james h jackson jr @jameshjacksonjr@librem.one

OK. I spent a bunch of time playing with different distros on my #pinephone — I went back to some oldies and gave them another shot as well.

Manjaro (phosh) is the best one right now. If you need phone calls, texting, a few things like matrix or telegram, and some light web browsing you are good to go already. If you need some more niche things, or decent maps/navigation software you are still out of luck and that lack applies to all pinephone distros right now. At some point Anbox might become available and that can fix that if you are willing to let a little bit of google on. I don’t know how isolated anbox is, mind you. It could be safe, or not, I don’t know.

Mobian (phosh) is still pretty magnificent and its easily number two, nearly matched with Manjaro — however, its a bit less stable. That said, its progress seems to be running a bit faster so we’ll see. Its usable, if you are a bit conservative about updates. Its good!

pmOS (phosh + plasma) remains good, but not great for battery, since its AFAIK still unable to reach the deepest sleep states (no systemd — love it or hate it, its the tool that works right now.). Its neat because its really alpine linux. Cool as it is, I don’t rate it especially highly though as it seems slow for some reason. Plasma mobile remains nice looking, but not functional yet.

Ubuntu Touch — UBports, has by far the best and most functional GUI. But development hasn’t really gone anywhere that I can see. Basic things like nextcloud integration are as broken now as they were on the first release. Not sure whats going on with ubports on pine right now but its disappointing. They get the bugs out though, the GUI is leagues ahead of phosh — which if I’m being honest is pretty bad.

Plasma Mobile Neon .. honestly, no idea whats going on here because plasma mobile just isn’t working on a level that really even testing it is possible. Things like camera are broken etc, wifi worked but that’s about it.

and that’s whats up.

Why all the hate on #purism they might have oversold the #librem5 as a daily driver but I hope most bought it to progress the ecosystem... I'm so greatful for the work they did on #phosh and #libhandy that make my #pinephone usable.

I just keep imagining the epic sword battle between Google Reader and Orkut... In the end the life force of all Google products end up feeding Search, the only immortal.

@kyle who becomes mortal (opensource) and produces many offsprings (forks)