How to convert your pinephone to a palmtop now that you have the clamshell keyboard
05-07-2022, 12:18 PM
(04-25-2022, 03:25 PM)ragreenburg Wrote: It's been a few months since you made this post, did you end up sticking with it? What were some annoyances that came up? Was thinking about doing something similar but haven't gotten around to it yet.
It *rocks*. Everything I ever wanted in a tiny linux desktop. WAYYYY more stable and faster than any of the swipey-based interfaces (I tried a bunch of them when I first got the pinephone). And if you like attention, people are always admiring it at coffeeshops and super impressed when you show them switching between apps with alt-tab. I think there's a real pent-up demand for tiny computers out there even among the non-linux general population.
The big drawback (for some people, not for me) is, you know, it's not a phone at all. I don't even have the cellular modem going (though that's a project I want to try and get working at some point.) I'm just on wifi. I just use google voice for texts and calls, so I don't miss phone functionality at all, but for most people you would still need another device for your phone. Perhaps a pinephone pro phone and and a regular pinephone for tiny linux desktop? Maybe I'll be at that point someday.
Here's the one bad thing: two times now the keyboard stopped working on a big pacman update:
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=16522
And, you know, reinstalling and re-setting up the OS is... an annoyance.
Also I switched to dwm for an even lighter footprint, but probably any keyboard-driven lightweight desktop will be fine.
Please do try it! I wrote out that (too long) set of instructions mostly as notes for myself. But I'd love it if at least one other person found it useful!
