What OS to choose for my PinePhone ?

[PhiletJosie]

I never had a smartphone, neither a mobile phone, and I'm eagerly waiting for the pinephone.
I do not know clearly what OS I should use. Here are my needs:
 - properly working phone and SMS
- easy synchronisation of contacts, agenda and bookmarks with my Ubuntu computers
- a map application with the ability to load maps for offline use, for weeks long mountain walks
- a good web browser, ideally Firefox, as it is my default browser and I already synchronise bookmarks with it
- ability to take photos

I'm thinking of using UBport, but I do not know if it will answer all my needs. And what about Pure OS, made by Purism ? Will it be possible to install it in the PinePhone ?

Thanks for any help.

[tophneal]

I can't speak to the rest, though UBports should meet most of your needs, but from what I recall someone asking on reddit there is not currently a port of Purism in the works for the PinePhone. It may be possible to run it, but it will require some work to get it to boot and make sure everything's working.

[bcnaz]

There are some likely good OS's listed here under Pine phone OS posts.
I would pick from that list, as those are the ones most closely associated with the actual Pine phone.
I am not sure if the Pine phone uses a stand alone GPS that relies on satellite reference or like many Google phones use cell tower positioning. ( ? )
In which case if you do not have cell reception you cannot use the maps.

As far as using 'Pure' OS, That probably would not be possible 'out of the box' as they use different hardware. It may be "possible" but would require some work.

I would suggest picking 3 or 4 OS's that look promising and load them on separate sd cards and take them for test drives.
You do not want to load any OS to your eMMC until you feel fairly certain it is THE one you want.

***
EDIT:
SO it appears the Pine phone does have its own GPS receiver.
IT also appears to be able to communicate with every known GPS satellite system on earth.
SO it mostly depends on the software for possibilities , I 'think' there are some 'free GPS software' programs available.
BUT hopefully the developers will incorporate them, probably a little over the head of most 'consumers'..!

***

UPDATE: (December 13, 2019)
The phone modem and the GPS are integrated together, So disabling one disables both :-(
Perhaps a future Pine phone will be different ? ?
***
note about my experience with 'Pure OS' :
When I installed it on a Dell laptop, I was able to download updates while installing, using both the onboard Ethernet, and a generic usb/wifi dongle.
But after the installation, the Pure OS saw neither of them... ?
So obviously it 'could' work with those devices, BUT, It Would take extra 'work'
***

[lispy]

Sailfish is very mature and has a rather huge App ecosystem for a Linux OS. The Interface os LuneOS is really lovely.

[letarg]

Jolly or Haiku

[PhiletJosie]

Thanks a lot for all your answers.
I did not know it was possible to test the OS from a SD card with a Smartphone (as with the Raspberry Pi), it seems a very good idea, and probably the best thing to do according to your answers !

[Luke]

I think that most people will be choosing between Sailfish OS and Ubuntu Touch, but some people who really like Plasma mobile will likely decide on running PostmarketOS.
I also have a feeling like LuneOS will be quite popular because its a throw-back to the good ol' days of WebOS.
Anyways, the key word here is choice

[Neat]

To be clear, not all of SailfishOS is open source (keyboard, UI, and Android support are all proprietary) and their full support is limited to only a few EU countries. That said, they’ve been catching up their open source base called Nemo which personally i like a lot because it looks more like my old Nokia n9 MeeGo and it can use the OpenRepos store (so can SailfishOS).

Just making sure people knew what they would be getting into if they went with Jolla.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[hockleyj]

Beyond cycling the top 4 OS's  to check them all out,  the preference for me is KDE based distro, and hopefully someone  gets the itch to make an Arch/KDE based OS, somewhere down the line.

The proprietary aspects of Sailfish give me pause, though still worth trying out, look at the time between when you get the braveheart edition until the next version in march-ish next year as a time to try everything out.

[varuna]

Beyond cycling the top 4 OS's  to check them all out,  the preference for me is KDE based distro, and hopefully someone  gets the itch to make an Arch/KDE based OS, somewhere down the line.

The proprietary aspects of Sailfish give me pause, though still worth trying out, look at the time between when you get the braveheart edition until the next version in march-ish next year as a time to try everything out.

About this matter i will ask
1) the future model of 2020 will be sent with a chosen OS on it . Right ? So what will be the one easy-to-line with my ubuntu 18 ?
2) Probably i will choose ubuntu touch . And buy it in march if possible , will it be 150 $ still ?