I get conflicting instructions from the web. Use resolve.conf or don't. What's the simplest way?

Something broke the mobian image on my SD card a while ago so I bit the bullet, installed tow-boot and installed a new image to SD card. There are some minor UI improvements that help me when using phosh a little and I now know never to install Evolution again (after some incomprehensible UI changes that make Thunderbird look pretty). 

However as I regarded the new image on the SD card as a test image I decided to try installing the XFCE desktop again. Previous attempts lead to problems logging in so I did not go any further with it. The new version of mobian makes setting up XFCE child's play. The result is remarkably usable.

There are some oddities. I cannot control the layout and theme of the Onboard on screen keyboard in the LightDM login screen. Other things can be changed such as using large fonts but I have not managed to work out how to change Onboard's settings. Does the default phosh install have its own LightDM configs somewhere that (partially) override mine?

The power button logs me out of my session despite configuring XFCE to "Ask" when the power button is pressed. I am not sure why that is the case. I have a workaround with a "lock screen" button on the main panel but if the power button gets hit by accident then it will still log me out.

I have a second panel that I hide. The problem is that the target area I need to hit to unhide the panel is too narrow for me to hit with my finger. It is fine if I connect a mouse up to the PPPro. I seem to remember that there was a way to widen the target area, but I have not found anything after several searches on the internet. It could be that it is a feature of LXDE panel that I have ascribed to XFCE. Anyone know how to widen the target area to unhide an XFCE panel?

I tried to uninstall some GNOME applications from the XFCE session and Synaptic indicated that phosh would be uninstalled as well. I had to boot back into phosh where it was possible using GNOME Software to remove the packages I did not want without removing phosh. Why is this?

I have an older version of mobian installed to the eMMC in my PinePhone. Currently the image still boots with the help of uBoot. I was planning on installing a newer version of mobian to SD card after seeing the changes in the OS and UI that I discovered when I had to reinstall my PinePhone Pro. But current mobian images now need tow-boot to be installed.

If I understand correctly on the standard PinePhone, tow-boot has to be installed onto the eMMC. There are some things that are not clear to me after reading the instructions I have found ( https://tow-boot.org/devices/pine64-pinephoneA64.html )

a) will installing tow-boot to the eMMC wipe my mobian image that I have installed on the eMMC?

b) is it possible install tow-boat to an SD card?

c) is it possible to boot an image that was designed to use uBoot after tow-boot has been installed?

d) if the mobian image on the eMMC is written over when installing can I use say dd to copy the eMMC image to disc before installing tow-boot and then copy it back to eMMC after tow-boot is installed?

When typing in a console/terminal I do something that causes the arrow keys in the ABC mode to disappear. Crucial for repeating misspelled commands. What am I doing wrong?

SOURCES
        US Mobile I believe I found in the pine64 forums.
        For the remaining eight mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), which without exception were less expensive than the carriers
        whose networks they used, I had the following sources.
        PinePhone APN Settings - PINE64 - https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php?title=...N_Settings
        PinePhone Carrier Support - PINE64 - https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php?title=...er_Support

T-MOBILE, NOT VERIZON NOR AT&T
        I only found T-Mobile (through the company's representative) to claim compatibility.
        Contradicting what the links above may say, a representative at AT&T said its network does NOT support the PinePhone.
        Therefore, I excluded MVNOs that only work with AT&T: Consumer Cellular, SimpleMobile, and TracPhone.
        I welcome comments contrary to the AT&T rep.'s claims.

CANDIDATES
I list these in economical order.
(1) US Mobile 878-205-0088 - 24/7
-$5/mo: unlimited 2500 min/msg 500MB/data with hard cap.
-SIM card: $4 cost waived. I signed up for my account on US Mobile's website.
        US Mobile needs to educate its representatives. A wrongly entered APN (using lower case instead of upper case) caused US Mobile to flag the PP (PPP in my case) as "non-compatible" and "an embedded network module."
        Only after my *fourth* phone call -- after transferring my account -- did I receive a return call from a supervisor, Daud Navin. (Two other supers had tried to reach me when I was unavailable.) He informed me of the following, critical capitalization.
Settings --> Cellular Network --> SIMs --> Modify APNs --> Add APN:- PWG  (PWG MUST BE CAPITAL)

(2)  Red Pocket (USA)                        1-888-993-3888 Text (Mon-Sun 5 AM - 9 PM PST
Red Pocket for $5/mo gives 500 min/text/MB of talk/text/data, thus matching US Mobile on price EXCEPT a year is pre-paid.
Carriers: T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon
Rep. said that I could NOT have a temp # to test phone's functionality.
"Compatibility does not guarantee functionality? I asked. Yes," said the rep.
Temp # to test phone's functionality, requires setting up an account. If working, I can close the first account and transfer its payment to a second account.
SIM card costs nothing. Go to www.redpocket.com, click on activate SIM and open, or have opened, an account.
I list these in economical order.
(3)  Tello (USA)                                    1-866-377-0294
Tello for $6/mo gives 100/unlimited/500MB of talk/text/data: $1 more for 1/5 of the talk.
Above limit, data shifts  to 2G network and slow data is at no charge.
Carriers: Only T-Mobile
Temp # to test phone's functionality, followed by transfer is possible.
Pinephone is "fully compatible". (The rep. said that he knew of some phones that were only partially compatible.)
SIM card costs $2 on tello.com
(4)  Mint Mobile (USA)                        800-683-7392 - available 7 days a week 5AM-7PM PST - $15/mo
Mint Mobile for $15/mo gives unlimited talk/text and 5G data.
Carriers: Only T-Mobile
Temp # to test phone's functionality, followed by transfer is possible.
SIM card costs nothing upon creation; upon activation, the billing cycle starts.

CANDIDATE, AWKWARD (but see below): sales staff did not convey competence.
(5)  Ting (USA)                                    1-855-846-4389
BoostMobile, Not Ting, for which a web search gave me the phone number above.
Neither of the two representatives with whom I spoke (on two distinct calls) inspired confidence.
All plans have unlimited talk+text.
$8.33/mo 1GB, one year contract total $100/yr - not including fees/taxes
Carriers: T-Mobile, AT&T; BoostM. has its own towers and shares towers
US Mobile, via T-Mobile, won't support Pinephone Pro b/c of its "stand-alone" modem - https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?...#pid118379
        "FWIW, Ting works fine on one of my Pinephones."
Further details on Ting follow in the next link.
Will a Pinephone Pro (Explorer) work with TING - https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=17984
The thread has both pro and con.
PRO: Using Ting resolved of OP's Q.
"... So you see the TING restrictions and also the other channel restrictions.  Also Ting now requires VoLTE even if the other carrier does not, adding another exclusion for some devices. // ... // So far, TING has been worthwhile.  They have better service and friendlier support than any other carrier I have used..."
CON: Other posts suggest Ting is not reliably compatible. (See link in second quotation.)
"i tested three pinphone imei numbers. beta edition imei says following, "Your phone is compatible!". and two says "no". if these are correct, ting has arbitrary blocks!"
"...pinephone pro uses same modem chip than pinephone, e.g. eg25-g. i put pp's imei number to a website https://www.tingmobile.com/mobile/check_device , and it says "Sorry, this phone is not compatible with Ting"."
"TING says in their fine print that they use both T-Mobile and Sprint networks (the two companies merged, but their networks aren't fully combined yet, and T-Mobile has the unique 1700MHz band in North America, which may mean their two networks might never be fully combined). So, whatever phone you use has to be capable of supporting both T-Mobile and Sprint as it may flip-flop between the two networks while on TING."
"From user feedback, looks like work with TING/T-Mobile bit not TING/Sprint."
The last quotation is from a moderator.


HIGHER PRICE FOR LESS DATA THAN MINT MOBILE:
(6)  Patriot Mobile (USA T-Mobile)    972-PATRIOT 972-728-7468 - USA based sales and support staff... Weekdays: 8a.m. - 8:30p.m. CST - $35, 3GB
$25, unlimited talk/text, 1GB, no contract
Carriers: T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon
I did not ask about a temp # to test phone's functionality.


Please, do your own research to confirm my findings.

Too, please post additional details and/or more MVNOs as you can.

Arch Linux - How do I terminate a running app? I assume that if several apps are loaded then perhaps there is not sufficient RAM for the next one to open.

Last summer the keyboard I was using with my PinePhone got very hot on the underside and stopped taking charge and stopped charging the PinePhone. I finally got round to ordering a new logic board for the keyboard and fitted it a couple of days ago. Charging seems to work now as it did before last years overheating event.

I noticed that the new board got quite hot whilst charging with a standard 2.1 A phone charger. Besides drilling holes in the keyboard case is there a simple way of improving cooling to the board (and where is the question mark when the phone is set to Swedish layout)

When I bought my PineBook Pro, I formatted the emmc and installed postmarket os, but recently, wanting to use an external monitor, I thought I would try the kernel at https://github.com/megous/linux. Cloning the repository failed, probably from running out of hdd space, but I noticed there were pre-compiled kernels. I grabbed kernel 6.4 for pbp, and followed the instructions in the readme. I also added an entry to the extlinux.conf. reboot. Came up beautifully on the external monitor, but without networking. I then ran lsmod, and saw that there were no modules present.

ls /lib/modules/6.4.0-rc5-00791-g75b3f7ec5825-dirty/kernel/ shows no modules.
ls -l /lib/modules/6.4.0-rc5-00791-g75b3f7ec5825-dirty/kernel/source is a link to /workspace/megous.com/orangepi-pc/linux-6.4.
which of course is not on my machine.

What am I missing?

I posted this in the PinePhone forum by accident.

I am not sure if the PinePhone Pro uses a different modem, i.e. its "stand-alone modem" instead of a "phone modem'.

If you would be kind enough to check my post,

US Mobile, via T-Mobile's "partially compatible" network, won't support Pinephone Pro - https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?...#pid118371

I would be grateful.

SOLVED.
PLEASE, SEE THE LINK ABOVE FOR THE SIMPLE FIX.

Hello! 
I am new to Pine64 - have a Pinephone Beta and have finally taken it out of the box...this community is unbelievably rich. I would like to register as a developer but get an error message when selecting "register"....any helpful input would be welcomed. 

https://www.pine64.org/gettings-started/     [[[at the bottom of the page DevZone sign up]]] 

Not Found
The requested URL was not found on this server.

Apache/2.4.38 (Debian) Server at devzone.pine64.org Port 80

thanks in advance --