Projects:PinePhone Daily Driver Distributions Testing

My results from testing of various distributions with the PinePhone to fulfill the Projects:PinePhone Daily Driver.

postmarketOS

Pros and Cons

• [+] Alpine Linux

Next Steps

• ☆ Flash a prebuilt image
  • [+] ?
  • [–] ?
• ☐ Build and flash from the repository
• ☐ Try the custom image
• ☐ Try customizing the image

sxmo

Pros and Cons

• [+] built on top of postmarketOS (i.e. Alpine Linux)
• [+] tiling window manager
• [–] smaller community?

Next Steps

• ☑ Flash a prebuilt image
  • [+] Works
  • [–] Hard to master the controls
• ☐ Build and flash from the repository
• ☐ Try the custom image
• ☐ Try customizing the image

UBports

Pros and Cons

• [+] Ubuntu (almost Debian, could be worse)
• [+] Built via debos from source

Next Steps

• ☆ Flash a prebuilt image
  • [+] ?
  • [–] Crashes during boot.
• ☓ Waiting for a better build... (couldn't use a bootloader with lower DRAM frequency)
• ☐ Build and flash from the repository
• ☐ Try the custom image
• ☐ Try customizing the image

Mobian

Pros and Cons

• [+] Debian (almost as good as Arch Linux)
• [+] Aims to be as upstream as possible, built from source
• [–] Phosh

Next Steps

• ☑ Flash a prebuilt image
  • [+] Boots, serial shell works
  • [–] Bootloader needs to be replaced for lower frequency of DRAM
  • [–] Phosh
    • You can install Gnome, but it is not polished for the device and it is slow.
• ☓ Waiting for a better build...
• ☐ Build and flash from the repository
• ☐ Try the custom image
• ☐ Try customizing the image

Arch Linux ARM

Via Arch Linux ARM for PinePhone Installer.

Pros and Cons

• [+] Arch Linux
• [–] Relies on Megous' kernel image and updates
• [–] Needs more maintenance

Next Steps

• ☑ Update to kernel 5.7
• ☓ Try again the current status and progress
  • [i] Tested, boots and works, but the USB network seems broken as of 2020-05-11 --> Reverting to 5.6
  • [i] Kernel 5.6.13 works with USB network as of 2020-05-17

Related

• PinePhone Software