02-19-2023, 01:34 AM
When many people suspect hardware problems to come up at the same time, it's often software. ;-)
Currently, the PinePhone (and other AllWinner A64 devices), is being plagued by an issue surfaced by Mesa 22.3.1, that has been fixed in Mesa now according to the freedesktop.org issue tracker, it should land in 22.3.6 and some distributions will cherry pick it before or already have:
If you want to read how these bugs are being located (it's a lot of work):
- debian bug
- postmarketOS issue tracker, blog post
- freedesktop.org issue
Fortunately, this means that these crashes are going away soon. Now how do you tell if the behavior you are seeing is being caused by this issue? Check with your package manager, whether you are running a "known bad" release of Mesa - on Arch and Manjaro that's done with `pacman -Ss mesa` on postmarketOS it's `apk search mesa` (only Edge was ever affected), and on Debian/Mobian you can check with `apt search mesa`.
-- OFF TOPIC --
I saw some questions about the Librem 5 and it's daily-driveability. I plan to post on my blog about that topic soon after having re-evaluated it after a re-install and equipped with the new WiFi card.
The main issue I have is battery life; it's still not always possible to make it through (a long) work day on my unit, which admittedly may exhibit poorer battery life due to being used for App Testing for LinuxPhoneApps.org - I have way too many flatpaks installed. With suspend enabled battery life would be good enough, but with it enabled my Librem 5 is plagued by 'modem lost' issues, which some of you are familiar with. The new wifi card should help with battery life, too. Until then, if you can't find reviews, make sure to check my Weekly Updates, I am sure I had a few recent-ish blog posts linked in there in the past, or just read purism's forum.
That said, if you can live without hardware kill-switches and a working camera, I highly recommend trying mainline Linux (postmarketOS or Mobian) on Snapdragon 845 devices (OnePlus 6, Poco F1, Shift6mq) - great performance and battery life for a low price, it's almost as using chips designed for phones makes a difference ;-)
Currently, the PinePhone (and other AllWinner A64 devices), is being plagued by an issue surfaced by Mesa 22.3.1, that has been fixed in Mesa now according to the freedesktop.org issue tracker, it should land in 22.3.6 and some distributions will cherry pick it before or already have:
If you want to read how these bugs are being located (it's a lot of work):
- debian bug
- postmarketOS issue tracker, blog post
- freedesktop.org issue
Fortunately, this means that these crashes are going away soon. Now how do you tell if the behavior you are seeing is being caused by this issue? Check with your package manager, whether you are running a "known bad" release of Mesa - on Arch and Manjaro that's done with `pacman -Ss mesa` on postmarketOS it's `apk search mesa` (only Edge was ever affected), and on Debian/Mobian you can check with `apt search mesa`.
-- OFF TOPIC --
I saw some questions about the Librem 5 and it's daily-driveability. I plan to post on my blog about that topic soon after having re-evaluated it after a re-install and equipped with the new WiFi card.
The main issue I have is battery life; it's still not always possible to make it through (a long) work day on my unit, which admittedly may exhibit poorer battery life due to being used for App Testing for LinuxPhoneApps.org - I have way too many flatpaks installed. With suspend enabled battery life would be good enough, but with it enabled my Librem 5 is plagued by 'modem lost' issues, which some of you are familiar with. The new wifi card should help with battery life, too. Until then, if you can't find reviews, make sure to check my Weekly Updates, I am sure I had a few recent-ish blog posts linked in there in the past, or just read purism's forum.
That said, if you can live without hardware kill-switches and a working camera, I highly recommend trying mainline Linux (postmarketOS or Mobian) on Snapdragon 845 devices (OnePlus 6, Poco F1, Shift6mq) - great performance and battery life for a low price, it's almost as using chips designed for phones makes a difference ;-)