Basic questions of somebody new to pine64

[kqlnut]

Hello, I hope you all are having a nice day.

I am very new to Pine64 and interested in the PinePhone and PineTab.
Also I do not really have a clue of Linux, so I will probably ask quite some stupid questions. I hope that's okay.

But for now just two questions about Pine64 hardware in general and one about operating systems (this one is probably a bit embarrassing).

A big reason why I am looking at the pine devices is that I really don't like the way most phones and tablets do not get (os/security) updates after 2-3 years anymore (the other reason is privacy).
I don't really understand why it is that way for phones but not for pc's, which also support a variety of hardware. I always read something about drivers and chip producers not providing patches or something along those lines.
So how about the pine hardware in that regard? Is it that open source that as long as the community supports it, it will be updated?

How about repairs? I think I read somewhere that some things are screwed that would usually be glued - for repairability. As the hardware is mostly for tinkerers I reckon it is much easier to repair than other phones/tablets ? Is it possible to have it repaired by Pine64 if i don't have the skills to do it? Obviously the devices are not very expensive but I really dont like the idea of throwing away a device because of minor issues.

Are the Linux versions available for the PinePhone and PineTab "the same" as the desktop variants? What I mean by this is: If i get a certain distribution running on a device, will it be able to run all applications that would run on a desktop (from a compatibility, not a performance point of view of course).

I really hope you guys don't mind helping out someone who very much is not a power user. ^^
Thanks to anyone answering my questions.

Welcome! Don't be embarassed to ask questions, only way to learn.
What makes the PinePhone special compared to most other phones that can run some sort of Linux is that it runs the mainline kernel. So you can use the newest kernel available and it will work (as far as people make it work). You are not dependent on hardware vendors patching the kernel with proprietary drivers and firmwares to make their devices work (which they won't for a long time which is why you stop receiving security updates). So as long as people keep working on it, the PinePhone doesn't have that problem. Also you will also always be able to work on it yourself. However not everything in the phone is completely open source, but I think this is only true for part of the modem (maybe something else, but I'm not sure).

You will also be able to repair it yourself quite easily and you will have to also because Pine64 has no support for those kind of things. But don't be scared of it, it's really not hard to swap out parts if you follow the available tutorials.

The Linux distributions for the phones are basically the same as for the desktop, i. e. they share their repositories. You won't be able to run the standard desktop environments without problems though, that's why new ones adapted for phones are being developed (most notably Phosh and Plasma, but there are more very interesting ones). But a big difference to desktop machines is that the phone's (and most portable devices') procesor has ARM architecture unlike most desktop machines x86_64 architecture. Apps have to be compiled for a specific architecture, so packages are not interchangable and not always available for every architecture. If you just use the available repositories, you don't have to care about this yourself, but just be aware that not everything will be available as on other Linux machines (e. g. Signal - they don't support the ARM architecture for their Linux client officially, so you would have to rely on an unofficial client like Axolotl which is far from perfect).

If you are willing to learn about Linux and want to make a step towards a future smartphone alternative to Apple and Android, go for it! But the biggest drawback that you really have to think about if you can accept it is, that things are still far from the functionality regular users would expect of a smartphone today. The community is great and development really makes fast progress, but it's just not the plug and play mentality especially smartphone users are used to. Even basic functionality like calls and SMS cannot be expected to work reliably all the time. You have to learn about that stuff and have to get to know your ways around it. I for myself use my PinePhone as my daily driver, it works for me and I really like the aspect of being able to know about everything that's going on, get into fixing things and learning new things along the way all the time. But I also don't have high expectations and have never really relied on any apps. The PinePhone is time consuming and not exactly a device to make your life easier at this point if you just want something that works. But I find it very rewarding and have never regretted a single bit getting into this world.