Distro for writers, k & m, LibreOffice, PostmarketOS?

[Peter Gamma]

I currently want to use my PinePhone only for office application with textprocessor and excel like tables, with a keyboard and mouse, touch not urgently necessary. Which distro is the easiest to start with? Is there a distro that has already installed office software, for instance OpenOffice?

[Peter Gamma]

What about Fedora desktop? Fedora Linux comes preinstalled with a wide range of software such as LibreOffice and Firefox:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2ZyZo1r5KY&t=100s

Any cons for writers which use a mouse and a keyboard?

[Peter Gamma]

Installation looks a bit complicated, but I found a version for (swiss) german speaking persons which looks easy:

Pinephone: Wie man Fedora installiert (PinePhone, how to install Fedora)

https://marius.bloggt-in-braunschweig.de...stalliert/

Fedora does not (yet) support the PinePhone, Has someone installed Fedora on the PinePhone and is happy with it? Since I will always use the PinePhone with a keyboard and a mouse as a miniPC and not as a phone, Fedora looks better than Ubports for my purpose.

[TRS-80]

I would go with any of well supported distros. I do not think Fedora is among those, not on PinePhone anyway.

I am not sure how well OpenOffice will run on any distro (even well supported one) due to the fact it's probably not optimized for small screen, and it's also a bit 'heavy' of an application.[0]

So, personally, I would use a good text editor. Which have a lot of advantages. However, any truly powerful text editor is going to have some amount of learning curve (and the more power, the more curve). I am a huge fan and proponent of Emacs for example, but she's a hairy beast! Some people like vim but you won't be able to exit out of it. There are many others which may be easier to start with, but the aforementioned 'big 2' are true power user tools which require some investment to master. It's sort of tangential whether or not you think that investment is worth it in the long run. Personally I do, but YMMV.

[0] In fairness, I do not use it (on PinePhone) so I could be totally wrong. This is just what I suspect.

[Peter Gamma]

Thanks, TRS80 for your great comments.

I did get this wrong. The Fedora on the PinePhone Multi Boot Image has no preintalled Libre Office. The video above has let me to a wrong conclusion. This is not preinstalled on the PinePhone Fedora.

Using the PinePhone as a mini PC for writers is as when I bought my first computer as a teenager, and I had to edit the HEX code of the editor so that it worked my PC .

[TRS-80]

Using the PinePhone as a mini PC for writers is as when I bought my first computer as a teenager

I do a little programming, but I am not a programmer by trade.  I came to Emacs by way of one of the two main gateway drugs to Emacs, Org Mode.  Many other academics, writers, and non-technical folks came to Emacs via similar paths. In fact, there is even an emacs-humanities mailing list.

I very rarely recommend Emacs, because very few people nowadays have the patience for the learning curve it takes to master it.  It even took me a few tries over several years (but maybe you are smarter than me, lol!).  But you seem like a smart guy who may appreciate what Emacs is, so I thought I would throw it out there.  Plenty of videos and things on the Internet that should give you an introduction. And the community (mailing lists, IRC, Reddit, etc.) are all quite friendly.

[Peter Gamma]

Thanks for your answer.

I installed LibreOffice on PostmarketOS, and I found there a lot of issues:

https://petergamma.org/libreoffice-on-a-...os-issues/

I am a bit worried about whether LibreOffice really works, at least on PostmarketOS. The issue with the box who ask to recover files prevents for instance to be able to start the software.

I have aleady installed an external keyboard and external mouse, and a VNC connection to a PC to be able to see the PinePhone screen on a HDMI monitor.

But there are other things, like the drop down menues which do not drop down, etc. I suppose there are other people resolve such issues better than me.

I am a bit suprised about this. LibreOffice is a Linux software. Why so many issues on a Linux phone?Is it PostmarketOS? Does LibreOffice eventually run better on another distro?

[Peter Gamma]

Using the PinePhone as a mini PC for writers is as when I bought my first computer as a teenager

I do a little programming, but I am not a programmer by trade.  I came to Emacs by way of one of the two main gateway drugs to Emacs, Org Mode.  Many other academics, writers, and non-technical folks came to Emacs via similar paths.  In fact, there is even an emacs-humanities mailing list.

I very rarely recommend Emacs, because very few people nowadays have the patience for the learning curve it takes to master it.  It even took me a few tries over several years (but maybe you are smarter than me, lol!).  But you seem like a smart guy who may appreciate what Emacs is, so I thought I would throw it out there.  Plenty of videos and things on the Internet that should give you an introduction.  And the community (mailing lists, IRC, Reddit, etc.) are all quite friendly.

 
Emacs and vim with a steap learing curve in 2022?

LibreOffice was critizised to be slow and not usable on the Phone screen.

https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?...614&page=3

But when it could be used with some command lines on the phone screen, I would be happy with it. The advantage is to use the same application on the phone and on a desktop PC.

Abiword and Gnumeric where recommended as alternatives. But what is the advantage for a writer to use a PinePhone instead of an Android phone with Softmaker?

Softmaker Office is fully touchable. Softmaker has Windows and Linux versions of their software, and the Android version is touchable, and has full desktop features.

It could eventually be possible to use it with Waydroid. But a full Linux version which is touchable from Softmaker of their applications would be highly desirable.

Softmaker was the most attractive software for mobile Office to me personally. I already wrote to Softmaker to port the software to the PinePhone. But will they do it? Eventually yes. The PinePhone has the potential to be a «real computer», which Anroid phones are not. And a PinePhone with a professional Office packet could be sold as a professional solution.

[wibble]

It wouldn't just be the PinePhone they'd be supporting if they released an aarch64 version - there are other aarch64 devices with MUCH higher sales. I'd guess that between the Raspberry Pi 4, 3 and Zero 2 would be the biggest block.

I was going to suggest looking at Calligra, but their Windows support seems to have gone downhill.

I spent @1/2hr on and off with the iGo Stowaway bluetooth keyboard connecting to mobian/phosh and relearning some of its layout oddities, mostly in libreoffice writer, and didn't have any disconnection issues. It did auto-sleep at one point (while I was looking up some keymap stuff), but hitting a key triggered reconnection and all was fine again. It's somewhat ancient though - I bought it for use with the openmoko. Perhaps being ancient and well regarded at the time it became well supported? I did get the "libreoffice won't let you do anything" issue which felt rather like a modal dialog had been drawn off-screen or something. I really wouldn't want to use it at that screen size though - the interface just isn't built for it. I'd still love to have modern hardware in a Psion 5 case, and the old UI with a current backend behind it for interoperable file access - the old Psion apps wrote something proprietary and highly optimized that needed translating to and from desktop formats using their proprietary sync software which is something I certainly don't miss!

[biketool]

I am curious about your specific use case.
Are you planning on a monitor?
What keyboard and mouse will you use?
Why a pinephone and not a laptop or netbook?
I wonder if it is possible to get the right balance between visibility and scaling to make the screen properly visible and usable.
The dilemma reminds me of my old TRS-80 where the word processor cartridge program skipped between the left and right side of a document as the resolution of the computer on a TV screen was not good enough to display both sides of the document.