PostmarketOS 22.06 released – now upgrades are possible | Hacker News Reader

PostmarketOS 22.06 released – now upgrades are possible

postmarketos.org

130 pointskirschner20 comments

To those who are curious - I'm working on a PostmarketOS / AwesomeWM based interface for e-readers, currently happily running it as a daily driver on my Kobo Clara HD. https://github.com/bjesus/air . It's very fun to have an e-ink device running modern Linux, and it's also very cheap :)

KOReader has plain Linux builds, so running that ought to be a perfect match. I might get a Kobo to try this out, thanks!

Sadly I never managed to get it running, but you're right that it _should_ work. I'm using Foliate for book reading and it works fine - not perfect but definitely good enough.

https://johnfactotum.github.io/foliate/

Just curious as to what the use cases for this are from any current users. Is anyone using postmarked as a daily driver replacement for their phone ? Do people use it as a mobile low power server or just a fun handheld Linux computer ?

I've used it for a couple months. Battery life and CPU power are a major hurdle, but it is promising because calling and SMS works just fine with the open-source modem firmware. I might try it again in 6 months, as I heard the next release of Phosh is supposed to have GPU acceleration or something and is much smoother.

I think I will continue using AOSP on a pixel phone until waydroid support gets a bit better. It takes a while to start waydroid, and by then I'm already down like 25% battery.

The "selling point" of postmarketOS is that it is based on the lightweight Alpine Linux, and it has a toolkit (called pmbootstrap) which is designed to make it easy to port it to stock-android phones, not just pinephone/librem5's. So whatever contributions you make to the OS will survive beyond this generation of phones. Also, other distros like Ubuntu Touch try to make their own weird userspace, but postmarketOS is nice because it behaves a lot more like the desktop linux userspace. Also, it's easy to run their pmbootstrap program to make your own image- it gives you a selection of DE's to choose from for example sxmo or kde mobile or phosh, and you can even set up FDE. What I'm getting at here is that it's a lot more "standard" and extensible than the other linux phone distros out there: they try to build on top of a minimal alpine linux instead of just porting a bigger distro like manjaro or reinventing the wheel.

Hopefully we will eventually see postmarketOS ported to a more powerful (probably stock-android) phone that has feature-parity with the pinephone (see https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices#Community). I would definitely miss the extensibility and open-ness of the pinephone; ideally a company like pine64 just iterates on the pinephone until the hardware is usable, and the software meets it in the middle.

> Is anyone using postmarked as a daily driver replacement for their phone?

Yes. I'm not sure I understand your question though. A big use case for PostmarketOS is software for a mobile phone, so that's my use case.

Yes but how much do you depend on your phone? As in, what functions does it fill in your day-to-day life?

I use it for Calls, SMS/MMS, Email, Calendar, tasks/TODOs, various chat applications, 2FA, password manager, and internet. So it fills the functions I expect in a smartphone.

I think it has some apps for social media, but I only have a mastodon acccount for social media.

The only thing really lacking in it is a decent maps app, but for the most part I get by just fine without that.

Regarding maps apps: Arguably, Pure Maps is decent (in a Mainstream Smartphone way), and Mepo is great in a nerdy way. I really need to look into packaging Osmin for postmarketOS, it‘s almost upsetting that it’s only available on Manjaro ARM.

For more info on these and other apps, check out https://linuxphoneapps.org/apps/ - contributions welcome!

It's a good thing that they have a donation link on that page, however the list of supported devices still lacks recent models, which can be discouraging. I completely understand the effort required to port software, do proper tests, the time and money needed, plus the risks of bricking new costly devices, so I wonder if setting up a way for donating for a specific device or set of devices (no strings attached of course) could help to attract more interest, make users feel more involved and somehow also help development by telling developers where there is more demand.

Maybe I have unrealistic expectations, but I was surprised not to see the PinePhone Pro on the list of supported devices.

Was that a mistake or does it get lumped together with the OG PunePhone?

On the devices page of the wiki, the PinePhone pro is in the "testing" list, which has this description: "All other device ports, including new ones. Maintainers can create merge requests to move devices to community if requirements are met on the Device categorization page. A more detailed view with a full status matrix of these devices can be found on the All devices page"

The normal PinePhone is one of the main devices, so it seems that that one has way better support.

https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices

As the sibling comment said, it's officially in testing phase. It already works quite well in my experience, the reason why I am not daily driving it yet is that it does not get calls and text messages while in stand-by (as of a few months ago, at least).

This is some good background info: https://drewdevault.com/2022/01/18/Pine64s-weird-priorities....

TL;DR: Pine64 creates the hardware, but pretty much depends on the community to get software support. As a result, software support for the Pinephone Pro is incomplete. That being said, PostmarketOS probably has some of the best support for the Pinephone Pro

At long last a decent OS for Galaxy S3. I wish I had kept mine. It doesn't say whether it's the European or American version though.

Looks like it's the international (non-US) version. From the wiki page[0] of the device:

> So far, what works for Samsung Galaxy S III LTE (samsung-m3) also works for the samsung-m0 (Galaxy S III international GSM version without LTE, Also known as Galaxy S III 3G SHW-M440S in South Korea) and samsung-shv-e210s (a Korean variant). (None of these S III models should be confused with the North American S III models, which require OS builds.)

[0] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S_III_(sam...

Nice to see all the different devices being worked on for (close-to) mainline Linux support. Some even have working mobile data, wifi etc.

The only weird choice is not having systemd and also using musl due to being based on Alpine ;)

Tangentially here is my wishlist for a phone os:

- Displays text on screen

- Responds to touch input for navigating a contact list and call functions

- Initiates and terminates calls

- Operates the handsfree speaker

- Shows battery status

- Basic text input

- Provides gsm connectivity, no internet, no bluetooth

- Its a dumb os doing nothing more than the above - nada, nil.

I am not being sarcastic, but i would install such an “os” on spare smartphones in a heartbeat. It would save on battery, reduce waste and enhance my privacy. I am not knowledgeable on the topic otherwise i’d do it myself. Hopefully someone with experience can make it happen.

It seems like the easiest way to get there is to just sell the smartphone and use the money to buy a (possibly used) dumbphone.

I obviously own such a phone, but it still does heck knows what and connects to the internet. A base os that does nothing else but calls is still a better option.

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