Re: PinePhone Pro & Guix

[Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli <GNUtoo@cyberdimension.org>]

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On Sat, 24 Dec 2022 20:18:30 +0000
phodina <phodina@protonmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
Hi,

> > Hi all, I'm trying to write a guix code that will generate images
> > for pinephone pro. Can anyone share the config .scm file if anyone
> > has done it? Thanks.  
> 
> I do have same interest in mind. The bigger issue I'd say is to have
> working mobile UI environment as the console would otherwise be
> useless.
> 
> There are two possibilites:
> - Plasma mobile [1][2]
> - Phosh [3][4]
If people buy the keyboard addon it's also possible to use additional
environments like sxmo that was mentioned before (an environment that
works 100% with a keyboard).

> After these environments are running in Guix we can look into the
> hardware. The biggest drawback I'd say is that's still development
> platform.
Users probably just need to be aware of it[1].

> Sure you can use it daily but the mileage varies from
> Android or iOS (mainly power and peripherals such as camera)[6].
> Though the work already done is amazing and continues to improve!
> 
> Besides the code not yet being merged in the upstream kernel there's
> another issue.
That would be an issue indeed. Though if packages are added, it might
be possible to easily support the Pinephone (the not-pro version) or
other smartphones with upstream kernels.

> FIY I've been putting together the definition for the Pine64 products
> on nonguix channel :-)
With a little amount of work, it might be possible to use Pine64 devices
supported by upstream Linux and u-boot. And as I understand, there is
not a lot of packaging to do for the Pinephone, so it might also
benefit other phones, or at least show how to do it in a way that works.

Though having everything packaged will not magically adapt
all the applications to a very small screen with a very high resolution
for instance, or magically port free software Android applications to
GNU/Linux. Some Android applications will also not work with Waydroid
if they require hardware features that Waydroid doesn't support yet
(like telephony for the "silence" application).

Another issue might be that not everything cross compile fine in Guix,
and cross compiling from x86_64 is needed so to have downloadable images
like for the Pinebook PRO[2].

Though things could be done in two stages where once the image is
installed, the users would then just use guix system reconfigure to
install additional packages.

References:
-----------
[1]https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/PinePhone#Thermal_safety
[2]https://guix.gnu.org/en/download/latest/

Denis.

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