Current state of the art OS comparison

[Cree]

Okay all, time to revisit this question.
The current leaders are:

Mobian
Manjaro
Arch

Please advise on your most recent experience with each and draw comparisons, ranking the one you like best. Try to compare the most recent releases.
Thanks!

[lat]

Manjaro I test-drove 2020-12-17:
- In default install, incoming calls/sms only vibrate; not immediately obvious how to turn on ringtone sound
- Modem disappeared within minutes, and didn't re-appear on reboot.  This was a show stopper for me.

Mobian
+ significant advantage over others on 2020-12-17 was how well the camera worked and the application to view images.  This got broken 2020-12-19, supposedly because of the recent libtiff update.
- I'd prefer that ssh server was intalled and active by default.  I make a huge use of ssh'ing to PinePhone from laptop, and I like ssh to work out-of-the-box just like in other distros.
- Occasions when modem becomes unavailable I encountered too.
+ Some nice applications pre-installed, but some others call for immediate removal (e.g. flashlight whose function is available from system bar, unneeded games).
- I have all the reasons to expect Mobian to be better than the other distros, but in multiple attempts of practical use it has come out inferior.

ArchLinux
is the winner and my daily driver.  A bit surprising given so much fewer people working on it.  Biggest current drawbacks:
- The phone doesn't conveniently notify me about missed calls and new sms.  LEDs are not used at all!   Takes too many actions just to see if I have a missed call/sms: (1) press power button to get to locked screen; (2) slide up; (3) enter password & click 'Unlock'; (4) click on system bar to see if any notifications.  This could be avoided by a simple LED notification like in other distros.
- Camera has not worked well yet.
- Ringtone keeps playing for 1-2 seconds after the incoming call is connected - I can hear caller's voice overlapping with ringtone.
+ Updates are fast from a nearby mirror and command line.

[dukla2000]

Mobian

My banker. This was for sure the first release to be genuinely PinePhone specific as just about any others are concerned with an installed base of non-PinePhones which I figure has to compromise progress for the PP. Unlike @lat I have yet to get the flashlight working from the status bar but like @lat I have a list of applications that I immediately remove after any new installation - geary (I am using evolution), fractal (not using, am using telegram), the games and gnome-software (which I find exceeding irksome with its checks for updates which I don't need - I am happy with apt). All of which I realise is purely preference and certainly need to be read in the context that this is my first, and still preferred, starting point.

Manjaro

Never tried it on PP (Did try it once on my RockPro64 and could not get it to boot properly so moved on.)

Arch

Do love the bleeding edge - 5.10 kernel already, proper firefox rather than -ESR, telegram v2.4.7 that supports voice & video calling. Sadly for me not yet on PP - can't get my front camera functioning at the moment on any release. Did help me debug that my intermittent PP speaker was a loose connection though. The downside (with the bleeding edge, possibly) is I have a current problem with mp3 playback that means I have to download and play podcasts with mpv as lollypop can't cope.

Mobian is the release that meant I could leave my Android at home, Arch is exciting.

Overall my humble opinion is worried about phosh: so far it seems to be the easiest PP functional environment to deploy. For sure it deserves kudos for chatty and calls. But when a simple alternative emerges (I have played with Openbox and LXDE a bit on my PP but don't have enough time to get it all right - I suspect something Wayland based will be easier to slot into Mobian or Arch?) I will not be sorry to say farewell. Again hard to moan if Purism are focused on Librem rather than PP, even though arguably there are more PP running it?

[p1trson]

So the generic answer on the thread question is - depends on your definition of "daily driver". Eearlier it was Mobian for me, but then I've switched back to pmOS again (because of annoying problems with sleep in Mobian), and it was MUCH more stable (with sleep etc). So basic functionality became much better on pmOS for me (which IMHO is the prerequisite for "daily driver").

I will give a most recent Mobian build a try to compare.

btw - to have a proper poll you should include more distributions.

[ryo]

The big reason why I'm using Mobian is because this seems to be the only distro with a Japanese locale.
Now that I finally got fcitx and mozc working, Pinephone is now the only phone I take with me, and just leave all my other phones (Android, iOS, Ubuntu Touch, garake, and even Windows Phone) at home.

At this point, the only thing I had to sacrifice is not having LINE on my phone.
But I never make voice calls when I'm not home, so it makes no difference on that front.
Only if Chromium would have worked, it would have solved the text side of LINE.

[anty]

I also went for Mobian. It is rather stable, Terminal works great, Camera is acceptable, and - unlike the most - it makes phone calls, AND has good sound.

[afigegoznaet]

2 weeks in using Mobian as the daily driver and counting.
Basically, the only thing that's missing is a proper messenger app.

[ryo]

I went to sightseeing in Kyoto during the weekend (which is why I didn't post anything during that time), and I tried to use the Pinephone as a daily driver while out of reach of a wall with a charger.
I had to take 2 portable batteries with me in order to have it last 1 day of non-stop walking in between the crowds (there were foreign tourists, pretty much all of which were Chinese) and overcrowded buses.

However, I noticed something that reminded me to Linux laptops from 12 years ago: screen off doesn't actually turn the screen off.
It will leave a slight bit of screen turned on (especially noticable in the sun when I had to forced shutdown the phone multiple times).
I guess that's what results in the heavy battery usage dispite doing absolutely nothing?

[dukla2000]

...
Please advise on your most recent experience with each and draw comparisons, ranking the one you like best. Try to compare the most recent releases.
...

I update whichever dist I am running daily so my release is contemporaneous with these notes.

I have been running Mobian predominantly the past 10 days which has reminded me of some points I missed in my initial post in this thread. As before my vote remains with Mobian and I can only compare Arch:
1) Sound in Mobian I have no problems with - in Arch lollypop hiccups then crashes and broadly cannot play a song. (mpv hiccups and continues)
2) Mobian encrypted disk has been fault free for me since I installed it - f2fs in Arch is fine
3) LED indicators (well flashing blue for incoming messages etc) work OOB in Mobian - in Arch I had to setup after each boot and last I looked seem to have broken (I was setting a flash for eMMC activity, couldn't find the way to get it for incoming messages)
4) Arch has an intermittent freeze problem that seems to be triggered when plugging in/out the charger cable, depending on the state of the screenlock at the time (but I am really not sure and can't reproduce it at will) - I don't have this kind of issue on Mobian.)

[kent]

Recently purchased the Manjaro Community Edition phone (3/32GB Convergence pkg).  Out of the box it had problems w/ the update repos and voice call quality was terrible, so I flashed Manjaro/Phosh Beta4 to the emmc and am using that as the current base.

Manjaro Phosh Beta 4:

-Voice Calling: Working pretty well. Audio quality is much improved over previous versions.
-SMS: Working great. No MMS support,
-Contacts: Haven't used much. Adding a test contact worked well.
-Terminal: Works great.
-Firefox: Seems to be working well. Only issue so far is difficulty switching out of full-screen mode.
-Notepad: Trying to save-as fails and starts doing really weird stuff in the file selector and creates a dialog loop. (this issue seems to occur in other apps when they request a filename input). Normal editing and saving of existing documents works well.
-Nemo: Navigates, creates folders, creates blank documents. Text documents and images open in correct apps. Seems to work.
-Maps: Basemaps and satellite overlays render well. Haven't used navigation on the road, but position indicator seems to consistently appear a couple hundred yards from the device's actual location.
-MegaPixels: Some issues. When first loading, the main camera is selected and display appears monochromatic. Trying to take a picture in this state will cause the app to freeze. The selfie camera takes pictures as expected. Switching to the selfie camera and then back to the the main camera results in a long pause after which the main camera initializes correctly. Once this occurs, the program seems to work as expected; but when re-running the app after closing it the camera takes quite a long time to initialize after the app itself loads. Image preview button does not work. Folder view button works. (The issues w/ main camera appeared in Beta 3, the app works better in Beta 2)
-ImageViewer: Doesn't initially launch in the pictures directory and there doesn't appear to be a way to set the default location. Viewing a picture file with Nemo launches Image Viewer to show the image and also displays contents of the directory containing the selected image. Image rotate works well.
-Sound Recorder: Records and saves audio files. The "open" file button does not appear unless there is an audio file present and selected. The "open" file button doesn't work; the file selector behaves much like notepad. The "delete" button briefly pops up a confirmation dialog which appears to automatically select "OK" and then proceeds to immediately delete the file.
-Software: No problems browsing the list of available software. System update alerts are issued and the automated system update process seems to work well.

Random Observations: Overall, the system seems quite stable. The Phosh UI takes a bit of getting used to; Plasma is initially more intuitive. The soft keyboard seems to be missing a way to generate "F" key output (F1-F12). Also, as a system feature, auto-rotate would be very nice but seems to be missing.