Anyone running Guix on the pinephone?

Anyone running Guix on the pinephone?

[Christopher Lemmer Webber]

I see the cookbook now mentions the possibility of running Guix on a
pinephone... is anyone actually doing it?  Mind posting your experiences
and setup?

(Doesn't have to be as a phone necessarily... I'm more interested in
using it as a lightweight portable computer.  But a phone would be nice
too.)

 - Chris

Re: Anyone running Guix on the pinephone?

[Joshua Branson]

Christopher Lemmer Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> writes:

> I see the cookbook now mentions the possibility of running Guix on a
> pinephone... is anyone actually doing it?  Mind posting your experiences
> and setup?
>
> (Doesn't have to be as a phone necessarily... I'm more interested in
> using it as a lightweight portable computer.  But a phone would be nice
> too.)

Is a pine phone good enough for a portable and personal computer?
Doesn't it only have 2GB?  I was starting to run into RAM issues with
4GB when I was using Gnome.  Now I have 8GB and I am running sway.  No
RAM issues anymore.

Just out of curiosity, how would you deal with RAM issues/slow CPU
issues on a pinephone?  Using a lightweight window manager and only run
Emacs?  :)

--
Joshua Branson (joshuaBPMan in #guix)
Sent from Emacs and Gnus
  https://gnucode.me
  https://video.hardlimit.com/accounts/joshua_branson/video-channels
  https://propernaming.org
  "You can have whatever you want, as long as you help
enough other people get what they want." - Zig Ziglar

Re: Anyone running Guix on the pinephone?

[Christopher Lemmer Webber]

Joshua Branson writes:

> Christopher Lemmer Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> writes:
>
>> I see the cookbook now mentions the possibility of running Guix on a
>> pinephone... is anyone actually doing it?  Mind posting your experiences
>> and setup?
>>
>> (Doesn't have to be as a phone necessarily... I'm more interested in
>> using it as a lightweight portable computer.  But a phone would be nice
>> too.)
>
> Is a pine phone good enough for a portable and personal computer?
> Doesn't it only have 2GB?  I was starting to run into RAM issues with
> 4GB when I was using Gnome.  Now I have 8GB and I am running sway.  No
> RAM issues anymore.
>
> Just out of curiosity, how would you deal with RAM issues/slow CPU
> issues on a pinephone?  Using a lightweight window manager and only run
> Emacs?  :)

Sure, why not? ;)

It wasn't actually too long ago that my main computer only had 2GB of
ram...

Re: Anyone running Guix on the pinephone?

[Vagrant Cascadian]

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On 2021-05-02, Christopher Lemmer Webber wrote:
> Joshua Branson writes:
>> Christopher Lemmer Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> writes:
>>
>>> I see the cookbook now mentions the possibility of running Guix on a
>>> pinephone... is anyone actually doing it?  Mind posting your experiences
>>> and setup?
>>>
>>> (Doesn't have to be as a phone necessarily... I'm more interested in
>>> using it as a lightweight portable computer.  But a phone would be nice
>>> too.)
>>
>> Is a pine phone good enough for a portable and personal computer?
>> Doesn't it only have 2GB?  I was starting to run into RAM issues with
>> 4GB when I was using Gnome.  Now I have 8GB and I am running sway.  No
>> RAM issues anymore.
>>
>> Just out of curiosity, how would you deal with RAM issues/slow CPU
>> issues on a pinephone?  Using a lightweight window manager and only run
>> Emacs?  :)
>
> Sure, why not? ;)
>
> It wasn't actually too long ago that my main computer only had 2GB of
> ram...

Some pinephones have 3GB of ram, too, which gives a little breathing
room.

It's very similar specifications to the (older) pinebook, which runs
guix system ok (considering, of course, it is slow), but you'll need to
significantly patch the kernel and bootloader until support lands
upstream...

You could surely run guix on one of the foreign distro images.

One of the main problems will be screen resolution and size issues; many
applications do not render well on a phone-sized screen. There is a list
of applications and rough ratings for their usability on the pinephone
with mobian:

  https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php?id=apps

Incorporating some of those into guix wouldn't probably be terribly
hard.

The main user interface for mobian is phosh, which is a gnome-shell
alternative targeted at mobile devices; runs well on the pinephone
despite the low hardware specs. I presume it would be plausible to get
that and related software into guix, though I don't know what gnome
versions it depends on.

Getting a decent on-screen keyboard will also be essential; squeekboard
is pretty configurable, though it's written in rust, and rust's long
bootstrap chain may make it impractical on aarch64, if it works at all.

I suspect it would be feasible to create a mobian-like experience with
guix; it's *just* a matter of packaging the right software and finding
the time to do it! :)

Count me interested, if cautious at taking on too many side
projects... :)


Before I tackle that, I think I'll try to get some decent aarch64 build
machines available and running locally, and make guix publish results
available somehow to the world at large... doing anything on aarch64 is
a bit painful until substitute availability is more workable.


live well,
  vagrant

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Re: Anyone running Guix on the pinephone?

[Efraim Flashner]

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On Sat, May 01, 2021 at 10:01:39PM -0400, Christopher Lemmer Webber wrote:
> I see the cookbook now mentions the possibility of running Guix on a
> pinephone... is anyone actually doing it?  Mind posting your experiences
> and setup?
> 
> (Doesn't have to be as a phone necessarily... I'm more interested in
> using it as a lightweight portable computer.  But a phone would be nice
> too.)
> 

I have a pinephone that I play with occasionally. I haven't yet
installed Guix (package manager, not planning on OS any time soon) on
it, I mostly want to see what I can get to work without worrying about
integrating packages from Guix too.

The display is 720x1440, but that's a bit of a lie since somewhere
between 600 and 700 pixels are lost to the on-screen keyboard. (I have
the KDE plasma mobile one). I tried setting up KMail for email on the
phone and I almost got it set up, but I don't have an existing config to
copy over and setting it up on the phone is difficult with the
aforementioned screen size. It's running wayland so I can't just use
'ssh -X' to pull it up on my desktop and setup kmail.

I will agree with everyone that the phone is getting better with each
incremental software release and feels faster with each passing week.

On the other side, as a more computer oriented device, I love ssh-ing
into my phone and treating it like a normal computer. Unfortunately I
had to give my KVM switch to my kids (they're now switching between my
old desktop and an N64) so I haven't been able to hook up the pinephone
to my monitor yet.

As a last thing, I have used my kickstarter-era pine64 as a build
machine for Guix for many years now and I found that under load it's
more stable running Debian than running Guix.

-- 
Efraim Flashner   <efraim@flashner.co.il>   אפרים פלשנר
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Confidentiality cannot be guaranteed on emails sent or received unencrypted

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Re: Anyone running Guix on the pinephone?

[raingloom]

On Sun, 02 May 2021 12:36:37 -0400
Joshua Branson <jbranso@dismail.de> wrote:

> Christopher Lemmer Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> writes:
> 
> > I see the cookbook now mentions the possibility of running Guix on a
> > pinephone... is anyone actually doing it?  Mind posting your
> > experiences and setup?
> >
> > (Doesn't have to be as a phone necessarily... I'm more interested in
> > using it as a lightweight portable computer.  But a phone would be
> > nice too.)  
> 
> Is a pine phone good enough for a portable and personal computer?
> Doesn't it only have 2GB?  I was starting to run into RAM issues with
> 4GB when I was using Gnome.  Now I have 8GB and I am running sway.  No
> RAM issues anymore.
> 
> Just out of curiosity, how would you deal with RAM issues/slow CPU
> issues on a pinephone?  Using a lightweight window manager and only
> run Emacs?  :)
> 
> --
> Joshua Branson (joshuaBPMan in #guix)
> Sent from Emacs and Gnus
>   https://gnucode.me
>   https://video.hardlimit.com/accounts/joshua_branson/video-channels
>   https://propernaming.org
>   "You can have whatever you want, as long as you help
> enough other people get what they want." - Zig Ziglar
> 

Firefox works fine on it, can even compile some software on the device.
The trick is indeed to not run too much RAM eating crap at the same
time, browsers included. I wish Netsurf was more touch friendly and
less buggy.

Also there is a model with more RAM.

What's actually missing is better input. GTK's touch input is still
very far from Android's. Also a lot of apps need to be made more touch
friendly and responsive.

The big issues with Guix would be:
* too much wasted storage space compared to postmarketOS
* much slower guix pull
* no GUI frontend
* lots of missing packages