Mobian started as a hobby project, triggered by the excitement of finally being able to hack one’s mobile phone at will. It is fair to say that the device that made it possible back then was the original PinePhone. However, after running once again into the same difficulties we experienced over and over, we’re wondering whether maintaining support for this device is still worth the effort…
https://blog.mobian.org/posts/2023/09/30/paperweight-dilemma/
To give you a sense of what we talk about: all patches in these folders are those we carry in Mobian.
https://salsa.debian.org/Mobian-team/devices/kernels/sunxi64-linux/-/tree/mobian-6.1/debian/patches
@mobian Same old story... Distros war, DE war... and now also the kernel which should be the COMMON cornerstone for everybody. 😤 With those project at the beginning there's always a lot of enthusiasm, confusion, then different ideas and approach lead to the disaster. Take the lesson from previous examples like Openmoko. Imho without a more "professional" approach I'm worry soon or late things will fall into oblivion. I bought my #Pinephone knowing that, but I hoped in a different destiny...
@KinmenRisingProject the hardware is what is dooming linux on the phone.
we need some basic standards from manufacterers for bootloaders, GPU drivers, etc.
i had lots of hope for my pinephone, and now i have sadly bought a Google Pixel. i hate it but has the best support for custom roms (GrapheneOS)
what i really want is a real linux phone with flatpaks.
@tootbrute @KinmenRisingProject the hardware part is what makes me think that Purism may have been right after all when they decided to spent quite some time on sourcing the right parts.
Sadly their high price point (now that devices are readily available) is just too high of a commitment :/
(I know that money flows back into software development but still…)
@gecko @tootbrute @KinmenRisingProject The real difference there comes from @purism having kernel devs on their payroll: in terms of hardware parts, IMHO they didn't make obviously better choices when looking only at the "software support" aspect (heck, even they ended up with a downstream driver for the wifi cards they initially shipped)
@awai @gecko @tootbrute @purism We all know that with money you can do more, especially when the work is longer and complex. But without, human resources should be optimized and you can only do this if there's a sort of governance (and ppl follow it). The development at the lowest lev.(fw etc) is the most critical point: fewer guys working on that (even because more difficult) means that, assuming you can't/ don't want to pay, they should collaborate (more) with each other. Same for upper levels
@KinmenRisingProject @awai @gecko @tootbrute @purism The only way to have people follow your governance is either:
a) to pay them; or
b) to find someone already aligned with what you want to do, and with ability to do so.
Everything that happens for free comes from b). It can lead to strong structures based on volunteer work and mutual trust, but it's *inherently* chaotic, especially when the community is still relatively small.
@dos @awai @gecko @tootbrute @purism absolutely right