Linux has long been the most practical laptop OS for me, but I can't see it ever being competitive with mobile OSes, and that's coming from someone who wants it to succeed (I've installed postmarketOS on a OP6T). I just don't see how it will overcome the various issues (app support, tap-to-pay, camera quality, etc).
I've never understood tap-to-pay being a dealbreaker issue. It takes me just as long to pull out my credit card as it does to pull out my phone, and you can use them on the exact same terminals.
App support and camera quality I can understand more. I'm on a Linux phone using Phosh (FLX1s), and there's Android app compatibility, but it is a little rough (and of course things that rely on Play Integrity won't work). I've managed to avoid tying myself to anything that requires Google for now, but I acknowledge that I'm lucky there.
I often leave the house without my wallet these days. Itâs great. Especially riding the subway, where Appleâs transit functionality means you donât have to do anything other than tap your device without even unlocking, is a very nice convenience when youâre carrying groceries or something similar.
With tap-to-pay, you can store multiple cards in your digital wallet, and you don't have to remember any of their PINs. You can use your fingerprint to sign transactions. I believe this makes it faster.
Tap to pay isn't itself a dealbreaker, for me it's more a representation of the status-quo and what is to come, specifically how more and more of the modern world will rely on integrations with proprietary software and hardware on phones. Tap to pay with credit cards isn't too big of a deal, but the wallet as a whole (i.e. boarding passes for airplanes, gift cards, ChargePoint tap-in) is a major feature.
> It takes me just as long to pull out my credit card
It can be a lifestyle difference.
I personally don't being my wallet in most daily trips, have no use of it. I used to stick a credit card in my phone case but also got rid of it as more stores reliably offered wireless and QR code payments.
Mind you this comes with a specific environment I don't expect everyone to live in or long for, I'm just explaining.
I just put my debit card in the pocket in my phone case. Job done. If yours doesn't have a pocket, you can try putting it between the phone in the case. In that scenario, I suggest turning off NFC on the phone so it doesn't keep trying to read the card.
As long as every phone distro is just a desktop distro shoehorned on a small screen, that's not gonna happen.
IMO it's not a matter of tap to pay and camera quality, rather a matter of whole system paradigm. Having millions of disconnected services in the "do one thing and do it right" spirit and using text based communication and hundreds of python and shell scripts is relatively maintainable and relatively easy to use, but very inefficient when it comes to CPU cycles - and on a handheld every cycle counts.
And of course every app is optimized for desktops/laptops... but I guess that's a chicken-or-egg problem: once there is a working distro, there will be apps too. And once there will be apps to use, there will be a working distro. Maybe.
Oddly enough I am using Win10 right now on my laptop. On my
main computer I use linux but I also got tired having to set
up things specifically for the laptop or be locked down in
a specific distribution; plus, I also have to run various
software on the laptop and when the rest of the class or
group uses Windows, and you are the sole Linux person, it
feels very lonely. So I fake being a win user in that case.
This is a good example of a poor web site design. If you, like me, do not know what Phosh is and go to their website, it will tell you not much beyond "A user interface for your mobile phone," which could mean pretty much anything. Is it a UI level on top of Android? Is it an idependent mobile OS? How it is better that competition? What are key features and design goals?
I think itâs more a failing of a link aggregator site like this one dropping you into a release announcement page without context. If you donât already know what Phosh is, why would you read their 0.56.0 announcement? Normally you wouldnât. But here we are. Putting âThe Phosh project aims to provide a daily-usable, robust and easy to use graphical user environment for mobile devices running mainline Linuxâ on every release page feels like a waste of time.
As it is I didnât find it at all difficult to find the answers to your questions by going to the âabout pageâ.
> The Phosh project aims to provide a daily-usable, robust and easy to use graphical user environment for mobile devices running mainline Linux. The name is a portmanteau of phone and shell as phosh was one of the first components developed by the project. It hence coined the whole projectâs name and is still one of its core components. All of Phosh is entirely Free Software.
I've installed this on my Surface Go 2 64GB. Runs smooth! Absolutely the best tablet experience for Linux. The support is also wild: My silly questions are answered within hours.
I have a oneplus6 and use a mobile version of Debian called "Mobian". postmarketOS is a really good choice, and they have a wiki of supported devices: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices
Seemed interesting until I read that Phosh pulls in GNOME - gnome-settings, gnome-session etc. Seems like a very strange bundle to bring in for an extremely power constrained device, where every % of increased battery drain is noticed by the user
I'm a certified gnome hater, but a phone is basically the perfect application for it. As far as resource usage goes, I have been dailying an FLX1 for a year and a half now and Firefox is the only noticeable resource hog
Why? What's particularly heavy in these gnome tools?
Like the particular programs are no issue, but the whole UNIX-userspace as done in the mainframe era and still is. Like you definitely need cooperative program suspend/resume like on Android for any kind of sane battery life, but that's unfortunately completely missing in case of GNU/Linux.
Phosh is not based on gnome-shell and has its own settings and apps, but it does use parts of gnome, no reason to reinvent the wheel.
> Seems like a very strange bundle to bring in for an extremely power constrained device, where every % of increased battery drain is noticed by the user
I'm sure you can make your Frankenstein version that would be 10% as usable and secure as phosh by removing everything but for most users, 100mb more ram and 1% more battery drain for an OS aiming to be a daily driver is something that's worth it.
Linux has long been the most practical laptop OS for me, but I can't see it ever being competitive with mobile OSes, and that's coming from someone who wants it to succeed (I've installed postmarketOS on a OP6T). I just don't see how it will overcome the various issues (app support, tap-to-pay, camera quality, etc).
I've never understood tap-to-pay being a dealbreaker issue. It takes me just as long to pull out my credit card as it does to pull out my phone, and you can use them on the exact same terminals.
App support and camera quality I can understand more. I'm on a Linux phone using Phosh (FLX1s), and there's Android app compatibility, but it is a little rough (and of course things that rely on Play Integrity won't work). I've managed to avoid tying myself to anything that requires Google for now, but I acknowledge that I'm lucky there.
I often leave the house without my wallet these days. Itâs great. Especially riding the subway, where Appleâs transit functionality means you donât have to do anything other than tap your device without even unlocking, is a very nice convenience when youâre carrying groceries or something similar.
With tap-to-pay, you can store multiple cards in your digital wallet, and you don't have to remember any of their PINs. You can use your fingerprint to sign transactions. I believe this makes it faster.
Tap to pay isn't itself a dealbreaker, for me it's more a representation of the status-quo and what is to come, specifically how more and more of the modern world will rely on integrations with proprietary software and hardware on phones. Tap to pay with credit cards isn't too big of a deal, but the wallet as a whole (i.e. boarding passes for airplanes, gift cards, ChargePoint tap-in) is a major feature.
> It takes me just as long to pull out my credit card
It can be a lifestyle difference.
I personally don't being my wallet in most daily trips, have no use of it. I used to stick a credit card in my phone case but also got rid of it as more stores reliably offered wireless and QR code payments.
Mind you this comes with a specific environment I don't expect everyone to live in or long for, I'm just explaining.
I just put my debit card in the pocket in my phone case. Job done. If yours doesn't have a pocket, you can try putting it between the phone in the case. In that scenario, I suggest turning off NFC on the phone so it doesn't keep trying to read the card.
As long as every phone distro is just a desktop distro shoehorned on a small screen, that's not gonna happen.
IMO it's not a matter of tap to pay and camera quality, rather a matter of whole system paradigm. Having millions of disconnected services in the "do one thing and do it right" spirit and using text based communication and hundreds of python and shell scripts is relatively maintainable and relatively easy to use, but very inefficient when it comes to CPU cycles - and on a handheld every cycle counts.
And of course every app is optimized for desktops/laptops... but I guess that's a chicken-or-egg problem: once there is a working distro, there will be apps too. And once there will be apps to use, there will be a working distro. Maybe.
The main issue is lack of banking app support for me. Without that (which the banks will never allow) you would always need two phones.
At the risk of sounding really old can't you use your computer/laptop for that?
Oddly enough I am using Win10 right now on my laptop. On my main computer I use linux but I also got tired having to set up things specifically for the laptop or be locked down in a specific distribution; plus, I also have to run various software on the laptop and when the rest of the class or group uses Windows, and you are the sole Linux person, it feels very lonely. So I fake being a win user in that case.
This is a good example of a poor web site design. If you, like me, do not know what Phosh is and go to their website, it will tell you not much beyond "A user interface for your mobile phone," which could mean pretty much anything. Is it a UI level on top of Android? Is it an idependent mobile OS? How it is better that competition? What are key features and design goals?
I think itâs more a failing of a link aggregator site like this one dropping you into a release announcement page without context. If you donât already know what Phosh is, why would you read their 0.56.0 announcement? Normally you wouldnât. But here we are. Putting âThe Phosh project aims to provide a daily-usable, robust and easy to use graphical user environment for mobile devices running mainline Linuxâ on every release page feels like a waste of time.
As it is I didnât find it at all difficult to find the answers to your questions by going to the âabout pageâ.
From that same website:
> About Phosh
> The Phosh project aims to provide a daily-usable, robust and easy to use graphical user environment for mobile devices running mainline Linux. The name is a portmanteau of phone and shell as phosh was one of the first components developed by the project. It hence coined the whole projectâs name and is still one of its core components. All of Phosh is entirely Free Software.
The fact I thought it was a custom UI over stock android means they got this well rounded.
I've installed this on my Surface Go 2 64GB. Runs smooth! Absolutely the best tablet experience for Linux. The support is also wild: My silly questions are answered within hours.
What are the best phones/distros to use phosh with?
I have a oneplus6 and use a mobile version of Debian called "Mobian". postmarketOS is a really good choice, and they have a wiki of supported devices: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices
https://phosh.mobi/faq/#so-what-phones-are-supported
Seemed interesting until I read that Phosh pulls in GNOME - gnome-settings, gnome-session etc. Seems like a very strange bundle to bring in for an extremely power constrained device, where every % of increased battery drain is noticed by the user
I'm a certified gnome hater, but a phone is basically the perfect application for it. As far as resource usage goes, I have been dailying an FLX1 for a year and a half now and Firefox is the only noticeable resource hog
Why? What's particularly heavy in these gnome tools?
Like the particular programs are no issue, but the whole UNIX-userspace as done in the mainframe era and still is. Like you definitely need cooperative program suspend/resume like on Android for any kind of sane battery life, but that's unfortunately completely missing in case of GNU/Linux.
Gnomes' a massive memory hog
I was looking at this and thinking maybe it would improve a cheap android phone. But now I know it's running gnome I won't even consider trying
Phosh is not based on gnome-shell and has its own settings and apps, but it does use parts of gnome, no reason to reinvent the wheel.
> Seems like a very strange bundle to bring in for an extremely power constrained device, where every % of increased battery drain is noticed by the user
I'm sure you can make your Frankenstein version that would be 10% as usable and secure as phosh by removing everything but for most users, 100mb more ram and 1% more battery drain for an OS aiming to be a daily driver is something that's worth it.
It works kind of okay for recent devices as phones are very powerful nowadays, Phosh on a <2015 device is much more painful though.
The name sounds like someone driving by at high speed ...
Terrible name. It's going to fail on those grounds alone.
Not that it would really succeed otherwise. You need Android app compatibility to stand a remote chance.
> You need Android app compatibility
That's not phosh's problem; waydroid is a pretty much independent component.
a