
50 days of postmarketOS - ollieparanoid
https://ollieparanoid.github.io/post/50-days-of-postmarketOS
======
justinsaccount
Even if half of the hardware features don't work, having a working, standards
based linux image for old cell phones is super useful for prototyping random
IoT devices.

An old cell phone is like a raspberry pi, if a pi had a built in touchscreen,
camera, microphone, battery, wifi, and gps.

~~~
maxaf
I've worked for an IoT company once where random old Android phones were
sometimes called "best Raspberry Pi ever made".

~~~
Animats
I use old EeePC subnotebooks for that, which I get on eBay for about $40.
Compute power, WiFi, wired Ethernet, USB, a keyboard, screen, trackpad,
battery backup, and case. With a Raspberry Pi you usually have to add
peripherals just to talk to the thing.

When I get one in I immediately install Xubuntu from a USB stick and do a
total wipe.

(If you do this, get a real ASUS power supply. The cheapo ones with no brand
and no UL certification overheat. Fires have been reported.)

------
bikamonki
I quit Windows a few years ago (I'm fine now thanks for asking!). It took me a
couple of hours from what is this Linux thing to dual boot, and a few months
from everything proprietary to everything open source. Freedom feels awesome.

I long for the day where I can have the same feeling on my phone.

~~~
mozartoz
Right now you can use LineageOS, or even CopperheadOS. PostmarketOS might be
better in the distant future due to Linux vs Android userland.

~~~
kitchi
I absolutely can recommend LineageOS (used to be CyanogenMod). I installed it
for the first time about a week ago on my phone, and I couldn't be happier.

Rooting it is straightforward, and the first thing I did was to install a
firewall, and AdAway (so I get system wide ad-blocking and tracker-blocking).
It's an incredible feeling that for the first time in forever I'm more in
charge of what my phone does.

The only caveat is that the support from LineageOS for less popular phones
isn't great (unless you get lucky!) but if it does work on your phone,
absolutely go for it.

~~~
mintplant
Also, assuming your device has a good maintainer or maintainers, security
patches arrive in days rather than the months-if-ever it can take
manufacturers to release updated images and then carriers to roll them out.

------
onetom
Hm... It feels like pmOS would be an ideal host for running applications
written in [http://www.red-lang.org/](http://www.red-lang.org/)

It has a very concise, cross-platform GUI DSL ("inherited" from Rebol) which
requires a 1MB runtime only on top of the host OS' GUI system.

Look what can you build in ~7kB which can run on top of a 1MB runtime, not a
100MB browser...

[http://www.red-lang.org/2016/12/incursion-into-explorable-
ex...](http://www.red-lang.org/2016/12/incursion-into-explorable-
explanations.html)

A few years ago I've actually built an iPhone app launcher simulator in a few
kilobytes which looked exactly the same on a PPC iBook, an x86 Mac Mini or a
Windows PC...

~~~
ollieparanoid
If it works on Linux, why not? Everyone is encouraged to work on what they
like best, and we will together, as a community, pick sane defaults from the
best components we have. See also:
[https://github.com/postmarketOS/pmbootstrap/wiki/Milestones](https://github.com/postmarketOS/pmbootstrap/wiki/Milestones)

------
ipsum2
I would love to see this be the Rockbox (www.rockbox.org) of smartphones. Best
of luck! I'm excited to see this project progress.

------
chatman
Hope this becomes big, all the best. The beginnings are extremely promising.
My biggest motivation behind seeing this succeed is that this is a free
software alternative to Android.

~~~
azinman2
What about Ubuntu phone?

~~~
ollieparanoid
Check out the [https://ubports.com/](https://ubports.com/) project, they have
continued Ubuntu Phone (which has officially been discontinued), and they have
made really impressive progress since then. You can really run it on a phone
and have all drivers working, unlike postmarketOS (but we have different
goals, remember).

One of our goals is packaging all sorts of user interfaces, and ubports is one
of them (but it depends on individual developers, if they actually want to do
it, because developers are encouraged to work on what they like most):
[https://github.com/postmarketOS/pmbootstrap/issues/62](https://github.com/postmarketOS/pmbootstrap/issues/62)

------
interfixus
Amazing! Got an old HTC Desire with a cracked screen lying around. I know what
I'm doing tonight.

As for the Alpine Linux it's based on, that stuff is seriously nifty in its
own right. Any old decrepit box is a decent server with Alpine on it.

~~~
ollieparanoid
Perfect! Drebrez already made decent progress with the HTC desire:
[https://github.com/postmarketOS/pmbootstrap/wiki/HTC-
Bravo-%...](https://github.com/postmarketOS/pmbootstrap/wiki/HTC-Bravo-%28HTC-
Desire%29) Make sure to talk to him in the IRC/matrix channel, so you can join
the efforts :)

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smoyer
Isn't this also what OpenWRT/ddWRT have accomplished? I wouldn't be surprised
at all if there was a huge amount of synergy between those groups and pmOS
since there has been so much work done on wifi and core machine management for
the various router hardware that's around.

~~~
ZenoArrow
All embedded Linux projects have a certain amount of crossover, though I
suspect a large amount of the work carried out by the OpenWRT and ddWRT teams
was on MIPS-based hardware rather than ARM.

~~~
floatboth
Also they focused on, well, WRTs. No graphics stack there :)

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bmn__
Ollie, why pmOS and not Meego or Sailfish? What do you want to accomplish by
starting from scratch?

~~~
Brakenshire
Would be interesting to know what can be shared from those projects. For
instance Jolla are just preparing to release Sailfish on the Xperia X, I
wonder how much assistance that will provide to this project as well. Sony
have an Xperia Open Devices programme which at least puts some effort into
running on a mainline kernel.

~~~
ollieparanoid
We have used the usb network configuration code from SailfishOS' hybris-boot
as reference to implement our own version for the initramfs already.

What these projects can share is mainlining kernels at least, and there could
be more. We have heavily documented what we do and I hope that this will prove
to be useful to other projects as well.

------
fosco
Nice! Now we just need approval for use over cell towers.

This is really exciting!

If there is a way for a laymen to help please provide some guidance, I'm
comfortable tinkering around with Linux and breaking and fixing things but
this looks a bit over my head.

Keep up the great work!

~~~
Rjevski
Why do you think you need approval? You've got a modem that speaks GSM/3G/LTE
and the towers speak the same - no approval necessary.

~~~
fosco
Am I able to register a phone number and have others call it from other
carriers?

I would love to use a phone in that manner. in the same way I built my own
desktop to connect to the internet.

------
Zigurd
Google had to embrace OEM bloatware to get Android into the market and has
been, so far without success, trying to stuff the evil OEM product management
"we have to be distinctive" genie back into the bottle ever since.

Google is going to have to save Android Things from the same fate or we'll
have billions of unpatched IoT devices.

Without diagnosing Android One, Nexus, Android Silver, etc. and why they all
failed - not to mention Cyanogen - why do two guys with a Linux distro think
they will succeed?

~~~
ollieparanoid
Who said, that we are "two guys"? I've started with this alone, before I
considered pmbootstrap good enough. Since I've released it, we have 40-60
people hanging out in the irc/matrix channel, and a good bunch of them are
actually contributing to either this project or other projects with which we
share efforts.

The big difference compared with Android and everything based on Android/AOSP
is, that we keep the effort for each device minimal. Read the introduction
post for more information:
[https://ollieparanoid.github.io/post/postmarketOS/](https://ollieparanoid.github.io/post/postmarketOS/)

------
rtpg
This is pretty amazing work. I'm very excited for the future here.

I do wonder if using linux will make battery management hard

~~~
ollieparanoid
Luckily the battery drivers are all included in the Android kernels so far
(which we use right now). Besides that, it will work like with Linux on your
Laptop - carefully craft energy efficient programs together and you will get a
nice battery lifetime :)

------
SJetKaran
Nice! Waiting for OnePlus One support.

~~~
ollieparanoid
If you have some time to spare and your oneplus one is not your day-to-day
phone, you could give porting pmOS to it a try:
[https://github.com/postmarketOS/pmbootstrap/wiki/Porting-
to-...](https://github.com/postmarketOS/pmbootstrap/wiki/Porting-to-a-new-
device)

All you need is some Linux knowledge, and we will help you with the process in
the irc/matrix channel.

Even if you can't get very far, it helps the next guy who picks up your work
and starts from there. That's why we document our progress on a device-
specific wiki page:

[https://github.com/postmarketOS/pmbootstrap/wiki/Devices](https://github.com/postmarketOS/pmbootstrap/wiki/Devices)

------
ianai
I want this to be a big thing.

~~~
ollieparanoid
If you have some time to spare, the best way to get there is through
contributions, we all do this in our free time after all. With some decent
Linux knowledge and help from the community, you should be able to get a port
done in most cases, check out the porting guide in the wiki:
[https://postmarketos.org/wiki](https://postmarketos.org/wiki)

~~~
ianai
I'm considering it.

------
Animats
_Making calls and other basic phone features do not work yet._

Um. That could be a problem.

~~~
saimiam
The calls app is probably not even in the top five apps used everyday by a
large swath of the mobile population.

My guess is that FB, Mail, Whatsapp, Twitter/insta/Snap, and news apps make up
the top 5.

~~~
Rjevski
To start off with I think a browser and email client would be the most
important.

~~~
ReverseCold
Just get a browser and some form of networking to run and you've got a pretty
usable OS for a lot of people.

~~~
saimiam
This is me right now on my iPhone. Apart from an ssh app, a openvpn app, and
my bank's app (which could probably be handled on the browser using KeyChain),
I use the browser for everything. It's glorious.

