
PinePhone Manjaro Community Edition - jandeboevrie
https://www.pine64.org/2020/08/31/pinephone-manjaro-community-edition/
======
Foxboron
Every time the Pine64/Pinephone stuff gets mentioned I go looking for the Arch
Linux ARM project mentions, and donation links. Previously they just avoid
mentioning this, but most of the Manjaro ARM stuff couldn't happen without the
tireless work of the Arch ARM developers.

I've had to repeatedly mention they shouldn't remove attribution from
PKGBUILDs they take from Arch ARM.

[https://gitlab.manjaro.org/manjaro-
arm/packages/core/linux-r...](https://gitlab.manjaro.org/manjaro-
arm/packages/core/linux-rpi4/commit/d9f94b8fb3e6260c159763cba176cea2358573dd)

Also begging for donations to Manjaro ARM, but with no mentions of Arch ARM.
This was fixed with the old announcements, but it seems like any donations has
been removed from current announcements.

> We will donate $10 per unit sold to the Manjaro development team. To learn
> more about this scheme please click here.

But where? Currently there is Manjaro the Company and Manjaro the Community.
Both has separate funds, which is partially where the treasurer drama stems
from. And is there any donations to the dependant projects?

This annoys me as most of the packaging efforts are on the Arch ARM side of
things, not Manjaro. You can open any of their distributed ISOs and take a
look at the packager information.

~~~
MayeulC
> Every time the Pine64/Pinephone stuff gets mentioned

You probably mean Manjaro/Pinephone or something like this, I initially
thought you equated Pinephone with Manjaro. (hint for others: it is not, there
are a various other compatible distros). I agree that Arch Arm upstream does a
pretty good job, though that packaging job is 70% orthogonal to, say,
alpine+postmarketos packaging :)

~~~
brtln
I believe postmarketOS team closely collaborates with Alpine. It cannot be
said about Manjaro, neither in relation to Arch or Arch ARM.

~~~
unixhero
Manjaro is downstream from Arch.

~~~
brtln
That's not my point. Being a downstream does not imply collaboration.

------
candiddevmike
I personally would avoid anything Manjaro related due to recurring
controversies around the project leadership:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/hxpj87/change_in_man...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/hxpj87/change_in_manjaro_team_composition_announcements/)

I wish PinePhone would partner with Arch or Debian instead.

~~~
deepstack
_I wish PinePhone would partner with Arch or Debian instead._

Word. Debian is great! In the past when I see people using Ubuntu, I always
wondered why? It is so interesting how people in tech just fall into the
fashion trap.

~~~
dx87
> In the past when I see people using Ubuntu, I always wondered why?

Because I don't have a wired internet connection, and my wifi adapter requires
proprietary drivers. If I could just download and install from an ISO like I
can with Ubuntu, I'd switch to Debian in a heartbeat, but I don't feel like
having to do manual workarounds just to get a running Linux distro.

~~~
mkesper
use one of the (unofficial) images containing non-free firmware:
[https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-
free/images...](https://cdimage.debian.org/images/unofficial/non-free/images-
including-firmware/)

~~~
symlinkk
> unofficial

And there lies the problem.

~~~
ncmncm
But not any sort of actual one--do you imagine that "unofficial" has a
technical meaning of greater significance than that Debian people don't care
for proprietary binary blobs?

------
megous
Anyway, with all those distros piling up for PinePhone, I finally decided to
release p-boot with display support and GUI multi-boot menu.

[https://xnux.eu/p-boot/](https://xnux.eu/p-boot/)

I'll make some multi-boot SD card demo image next, perhaps with postmarket,
arch linux, mobian and ubuntu touch. :)

~~~
hideevidence
Your work is impressive! What's amazing is the mere seconds you see a
productive screen in. Android takes full 30 seconds for me.

~~~
megous
That requires a customized PID 1 init program and a lightweight GUI (that map
app is just ~10MiB of code + some code for postgresql that runs in the
background) - most of the delay there is waiting for the postgresql to start
up, actually.

Arch Linux to some lightweight GUI based on Xorg/i3wm takes about 8s. Similar
for my Electron/X11 fullscreen based GUI for the phone (also in the video).
Both are much larger.

Sadly, the Linux userspace is quite bloated, and the limiting factor is
loading times from storage to RAM. You basically need to load >200 MiB of
binaries/.so files to have anything useable running.

With eMMC speed of ~85MiB/s and SD card speed of 25MiB/s max for sequential
reads only, you get the picture of where the most of the delay is.

~~~
justinclift
Is this one of the cases where PostgreSQL is overkill and something like
SQLite would be a better fit?

~~~
megous
I like the fact that I can get easy to set up replication, without much
effort, that works reliably with frequent network failures and such.

~~~
justinclift
Cool. :smile:

------
Abishek_Muthian
I see several comments questioning the choice of Manjaro on PinePhone, but as
the name suggests it's _Community Edition_ after all; _Those who want Manjaro
on smartphone, now have a device to develop for_.

I think, the way Pine64 is pushing these CE devices is smart and definitely a
positive step for overall pure Linux smartphone ecosystem. But, I'm also
hearing great things about Mobian[1] on PinePhone and AFAIK it's being largely
developed by an individual. I would like Pine64 to come up with a way to
support these talented individual developers as well, besides supporting large
well-established communities.

[1][https://mobian-project.org/](https://mobian-project.org/)

~~~
megous
Lot of the projects pinephone depends on are developed just by a bunch of
talented individuals. Majority of the PinePhone specific
bootloader/firwmare/kernel driver work and upstreaming is done by maybe 3
individuals, neither of whom are associated with any of the distros supported
so far, AFAIK. And you can't have a working distro without a working kernel. A
lot of value is based on the results of linux-sunxi.org project, and related
communities, like lima project, etc. It's FOSS, hey. Everything depends on
everything, and it's kind of a hard to support everyone.

I personally wish for a "Linux kernel CE" edition, in the future, being one of
those kernel devs. ;)

~~~
tpxl
How/where does one contribute? Is there a guide specifically for this
(phone/pinephone development). I couldn't quite figure it out from the mobian
repo ):

~~~
megous
Icenowy did the initial board bringup, I think:
[https://github.com/Icenowy](https://github.com/Icenowy)

I don't know if Samuel accepts donations, but his contact info is here:
[https://sholland.org/about/](https://sholland.org/about/) (he's responsible
for the huge power saving optimizations that PinePhone got this year, and for
the sound codec improvements, that were necessary for making calls work)

And I have a page here:
[https://xnux.eu/contribute.html](https://xnux.eu/contribute.html)

As for the mobian I don't know. I don't follow distributions that much.

~~~
tpxl
I meant code contributions, but thanks for the links ;)

~~~
megous
Ah, you can contribute just by doing something for the project you're
interested in. None of the development is centrally organized.

There's plenty of stuff to do. I can give you a bunch of hints if you're a
kernel dev. :)

~~~
tpxl
I'm not (yet?) a kernel dev; I haven't ever contributed to any OS project, but
I'd like to start with the pinephone.

~~~
megous
Bootlin has some very nice introductory training materials online:

[https://bootlin.com/doc/training/linux-
kernel/](https://bootlin.com/doc/training/linux-kernel/)
[https://bootlin.com/docs/](https://bootlin.com/docs/)

Allwinner SoC used in PinePhone has a longstanding community around it
organized around [http://linux-sunxi.org/](http://linux-sunxi.org/) There are
a lot of materials, including datasheets there, etc.

[https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/PinePhone](https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/PinePhone)
wiki also has a lot of information.

#pinedev at freenode is where the kernel development discussion happens, so
feel free to join there.

------
DoofusOfDeath
Can someone help me understand the relationship between phone hardware and
carriers in the US?

I recently bought a new, unlocked Samsung phone on Amazon. When I put a
Verizon SIM card into it, a Verizon-specific firmware module got added. I
don't understand why that would be necessary.

Asking because I'm attracted to the idea of a phone I truly control, but not
sure what that means for carrier compatibility.

~~~
joecool1029
T-Mobile and Verizon should allow any modern device. Verizon used to need a
activation conponent for the CDMA radio but modern devices just use LTE and
voLTE. They did have a visual voicemail blob that used to be pulled in, but
now they follow spec and don't require anything special.

Sprint (which is now T-Mobile) has required an activation app for their CDMA
devices called SprintDM. Without it, phone will not activate and work. Most
alternative OS like LineageOS don't include it, but if you activate on stock
OS and don't wipe modem partitions, it continues to work. Thankfully they are
transitioning to T-Mobile network.

AT&T has no activation crap but may not let imported devices based on IMEI
numbers they don't have.

~~~
deepstack
In Europe, GSM is still being used. I heard in they are being phased out.
Anyone knows how that will affect old nokia type of phones?

~~~
fabioborellini
The cheapest candy bar phones available started having 3rd gen (WCDMA) network
support around 2010, so GSM-only handsets should be out of active use. Of
course the classic monochrome Nokia phones will cease working once GSM is shut
down.

On the other hand there must be quite a lot of embedded devices using only
GSM. For example, this year the elevator maintenance company offered our
housing company GSM emergency phone units to replace landline-based ones.
WCDMA-supported units would have cost a few thousand euros more.

------
slantyyz
Does anyone know if you can heavily customize the user interface of the
PinePhone?

The reason why I'm asking is that I have yet to find a feature phone or
smartphone that my father (in his 80s) can use. He basically doesn't want to
learn new things, and he's more interested in learning/memorizing repeatable
steps than intuiting how to do things by reading text on the screen.

All he needs is the ability to make/receive calls, and easily get the
bluetooth built into his car to connect to the phone. The bluetooth is a nice-
to-have though.

I haven't had much luck with feature phones because he doesn't (want to)
understand rocker switches or navigation using arrow keys. I also tried the
"dummy" launchers on Android, but didn't get very far with him. He's also
tried iPhones, but didn't get very far.

The funny thing is that he's pretty good with the Nortel phone he uses with
his land line in terms of dialing favorites, etc.

~~~
amenod
I only know Doro _feature_ phones (and am impressed by how easy to use they
are, especially for those who don't see well and have trouble hitting small
buttons), but it seems that they make smartphones too:

> Age should never be a reason for not being able to enjoy all that a modern
> smartphone has to offer. Our stylish smartphones bring you not only the full
> Android® experience and an elegant design, but also unique features that
> make them easier to use the older we become.

[https://www.doro.com/en-gb/products/smartphones/](https://www.doro.com/en-
gb/products/smartphones/)

Maybe check out some video review before buying? Good luck.

~~~
slantyyz
I have checked out Doro in the past and gotten him a similar "seniors" phone
(that worked with local carriers here), and it didn't really take.

I've tried having him use a "simplified" home screen on one of my old Android
phones, and that didn't work very well either.

Personally, as far as "smartphones" go, I think he needs something without a
home screen, and a phone app (that can't easily exit to a home screen) with a
recognizable skeuomorphic UI with minimal navigation and lots of discrete
buttons for performing the few actions he needs.

------
fsflover
I wonder if it will be powered by Purism's Phosh (by default) like many other
distros already.

"Phosh is current available on 8 different mobile distros that have been
ported to the PinePhone, and Phosh is the preferred DE on 7 of those 8."

[https://amosbbatto.wordpress.com/2020/08/05/advantages-of-
ph...](https://amosbbatto.wordpress.com/2020/08/05/advantages-of-phosh/)

The list of those distros is in the link.

~~~
MYEUHD
> There are currently three Manjaro PinePhone build variants (Lomiri, Phosh
> and Plasma Mobile) for users to try out

------
smoyer
I've got an (old) Samsung Galaxy S4 that I've stuck with because it suits my
needs and it still works well. Knowing that it will eventually die, I guess I
have two questions I'd love to have answered by Pinephone owners:

1) Is a Pinephone a viable alternative either iOS or Android?

2) How do you get it connected to carrier X?

~~~
blendergeek
Disclaimer: I do not (yet) have my Pinephone.

> 1) Is a Pinephone a viable alternative either iOS or Android?

A Pinephone will never support all the proprietary apps (Facebook, Instagram,
Snapchat, TikTok, Fortnite, etc). In order to be viable, I would say a phone
needs to support phone calls, SMS, MMS, camera, GPS/Navigation, and have a
fast and snappy web browser. Currently the Pinephone supports everything
except MMS (which is necessary for "texting" pictures and groups). Because you
will not have access to FB Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram, Snapchat, etc on a
Pinephone, you will have to you SMS/MMS for communication if you want to
interoperate with people from the mainstream.

2) For T-Mobile based carriers in the US, you just stick in the simcard.

~~~
cocoa19
"A Pinephone will never support all the proprietary apps (Facebook, Instagram,
Snapchat, TikTok, Fortnite, etc)."

That sounds like a feature I'm excited about :).

~~~
blendergeek
So am I.

------
yearoflinux
As someone who has always made fun of "year of linux on desktop", I want to
say this move will finally pave a way for the next decade to end with "year of
linux on mobile". Using a popular distro will be the push linux needed on
phone. While Manjaro users themselves (IMHO) aren't really developers, this is
gateway to get Arch people involved. Arch is a very vibrant community with a
lot of people who try to contribute back. Good decision. Can't wait to use
netcat for quick chat with friends :)

(PS: I know supremacists will claim Android is linux but the thing about
supremacists is they no real ideals so they will ignore how close Android is)

~~~
blendergeek
> (PS: I know supremacists will claim Android is linux but the thing about
> supremacists is they no real ideals so they will ignore how close Android
> is)

That Android contains the Linux (R) kernel is no mere "claim", rather it is
the truth. Also, obviously, Android is not what anyone was thinking of when
they say "Linux". This confusion stems from people using the term "Linux" both
to refer to a kernel (the original and still accepted meaning) and to refer to
an operating system combining said kernel with the GNU userspace.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Precisely; Android is a _perfect_ example of why it's meaningful to call it
GNU+Linux, because Android+Linux and busybox+Linux (Alpine and some embedded
systems) _are_ real things that are really Linux systems, but the userland is
actually a pretty big deal.

------
Waterfall
Can the pinephone hardware realistically be used to run Linux comfortably on
mobile? The pinebook sucked and this is the same hardware,the pinebook pro has
4gb and still struggles

~~~
fsflover
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH3RbrwhNd8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH3RbrwhNd8)

~~~
Waterfall
Is it running without power savings? It's better than I thought it would run

------
collyw
I like Manjaro and I like the idea of an open source phone, but I was
disappointed by the Ubuntu phone after actually buying one. It's basically
that "content is king", with the content being apps. Is this going to be the
same?

(A lot of the apps on the Ubuntu phone were web based rather than native,
which is actually a drawback when you don't have an internet connection. There
was no way to do offline maps for example).

~~~
opan
I also got the UBPorts Community Edition. I highly recommend installing
postmarketOS or something else. Ubuntu Touch has this strange locked down
approach, mounting the FS read-only and forcing a [buggy] gui on you. With
pmOS I can install programs I'm familiar with from my computer, use the
package manager over ssh and update everything with one command, view
processes in htop, edit things in vim, etc. It's a lot of fun now, and I was
rather miserable when I used Ubuntu Touch the first couple days I had it. pmOS
also supports LUKS full disk encryption at install time, which is pretty cool.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
> I highly recommend installing postmarketOS or something else. Ubuntu Touch
> has this strange locked down approach, mounting the FS read-only and forcing
> a [buggy] gui on you.

Not to mention that UBports is based on some idiosyncratic 2014-era Ubuntu-
specific software that even Ubuntu moved away from. Under the hood it doesn’t
at all feel like a "normal Linux" (whether you define that as the software
stack found nowadays on RedHat or Debian, or the more conservative and purist
approach of some other distros).

------
crazypython
Do these support Android apps? How would I develop a native app for one of
these?

~~~
Shared404
> Do these support Android apps?

They do not, at least not yet. They may support anbox at some point, but
that's not a given.

> How would I develop a native app for one of these?

The same as you would for any Linux distro. I would check out Plasma Mobile,
as they have toolkit's and a workflow already in place is my understanding.

~~~
mikece
> They do not, at least not yet.

And hopefully never. Almost all Android apps rely on the closed-source GMS for
essential functionality (eg: push notifications). There will need to be an
open alternative to GMS if the goal is to support Android apps but a better
idea would be to abandon Android as template basis going forward.

~~~
vinay427
There are a number of apps I use and depend on that work fine without Google
services. Signal comes to mind, for instance. I agree that a better template
would be great, but I can't imagine we'll get there anytime soon, and I would
love to use my PinePhone as a daily driver in the near future. I won't do this
without a few key apps that don't have direct alternatives considering some
people with whom I would like to communicate only use these options.

I think getting people onto devices that support open and flexible
alternatives is the first step to actually converting users to these
alternatives. I won't switch to a platform that doesn't let me communicate
with people I know, and I wouldn't expect others to do so either. However, I
could get people to switch from a less convenient option (e.g. Signal on
Anbox) to a more convenient option (e.g. Matrix for messaging) in time.

~~~
pineyboi
There's some work being done to make Signal work more natively on Linux
(though not from Moxie directly)

This is a daemon that provides an API for signal

[https://git.callpipe.com/finn/signald](https://git.callpipe.com/finn/signald)

This is a libpurple plugin for it (Pidgin messenger, or even irssi, Weechat
etc)

[https://github.com/hoehermann/libpurple-
signald](https://github.com/hoehermann/libpurple-signald)

Chatty, the SMS messenger that works in Phosh also supports libpurple plugins,
so presumably Signal could work alongside SMS (The SMS feature itself is a
libpurple plugin IIRC)

[https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/chatty](https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/chatty)

I've used libpurple-signald with irssi and it works alright. It's not feature
complete yet by a long shot, but much nicer to interact with than the Electron
bloat.

~~~
finnn
[https://gitlab.com/thefinn93/signald/-/issues/52#note_406669...](https://gitlab.com/thefinn93/signald/-/issues/52#note_406669306)
has some details about the issues running Chatty with libpurple-signald

~~~
pineyboi
Thanks for all your work!

------
Teichopsia
I have a spare phone which I would like to flash but I have not been able to
find any device specific information on how to do it.

I checked XDA but they don't have any device specific info. Google returns
sketchy pages wanting to install software. The phone is not on the list of
supported devices on lineage OS website. And I have been unable to find a how-
to do it yourself guide.

I followed a guide on how to do it over a decade ago and that is as far as my
knowledge goes. I suspect things have changed since???

I would appreciate if someone could point me in the right direction. The
device, a blu G5 plus (which when I search on XDA it returns Moto G5
¯\\_(ツ)_/¯)

Edit: Nevermind, I believe I've got it.

~~~
klerpi
How did you do it? Support got dropped for my mi a1

------
josteink
I pre-ordered the PmOS community edition, and it's getting delivered tomorrow.

From what I can tell, this is the same HW, but without a different distro pre-
loaded.

I'm super-stoked to try out the different distros, and will definitely give
Manjaro a shot too :)

~~~
cookiengineer
> I pre-ordered the PmOS community edition, and it's getting delivered
> tomorrow.

How did you get notified? I didn't receive any email since my purchase (I only
have the receipt). Contacted sales@pine64 and opened up a support ticket, but
haven't got any replies from them.

~~~
ncmncm
You get an SMS from DHL identifying Syabas Tech as the shipper. (This is a
different Syabas from the one that manages tap water in Malaysia.)

Anyway I did.

~~~
josteink
Yeah same here. SMS (and email) from DHL about shipment on the way from
“Syabas Technology Hong Kong Limited”.

I also never got an order-confirmation upon ordering, but received one later
quite swiftly when I emailed support and asked.

------
Valkhyr
I'd really like an unbranded version with these (or better) specs, even at a
slightly higher price (I don't particularly identify with any of the distros
that have been released so far, not to say there is anything bad about them of
course :-)).

I imagine that is what the final retail version will be?

I'm on pre-order for a Librem 5, but the Pinephone is more compact, and since
I'd want it essentially as a _portable linux computer_ in addition to a
regular daily driver _smartphone_ (i.e. carry two "phones"), it might fit my
needs better...

~~~
seba_dos1
Dunno if I'd call PinePhone "more compact". It's thinner, but it's bigger
(about 1.5cm higher). I'm holding both of them next to each other right now
and Librem 5 ends where the PinePhone's camera begins.

------
xorcist
Is this the same hardware revision as the previous, postmarketOS-based, one?

~~~
hoistbypetard
According to the article, yes:

> Both configurations of the Manjaro CE PinePhones feature rev. 1.2a PCBA,
> introduced with postmarketOS CE that is currently shipping.

------
Const-me
I wonder are there similar devices with 3-4” displays instead of 6”?

I don’t even need purposely-built Linux phone, I am OK getting one with
Android and installing Linux myself. I want modern hardware (LTE, GLES 3.1,
ideally optical camera stabilization), reasonably new Linux kernel, and good
software support for basic functions (touch screen, phone, SMS, camera, web
browser).

~~~
ncmncm
It is effectively impossible to install an upstream kernel on random phone
hardware. It is very hard to field a phone that can take a kernel without
proprietary blobs tied to a particular ancient kernel. So, there are two live
efforts in that direction, PinePhone and Librem 5.

~~~
Const-me
There're devices out there which started as proprietary hardware, then
community implemented the support. RTL-SDR was initially a TV tuner, Raspberry
Pi SoC was designed for a set top box, people made XBMC (now Kodi) re-
purposing game console into a Linux media player. Why that never happens to
cell phones, what's so special about them?

~~~
ncmncm
Cellphones have a lot of peculiar, absolutely undocumented and very buggy
peripherals, and tricky system-level power management demands.

Pi's SOC was meant to be designed in to a variety of products, so needed to be
documented and understood. Cell phone chips are dumpster fires, as a rule, and
are forgotten by their manufacturer within months of first delivery.

~~~
Const-me
Good points, but on the other hand the market penetration is enormous, e.g.
Samsung probably shipped hundreds of millions of their galaxies.

There’re thousands of exceptionally good software developers worldwide. It’s
surprising no one so far found a good way to re-purpose the hardware. The OS
kernel is open source already (wasn’t the case for the original xbox), and all
these proprietary firmware blobs are shipped with the devices.

~~~
ncmncm
The blobs are compatible only with a particular, ancient and very heavily
patched kernel version. Most of the important code is entirely inaccessible in
the "baseband processor" that actually operates the radio hardware, and really
owns the whole phone. And solving one phone model would barely help with the
next one, if at all.

------
panpanna
Here is an unpopular opinion:

Phones are hard, maybe the FOSS world should put more effort into the pine
tablet for now.

Because the core system of not ready yet much less the telephony stuff, and
yet here we are doing distro hoping and pretending our apps are touch
friendly.

------
hasperdi
This is an exciting development!

I am though wondering, if the current version is stable & working well enough
to be a daily driver / main phone.

------
FullyFunctional
My immediate reaction when seeing the phone: thank $randomdeity that the
screen is a proper rectangle and not some moronic almost-oval (eff you Apple).

------
moreorless
Anyone actually using this as a daily driver? I am completely Apple free
except for the the phone. I would love to be able to ditch that.

~~~
bjo590
Most people cannot live w/o MMS or some apps that do not have a mobile website
equivalent.

------
phre4k
Cool, does it include a small dial to put the clocks back when they manage to
let their TLS certificates run out the 4th time?

