I was going through Pine64’s page again after I found the latest KDE announcement. With that said, I seem to see a lot of issues with firmware on the Pine, whilst the Librem is just plain out of budget for me. Was interested in how many people here run a Linux mobile as a daily driver, and how has your experience been?

I’m considering purchasing the Pine but I’d like a better screen, more RAM and a better CPU. Don’t know if I should wait for a new model to be released (are they even planning to do that? Is the company active?). I will only really use it to browse the Web, and might even look to desolder a couple of parts that I know I won’t use.

Thanks.

Edit: I am willing to watch content and use banking apps from the browser. Do you think it’ll be fit for me?

Edit 2: overall, I am much saddened about the state of affairs regarding private computing on the go. I desperately hope that Linux on mobile takes off, even though its incubation looks disheartening at the moment. Thank you everyone for your comments.

    • @chitak166
      -8•1 year ago

      So fucking dumb how we have to look for specific models just to get support for smartphones.

      Can you image if Linux only ran on HP and dell laptops?

      • @Hiro8811
        4•1 year ago

        Unfortunately that’s moistly on maufacters. If they don’t release the kernel LOS can’t do anything. Also depending on the phone it might take a while till someone picks the phone and decides to support it. Laptops do have compatibility options. But I get what your saying, it is annoying but what did you expect from such organization?

        • @[email protected]
          1•1 year ago

          It would be awesome if we could just install whatever like we can on pcs. On phones you still need a developer to make a specific rom for that device, we were close with Generic System Images (GSIs), but I don’t think they really went anywhere

          • @Hiro8811
            1•1 year ago

            I think you can but I’m not sure. There’s Ubuntu Touch that works on some phones but it’s really buggy

      • bitwolf
        2•1 year ago

        Hopefully when RISCv gets there it won’t be so bad.

        Now that manufacturers are getting called out for it they tend to follow the support cycle upstream. Now, much of it falls on the chip makers, Qualcomm specifically supports chips for 5 years iirc (and 8 years for their industrial chips).

        If the manufacturers can achieve vertical integration, like Apple has, with RISCv I think we’ll see a lot more mainlined support from them.