
PostmarketOS's new roadmap to fight e-waste - z0mbie42
https://gitlab.com/groups/postmarketOS/-/milestones
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znpy
It's basically: buy a new phone. These two phones, specifically (the pinephone
and the librem 5 -- both not even available to the general public at the time
of writing).

I view this as a complete failure of the project: to bring back old phones to
an usable state.

I've always objected that postmarketOS, while great, fails at being real-world
usable.

AFAIK, there currently is not a single phone which is 100% supported, and not
a single phone that can make calls, send/receive texts, and browse the
internet.

You know, the things that you would use a phone for.

One of their flagship phones, the google nexus 5, only partially works and
btw, last time I followed their installation instructions, it didn't boot.

I still admire their accomplishments, but they failed to deliver on the
original core idea.

I really hope that they manage to deliver... In the meantime, if you want to
make calls, you're stuck to regular phones.

~~~
z0mbie42
From the issues' comments some people are using the pinephone as a daily
driver and phone calls are working.

Regarding the original vision there are not yet there, sure, but they are
relentlessly pushing the platforms where Linux can run.

Once the 2 Linux native smartphones are 100% working, it will be easier to add
more and more devices.

On the other hand, I've successfully flashed an old Nexus7 tablet which now
can be used as a server rather than as a dead brick.

~~~
znpy
> From the issues' comments some people are using the pinephone as a daily
> driver and phone calls are working.

Yep, but they had to buy a new phone to do that. pmOS mission was to let users
keep using their old one. So e-waste keeps adding up.

> Regarding the original vision there are not yet there, sure, but they are
> relentlessly pushing the platforms where Linux can run.

Yes but there is no single platform that can make/receive calls. That's what
phones are for. Text messages? nope. Wi-fi? sometimes, on some devices.

> Once the 2 Linux native smartphones are 100% working, it will be easier to
> add more and more devices.

Why would that happen? please elaborate on that.

> On the other hand, I've successfully flashed an old Nexus7 tablet which now
> can be used as a server rather than as a dead brick.

I used to run ubuntu on the nexus 7 in 2013, without much fuss. Booting Linux
is not the problem. The problem is supporting the basic use cases. Which for a
phone is, again, phone calls and text messages.

~~~
z0mbie42
> Why would that happen? please elaborate on that.

Because then it will just be a matter of drivers. Currently, as you say, they
need to polish other things like camera handling, audio etc... But once this
work is done, it's done. Then porting to new devices should be just a matter
of drivers.

> I used to run ubuntu on the nexus 7 in 2013

Today they are bringing an usable touch interface which was not the case.

