closing apps rather than leaving them running (phosh)

[lordearl]

Has anyone managed to actually close apps rather than leaving them running on phosh?

Ie. if you open an app (say "settings") then the only option is to minimise it and have it sitting in the home screen, which then moves all the other app icons to a lower position in the home screen

I understand that it is useful to be able to have a few applications open for ease of multi-tasking, but is there a way to force stop an app so it does not sit on the home screen after it has been opened?

[kqlnut]

Has anyone managed to actually close apps rather than leaving them running on phosh?

Ie. if you open an app (say "settings") then the only option is to minimise it and have it sitting in the home screen, which then moves all the other app icons to a lower position in the home screen

I understand that it is useful to be able to have a few applications open for ease of multi-tasking, but is there a way to force stop an app so it does not sit on the home screen after it has been opened?

You can swipe the window up to close it while you are in the overview. Some apps will keep running in the background though, so if you want to make sure the app closes completely instead of just closing the window, you would have to kill the process in the terminal (e.g. with "pkill $app" where $app is the name of the app's command).

[parry]

Has anyone managed to actually close apps rather than leaving them running on phosh?

Ie. if you open an app (say "settings") then the only option is to minimise it and have it sitting in the home screen, which then moves all the other app icons to a lower position in the home screen

I understand that it is useful to be able to have a few applications open for ease of multi-tasking, but is there a way to force stop an app so it does not sit on the home screen after it has been opened?

You can swipe the window up to close it while you are in the overview. Some apps will keep running in the background though, so if you want to make sure the app closes completely instead of just closing the window, you would have to kill the process in the terminal (e.g. with "pkill $app" where $app is the name of the app's command).

I was quite surprised to find that there was no apparent way of exiting say a Settings attempt etc without  killing the process. At least manjaro plasma has a setting for this.  Or perhaps I don't understand something about manjaro phosh. I continue to be, shall we say, a little surprised at the lack of fundamental functionality with some of these platforms. Are we, the people who paid for these phones, the community that is supposed to fix these issues ? Could some kind person please explain this business model, exactly what we as customers and community of the platform should expect. De minimis  shouldn't the originators compile a list of known issues that they know of ?  The git repos dont contain this information.  Look I am not trying to be a pain, just can someone explain what we should expect when we put our hard-earned funds down for a device that we hope will provide us some privacy. I truly don't understand the statements that (I paraphrase) "you better know linux before you buy this phone" and how that maps to a environment where truly basic functionality like screen brightness, being able to switch off or exit an application is not available.  Please target all invective at me as long as you provide the answers. Thanks, parry

[arcanemachine]

Are we, the people who paid for these phones, the community that is supposed to fix these issues?

Yes, that is exactly the case.

Pine64 doesn't make Phosh (it was made by Purism, the company that makes Librem phones and computers), they don't make any of the distros (all community efforts). They don't make any of the software. They provide that hardware, and that's pretty much it.

[kqlnut]

I was quite surprised to find that there was no apparent way of exiting say a Settings attempt etc without  killing the process. At least manjaro plasma has a setting for this.  Or perhaps I don't understand something about manjaro phosh.

What do you mean by that? There are some apps where it makes sense that they keep running in the background. Geary is one example, even if you close the window, you will receive notifications about new e-mail. "Killing the process" may sound drastic, but the kill command by default is just letting the process know to please shut down, just like pressing "exit" or whatever within the app itself. If the process doesn't respond to that, the kill command provides options for more drastic measures too (terminating the process without allowing it to gracefully shut down), but that's not the default.

As for background info, good places to look are the PinePhone wiki (for hardware) and the Mobian wiki (for software/Phosh). You will also find distro specific info on their respective release pages and bug trackers. As already mentioned, this is solely a community effort. You as a customer and we as a community can expect to make whatever we want out of the hardware we bought. Which is in one way a lot more than other phone manufacturers offer, but of course also a lot less comfortable (in this early stage at least).

[parry]

Are we, the people who paid for these phones, the community that is supposed to fix these issues?

Yes, that is exactly the case.

Pine64 doesn't make Phosh (it was made by Purism, the company that makes Librem phones and computers), they don't make any of the distros (all community efforts). They don't make any of the software. They provide that hardware, and that's pretty much it.

Thanks arcanemachine, i kind of get it. But to be honest, I have never seen a program where someone just builds hardware and hopes for the best. I would expect at least the group that is building and selling the hardware to provide some structure that tracks bugs in the software, that recognizes some of the problems and mitigates what they triage to be the worst ones. Otherwise success will be distant, because it will take effort to develop a critical mass of people who are guiding customers with clarity.  Some examples. Starting with a new phone, I could not see anything because the screen turned the brightness down.  I had to ssh into the device and try and figure out how to fix it. There was no data, except for an individual providing a canned profile on how to do so and I think that it was an update of the SW that helped.  But even now, Phosh, Plasma and Mobian only provide a brightness slider when you first install the OS(at least that's what I have found), after that I can't find it. (probably my mistake).  But I am not a complete novice (although I am incompetent).I have been mistaken about some of the versions of the OS's and their UI. Phosh for example minimizes applications but there is no indication of how you turn them off.  Answer: swipe from the bottom when they are minimized -  but why is there no documentation to explain this very simple action?   If we had a list of OS's, applications and functions, and how they behave -  for example a git repo, focused on issues associated with the  various OS's and their foibles, that would be helpful and would speed up the exploration and improvement of these OS's. Having worked on everything from creating materials that go into chips, processes that make them, systems that are built out of them and applications that run on them, I find this separation of HW and SW to be rather eerie.  I clearly don't understand the business model. Making money from HW is very difficult since the process is very capital intensive, especially now, so how is this Hong Kong based manufacturing  operation sustaining itself without connecting to SW ? I'm rather interested in this business model.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine64 provides some history.  Well, that's my 10 cents worth.

[vdicarlo]

>brightness slider

@parry

In Phosh, if you tap the bar at the top that contains the time and some status icons, you should see some options including brightness.

-v

[parry]

Mille grazie tutto funzione ora