to still use MMS in 2020 are starting to get old quick. Among all people, those interested in the Pinephone are probably more likely to not use WhatsApp and its friends. And there are very cheap mobile plans without much data, but on which MMS are free.

Yesterday, I wrote a script to retrieve MMS "easily" on the Pinephone (in the spirit of janky-mms [1] which does not work well on my phone and of which I'm unable to read the code properly), I need to take the time to release it at some point.

[1] https://git.sr.ht/~amindfv/janky-mms

Re: PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available

#63

Post by Dahoon »

kleiba wrote: post #42
oriesdan wrote: post #9

For the record, I received yesterday the new mainboard that will be in those phones to replace the one of my pinephone UBport edition. The boost in RAM (3gb instead of 2gb) does the trick for me, allowing to use firefox. Not to the point that the experience is even close to android, but at least usable (before that, I used elinks on the phone). The system I use (mobian/phosh) still feels sluggish, but I suspect it's…

I grew up in the C64 days - I still can't get my head around the fact that you need 3gb of RAM because 2gb is not enough to run a webbrowser these days. I know that what's going on on a typical website these days requires an enormous amount of computational power, but I mean, come on. That shouldn't be the explanation, it's part of the problem.

Especially since on PC it doesn't even need 1gb. With 7 add-ons (one being an adblocker) and Firefox having spawned 9 processes in Win10 it still uses less than 1GB RAM for me (even though two tabs are chats, so background-active). Something is clearly either wrong in the Firefox he run, his add-ons or Phinephone.

Re: PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available

#64

Post by jegea »

qwertox wrote: post #41

I could fall in love with such a phone. One where I can easily run Python processes inside screen sessions, which gather GPS and other sensor data for rapid prototyping, stream that data over a WebSocket connection, then some Bluetooth stuff in Go. Computing stuff.

I own the 3GB Manjaro edition of the PinePhone (same hardware as this one, AFAIK) and, while in theory you can do everything that you describe with it, it is hardly something you could use as your only smartphone for the day. (I still love it, though, and love hacking away with it!!)

However, as of today, there's a much better way of achieving what you're describing in an Android phone: Termux (1)

With Termux you can use an amazing number of regular Linux/UNIX tools, interface them with phone specific functionality (like GPS or other sensors) and still enjoy having a modern smartphone in terms of apps available, performance and battery life.

(Shameless plug: you can watch Termux in action in this talk from last year (2). It's centered around Ruby, but Python works just fine, too)

(1) https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Main_Page https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Termux:API

(2) https://vimeo.com/482309000/1534e97efd

(edit: typo)

Re: PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available

#65

Post by Dahoon »

seniorivn wrote: post #46
swiley wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a landline when I switched to the pinephone and set it up to ring both. I do miss MMS messages but people who really need to get to me call or email me.

did you use mms in 2019-2020? where are you?

In reality it is likely more realistic to ask where are you as most places still use MMS.

Re: PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available

#66

Post by fsflover »

Ardon wrote: post #50
antoineMoPa wrote: post #45

> $199 — 3GB RAM; 32GB eMMC (includes a bundled USB-C dock) This could basically be a daily use PC + Phone for 199$? Quite impressive.

"Daily use" might be a biiit of a stretch with this hardware, but it'll be functional. I think Pinephone 2, whenever that happens, will be a much more practical convergence device. Pine64's plans to upgrade to the RK3566 SOC in their low-power devices look very promising.

If you are waiting for "Pinephone 2", take a look at Librem 5: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5

Re: PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available

#67

Post by fsflover »

LeonM wrote: post #58

Does anyone here have experience with actually using the pinephone as a daily driver? I know plenty of people that ordered one, but they are all laying on a drawer somewhere with the intention to play with it a bit. Basically how most RPi's end up. Just curious if this phone is actually competitive with android devices in the same price class.

I am using it as a daily driver. However, it does not survive a day with an average use. I use a second battery or switch it off when not using. Calls can occasionally be missed (Mobian Phosh), but you get a notification immediately and can call back. Desktop Firefox with all plugins is amazing.

Re: PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available

#68

Post by jhardy54 »

oriesdan wrote: post #30
p4bl0 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's the compositor that causes the problem, can't it be disabled? I don't know phosh but in Plasma you can disable the compositing from the system settings.

Nope, there's no option for that in phosh settings. Actually, it's the compositor (phoc) that starts gnome-session in /usr/bin/phosh. I've just tried to edit the startup script to launch gnome-session directly, but it would refuse to start. It's also a pure wayland system, so it's quite unlike what we're used on desktop.

> It's also a pure wayland system, so it's quite unlike what we're used on desktop.

When you say "pure", do you mean "no XWayland"?

Re: PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available

#69

Post by Dahoon »

netol wrote: post #4

I can't believe KDE can be run in a phone, when I tried to run KDE in my desktop it always felt sluggish and unstable

I'm guessing it is seen as poor taste to not praise KDE in a thread with lots of people that like KDE since you get downvoted. I have the exact thoughts you did. It is amazing because in my experience KDE was one of -if not the- slowest desktop in Linux when I tried it. I'm guessing it was KDE 4. Gnome was way better and faster back then for me, both in Ubuntu and Debian. Great to hear it has become faster. Not so great that KDE users would downvote someone for speaking the truth.

Re: PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available

#70

Post by dagw »

Dahoon wrote: post #69
netol wrote: post #4

I can't believe KDE can be run in a phone, when I tried to run KDE in my desktop it always felt sluggish and unstable

I'm guessing it is seen as poor taste to not praise KDE in a thread with lots of people that like KDE since you get downvoted. I have the exact thoughts you did. It is amazing because in my experience KDE was one of -if not the- slowest desktop in Linux when I tried it. I'm guessing it was KDE 4. Gnome was way better and faster back then for me, both in Ubuntu and Debian. Great to hear it has become faster. Not so gr…

After failing to get XFCE to run without terrible tearing on my Ryzen 3400G, I recently installed KDE for the first time since the early KDE 4 days. And I have to say I was really really impressed. It is all around much faster and better these days. In fact it might just become my new favorite desktop
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