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My short experience with Manjaro Plasma Mobile - Printable Version

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My short experience with Manjaro Plasma Mobile - anonymous - 12-25-2022

Hello

My very first Pinephone became almost unusable a few days ago, some parts of the touchscreen no longer worked, I had to use a second Pinephone left as is, bought 2 years ago with Manjaro ARM KDE (Plasma Mobile) installed by default.

At first, I quickly realized that the battery couldn't be recharged. I tried to recharge it for hours but I had to use the battery of my first Pinephone to be able to power it on anew.

Secondly, I had no mobile data whereas my mobile operator is the biggest one in France and I was very surprised because I had mobile data support two years earlier with Manjaro and Phosh. I could call but the dialer was broken, I often had to reboot to make it work anew, I couldn't press keys during calls for audiotel systems (i.e "Press zero to choose this option" etc). The SMS barely worked, there was a problem of refresh, I had to restart Spacebar to see them. When I was receiving a call, sometimes it didn't ring, I only saw the dialog with "Accept" and "Decline" buttons. It was impossible to select a language for the system, I was stuck with American English (which is obviously not my mother tongue).

Thirdly, I tried to perform the system upgrade by using the GUI but after hours, the tasks remained stuck at 50% and then it complained about a corrupted package. Retrying gave the same result.

Fourthly, I tried to do it in command line with pacman, it started well but I got a black screen with a message talking about a broken session manager that became unreadable after a rotation of the screen. When rebooting, I just saw the KDE logo and it didn't go any further.

As it's Sunday, I can't buy a microSD card, nobody can contact me. The only suggested solution consists in buying one, which I will do tomorrow in order to install Tow-Boot and probably install a working Linux distribution. If anybody has a better suggestion in the meantime, it will be very welcome.

By the way, it's better than nothing, the first time I used a Pinephone, it was unable to boot whereas this second Pinephone was able to do a very few things.

RE: My short experience with Manjaro Plasma Mobile - Zebulon Walton - 12-25-2022

I've been using my Pinephone as my main cell phone for about a year and a half now and have found it is best to keep a "known to work" SD card handy in case the eMMC installation gets frelled. It's also a pretty good idea not to update your installation once it's in good working order, or if you do updates be sure to make image backups of the eMMC periodically. Remember the Pinephone software is in the alpha or beta stage of development, depending on distribution, so things will break.

RE: My short experience with Manjaro Plasma Mobile - acrux - 12-25-2022

PinePhone is not intended to use as the device for people to contact you Big Grin
Usual procedure after getting it, is to replace the existing usually outdated software with fresh one. If Manjaro Plasma Mobile, then the latest is beta 14. Or choose another according your preferences. Be prepared, that there is no 100% working distributions for PinePhone Big Grin

RE: My short experience with Manjaro Plasma Mobile - anonymous - 12-26-2022

Hello

I installed Tow-Boot and I tried an installer of another distribution but it didn't work, I get a black screen. By the way, I have used the Pinephone as a daily driver for two years.

RE: My short experience with Manjaro Plasma Mobile - Uturn - 12-27-2022

I do not use my pinephone as a main phone (my impression is that pine64 is far behind the big producers in terms of build quality). So, I was wondering, if you exchange screens on your PinePhones? I understand this might be tricky tinkering work, and of course it is a pity to take a conserved pinphone out of the box to realize it bricks itself at updating. Maybe send a complaint to the factory, too?
Flashing to a SDcard helps me often, but then these flashed cards are not too reliable either. I flashed quite a number of plasma mobile developer editions and very often ended with a black screen (but could go back to a working emmc system)

RE: My short experience with Manjaro Plasma Mobile - _radv_ - 12-27-2022

(12-26-2022, 12:09 PM)anonymous Wrote: Hello

I installed Tow-Boot and I tried an installer of another distribution but it didn't work, I get a black screen. By the way, I have used the Pinephone as a daily driver for two years.

I had a problem very much like that (i.e. stuck on the K& gear logo). I finally got it to work when I got a new microSD card. I flashed JumpDrive to it from a different device. When inserted into the Pine Phone Jumpdrive booted from the card, and I was able to able to get archlinux-pinephone-phosh-20220729.img flashed to and running from the eMMC. So, that's nice, now I can turn on and use the phone; still have other trouble, though.

RE: My short experience with Manjaro Plasma Mobile - mruser1 - 01-01-2023

Code:
pacman -Syu
was the first and the last command I run on the shipped manjaro install. It seems to be a natural starter command for more of us. I can imagine it is not meant to work, however I do not remember ever being warned about it. I am finding this issue after fact. What could be done to help users avoid this pitfall?
(12-27-2022, 11:36 AM)_radv_ Wrote:
(12-26-2022, 12:09 PM)anonymous Wrote: Hello

I installed Tow-Boot and I tried an installer of another distribution but it didn't work, I get a black screen. By the way, I have used the Pinephone as a daily driver for two years.

I had a problem very much like that (i.e. stuck on the K& gear logo). I finally got it to work when I got a new microSD card. I flashed JumpDrive to it from a different device. When inserted into the Pine Phone Jumpdrive booted from the card, and I was able to able to get archlinux-pinephone-phosh-20220729.img flashed to and running from the eMMC. So, that's nice, now I can turn on and use the phone; still have other trouble, though.

This jumpdrive trick was new to me, thanks for the pointer! Let me just leave a link here to https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Jumpdrive to make it more explicit.

RE: My short experience with Manjaro Plasma Mobile - anonymous - 01-06-2023

Rather use Tow-Boot than Jumpdrive.

RE: My short experience with Manjaro Plasma Mobile - _radv_ - 01-06-2023

(01-06-2023, 02:10 AM)anonymous Wrote: Rather use Tow-Boot than Jumpdrive.


Did you yet it working?

RE: My short experience with Manjaro Plasma Mobile - anonymous - 02-28-2023

(01-06-2023, 07:28 AM)_radv_ Wrote:
(01-06-2023, 02:10 AM)anonymous Wrote: Rather use Tow-Boot than Jumpdrive.


Did you yet it working?

I stopped using Manjaro and Tow-Boot works very well with Mobian.