A nice little update on my PinePhone
from alex_02@infosec.pub to hardware@infosec.pub on 24 May 2024 09:56
https://infosec.pub/post/12736168

Welp, good news. This stupid annoying pos (not really annoying or a pos, but it took a bit) phone is finally up and running after way too much distro hopping and testing apps.

I have to say, it isn’t bad right now. Arch + Phosh. There are still a few quirks here and there, but not terrible.

Software is really what is holding back the device and Linux mobile overall imo. I do think XFCE mobile variant would run quite well on linux mobile, but I don’t have hope for the dev team to come out with one anytime soon.

A few terrible pictures, but it is almost 4 am here.

#hardware

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alex_02@infosec.pub on 25 May 2024 15:44 collapse

A list of apps that I’ve found as nice alternatives:

  • Flare (Signal messenger)
  • Dissent (A very light discord app. It is very nice.)
  • Tuba (Mastodon)
  • Fluffychat (Matrix)
  • Freetube (Youtube. Still a bit quirky but it works well enough. The stupid phosh notch gets in the way.)
  • Lemonade (Currently testing this for Lemmy. It doesn’t work on Phosh + Wayland. For some reason I can’t click any community and I can’t login. I do like the app and hopefully it will improve over time since it has potential.)
  • Podcasts (GNOME podcast app. Works well enough. Just annoyingly overbloated.)
  • Syndic (RSS feed client. It is still in development and has some issues like unable to import opml, but it works well for what it is.)
  • GNOME Secrets (Stupid password manager. Had to export the bitwarden vault into json and import into keepassxc before transfering that vault to the pinephone. Would be nice if bitwarden dev team could come out with a proper working flatpak instead of this bollocks.)

Still testing apps and might update this list overtime.

alex_02@infosec.pub on 25 May 2024 18:09 collapse

Themes that I settled on:

Dracula slim theme here: www.gnome-look.org/p/1687249/

And papirus icon theme in the repos.

To change the gtk theme I had to install gnome-shell-extensions and reboot. Probably a simple source of /etc/profile would’ve been fine.

alex_02@infosec.pub on 12 Jun 2024 19:44 collapse

Thinking about trying to see if I can get flutter apps to compile and run on the PinePhone. Flutter seems the most promising for software on the PinePhone since a lot of the issues with Linux apps is they’re bloated because of Electron and GNOME crap. Also, making them fit the screen is also a gamble.