"Maemo Leste might be right for your #PinePhone"
https://medium.com/@camden.o.b/maemo-leste-might-be-right-for-your-pinephone-f0345485e8b1
@thisisthebreath @lupyuen
Hi, I'm the person who wrote this article!
Yes it's still very much alive and well!! A new community maintains the system, which now includes support for a lot of new devices such as the Motorola Droid 3/4 (with calls working) and the PinePhone.
@carbonatedcaffeine @lupyuen i still have my n900, is it of any use?
@thisisthebreath @lupyuen
Yeah of course! You can run PostmarketOS on it with the i3 window manager as well as Maemo Leste.
https://wiki.postmarketos.org/index.php?title=Nokia_N900_(nokia-n900)&mobileaction=toggle_view_desktop
https://leste.maemo.org/Getting_Started
@thisisthebreath @lupyuen
Maemo leste is super cool, since it's still Maemo but it has newer software like the linux kernel.
@carbonatedcaffeine @lupyuen i see that it has a new mac address every time it boots?
seems like an ideal unit for privacy on public networks
i assume there are several tor browsers that work?
@thisisthebreath @lupyuen
Yeah, there's a QT webbrowser on Maemo Leste and theres a good few light ones on PostmarketOS too.
@thisisthebreath @carbonatedcaffeine @lupyuen my #N900 with #PostmarketOS is still doing a decent job as a pocket-sized SSH client - especially useful to control media on my Raspberry Pis when I'm around the house, or for small system administration tasks.
Besides that, and occasionally showing it off to some geek friends (or maybe use it as a small in-house server), I struggled to find many practical uses - I may have really stretched its lifetime more than the NASA team did with the Voyager probes.
Another problem I have is with PostmarketOS. It's built around Busybox and OpenRC instead of the GNU environment + systemd. It means that most of my existing configuration files, services etc. won't work without modifications. This is something I hoped Ubuntu Touch could fix, but Ubuntu Touch eventually preferred to follow the path of the locked+containerized school that made the tinkering experience worse. Since I loved Maemo a decade ago, I could give Leste a try, but I also have my concerns about a project still based on Debian oldstable that is likely to ship software that is at least a couple of years old...
@blacklight @carbonatedcaffeine @lupyuen i have an n800 as well
@thisisthebreath @carbonatedcaffeine @lupyuen I used to have an N800 too, and even an ancient N770, but those two devices already failed badly a couple of years ago because of inexplicable hardware issues. So far the N900 has really stood the test of time though.
Love to have a keyboard again...and eyeing this one; https://store.planetcom.co.uk/products/astro-slide (a tad pricey)
Had a chance to "feel it" at Embedded World a few weeks ago, and feels very solid.
Apparently running Ubuntu (boss in booth said that) or Android...so should be possible to get a proper FOSS working.
@niclas @blacklight @thisisthebreath @carbonatedcaffeine @lupyuen that's using Mediatek 800 as stated on the page. I'm not sure what the current status for mainlining the SoC is (let alone the device) but my educated guess is - not even close.
I don't have anything against Planet Computers but be prepared to be stuck with what they release. Usually distro builds with their BSP kernel.
It's not bad per-se and I'm sure the k-b is awesome. There are limitations to be aware of tho
@blacklight @carbonatedcaffeine @lupyuen @celesteh “Another problem I have is with PostmarketOS. It's built around Busybox and OpenRC instead of the GNU environment + systemd.”
Heh - reading this just convinced me it’s worth checking out.
@lupyuen This is why I was skeptical about the #Pinephone and I keep being skeptical.
The Pinephone is an amazing idea, free and open Linux phones are what everybody needs.
But they released a product that ships hardware that is a decade old, something that nobody would use as their primary device, with even basic features like calls and Bluetooth often requiring extra tweaking.
They said "it's mostly to allow developers to build something against the ecosystem" (a sensible point), but then added "oh, btw, almost none of the modern software can run on it without glitches or sluggish performance".
And now we're like "oh, cool, actually this device can run quite well this Linux distro that was last released for a phone released 13 years ago!" - and I mean, I used to love #Maemo, I had it both on my Nokia 770 and Nokia N900, I used to build stuff on it, but I wouldn't invest my time today building software for a distro that hasn't been maintained in years and doesn't even ship systemd or at least OpenRC.
I fail to see the point of all this. It's not a product, it's not even an MVP, it's barely a PoC. It's more something that people would show off on their geek timelines when they receive it, maybe some would even embark the challenge of installing Arch or Manjaro on it, and then they'd just leave it in a drawer when they realize that it can't do that much for today's standards.
As a developer, I'd love to have a Linux device in my pocket and build lots of cool software on it, but if all I get is a device that can't even run a modern desktop environment then I won't even invest my development time on it.
@blacklight @lupyuen io ho il pinephone come device di tutti i giorni, funziona così così quindi c'è bisogno di sviluppatori, al massimo prendi il pinephone pro
@blacklight @lupyuen
Hey, if this decade old software is working, I'm happy :)
It's still being maintained by a very dedicated community, and it runs really well on the PinePhone.
@blacklight Do not blame Pine64. They did an amazing job with both PinePhone models, given how small the market is and how uncooperative the chipset manufacturers are. We are at the beginning of a long uphill battle. Yet a number of people already use #Mobian as a daily driver.
@lupyuen wow maemo is still around? i had that on my nokia N900