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Comment by collyw | Hacker News Reader

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).

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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.

> 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).

I actually found the UI to be quite good on Ubuntu Touch. However I swapped it for mobian due to its locked down nature same as you did.

The app situation is not perfect, but there are some (not all available on every distribution): https://linmobapps.frama.io.

Specifically Pure Maps is available as a Flatpak and can be used in conjunction with OSM Scout Server for Offline Maps.

Also, Anbox support got almost usable in the PinePhone’s ArchLinuxARM distribution with working networking and a working keyboard just yesterday, so some Android apps are going to work. I expect Manjaro to ship at least the same level of Anbox support with their PinePhone CE.

The phones are made, and sold at this price, as a community service to help develop the open source platforms (postmarketOS, ubuntu touch, etc.), not as a consumer phone. A prototype of sorts.

> there was no way to do offline maps for example

That's not true, you can use https://open-store.io/app/pure-maps.jonnius

Offline mapping is possible by installing OSM Scout Server https://open-store.io/app/osmscout-server.jonnius

About the apps, you can help developing native apps using https://clickable-ut.dev/en/latest/

What about Open Street Map?

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Using_OpenStreetMap_offl... ?

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