debian+phosh running on PinePhone

[a-wai]

Hi there!

As a long-time debian user, and being quite impressed with the looks of the Librem 5 software, I've been hacking a debian-based image for the Pinephone.
It uses phosh as the UI, packed with a few apps (not all are usable on the phone's screen)

Don't expect more from it than any other Pinephone distro out there can deliver, most features don't work yet and the phone feels really slow, but I believe this is a good starting point, as the display, touchscreen and wifi work (mostly) fine

For those wanting to try it out, just click on this link.

Default username is "debian" with password "1234"; default root password is "root".

@harvey186 has started a list of working/non-working apps, you can view and edit it here.

More details (and the debos recipes used to build this image) can be found on gitlab.
Contributions are more than welcome

Finally, kudos to the "low level software" team for the awesome work on the kernel and bootloader!


  debphone-1.jpg (Size: 129.27 KB / Downloads: 2,078)

  debphone-2.jpg (Size: 75.15 KB / Downloads: 1,618)

[dukla2000]

Hi there!

Welcome - an impressive first post! Added a link to this thread to the wiki.

[wgvanveen]

I just tried the image. It looks great! I will try to contribute where I can, although I am not a Debian but Ubuntu user. I already learned a lot from the code you uploaded to git!

[jfloren]

This looks really easy to comprehend and tweak to my own purposes... even on a brief look-through I can see how to install additional packages by default, drop files into the rootfs, etc. Thank you!

When you say the camera doesn't work, do you mean there's no endpoints in /dev at all, or just that Phosh's camera app doesn't interface with it properly right now? Similarly for the cell modem: does ofono not work, or is the dialer application just not ready yet?

[a-wai]

You're welcome

When you say the camera doesn't work, do you mean there's no endpoints in /dev at all, or just that Phosh's camera app doesn't interface with it properly right now? Similarly for the cell modem: does ofono not work, or is the dialer application just not ready yet?

The rear camera driver is working fine and I can take a photo using command-line tools, but there's no camera app currently installed on the image (tested GNOME's cheese but its interface is not really small-screen-friendly for now).
Additionnally, there's still the issue of switching between the 2 cameras, as documented on the pmOS wiki, the flash isn't working, all in all quite a lot of work remains on this item.

Regarding the modem, ofono/modemmanager is not working for now, I have yet to check what needs to be done (but that will be after I come back from holiday in ~2 weeks) - once it's OK, we'll be able to have at least texting and mobile data, voice calls will require some more work on the audio side...

[Leiaz]

@a-wai Your build.sh has a typo in the shebang.

Where does debos store intermediary files (like downloaded packages) by default ?

[rico]

Where you answered on step one of init if i remember well
You can find this info in your current conf file

[Leiaz]

@rico There was no init, and I don't see a conf file either, unless I missed something ? Maybe you are confusing with pmbootstrap ?

I'm trying to use the debos recipe to build an image, but it failed in the "Install debian packages" step.
When I try to restart, it downloads packages again ... This feels like a waste of bandwidth so I'm wondering if I'm missing something.

[rico]

@rico  There was no init, and I don't see a conf file either, unless I missed something ? Maybe you are confusing with pmbootstrap ?

You're right, i was confusing.
So to answer, except a fakemachine in /tmp i think debos only work in the chroot.

[tyha]

I've also been impressed with Phosh on the Librem 5 and have been hoping it will come to the pinephone. Thanks for putting this together.

Any suggestions on keeping this updated with changes? Not sure if it'll be Sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade, but then again I might find my answer after flashing.