Which PP distros are live and install easily onto the hard drive?

[shengchieh]

In the linux/PC world, most distros are live.  The live version has an install icon - making it easy
for the user to install onto the hard drive.  I'm curious to know the status in the linux/smartphone world.
Which "smartphone" distros are easy to test, and then, install on the PP?  User-friendly distros are a plus.
(p.s. I'm not a geek - just an advanced power user - and want to distro-hop on the PP.)

Thank in advanced for any help/tip.

Sheng-Chieh

[zetabeta]

technically speaking there is no live distros for pinephone regular and pro. user can install prebuilt image into sdcard and being close to live. there is no direct install from when running sdcard, but re-downloading and using dd command, user can install image into internal memory (emmc).

installers exist, which offers some advantages like full disk encryption.

tow-boot is required and works little differently in pp reg and pp pro.

dominant distros:
- mobian trixie (weekly)
- postmarketos
- archlinux (danct)

user interfaces:
- phosh
- plasma
- sxmo (less recommended)

sxmo is special user interface and not for ordinary users.

generally speaking, all these are more or less buggy, not for beginners.

[shengchieh]

Thank you for replying - very helpful.    I am now thinking of distro-hopping live distros.  Then after looking around, I'll install one onto the
hard drive or just leave it as live.  What are your opinion about

- GNOME interface?
- Manjaro (I noted PINE64 uses that)
- UBPort

Sheng-Chieh

[Peter Gamma]

I tested TechHut: «Distro-Hopping a Linux Phone! - How to Flash an OS on the PinePhone»:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf0zwq6jI30

I previously tested Megi's multi-boot image for the PinePhone, but it was not a good experience for me personally. This multi boot image was not something I wanted to stay with. It felt like it was only made for testing purposes.

But what was a good experience is how easy it is with Balena Etcher to flash an OS to an the external SD card and boot from there. You can use TechHut's method with Balena Etcher for it. So you can distro hopping by flashing your OS on the external SD card and swapping the SD card.