05-28-2023, 01:15 PM
Thank you for the ideas. There are two workflows that i am looking into.
1) Connecting the Pinephone directly to a laptop where the external microsSD card is exposed to the laptop as a USB storage device. I did not get a reponse to a forum question about this so it looks like a deadend for now. I think there should be a switch in the settings that turns such functionality on/off (for security purposes), and then it should just work like a USB thumb drive. The Tow-Boot-like functionality of PostmarketOS and Mobium appears to only expose the internal eMMC storage as a USB storage device. Exposing the external microSD card the same way will make it easier for users to transfer and manage documents, photographs, and other, using their computer and OS of choice, making the Pinephone more accessible and useable.
2) Connecting the Pinephone to a network where the external microSD card is exposed as a network share. For similar reasons as above, it is to make it easier for users to do file transfer and management using their computer and OS of choice, making the Pinephone more accessible and useable.
It appears SMB is a possibilty so i am looking into how easy it is to set up. Using SMB would be familiar to power users who use Mac and Windows, not so much for the mainstream user. Do any of the Pinephone OSes have share settings where users can set up SMB sharing in a straight forward manner? Example, on macOS there is a Sharing applet where the user can turn File Sharing on/off, select the folder to share, and set up an access password. And then it just works.
I will also look into using FTP and how easy it is to set up. Although using a FTP GUI client is not as good as the above described workflows, it is better than doing things by command line. I think mainstream user should not be expected to do this.
1) Connecting the Pinephone directly to a laptop where the external microsSD card is exposed to the laptop as a USB storage device. I did not get a reponse to a forum question about this so it looks like a deadend for now. I think there should be a switch in the settings that turns such functionality on/off (for security purposes), and then it should just work like a USB thumb drive. The Tow-Boot-like functionality of PostmarketOS and Mobium appears to only expose the internal eMMC storage as a USB storage device. Exposing the external microSD card the same way will make it easier for users to transfer and manage documents, photographs, and other, using their computer and OS of choice, making the Pinephone more accessible and useable.
2) Connecting the Pinephone to a network where the external microSD card is exposed as a network share. For similar reasons as above, it is to make it easier for users to do file transfer and management using their computer and OS of choice, making the Pinephone more accessible and useable.
It appears SMB is a possibilty so i am looking into how easy it is to set up. Using SMB would be familiar to power users who use Mac and Windows, not so much for the mainstream user. Do any of the Pinephone OSes have share settings where users can set up SMB sharing in a straight forward manner? Example, on macOS there is a Sharing applet where the user can turn File Sharing on/off, select the folder to share, and set up an access password. And then it just works.
I will also look into using FTP and how easy it is to set up. Although using a FTP GUI client is not as good as the above described workflows, it is better than doing things by command line. I think mainstream user should not be expected to do this.