An Open Letter to Mobile #Linux Hardware and OS creators
https://fossingularity.com/2021/07/17/an-open-letter-to-mobile-linux-hardware-and-os-creators/
@normand @Blort The writer has updated the article...
https://fossingularity.com/2021/07/17/an-open-letter-to-mobile-linux-hardware-and-os-creators
@normand @Blort Could you suggest how we might improve #Pinephone @PINE64 and #Linux phones in general?
I'm afraid you're giving me more credit than I deserve. :-) I'm just a FLOSS enthusiast, with no particular knowledge or skills I could contribute. I reacted strongly to the blog post because it's just a big rant. I understand the author's sentiment, I actually share some of his views privately...But IMO they were unworthy of being published on a supposedly tech blog. Calling that whiny thing an "open letter" is a joke. And counterproductive.
Yes, the Pinephone and possibly the Librem5 (I don't own one) are underpowered. Yes, the Pinephone has barely enough RAM to be usable. I don't dispute that. But to just assume that these points could be addressed with a snap of the fingers is naive and unreasonable. It assumes the projects aren't aware of these shortcomings, which is also naive. Of course they are! Their choice of specs was based on availability, pricing, and most importantly to reduce reliance on proprietary firmware and binary blobs (eliminating them completely isn't yet possible AFAIK). A concern that obviously regular phone manufacturers don't have. This effectively dramatically reduces the choices of chipsets and other components. I am sure these decisions were excrutiatingly analyzed and debated internally, they had no choice but to compromise to get the ball rolling.
As for mobile-optimized OS and software, the author pretends not enough efforts are being made. They seem to be oblivious to the fact that for that, a lot more contributors would be needed. You can't muster new contributors out of thin air. But already, the thousands of Pinephones that got into the hands of people have elicited a lot of new contributors. That's quite an accomplishment already!
The truth is, it is still very early days, and this will take time. For example, the Pinephone's battery life is ridiculously short when you're actively using it. Well, 12 years ago, battery life on laptops running Linux wasn't that great either, and was considerably shorter than on Windows. It took years to see improvements.
All this to say, as regular users, all we can do is be patient, we're in for the long haul.
@normand @PINE64 @Blort I always wondered if PinePhone could run on Wayland instead of X11. That might give us more usable RAM.
https://lupyuen.github.io/pinetime-rust-mynewt/articles/wayland
Eh? I thought that a number of the current #Pinephone distros *were* using #Wayland? Did I imagine that?
@Blort @normand @PINE64 The PinePhone distros run Wayland + X11. I discovered that Wayland alone can't run a lot of Linux apps. Hoping we could have more Linux apps running on Wayland without X11.
https://lupyuen.github.io/pinetime-rust-mynewt/articles/wayland
@lupyuen @normand @PINE64 @Blort
I believe Mobian (and a number of others) is actually Wayland with an X compat shim connected to it.
3 gigs (Pinephone) seems to be enough for a phone plus "real" browser (i.e., Firefox, Falkon, not some toy one). I don't care if my open source daily driver can't run exciting games.
OTOH, I do care very much if you have to turn off the CPU and Wifi and only wake on SMS, call, or button--or else burn your battery in 12 hours. *Fatal flaw*
I've got the 3 GB version, I haven't checked the numbers but running Pure Maps and OSM Scout Server at the same time (one of my use cases) seems to use up much of the RAM. Trying to launch other apps bogs the whole system down.
I got myself a power bank for when I'm out, and I'll have to keep a USB-C to USB-A cable at work because the battery life is quite bluntly pathetic. I really hope they can improve on that.
@normand @lupyuen @Blort @PINE64
Interesting; I don't use either of those apps. You might try adding a swap partition on the sd card.
I don't think they can fix the battery life without choosing a new CPU. There's a reason ARM came up with that big.LITTLE thing, for instance. If you can't dial your CPU down, you have to offline it instead, thus CRUST mode and all of that lossage.
@lupyuen I dunno. To me, it largely reads like a grumpy person wanting small scale producers (hardware and software) to be able to produce products at the same price and speed as large scale manufacturers.
Personally, while there's things I would love to see, I'm not going to complain unless I, personally, am contributing a significant amount of work towards the solution.