Mobile Linux - Update
TL;DR - Librem 5 USA is in, PinePhone Pro is out.
Having now had both devices side by side for several weeks, the time has come to make some decisions about what I continue using. While I have a vast array of tools aimed at a growing set of tasks, I do try to keep to using the best tool for the job. This often means that as I upgrade, or in some cases simplify, there comes a time at which I need to let go of one tool in favor of another.
In this case, I will send the PinePhone Pro to a friend who helped me in the early days of my Linux use. That will put the device into the hands of someone else who can work with upstream projects to advance the state of mobile device support in Linux. For myself, I will continue to work towards improvements through the Librem 5 USA on PureOS.
Over the last few weeks, I have already found a number of cases where it has been the smarter play to dock my phone and get something done than to boot my Librem 14. Both, after all, run the same software. Since my last post I have done the following to my phone:
- Added Wireguard, and configured access to my VPN
- Added Syncthing, and configured key data shares across machines
- Installed GNU/Emacs, though I have
yet to clone my
init.el - Installed Nheko through Flatpak as my Matrix client
- Added GNOME Secrets
for accessing/managing my passwords. I installed this through Flatpak to
have a more recent version than was avaialble in
apt. I also installed it on my Librem 14, and like it rather a lot. - Added Pure Maps, though I have not yet configured it.
- Tested this PR to get to where my onboard smartcard can unlock my LUKS on boot.
Beyond that set of tasks, I have also started looking at writing simple GTK4 applications in Rust. Eventually, I intend to create one adaptive application that serves as a landing page for buttons allowing me to do simple tasks that themselves have no grpahical interface. It has been quite the learning experience having never even attempted to write a GUI application before.