The Best Feature of the PinePhone is...

[Dog House Dave]

...the removable battery! ...what a god send ...I've lost count of how many times I've had to take the battery out to get Manjaro Plasma working again ...joking aside, I've only had the phone a week and in that time it's been by far the most used feature of the phone - as Plasma seems to lock up pretty much every time I handle it and never for the same fault twice.

To be fair, part of my problem is my lack of Arch Linux knowledge.  I'm sure it's great when you get to know it, but I really don't have time to learn a new set of commands right now, as it seems to me that Debian has more in common with PowerShell than it does with Arch!

So - can any of you guys recommend a good Debian based OS that I may have a better chance of working with ...I'm by no means a Debian Linux master (as is recommended before buying the PinePhone, so I only have myself to blame) but at least with the amount of Debian I do know, 'll have a fighting chance to work out why the battery needs to be removed again...

...sorry Manjaro, you are very pretty, but I'm a simple man with simple needs ;-)

[ryo]

To me it's the fact that it's not a smartphone that acts like a PC like it's the case with iOS and Android, but rather it's a PC that acts like a smartphone.
Even things that are supposed to be simple like sending files back and forth is way easier with a PinePhone.

On iOS and Android I need to rely on a local Nextcloud server that's not hooked up to the internet to transfer files between phones and PCs, because on Android I need to enable "file transfer" every single time, and it's still not a guarantee it'll work.
And on iOS there's literally no other way if you're both using Linux on your PC, and refuse to update iOS to the latest version (for connecting to an old Mac or Windows PC, I have both just in case).

Meanwhile on PinePhone, I simply add my PC's SSH key to my phone so I can use the "scp" command, and just press the Tab key twice to autofill the correct filename that exists on my phone.

[jlucas]

Hi, a removable battery is indeed a great feature, but it is not necessary if you want to force a shutdown.
If you hold down the power button long enough, it will have the same effect.

If you want something Debian based, I think the best option would be Mobian (It's the only popular Debian based PinePhone OS that I can think of aside from Ubuntu Touch)

[ryo]

To be fair, part of my problem is my lack of Arch Linux knowledge.  I'm sure it's great when you get to know it, but I really don't have time to learn a new set of commands right now, as it seems to me that Debian has more in common with PowerShell than it does with Arch!

So - can any of you guys recommend a good Debian based OS that I may have a better chance of working with ...I'm by no means a Debian Linux master (as is recommended before buying the PinePhone, so I only have myself to blame) but at least with the amount of Debian I do know, 'll have a fighting chance to work out why the battery needs to be removed again...

...sorry Manjaro, you are very pretty, but I'm a simple man with simple needs ;-)

(Sorry, I read over that for some reason.)
Comparing Debian to PowerShell is like comparing a Buddhist temple to a Christian church rather.
The biggest difference between Linux distributions in general are the package manager, and where they store system files in (there are more differences, but these 2 I believe are by far the most important).
PowerShell is a beast of its own with a far higher learning curve (to my own experience at least).

As jlucas said, Mobian is mobile Debian, and Ubuntu Touch is Ubuntu for mobile, therefore Debian-based.
However, Ubuntu Touch is still not daily driver ready for PinePhone.

Taking out battery when whatever device crashes can possibly damage or even brick such device, and is therefore not recommended.
It's a better idea to just hold the power button for over 20 seconds as a much safer alternative.
Because this will still work, no matter how deeply it froze.

[RZ1]

To me it's the fact that it's not a smartphone that acts like a PC like it's the case with iOS and Android, but rather it's a PC that acts like a smartphone.
Even things that are supposed to be simple like sending files back and forth is way easier with a PinePhone.

On iOS and Android I need to rely on a local Nextcloud server that's not hooked up to the internet to transfer files between phones and PCs, because on Android I need to enable "file transfer" every single time, and it's still not a guarantee it'll work.
And on iOS there's literally no other way if you're both using Linux on your PC, and refuse to update iOS to the latest version (for connecting to an old Mac or Windows PC, I have both just in case).

Meanwhile on PinePhone, I simply add my PC's SSH key to my phone so I can use the "scp" command, and just press the Tab key twice to autofill the correct filename that exists on my phone.

Agreed. Being able to transfer files from the phone to PC without workarounds is great. For iPhones I used to use a Python script called "droopy" to do it before eventually writing my own. The idea was you run a bare bones server program on your Linux PC and use Safari as the client to upload/download the files. It's essentially just parsing a POST request and then sending or receiving the file data, but on principle it's a major PITA for something that should be (and now is, thanks to Linux phones) so simple.

[AwHereWeGoAgain]

Still waiting for my phone but I would agree the removable battery is one of the key reasons I bought this phone. Also, the fact you can boot a different linux distro by simply sticking a SD card in has got to be on there as a great feature.

As for Distros, I would suggest letting Manjaro Plasma mature a bit more before trying to use it as a daily driver. I wouldn't consider it even close to reliable or ready yet. They are working on it but like everyone else I would recommend Mobian for the Deb based distro and Manjero Phosh for the Arch side. Note That Manjero Plasma and Manjero Phosh are not the same. Phosh is much more stable from what I hear and depending on your basic needs could possibly be used as a daily. Same for Mobian.

[Dog House Dave]

To be fair, part of my problem is my lack of Arch Linux knowledge.  I'm sure it's great when you get to know it, but I really don't have time to learn a new set of commands right now, as it seems to me that Debian has more in common with PowerShell than it does with Arch!

Comparing Debian to PowerShell is like comparing a Buddhist temple to a Christian church rather.
The biggest difference between Linux distributions in general are the package manager, and where they store system files in (there are more differences, but these 2 I believe are by far the most important).  PowerShell is a beast of its own with a far higher learning curve (to my own experience at least).

I've been using PowerShell for a few years to do basic network fault finding at work - and from the moment I started using Debian, I found many of the basic commands to be the same (although, different switches and arguments) such as "netstat" and "arp" - whereas, these commands are not commonly used in Arch ...so from my experience, Debian and PowerShell have far more in common and Arch is a foreign language...

I will be sure to try the power button when resetting the PinePhone, although, there has been many times when the power button would not even turn the phone on unless I took the battery out first :-(

Ubuntu looks good, and it surly can't be any more unstable than Manjaro ...can it? ;-)

[nelstomlinson]

The removable battery goes a long way to make up for lousy power management and poor battery life. That was definitely a huge selling point for me.

[ryo]

To be fair, part of my problem is my lack of Arch Linux knowledge.  I'm sure it's great when you get to know it, but I really don't have time to learn a new set of commands right now, as it seems to me that Debian has more in common with PowerShell than it does with Arch!

Comparing Debian to PowerShell is like comparing a Buddhist temple to a Christian church rather.
The biggest difference between Linux distributions in general are the package manager, and where they store system files in (there are more differences, but these 2 I believe are by far the most important).  PowerShell is a beast of its own with a far higher learning curve (to my own experience at least).

I've been using PowerShell for a few years to do basic network fault finding at work - and from the moment I started using Debian, I found many of the basic commands to be the same (although, different switches and arguments) such as "netstat" and "arp" - whereas, these commands are not commonly used in Arch ...so from my experience, Debian and PowerShell have far more in common and Arch is a foreign language...

I will be sure to try the power button when resetting the PinePhone, although, there has been many times when the power button would not even turn the phone on unless I took the battery out first :-(

Ubuntu looks good, and it surly can't be any more unstable than Manjaro ...can it? ;-)

Netstat is something you can install on all distro's, it's just that Debian pre-includes it.
Like how CentOS pre-includes the "whois" command, which you need to install separately on both Debian and Arch.
As for arp, never heard of it or used it, so I don't really know.

As for the instability, it's not necessarily Manjaro's fault, but rather Plasma Mobile.
Out of all the PlaMo distro's, I believe that Manjaro still has the most stable one, they also have Phosh (currently the most stable DE) and Lomiri (which is what Ubuntu Touch uses) versions available.

Though my reason to use Mobian for the PinePhone running Phosh is primarily because Manjaro doesn't seem to include Japanese localization into their Phosh image for whatever reason.
They do for their PlaMo image though.

I have Ubuntu Touch running on my Nexus 5, but as I understood before, it's just not ready for PinePhone yet.
And Lomiri is the only one of the 3 major mobile DE that doesn't run any desktop apps without virtualization (which by the way drains battery like a lunatic).