What Pine Phone Operating System For A Daily Driver?

[Lousy Fisherman]

Mobian and Arch are the only ones that work consistently.
My preference is Arch.

I tried Manjaro with Plasma. I am not sure whether it is Manjaro or Plasma, but one of them is not ready.

YMMV
LF

[calinb]

my phone program became very unstable and I must toggle the modem off and on to obtain or re-establish a cellular network connection

I had a similar problem last morning after updating.
I solved that by going to Settings → Mobile → Network, then turn "Automatic" off, and back on.
All of the sudden, I got 4G back.

Thank your very much for this tip, ryo! I'll try it next time I'm in town. (I have no cellular coverage at home.)

[Zoomzit]

Mobian and Arch are the only ones that work consistently.
My preference is Arch.

I tried Manjaro with Plasma. I am not sure whether it is Manjaro or Plasma, but one of them is not ready.

YMMV
LF

It's Plasma. Manjaro with Phosh is working pretty well. About as good as Arch (maybe slightly better). Love the way Plasma is looking, but they have a long ways to go.

[kern707]

My PinePhone came with Manjaro pre-installed.

The pre-installed release was a bit shaky I must admit, but it gets better with every update - and so far the Manjaro-arm team came up with multiple updates in a relative short time span, right now Manjaro-arm on beta5 is far better and smoother then what came with my PinePhone on December 2020 - still a lot need to be improved, but it is going in the right direction

[muppeth]

I keep bouncing between Manjaro and Mobian.
As I use Arch on my laptop and Debian on my servers I am familiar with both. I would always go for arch (arch like) on desktops because of the bleeding edge software in comparison with debian. Not sure which strategy to choose for the phone. On one hand I want to use it as daily driver asap on the other have all features and some stability.

At the moment for me the biggest issue with Arch/Manjaro is lack of encryption support right off the bat. However as much as it does work on Mobian I run into lack of software/lack of AUR which reminds me why running debian on desktop isn't best option (for me of course). I do notice Manjaro (phosh) being snappier and somewhat more stable then Debian, but lack of encryption is a thing (perhaps the difference in speed comes form the encryption).
I wonder what others are using and if they do use their phone as daily driver. I want to make the decission asap so I can focus on building up my setup instrad of distro hopping.

[7horns7eyes]

Almost every OS i try till now have basic issues- i call but not call really. I call but who answer hear me but i don`t even understand that call is answered.  hahahah 
Then you try to add some phone number from calls to address book- no add, no copy- only "delete". To import from .vcf is real adventure in some OS-es.
This software not make PinePhone a phone yet.  And yes- this is the basis.

So if someone know OS that work like regular OS in every(not linux) phone- (just to be like normal phone that work), let us know.
We must start whit not matter which OS - just one to make this phone "real phone".
Till then we don`t know who call us, did we call, did anybody call us at all. We can`t make calls at all, and so on..


I edit post now because no much time before...

Idea is:
1. "phone/calls" to be connected with "phone book" - this 2 programs to work together.
2. To can add, edit, delete from "calls" program to "phone book" program.
3. As i write up it need when we call it to call really(it work but not stable), also who answer hear us, but we even don`t know that we talk at all.. Also when someone call us phone just ""sleep" and do nothing.
We all are here because we turn off wifi or bluetooth in andr@id, but it not turn it of in real, but spy us.
It is the same -we call, but it not call.
When we share idea of this phone to our friends they say it is not a phone- not work like phone yet. So it is critical very soon all this to be done to work like it must, and to be done soon. Bade fame is not a good thing.

When we end this road we will be ready for A Daily Driver.

[The3DmaN]

I keep bouncing between Manjaro and Mobian.
As I use Arch on my laptop and Debian on my servers I am familiar with both. I would always go for arch (arch like) on desktops because of the bleeding edge software in comparison with debian. Not sure which strategy to choose for the phone. On one hand I want to use it as daily driver asap on the other have all features and some stability.

At the moment for me the biggest issue with Arch/Manjaro is lack of encryption support right off the bat. However as much as it does work on Mobian I run into lack of software/lack of AUR which reminds me why running debian on desktop isn't best option (for me of course). I do notice Manjaro (phosh) being snappier and somewhat more stable then Debian, but lack of encryption is a thing (perhaps the difference in speed comes form the encryption).
I wonder what others are using and if they do use their phone as daily driver. I want to make the decission asap so I can focus on building up my setup instrad of distro hopping.

Arch has a script for full disk encryption now:

https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/ar...-installer

Almost every OS i try till now have basic issues- i call but not call really. I call but who answer hear me but i don`t even understand that call is answered.  hahahah 
Then you try to add some phone from calls to address book- no add, no copy- only "delete".
This software not make PinePhone a phone yet.  

So if someone know OS that work like regular OS in every phone- just to be normal phone that work, let us know.
We must start whit not matter which OS - just one to make this phone "real phone".
Till then we don`t know who call us, did we call, did anybody call us at all. We can`t make calls and so on..

Arch has been the best and most stable for me so far. When it comes to calling I have no issue receiving spam calls, I get them all the time and they come through fine and clear unfortunately :-)

[muppeth]

I keep bouncing between Manjaro and Mobian.
As I use Arch on my laptop and Debian on my servers I am familiar with both. I would always go for arch (arch like) on desktops because of the bleeding edge software in comparison with debian. Not sure which strategy to choose for the phone. On one hand I want to use it as daily driver asap on the other have all features and some stability.

At the moment for me the biggest issue with Arch/Manjaro is lack of encryption support right off the bat. However as much as it does work on Mobian I run into lack of software/lack of AUR which reminds me why running debian on desktop isn't best option (for me of course). I do notice Manjaro (phosh) being snappier and somewhat more stable then Debian, but lack of encryption is a thing (perhaps the difference in speed comes form the encryption).
I wonder what others are using and if they do use their phone as daily driver. I want to make the decission asap so I can focus on building up my setup instrad of distro hopping.

Arch has a script for full disk encryption now:

https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/ar...-installer

Yeah I'm already on it for last couple of days, building up my portable sysadmin terminal / smartphone daily driver. Thanks for the tip though. Hope others will find it easier. I did have my phosh restarting on me few times lately. Not sure what causes it. I need to get familiar with all the inner-works before.

[calinb]

<snip>
I did have my phosh restarting on me few times lately. Not sure what causes it. I need to get familiar with all the inner-works before.

I've had the phosh crashing (or maybe it's xwayland), requiring re-logon with Manjaro, Arch and Mobian since I received my Manjaro CE phone late last year. Sometimes the entire OS goes down and reboots. It has always been more likely under high memory loads and it seems to occur much less frequently on Mobian now that swap space is implemented.

The other problem that does not seem to get much attention in these forums is display dimming and then blanking briefly for no reason--even when all screen blanking and power savings feature are disabled. It might be a power distribution problem, because it seems more likely to occur when I'm running with the convergence dock (powered up via USB-C) and a DVD drive, but it can happen anytime. (I often dedicate my PinePhone to Handbrake tasks which, quite sadly, it performs much more effectively than phone-oriented functions. ) My battery also gradually depletes when I'm running my Handbrake application and hardware with the dock so I ordered a 65 W charger/power supply that will hopefully arrive today.

Finally, the touch screen zones near the screen corners for buttons in various aps are very hard to activate sometimes. They often require multiple attempts and taps. The keyboard toggle in the lower right corner is a very problematic example. I know I'm not missing what should be the activation zone most of the time I have trouble. There is something else causing the problem.

[kqlnut]

The other problem that does not seem to get much attention in these forums is display dimming and then blanking briefly for no reason--even when all screen blanking and power savings feature are disabled. It might be a power distribution problem, because it seems more likely to occur when I'm running with the convergence dock (powered up via USB-C) and a DVD drive, but it can happen anytime.

For me this happens all the time when I'm using the phone in landscape mode and it took me too long to figure out it was because my hand is covering the proximity sensor ...