July 28th, 2024

An ordinary day with a Linux mobile device

The author shares their experience using a Linux mobile device with postmarketOS, focusing on non-communication tasks like web radio, news aggregation, and podcast management, highlighting its customization and reliability.

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An ordinary day with a Linux mobile device

The article discusses the author's experience using a Linux mobile device, specifically one running postmarketOS on a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset. The author emphasizes that the device is not used as a traditional phone but for various non-communication tasks. Key functionalities include web radio, news aggregation, podcast management, and musical practice. The author utilizes a simple shell script to manage web radio streaming and has modified the SXMO environment to fetch RSS/Atom feeds for news, presenting them in a user-friendly format. For reading articles, the author employs a tool called rdrview to convert web pages into readable formats. Podcast subscriptions are managed through a customized sxmo_rss.sh script, allowing easy access to episodes and playback options. Additionally, the author has created a metronome script for musical practice and has integrated video search capabilities for backing tracks. Despite some limitations, such as low volume and issues with wired headphones, the author finds the setup reliable and effective for their needs. The article highlights the flexibility and customization possible with Linux mobile devices, showcasing how they can be tailored for specific tasks beyond traditional communication functions.

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By @kelnos - 3 months
Man I would love love love love to be able to have mobile device running a stock or near-stock Linux distro.

But I also want to be able to use things like contactless payment and banking apps. I actually wish in some ways that Jobs had kept with his original plan not to release an iPhone SDK (that was the original plan, right? I'm not misremembering?), and push the web platform hard for apps. Then mobile apps would have been naturally cross-platform, or at least cross-platform-possible, only requiring new JS APIs to be implemented in whatever available open-source browser.

It's a little ironic, because these days I advocate against closed, walled-garden platforms. But this unrealized future (well, present, I guess) would have required an iPhone that was even more locked down than it is, not allowing any non-Apple native apps on it.

By @arnaudsm - 3 months
I'm grateful for the non-Android mobile OSS ecosystem. Android is increasingly user hostile, notably the apps and features that block you when you obtain root access on your own device you paid for.

I'm about to quit Android, and I'm looking forward using and contributing to true open platforms.

By @Almondsetat - 3 months
Seeing the abysmal state of non-Android Linux on mobile really puts into perspective the sheer amount of skills and professionalism that it takes to create smartphone. It's 2024 and these phones do not have even 1/10th of the reliability, smoothness and features of the original 2007 iPhone. Heck, even a 2005 BlackBerry. Heck, even a 2003 Nokia.
By @vundercind - 3 months
Is this… parody? It reads like it but is done so straight that I can’t tell for sure.
By @mattl - 3 months
The things I do daily on a smartphone are:

- Web browsing

- iMessage

- WhatsApp

- Social media

- Photography

- Music

- Email

- Maps

- Medical stuff

When I see articles like this, it’s a stark reminder of just how wide the gap between iOS and any of these community Linux phones is. I’m also sure it’s a similar gap between a modern Android phone and the same community projects.

By @synicalx - 3 months
"Sorry I left you on read babe, Wayland broke again".

Joking aside this is kinda cool, I'd love to have something like b/dmenu for Android.