[26/09/2019] /e/ on pinebook, lineage derivative

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Thanks for this feedback !
blisslauncher is part of /e/ but will get better for laptops
I will look at other things you've mentionned !

@Luke
Thank you, I will send a mail !
By the way now our official repo for the pinebook is here
https://gitlab.e.foundation/a64/

I build and maintain a non-supported image of /e/ for US variants of the Samsung S6 Edge, so this is really of interest to me.
I won't touch ChromeOS or AndroidTV, because of the Play On libraries, but having microG built in as a replacement is fantastic.
Between this and the advancement of a Debian Buster bootstrap build, I will have too many things to do once my PBP arrives. Thank you.

— Jeremiah

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After using this quite a bit since posted, I thought I'd give some impressions for anyone interested in this img.

After installing Nova Launcher, this quickly became the best (in my opinion) OS option for the Pinebook, as far as usability!

I've been getting great battery life, easily double that of Manjaro. Since Manjaro lacks suspending still, it would constantly drain the battery when closed. Often times I'd have to leave it charging when idle, so I could use it at whatever point. Today, I brought the PB to work (w/o the charger) and left it on my desk for about 3 hours. When I opened it up to search something, Android reported it having 99% battery left. [ADDENDUM:] I left the PB closed overnight on my coffee table (wihtout charging,) and brought it to work with me again. When I opened it, Android reported 75% battery remaining, and Settings estimated another 3 days of charge remaining!

As with every instance of Android with a mouse, there are certainly somethings that take getting used to. The notifications drawer can be hard to scroll through when a lot of notifications start piling up. (I'm sure we all know how much fun click-and-dragging can be with the PB trackpad.) In my efforts to alleviate an abundance of notifications, I found that Notification preferences do not hold the settings for notifications display. For that, you'll want to long click on a notification from the drawer.

I suggest replacing the Bliss launcher with another option, mostly due to the app drawer. It has one located on the main page, but my attempts to scroll through it continually changed to the next home screen page and not the next page of the app drawer. Bliss didn't seem to offer any alternate app drawer options, such as in the dock. Another reason I chose to change launchers is the dock in Bliss. It was extremely easy to remove apps from the dock, but would not let me drag new apps into it.

If you use a Gmail address, I don't suggest the included email app. Every time it tries to contact Google for the server info, after giving it my email address, the app crashes. (This is an established issue for microG. Looking further into it, on my install FakeStore is not making any permissions requests and is thus not spoofing the Play Store. Digging around some more I found the solution to the lack of permissions for spoofing, Using Terminal emulator, type:

Code:

su
pm grant com.android.vending android.permission.FAKE_PACKAGE_SIGNATURE

then go back to mircoG settings > Self-Check. This resolved the spoofing permissions in microG, but not the ability to log into any Google apps. Attempting to do so afterward will cause the app to crash. However, I did start receiving notifications from Hangouts. This nightly build of GmsCore is reported to resolve this issue, but currently I'm having issues getting it to install. (I added the FDroid repo for microG, but my last attempt to downgrade to a previous version failed.)

Customizing colors for parts of this build can be frustrating or downright impossible, if you do change launchers. (I didn't notice these settings in Bliss, but is very noticeable with Nova.) There seems to be a lack of a color picker, so any attempt so far to choose a color has resulted in a dimmed screen with a bar just above the nav bar, with just "✓ Background Color" and no options to actually choose any colors.

The preview in OpenCamera is a bit bluer than reality. I haven't done enough digging yet to see if there's a setting I can change to help correct it, though.

Overall, for anyone looking for an OS that will allow their Pinebook to be a viable laptop for basic use (surfing, videos, streaming,) I highly recommend this Android build. It's incredibly fast (I've been running it from an SD card the whole time.) The 3rd party app store has almost every app the Play Store has (that I've searched for.) And though they are not installed as part of the build, Aptoide and FDroid have done well to fill the gaps. Did I mention this incredible battery life? (3 hours of off-and-on use today, and I still have 93% left!) Everything has been very snappy so far, and this build has all the major bases covered. If I wasn't planning to sell my PB when my PBP arrives, I'd happily erase Manjaro and install this onto the emmc.

@Phie this build is great! I'm sure plenty of people will love this option if brought to the PinePhone, too!

I maintain a phone build for /e/, and I'm pretty confident that you can't upgrade builtin apps and libraries like microG or the Camera app, without building a new image from source and specifying your customization in /srv/local_manifests/roomservice.xml of your build tree.

That doesn't prevent alternatives from being installed on an existing image for apps, and changing the default handler actions. But microG would obviously need alternative sources provided on Github for an earlier version. The branch you pull from would also have to be labeled with the right version "lineageXX" tag, so you probably have to fork your own branch.

A side note, /e/ and the foundation are headed by @gael_duval, who many may remember as the founder and original maintainer of Mandrake/Mandriva Linux, originally intended as a RedHat fork with full default KDE v1 desktop. He has a great Open Source ethic, and I'm glad for this vision being driven for a fully supported AOSP effort.

— Jeremiah