The Pine Phone

[JRManx]

I was going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole of looking for a good PDA, since I liked my old Nokia 9110, and I wound up looking at Linux-based smart phones.

This one looked interesting, since it has a lot of features you won't find on most modern phones that the manufacturers don't want you to modify, for various reasons.

Article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PinePhone

Anyway, it's called the Pine Phone, and it's manufactured by Pine64 (https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/). I thought some people might be interested in it, since it uses Linux and it's designed to allow you to download your favorite Linux OS.

I've been looking into getting a cheap laptop and downloading some kind of Linux OS onto it, since I am increasingly disliking Apple's ecosystem of having everything interconnected with your Apple ID (Apple stuff is nice- up to a point). This would seem like a logical next step, and I was wondering if anyone had recommendations for a good Linux distribution.

Official Pine64 website: https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/

If anyone was wondering, I did find a PDA- the Gemini, designed by Planet Computers. Unfortunately, the Jungle Website doesn't sell it, so I'm going to have to find somewhere that does. *Sigh* Another rabbit hole.

[Duthomhas]

Dang. I want that phone now.

[mbozzi]

I'd be interested in any phone whose software and hardware generally respects that it is a machine and I own it. I basically just want a device without built-in spyware that lets me control the software it runs, and fix the hardware if needed.

Fairly reasonable, but it's not what you get with mainstream stuff.

Crucial features are that I need to be able to send texts, make phone calls, take pictures, look up stuff on the internet and check my email. Also normal people have to be able to use it.

[TheIdeasMan]

agent max wrote:

..... and I was wondering if anyone had recommendations for a good Linux distribution.

Well I use SilverBlue at the moment. It is a Fedora distribution, with the OS files being immutable.

https://silverblue.fedoraproject.org/

There are 3 parts to it:

1. Update the whole system using rpm-ostree. It has commits and rollbacks, so it is like git for OS's. Try to minimise what is added here.

2. Flatpaks. This is where one tries to install most of the software if it is available.

3. Toolboxes. This allows installation of cut down versions of whichever Linux distro, intended for development. One can install whichever dev tools they want here, keeping them separate from the main system, and other dev environments.

There are some potentially confusing things:

Files in the Toolbox can't be seen from outside, like in the GUI File Manager for example. So when one install compilers & libraries in a toolbox, then installs an IDE like Visual Code in the main system, it can't see any of those compilers, libraries or ay other file in the Toolbox. So install the IDE in the Toolbox too. I guess one could install the GUI File Manager in the Toolbox as well, I should try that :+)

SilverBlue only has gnome (I personally don't like) now, but KDE (I prefer) and other DE are due in October 19.

In choosing which Linux to use, I imagine these considerations:

1. Which flavour does one like? Debian or Fedora types. ;
2. Which Desktop Environment? Probably the most important, this is the GUI look of the system.
3. Spins: there are various types, and they come with all the files associated with that theme. Some examples include scientific, gaming, astronomy et al. It doesn't affect what one might install / remove after the fact.

It's up to you to try different things and decide what you like. If your system has a reasonable size SSD you could have 2 Linuxes on it, choose which one to use from the boot menu.

Edit: As mentioned elsewhere, try different distro's on a USB stick, before installing.

Let us know how you get on :+)

[JRManx]

I'll try SilverBlue, it sounds pretty good (I think?). I still need to do some reading up on installing/using Linux, as I don't know a lot about it. Thanks, IdeasMan!

Now someone's probably going to tell me that Silver Blue is bad and terrible and that I shouldn't use it...

mbozzi wrote:

Crucial features are that I need to be able to send texts, make phone calls, take pictures, look up stuff on the internet and check my email. Also normal people have to be able to use it.

I already actually have a cell phone, but my boss keeps pestering me about getting a "smart" phone, since I can't do text messages/email/internet with mine. At least, I don't think I can. I don't want to, anyway. It doesn't have a keyboard, just the number buttons that have "ABC," "DEF," "GHI," etc on them, so I don't know how I even could.

Are computer programmers considered "normal" people?

[TheIdeasMan]

agent max wrote:

I'll try SilverBlue, it sounds pretty good (I think?).

I forgot to mention that if you don't like gnome there is an unofficial side project called kinoite which is silverblue with KDE. But it is only a few weeks (October 19) until the official release of SB 35 which will have KDE, or a choice from others such XFCE.

https://fedoramagazine.org/discover-fedora-kinoite/

Then there is the official beta version of Kinoite:
https://kinoite.fedoraproject.org/download/

Failing that there will be plain Fedora 35 (Oct 19) or Fedora34 now, if you are not happy with the different ways of doing things in SB.

I still need to do some reading up on installing/using Linux, as I don't know a lot about it. Thanks, IdeasMan!

Here are some links for post install stuff, especially the part about third party repositories, it could be tricky to find stuff to install without it:

https://fedoramagazine.org/things-to-do-after-installing-fedora-34-workstation/
https://fosspost.org/things-to-do-after-installing-fedora-34/


Finally, there is a GUI app called Software which does installs of the Flatpaks easily - just don't use it for anything dev related which should be in a Toolbox

[JRManx]

Thanks!