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⬅️ Previous capture (2023-12-28)
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Re: "Throwing in the towel on mobile Linux"
I have a Librem 5 that I turn on every couple of weeks to update. It's still nowhere near usable, but I am definitely supportive of the concept of a general Linux-based phone at some point in the future. That's why I never sought a refund despite all the problems and delays Purism had while shipping the phone. One day, maybe. But there's vested interest in the industry to keep free and open alternatives out, so it's a real uphill battle. Not to mention that people are immediately dismissive when they find that it can't immediately do everything their current iPhone/Android phone can do...
2023-07-24 · 6 months ago
I bought an original (non-Pro) PinePhone back in late 2021 and, while I also threw the towel after a few months, I started to daily drive it again since early 2023, and the experience has been steadily improving so far. However, it requires a lot of tweaking and hacking, but this is what is all about, I guess! As for the unstable modem and battery life issues, I wrote or readapted a bunch of shell scripts: https://gitea.privatedns.org/xavi/pinephone-scripts . For IM, I use a forked version of Dino (still based in GTK3): https://gitea.privatedns.org/xavi/dino/src/branch/pinephone
That said, I agree with another article Drew published some time ago that stressed the importance of solving low-level issues, such as kernel or modem stability issues. Unfortunately, there is little the community can do to solve the latter, except from putting pressure to the modem manufacturer (Quectel) to fix their source code, or even better: release it under a free software license so we can improve upon it.
Throwing in the towel on mobile Linux — [https link] Seems like a good+kind opinion.