(05-11-2022, 05:57 AM)danimations Wrote:I also meant to say that I never noticed much difference between Phosh and Plasma as far as battery is concerned.(05-10-2022, 08:36 PM)grinzie Wrote:(05-10-2022, 08:35 AM)danimations Wrote: I was using Manjaro Phosh on a regular Pinephone until I recently received my Pinephone Pro. I decided to install Manjaro Phosh on the PPP, but am disappointed with the lack of battery life. Does Plasma perform better in this regard? Can anyone with experience with both share their observations about the pro's and con's of these two OS? Thanks in advance.
I switched to Arch (Phosh) and I seem to get better battery life.
Thanks Grinzie. What are the other pros and cons of switching to Arch?
Was installing Tow-Boot straight forward? And is that process easily reversible?
Tow-boot was completely straightforward, as I recall, and I have not tried to reverse it. If you do not hold down any keys during boot, the phone acts as if Tow-Boot is not installed, so there is not much to reverse. Because of Tow-Boot I was able to install Arch to SD and boot from that without touching MMC.
As for modem firmware, I upgraded to biktorgj's 0.6.3 (just realized I need to upgrade again) and ADSP firmware 01.003.01.003. My PPP came with ADSP 01.001.01.001, and even Pine64 recommends running at least 01.002.01.002 (not sure why they shipped a lower version then). Upgrading ADSP is the most nerve-wracking because there is no way to recover the original firmware -- the recovery firmware is 01.002.01.002 -- and this, as I understand it, is the least open firmware. In preparation for this task, I reviewed the recovery instructions thoroughly and made sure I had a couple of paper clips handy in case I had to short the test contacts, but I did not.
Pros:
No more chasing, downloading and flashing images. I have been doing full upgrades regularly with "sudo pacman -Syyu" and have had no problems.
As I mentioned elsewhere, Manjaro and Arch/pmOS implement different strategies for accessing Phosh top and bottom menus (swipe vs. tap, respectively), and I prefer the Arch/pmOS tap approach -- except when I am typing a text and I hit the arrow instead of the space bar; that gets really annoying. My problem with the Manjaro swipe method is that you have to swipe half the screen or the pulldown goes away.
I don't have any Cons for Arch relative to Manjaro, but when pmOS has things working and I don't have to flash it to upgrade it, I plan to switch back.