[Not Pinephone] Phosh Autologin

[LienRag]

I installed Debian Gnome then Phosh on a Lenovo Thinpad Tablet, and the user wants to autologin.
I was able to edit /etc/gdm3/daemon.conf to that effect but it doesn't work for the Phosh session.
I can't find anywhere on the internet information on how Phosh manages its session nor where the configuration files are.
Woud anybody here know ?

[LienRag]

Also, is there a list somewhere of the applications that work with Phosh ?
I installed Thunderbird but it doesn't seem to get the inputs from the touchscreen nor the virtual keyboard.
Firefox works fine, though.

[alaraajavamma]

Also, is there a list somewhere of the applications that work with Phosh ?
I installed Thunderbird but it doesn't seem to get the inputs from the touchscreen nor the virtual keyboard.
Firefox works fine, though.

Check the apps list here:
https://linuxphoneapps.org/
And check also Phosh-mobile-settings app - there is option where you can scale down apps that does not fit to phone screen (like thunderbird). It does not make them fun to use but it does make them usable in some level.

Thunderbird will work but because it is not optimized to phones it will be pain to use. Geary is only email app which has "all basic email features" and it is optimized for small touch screen display.

Phosh does not support auto login - so at the moment you have to develop a solution for it yourself.

[LienRag]

Thanks !

Thunderbird apparently uses Xwayland on my system.

So running Thunderbird with MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 thunderbird fixed it.
Surprisingly, opening Thunderbird with this parameter removed the keyboard button, which meant that I couldn't get it out of the way to close the Thunderbird window...

Apparently people using Phosh on phones have a "back" button on the left upper corner, which I don't have.
Is that a parameter to set ?

Also, the standard keyboard has no "esc" key, so it makes closing pop-up windows a real problem. But choosing the "terminal" option for the keyboard makes these keys appear.

[alaraajavamma]

Sorry I did not read your first post that accurate - that is why I wrote like you were using Phosh on phone screen etc.

But my arguments are kind of the same:
People have put tons of work to make things usable on Phosh and the software that has not been invested in is not really usable.

Thunderbird is excellent example - while you can use it do you want to? I totally understand why you want to try because most likely it is familiar app for you. But today Thunderbird does not have really good touchscreen support and it does not integrate perfectly to Phosh (things might be different in some day and there is something happening as we speak)

So if you want works-out-of-the-box experience with Phosh you need to use mobile optimized GTK apps. See that link what I posted. When the app is mobile optimized and it is GTK then it works with Phosh like it is intended.
There are plenty of other apps which are working fine but for example QT apps does not open Squeekboard keyboard automatic and sometimes they look odd (it depends a bit of the OS but icons, top row or blurred overview are kind of common issues). With QT or other apps the best ones are mobile optimized (that means typically that they can also scale to tablet or even bigger screen smarter when you move them )

Also:
Sometimes flatpak apps work better and sometimes the ones from your OS repo. So you can try which one you like - versions might be the same but there might be big difference how they actually work.
Search how to edit Squeekboard configuration because it is really simple to edit layouts. You can for example copy the terminal layout as main layout if you like it.

[LienRag]

Thanks.
The main problem I have now is the absence of a generic "back" button somewhere; would you per chance know if there is a way to set one ?
Also, is there a way to calibrate the touchscreen (and/or to check if it's in good physical condition) ? The "swipe up" action to close applications is working randomly, sometimes it takes 10 attempts to succeed.
On windows there seem to be an option to calibrate it, but I don't find anything about it on Phosh or Debian.

[rocket2nfinity]

Thanks.
The main problem I have now is the absence of a generic "back" button somewhere; would you per chance know if there is a way to set one ?
Also, is there a way to calibrate the touchscreen (and/or to check if it's in good physical condition) ? The "swipe up" action to close applications is working randomly, sometimes it takes 10 attempts to succeed.
On windows there seem to be an option to calibrate it, but I don't find anything about it on Phosh or Debian.

xlibinput_calibrator in an X session or weston calibrate with weston tools

[diederik]

My impression is that those 'mobile' optimized apps are ONLY optimized for mobile phones, which often have a physical back button on the device.
I therefor suspect that quite a number of those apps need to be 'enhanced' to properly support (all) touch based devices, like f.e. tablets.

[alaraajavamma]

Generic back button is not a thing in Phosh - so there is none.

Can you still do it somehow? Maybe if you have good understanding what that generic back button would do in situation x,y and z.
Inside Phosh you can use and run Lisgd (libinput synthetic gesture daemon) https://git.sr.ht/~mil/lisgd
And lisgd can do any command you want when you for example swipe from left to right at bottom of the display.
I think there might be option to paste something so maybe you can even unlock the Phosh session with single swipe (I don't know how but it is most likely possible)

Touch screen calibration: no idea because I never had to do anything like it but weston should be the road with Phosh.

diederik: most linux mobile optimized apps are actually the same apps which you run on your pc or laptop. They are just developed to scale correctly and display menus etc. correctly also on smaller screens (and so it is easier to use them with touch screen).
For example with many apps (like gnome-settings) you can see sidebar when you are on large display -> if that app is optimized for mobile the sidebar is "hidden" or kind of in different tab because otherwise it would take 50% of the display. Also most of the navigation things are same but there might some difference where they are located on large display vs mobile (because by default you don't have mouse and keyboard with mobile)
Almost all developing work is done for Pinephone, Pinephone Pro or Librem 5 - none of them have physical back button.

[diederik]

The testing I've done so far with the PineTab2 paints a less rosy picture.
The situation for gnome apps seems to be (quite) a bit better then KDE apps (which I've tested the most thus far).
Some work decently, some work a bit and some hardly work at all with touch input.

With phog (at least on mobian on PineTab2), you can only input numbers to login, change the password to contain (also) letters and you can't login without the physical keyboard. And in other places you do get an OSK, but it's missing arrow/Ctl/Alt/Esc/etc keys and only uses half the screen width; thus likely made with only mobile phones in mind.
I was actually pretty shocked about the sorry state of OSKs and I don't foresee me using the PT2 anytime soon as a pure tablet, thus without the physical keyboard.
KMail does seem to work reasonably well, but it's still clear to me that it's optimized for keyboard control.

I did find lisgd and it looks very interesting. But I do get the impression that you'd still have to configure a lot to connect 'all the dots' to make it really usable and easy to use.

My general impression thus far is that some things appear to work, but as soon as you start to get a little further then a very superficial explorations, things fall apart ... fast.