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PinePhone Keyboard Driver Prepped Ahead Of Linux 6.1

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  • PinePhone Keyboard Driver Prepped Ahead Of Linux 6.1

    Phoronix: PinePhone Keyboard Driver Prepped Ahead Of Linux 6.1

    Improving the mainline Linux kernel support for the PinePhone is a keyboard driver expected to land for the imminent Linux 6.1 merge window...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    I hope this evolves in some years into a updated device that is usable, sadly this 250 Euro device would not be very useful with the error prone calling feature. I guess it's cheaper than a gemini pda, but with the latter you have working full akku support.

    But as much as I moaned in the past about it, they do advertise it as "not consumer ready product" and that of course addresses the person that hopes that you start it and all works what people expect from phones but goes far far further, even most basic stuff is at least partially if not totally broken. It's beta hardware basically (beta edition) that means that non-beta product will be a separate hardware. I might be to negative on it, but there are for a reason a million youtube videos out there "why linux phone died" or something alike. At least Pine never asked >500 dollar for this alpha-software systems like some other vendor

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    • #3
      Been using Manjaro Phosh as primary, and Mobian as secondary on PinePhone and PinePhone Pro for the past few years.

      The state of the PinePhone Pro is definitely less than ideal, although it's been making strides slowly but surely (for instance, the front and rear cameras now work in Megapixels). If you plan to use it, expect to install Towboot before doing anything else (currently only boots OS from SD card).

      However, I still use the original PinePhone as my daily driver due to the necessity of needing working audio when making a phone call. Camera works, SMS works, MMS works, waydroid provides a very usable method for installing android apps, and it has a rudimentary alarm that wakes the phone from suspend (wake mobile, although birdie-alarm-mobile provides more features, like reoccurring alarms. both require that you leave the app open in order for the timer to work).

      Puremaps provides an excellent navigation app with basically no setup required beforehand.

      Apps that are available as web apps are easily added by installing chromium and adding desktop shortcuts:
      lyft.desktop:
      Code:
      [Desktop Entry]
      Type=Application
      Icon=lyft
      Name=Lyft
      Exec=chromium --user-data-dir=$HOME/.config/lyft --app=https://ride.lyft.com
      Categories=Office;Application
      StartupNotify=false​
      Or, if a site requires you report a mobile device for it to work:
      skype.desktop:
      Code:
      [Desktop Entry]
      Type=Application
      Icon=skype
      Name=Skype
      Exec=chromium --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/75.0.3770.90 Mobile Safari/537.36" --user-data-dir=$HOME/.config/skype --app=https://web.skype.com
      Categories=Office;Application
      StartupNotify=false​
      Piece of advice: do NOT install Towboot on original Pinephone if you run an Arch-based distro or PostmarketOS. Installing Towboot currently prevents you from being able to boot into either of those from an SD card (this issue does not affect the PinePhone Pro).
      Last edited by lectrode; 02 October 2022, 11:26 PM. Reason: (fixed wording and mobile user agent)

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      • #4
        No TrackPoint, no deal!

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        • #5
          Originally posted by evil_core View Post
          No TrackPoint, no deal!
          I'm sure you mean this in jest, but on the off-chance you don't (or the off-chance someone reads that and thinks you're serious):
          I'm an avid trackpoint user. I specifically stick with ThinkPad laptops due to the trackpoint. However, the PinePhone/Pro are a different story - a trackpoint would not make much sense on that keyboard. With the mobile interface being optimized for touch, they only time you'd ever use the trackpoint would be when you could just tap the screen, which is easier IMHO.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by evil_core View Post
            No TrackPoint, no deal!
            No arrow keys, no deal! (Fn doesn't count)

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            • #7
              Originally posted by lectrode View Post

              I'm sure you mean this in jest, but on the off-chance you don't (or the off-chance someone reads that and thinks you're serious):
              I'm an avid trackpoint user. I specifically stick with ThinkPad laptops due to the trackpoint. However, the PinePhone/Pro are a different story - a trackpoint would not make much sense on that keyboard. With the mobile interface being optimized for touch, they only time you'd ever use the trackpoint would be when you could just tap the screen, which is easier IMHO.
              You know that BT keyboard and mouse works even on android 4 (like original Samsung Galaxy SII)?
              you may also want to install alternative OS, use emulation or even chroot and native GTK/Qt Linux apps, like people did on Nokia N900/N950/N9.
              You may also say that Android is not optimized for for hardware keyboard (like Meego/Harmattan on Nokia n950, where OSK/VKB worked much better in most apps), like win32 apps/games aren't optimized for OSK/VKB (which you can see on SteamDeck)

              TrackPoint/PointingStick doesn't take additional space (in keyboard layout), so it wouldn't be a big deal, for those who won't use.it.
              For many it could be portable PC replacement (LibreOffice opened very fast and worked reasonably even on single-core Nokia N9).
              It would be also nice to have some joysticks(even mini), and grip buttons(like SteamDeck). Not only for games/emu, but having re-programmable input open infinite possibilities

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              • #8
                Quirky gadget but I'd rather like to have a working on screen keyboard in electron apps on wayland.

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