Just purchased a PPP, how screwed am I?

[GhostLegion]

The title sounds negative but I say it with humor. Just to set my expectations, I'm currently using an F1 Orchid by Sunbeam Wireless. It's a flip phone and my phone before that was a iPhone 12 Mini. So I've already gone through the stage of losing essentially all smartphone functionality and on top of that, because the flip phone I use is from a niche manufacturer, I've even experienced the joys of carrier whitelists. So really, the only expectation I have is that the PPP function as a phone. I need it to be able to consistently receive calls and SMS/MMS whether suspended or not. Any particular US carrier recommended for best compatibility? Which OS/DE is most recommended currently for my purposes? I've looked at past threads but none seem current or answer the questions I have. My plan was to use pmOS with KDE as my ideal scenario but I could get used to GNOME or Phosh if needed. I plan on flashing the FOSS firmware for the modem as reports seem to indicate it improves the experience.

How is the software development progressing and where can I contribute monetarily? I looked at pmOS but they aren't interested in such donations.

[dachalife]

Definitely a unique post & no monetary contribution needed; Dev’s work when they can, in addition to their normal jobs.

[zetabeta]

my less than a strong opinion indicates. mobian with phosh seems to be best at the moment, you have to choose bookworm or trixie in the future. pmos is probably second and manjaro is third. manjaro has something weird going on at the moment. i don't know how arch linux fits here. fedora is the last one.

plasma seems to be mostly unusable, but it's getting better though.

those being said, all of them are unstable more or less.

[GhostLegion]

my less than a strong opinion indicates. mobian with phosh seems to be best at the moment, you have to choose bookworm or trixie in the future. pmos is probably second and manjaro is third. manjaro has something weird going on at the moment. i don't know how arch linux fits here. fedora is the last one.

plasma seems to be mostly unusable, but it's getting better though.

those being said, all of them are unstable more or less.

Guess I'll try Mobian first then! The instability doesn't bother me too much depending on what's unstable. Random kernel panics would be quite the damper but if Waydroid is less than stable, I won't really cry too much. Reading Mobian's blog, MMS is rock-solid (supposedly) so that's a good sign. I expect the shipping to take like a month or two since that's how long it took for my Pinecil to arrive. Really looking forward to trying out the PinePhone Pro!

[mikehenson]

The title sounds negative but I say it with humor. Just to set my expectations, I'm currently using an F1 Orchid by Sunbeam Wireless. It's a flip phone and my phone before that was a iPhone 12 Mini. So I've already gone through the stage of losing essentially all smartphone functionality and on top of that, because the flip phone I use is from a niche manufacturer, I've even experienced the joys of carrier whitelists. So really, the only expectation I have is that the PPP function as a phone. I need it to be able to consistently receive calls and SMS/MMS whether suspended or not. Any particular US carrier recommended for best compatibility? Which OS/DE is most recommended currently for my purposes? I've looked at past threads but none seem current or answer the questions I have. My plan was to use pmOS with KDE as my ideal scenario but I could get used to GNOME or Phosh if needed. I plan on flashing the FOSS firmware for the modem as reports seem to indicate it improves the experience.

How is the software development progressing and where can I contribute monetarily? I looked at pmOS but they aren't interested in such donations.

I use Arch Linux on EVERYTHING, so... I think Arch works well. 

See this post for a complete install and setup.
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=18192

See this post for my experience on functionally 
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?...#pid118783

[brb78]

Second vote for Arch. Stability hasn't been a problem, just add your kernel to the ignore list in pacman.conf so you can update it separately from the rest of the stack. If the kernel is pulled in as part of a full update and anything goes wrong with any of the other updates you're going to have a bad time.

[rocket2nfinity]

You have many options for carrier, the forum and wiki list many. My personal favorite is US Mobile

Plasma is pretty, but unstable. Phosh seems most stable on top of Postmarket, Mobian, or Arch.

---

SXMO has a dedicated fan club as well

[GhostLegion]

You have many options for carrier, the forum and wiki list many. My personal favorite is US Mobile

Plasma is pretty, but unstable. Phosh seems most stable on top of Postmarket, Mobian, or Arch.

---

SXMO has a dedicated fan club as well

Yeah, Plasma is far and away prettier than Phosh but unfortunately, Phosh wins hands down for stability. Once Plasma mobile gets it's stability kinks worked out, I'll switch to that in a heartbeat. It just has more familiar interactions and greater compatibility within the larger KDE ecosystem (is anyone using KDE connect?). Currently running mobian and liking it well enough. I'm familiar with apt and the underlying stuff so it hasn't been too difficult. I saw that ProtonVPN was supposedly compatible and I installed the .deb file but it doesn't seem to want to load so that's weird. Having call and SMS/MMS weirdness but I'm testing out a new carrier to see if that's the issue (Mint Mobile instead of Red Pocket Mobile). No way I'm going to try out Arch, that just sounds too intimidating to me.

[rocket2nfinity]

Search the forum and telegram channel for Mint. It's a popular choice, and others have worked it out.

These days, the Pine64 Telegram, Matrix, irc channels are the places to go for help. They are all bridged to the Telegram channel

[andybleaden@gmail.com]

The title sounds negative but I say it with humor. Just to set my expectations, I'm currently using an F1 Orchid by Sunbeam Wireless. It's a flip phone and my phone before that was a iPhone 12 Mini. So I've already gone through the stage of losing essentially all smartphone functionality and on top of that, because the flip phone I use is from a niche manufacturer, I've even experienced the joys of carrier whitelists. So really, the only expectation I have is that the PPP function as a phone. I need it to be able to consistently receive calls and SMS/MMS whether suspended or not. Any particular US carrier recommended for best compatibility? Which OS/DE is most recommended currently for my purposes? I've looked at past threads but none seem current or answer the questions I have. My plan was to use pmOS with KDE as my ideal scenario but I could get used to GNOME or Phosh if needed. I plan on flashing the FOSS firmware for the modem as reports seem to indicate it improves the experience.

How is the software development progressing and where can I contribute monetarily? I looked at pmOS but they aren't interested in such donations.

It is a lost cause for now. Go read the instructions on the MAIN site. They are wrong and not updated with their own stuff. I have tried kali which was terrible and died after trying to install nethunter. Mobian is terrible and can't update or install anything. The different manjaro distros have no set up, wrong user and password. No distro has a setup which is actually specified in all their instructions. There is no set up so if you do not immediatly try to get users and passwords your locked out. I just got this POS and I am hoping I can return it. This is not a 400 dollar device. An rpi with a flip phone is a thousand times better.

I have mobian installed
Update it every few days - via the terminal 
I installed what I need 

How are you trying to update the Mobian ? Maybe I can help