Pine64 is Working on a Linux Smartphone Running KDE Plasma | Hacker News Reader

Pine64 is Working on a Linux Smartphone Running KDE Plasma

itsfoss.com

119 pointswatchdogtimer51 comments

Mods might want to change the link to the original story: https://itsfoss.com/pinebook-kde-smartphone/

Ok, we changed to that from https://www.notebookcheck.net/Pine64-maker-of-cheap-Linux-la.... Thanks!

What we really need is a good dialer/sms/mms set of applications and some easy to use USB LTE radios that can do voice and data at the same time.

Then we could all be making perfectly usable phones by plugging the parts together and slapping an OS on it, just like PCs in the 90s. :)

Regarding the first part, isn't that what programmatic voice/text is (e.g. Twilio)? I guess they're more of an API on which you'd build said apps. So, rather, wouldn't something like WhatsApp be one of those?

There was an Israeli company called Modu (probably for Modular) mentioned on TechCrunch some years ago, that did something like that, but at a higher level, IIRC. Like, you could plug in accessories like a camera or other things, and remove them when you didn't need them. Also, I guess, if the interfaces were well defined, you could swap one module for another one of the same type, for better price, speed or other reasons. Didn't track what happened with that, but the idea seemed good.

I hadn't heard of Pine64 before now. Are there any good reviews of their Pinebook laptop out there? A cheap 64-bit ARM laptop could be fun to play with...

From what I heard, the keyboard is crap. I was going to buy one, but the shipping made it not worth it.

I think they'd be better off just offering the computer and screen only in tablet form. Have a case that let's you adjust the viewing angle. BYO keyboard & mouse via USB. I much rather do that...

It is slow. Browsing the web is almost annoying because JavaScript is such a big part of it these days.

The keyboard isn't the greatest, and the touchpad is really bad, and support for something other than the OS it came with is still non-existent, although that is getting somewhat better.

But it is a fully functional laptop, it works, and lasts quite some time on battery and I have been mainly using it to SSH to various servers/devices and doing work from the terminal and for that it is quite adequate.

It's fun to play with, but I wouldn't consider a serious device, not yet at least.

It's a reasonable laptop at an OLPC price. Come on.

Completely agreed, just setting expectations for those that think this will adequately come and replace their current MacBook Air or something along those lines.

Some of the KDE guys seem to have made it their pet project to get KDE to run well on a Pinebook[0].

[0]https://dot.kde.org/2018/08/22/kde-plasma-arm-laptop-pineboo...

Comments at that link seem to indicate that you're stuck running kernel 3.10? That would be a tough pill to swallow.

Yes. It's an Allwinner A64 chip underneath and they have binary blobs which they haven't ported to anything newer than 3.10

The original article says the boards have mainline support. Are you sure?

A mainline kernel won't be of much help you if you don't have GPU drivers.

While not yet in mainline (patches pending), the Lima open source driver for Mali 400 GPUs appears to be usable: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Lima-DRM...

This uses mainline kernel: https://github.com/anarsoul/linux-build/releases (Arch Linux)

Forum topic: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=4715

Apparently there will be an Armbian image with mainline as well: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=6538&pid=40821#p...

Well now. That might tip me over into "kids' first laptop" territory.

I have one of their SBCs. On paper it has pretty good specs, and it was cheap, but in practice the driver situation is a disaster and all of the good documentation is written in Chinese, if it exists at all.

I have avoided the company ever since.

Same here. I funded the project on Kickstarter. Specs looked amazing- so much better than the Pi.

But the software support sucks. Until they have better support I’m staying away.

I hope that someone will do something like Pinebook, but with iMX8.M. The SoC used by Purism with their Libre 5 effort. Maybe even Purism themselves. Main advantage is higher hopes that mainline Linux will just work at some closer point.

Agreed. The Pine products have great mainline kernel support if you ignore pretty much everything you might want in a phone/laptop/desktop (graphics, input, etc).

It's not the latest and greatest, but the MNT Reform[1] uses an i.MX6QP.

[1] https://mntmn.com/reform/

I thought all cheap Android phones count as a "cheap Linux phone?"

I really want a phone that I can plug into a screen and keyboard and have a full desktop environment. (I know Samsung makes something like this)

You shouldn't need a Samsung; if your phone supports MHL, you can plug a screen and a keyboard, and you can use GNURoot (not rooting required) + XServer XSDL to run a full GNU/Linux desktop.

There's also a packaged version: https://maruos.com/ | https://github.com/maruos/maruos

Or Motorola Droid4, where it called "WebTop". It was good idea: built-in keyboard, display as touchscreen, and large display, but firefox was painfully slow because phone was too weak for that.

I hope, someone will reimplement that with WiDi, on-screen keyboard and touchpad/magnifier, and support for both android and desktop apps.

This is the diference between Linux and GNU/Linux. These phones are trying to use the same userland and similar distros to what you would use on the Linux desktop.

That didn't work very well for Windows 10.

Windows 10 didn't have many ARM-targeted apps. A problem that would be smaller in the open source world.

It didn't work very well for Ubuntu Phone, either.

Spinning a device requires a lot of money, and the folks who want a unified device aren't exactly willing to drop $1000 on a phone and $300 on the dock/adapter to connect it to a monitor/keyboard/ethernet.

Those prices would be extremely out of character for pine64. From the article:

> The targets price should be in $100+ range for 2GB RAM and 16GB storage configuration.

Although Android uses the Linux kernel, it is pretty much hidden away to userland apps.

An application might compile with the NDK, but won't necessarily work in all devices.

These are the only APIs that an app is allowed to access.

https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis

People have said this for years but would it really work with having some type laser keyboard that really works and projector type display that are both built in (unless you have large phone).

Without these you are going to need a keyboard and monitor where ever you go. Might as well carry laptop

Seems one of those thing that sounds good but the reality is that it isn't as convenient as one imagines.

I think the more common use case would be having a work station at home and at your work, each with a screen, keyboard and mouse.

Then you could just plug your phone into the workstation you want to use, and switching between them would just be moving your phone. Staying home? Just plug in your phone. Decide to go to the office in the afternoon? Just bring your phone and you're set.

I've been waiting for something like this to really take off in the consumer space for a while now. It seems to me to be almost an inevitable next step. Even gaming or other high-end uses could be addressed with an external GPU (or streaming).

Combined with cloud storage, you can more or less stay in the same environment all the time, and your data would be impervious to drive failure. I'm actually surprised it's not already out there in a big way, the major players must all be working on some version of it.

It's hard for it to "really work" without haptic feedback.

I'd really appreciate a (more) open phone platform.

I bought a Rock64 on the basis of good benchmarks, but found the stability of the board absolutely atrocious unfortunately. Not sure if the same goes for the Pine64? Certainly for the Rock64 there was virtually zero post sale suppor.

Pine64 is ok, at least with Debian 8 (no hw video acceleration, fine for doing ARMv8 tests/builds).

I have a Pine 64 controlling a small cluster of Pi Zeros. So far (a couple years, months in this role) it's rock solid.

ASUS tinkerbox is solid, but you also have to pay $60 instead of $25. I'm planning on buying ten Rock64 for clustering because for the price I'm willing to sacrifice some quality for performance gains.

for an SBC with mainline support i would take a hard look at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/librecomputer/la-frite-...

disclaimer: not affiliated

Anyone know what OS they are planning on using on it?

I had an Ubuntu Phone and it was a bit disappointing. Lack of apps, and the majority were web based - which didn't work well offline (not useful when travelling and you can't use maps). When I bought an Android last year it had improved a lot. I can only imagine any new Linux based OS will be even further behind.

Its a pity as I hate the locked down, walled garden nature of Apple products, and the high price tag and I hate the intrusive spying nature of Andorid / Google.

1440x720 seems like a pretty high resolution display for $100 device.

The laptops would be perfect for me if they had longer battery life than 6 hours. Make it 12 somehow with expansion or something and I'd buy one immediately.

From what I saw, their laptops have plenty empty space inside. I wonder if adding more batteries would work or would somehow mess the battery controller.

I've been looking for an display for all our conference rooms, updating space reservations in real-time. A low cost display like this would be awesome.

In fairness you could probably just use a cheap tablet for that.

Any time frame available?

Article says developer kits released Nov 1, developer boards release and demo by FOSDEM, and design complete Q2 2019. Lots of other details make the article worth reading.

Insta-buy.

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