
Two years of postmarketOS - ollieparanoid
https://postmarketos.org/blog/2019/06/23/two-years/
======
zach43
Given the stagnation that's set in the mobile form factor, i think its the
perfect time for unwalled FOSS mobile environments to develop.

also, the demo with gesture typing on the console is pretty cool:
[https://postmarketos.org/static/video/2019-06/nexus5-shelli-...](https://postmarketos.org/static/video/2019-06/nexus5-shelli-
thumb.webm)

~~~
0815test
Yes, it's nice to see that pmOS is already enabling experimentation into such
things as graffiti-like gesture input. ISTR that people used to be quite
proficient w/ the old graffiti system when it was around, so this might turn
out to be the most usable input system on these devices, at least for power-
users, and until wholly-open voice-recognition systems become viable.

~~~
unrznbl
I used this setup daily on a geeksphone keon for about a year. I liked it
quite a bit. Sadly the screen got broken and 2G service was getting bad. :) I
hope to bring this fun experience to another phone with pmos. After the modem
starts working I can pull together what I had before for texting and contacts
and push it to the shelli repo.

------
0815test
The libhybris support that's mentioned near the end is the most interesting
part, IMHO. In principle, that should ultimately be enough to run a
postmarketOS-based userspace (and of course, a Debian Mobile based one, or any
other distro of your choice) on _any_ device supporting GSI ("Generic System
Image")/Project Treble, dispensing with Android or AOSP altogether. Thereafter
the only thing that the pmOS project needs to concern itself with is kernel
support (bringing the mainline kernel and free driver support to more devices)
and older devices that have not been "Treblized" already by the OEM or by the
AOSP modding community. It's not as simple as _one single image_ being
sufficient for everything, because even GSI's come with a few variations
(IIRC, 32- vs. 64-bit, and A+B boot partition scheme vs. A only) but it's very
close!

Added: I've noticed that Alpine seems to have dispensed with ARMv6
architecture support altogether in the upstream. Unfortunately, this cuts off
a _lot_ of the oldest AOSP devices from support - devices that used to run
quite well with CyanogenMod, and that ought to still be usable in some way, if
perhaps not in a truly general-purpose sense given how limited some of them
are (512MB RAM/512MB "internal" storage, etc.). Is there any hope of pmOS
picking up this support?

~~~
craftyguy
> The libhybris support that's mentioned near the end is the most interesting
> part

I'm more interested in having a device that doesn't require proprietary bits
to work.

~~~
0815test
You can't achieve this without support from the free, mainline kernel, which
I've also addressed in my comment; downstream kernels, by and large, depend on
these proprietary blobs. Mainline kernel support is also hard; the LG Nexus 5,
which is the "flagship" device for pmOS, still doesn't support mobile calls
properly.

It just makes sense to split the job and work on the kernel vs. userspace bits
independently. Compare with e.g. cyanogenMod or LineageOS; running a non-AOSP
userspace gives you something that will run as smoothly as iOS does today, and
that (barring kernel or driver bugs, of course) can be updated indefinitely.

~~~
MartijnBraam
Nexus 5 supports calls fine, that's neatly in mainline Linux and in ofono. The
issue is that the audio codec in the soc isn't in mainline yet.

The solution for this isn't hybris, it's fixing mainline. Hybris is mainly
useful for the impossible stuff like powervr graphics.

~~~
curioussavage
Is support for that codec in progress though?

~~~
ollieparanoid
From what I know, one person planned to look into it, but not much has
happened since then.

~~~
nonbirithm
Is there any specific list of things that still has to be done before voice
calls are more or less functional for the N900? I looked around the Gitlab but
couldn't seem to locate anything. The wiki[0] mentions a requirement of
"libcmtspeechdata" but there doesn't seem to be any other information beyond
that.

[0]
[https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Nokia_N900#Additional_inf...](https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Nokia_N900#Additional_info)

------
kaendfinger
I contributed support for Google Glass nearly two years ago, went on a long
hiatus, came back, and reflashed... it still works!

The people in the pmOS community are also amazing, big thanks to them for a
wonderful project, hope there are many great years ahead.

~~~
joshumax
Wow, I remember booting up your port on my XE to run a Minecraft server on my
Google glass during a vacation; thanks for all your hard work making pmOS
better!

~~~
kaendfinger
That's awesome! More stuff is in the works too, I plan to start working on a
UI for pmOS on Glass. For such an interesting piece of hardware, it's so sad
to see it just waste away :)

------
_frkl
Cool. This is really shaping up nicely. I have to admit that when I first
heard of it, I thought it's probably just one of those projects I'll never
hear from again. Really happy to be proven wrong!

~~~
neilv
There have been many Linux handheld projects that died. I think PostmarketOS
has the right idea with emphasizing mainline Linux (and GNU-ish userspace),
and no closed bits, on many popular and affordable devices.

One of the things it needs now is more people to follow through, and spend
significant time on getting some of the devices (e.g., Nexus 5) perfect, like
how Linux was originally gotten working well with various PC devices.

~~~
MartijnBraam
We do spend quite some time on the Nexus 5 because it's quite near being fully
functional on pmos. The issue is that the parts that don't work yet are
usually the hardest to fix.

Same issue with the Nokia n900 which has very good mainline support but is
doomed with powervr graphics

------
hedora
According to the list of 139 booting devices, not one is 100% functional.

This is a cool project, but is there any plan to focus on getting even one
(hopefully common) device to work as a primary phone?

~~~
MartijnBraam
There's a lot of work on the:

    
    
      - Nexus 5
      - Galaxy Nexus
      - Nokia N900
      - PinePhone devkit
      - Librem 5 devkit
    

So it's mostly the devices running on mainline. those all have some issues to
work out but are pretty close to functional.

At the same time a lot of work is being done to package desktop environments
so you can actually do stuff on the ported phones. due too the way pmos is set
up this means that once it works on one device then it works on all of them
(except for hardware limitations, or lack of 3d acceleration)

A lot of the devices are devices that only one person is working on which
means that not a lot of stuff works mostly but it can be used to develop
software on top of postmarketOS.

------
lostgame
This seems like the type of project I'd actually like to contribute code to.

~~~
ollieparanoid
Then we have a match: postmarketOS is the type of project that happily accepts
code contributions ;)

Here is the big overview link of all sorts of things where people can
contribute to:
[https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Contributing](https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Contributing)

I suggest to familiarize yourself with the project first. That is, play around
with it in qemu, flash it to a device if you have one or start your own port
(porting is quite feasible, as one can see from the steadily increasing count
of booting devices). Then work on what interests you most, and if you need
some inspiration, take a look at the gitlab issues that are tagged with "help
wanted". (Some are also tagged with "easy", which is obviously a good start.)

~~~
lostgame
I've never contributed to what I consider to be a major FOSS project like
this, but you've certainly got me seriously considering it. This is awesome
and IMHO a very important project. Stuff like TenFourFox, which, if it wasn't
so developed, I'd probably contribute to as well.

Anything that re-invigorates life into old devices like this is not only fun
from a tech angle, but also good for the environment.

------
RodgerTheGreat
Would it be reasonable for PostmarketOS to support the OLPC XO-1? It has
physically robust, capable hardware, and a great deal of technical information
is available, but the semi-maintained software stack for it is based on an
obsolete Fedora build. Is it too far away from the touch devices PmOS tends to
target?

~~~
ollieparanoid
It would be very feasible, as long as you know where the kernel sources are
(and since there is a Fedora build for it, this should not be a problem). Just
follow the porting guide and it will show up as new device in pmbootstrap:
[https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Porting_to_a_new_device](https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Porting_to_a_new_device)

Regarding touch-friendlieness: users can also pick user interfaces that are
not optimized for touch input during the installation, such as xfce4, mate,
i3wm.

~~~
RodgerTheGreat
Cool! I'll do some reading. Might make for a good project next time I'm on
vacation.

~~~
joshumax
FWIW I maintain a port of Debian stable for my XO-1 with IceWM and it's
extremely resource-light on the aging OLPC hardware. I'd be happy to throw up
the build scripts on GitHub if anyone is interested.

~~~
0815test
Doesn't the XO-1 have only 256MB RAM? That's definitely enough to _boot_
Debian Stretch and get to a desktop, but I'm skeptical that it's useful for
any real work.

(Of course, keeping hardware in use even as software requirements increase is
kind of a hard problem; Debian itself used to have its own projects - Emdebian
'Grip' and 'Crush' \- to try and address that issue with a broadly Alpine- or
pmOS-like approach, but these were abandoned a long time ago unfortunately.
The whole "embedded" Linux space is a bit of a mess, and a broad, community-
led project like Debian could have a positive impact there.)

~~~
MartijnBraam
the N900 is also 256MB ram, it's not ideal but it's usable, just add a lot of
swap.

------
squarefoot
Speaking in general about alternative systems for phones and tablets, I have a
few obscure tablets I'd like to free of Android and repurpose for more useful
tasks, but they're either too old or unknown to be supported. Is there any
tool that would help to identify their hardware and possible more famous
clones, then suggest the right image to be tested on these devices without
bricking them in the process?

~~~
MartijnBraam
The only way I know of is checking the info in the about phone/about tablet
menu and googleing for the magic strings like the build number and kernel
version. also if it happens to be an allwinner tablet then you can just look
at pictures of tablets at the sunxi wiki.

------
znpy
I'll post the basically the same comment I posted the last three or four times
that pmOS made it to the frontpage:

This is insanely cool! But can I make/receive phone calls and browse the
internet yet? Is there a reference phone that I can be sure will work?

(btw: I have already played with a Nokia N900 while it definitely works, I
wasn't able to make nor receive phone calls).

~~~
ollieparanoid
Thank you for the kind words.

Phone calls do not work yet, and since we get asked about this all the time,
it is in the header of the homepage now - on every page.

> Is there a reference phone that I can be sure will work?

We have two featured devices on the homepage, the Google (LG) Nexus 5 and the
Nokia N900. But even for those two we can't guarantee that they are always
working, in fact with the Nexus 5 we have quite a lot of breakage lately with
one of the reasons being a mesa update that broke the freedreno driver. For
the PinePhone devkit we started publishing reference images, which you can
expect to not have major issues such as not being able to boot (as mentioned
in the blog post).

EDIT: and of course: contributions welcome! if you are passionate about
getting phone calls working with let's say the N900 on postmarketOS and have
some time to spare, and you are not afraid of learning something new and
having a lot of fun in the process, then have at it. Especially with the N900,
there is a lot of groundwork available to build upon.

~~~
znpy
I came back after some hours and realised... postingg a truly open linux
distro on mobile phones is basically like using linux on pcs in the later 90s
or early 00s...

I appreciate your work, truly.

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rocky1138
It's off-topic but I just wanted to say that I love that their entire screen
header simply states an easy-to-read definition of postmarketOS because I
literally read the headline and said "Just what is postmarketOS? I see it come
up from time to time."

I wonder if it's annoying to people who are already familiar with the project.

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voltagex_
I tried pmOS on the Nexus 7 2013 (flo) and it's crashy and glitchy everywhere.
I've got a debug port via the headphone jack, but without someone else to
assist me I'm not going to get very far.

