
600 days of postmarketOS - ollieparanoid
https://postmarketos.org/blog/2019/01/16/600-days-of-postmarketOS/
======
priansh
Congratulations! This is one of the most amazing projects I've seen on here
and I can't believe I haven't heard of this earlier, especially since you got
the phones to boot it as well!

Amazing article as well. I learned 600 new things from this :)

Do you have any more information on sh.rt and its use cases?

~~~
wezm
You can read more about sr.ht at [https://meta.sr.ht/](https://meta.sr.ht/) as
well as on Drew’s blog [https://drewdevault.com/2018/11/15/sr.ht-general-
availabilit...](https://drewdevault.com/2018/11/15/sr.ht-general-
availability.html)

~~~
ollieparanoid
To anyone who would like to see sr.ht grow, please note that Drew DeVault is
running it on donations. He chose to go work full time on free software with
these donations:

> I need to clarify that despite choosing to work full-time on these projects,
> my income is going to be negative for a while. I have enough savings and
> income now that I feel comfortable making the leap, and I plan on working my
> ass off before my runway ends to earn the additional subscriptions to sr.ht
> and donations to fosspay et al that will make this decision sustainable in
> the long term.

[https://drewdevault.com/2019/01/15/Im-doing-FOSS-full-
time.h...](https://drewdevault.com/2019/01/15/Im-doing-FOSS-full-time.html)

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Thanks ollie <3

------
hawski
As my old ARM Chromebook gets nearer to it's EOL I start to look for how to
install Linux on it. I'm wondering if postmarketOS could be used to do this.
Has anyone tried to do something like this or where should I look?

I'm slowly dabbling on my own Linux distribution [0]. I'm using Void Linux
packages and build system to prepare a rootfs image. Thanks to how it's done
in Void I can build the whole image without root on newer kernels. I intend to
have the update model of ChromeOS (two partition scheme, reboot to update),
but Void being a rolling release only distribution may bring me same pains as
Alpine edge brings to postmarketOS. So I wonder: how's Alpine build system in
comparison to Void's? Does pmbootstrap bring the isolation or is it already an
Alpine feature?

[0]
[https://github.com/hadrianw/tomatoaster](https://github.com/hadrianw/tomatoaster)

~~~
m45t3r
> I intend to have the update model of ChromeOS (two partition scheme, reboot
> to update), but Void being a rolling release only distribution may bring me
> same pains as Alpine edge brings to postmarketOS.

You're kind of reinventing NixOS, but worse (NixOS has atomic upgrades and
allows you to return to any generation of your system, not only the last one).

~~~
hawski
No, I'm reinventing ChromeOS. I started on this project with my father in
mind, to make it easier for me to maintain his computer. My father would not
run NixOS, but maybe I'm wrong. This will give a single image and very little
tooling outside of end user parts. It probably will be much simpler.

If totally seamless and _automatic_ updates can be achieved with NixOS I'm all
ears.

~~~
roblabla
Put whatever update command (nixos-rebuild switch --upgrade I believe? haven't
touched nixos in a while) in a crontab and you get automatic updates. If the
update fucked it up, you can boot back into the previous configuration. In
this way, it's really, really hard to brick a NixOS install. That's the beauty
of it.

Of course, it's not going to be as transparent as ChromeOS: If the update
failed, you'll have to manually select the previous configuration in the GRUB
menu. That's definitely something solvable with a bit of code though.

So, yes, automatic and seamless updates can be achieved with NixOS, given a
bit of configuration and maybe a bit of code. Whether it's the right approach
for your use-case remains an open question though. NixOS has many other rough
edges (many applications don't "just work" on it) which might make it a deal-
breaker, depending on your use-case. But you might want to look into its
update models, you might get some good ideas :).

~~~
m45t3r
> Put whatever update command (nixos-rebuild switch --upgrade I believe?
> haven't touched nixos in a while) in a crontab and you get automatic
> updates.

It is even easier, really. Just add the following to your
/etc/nixos/configuration.nix file:

    
    
      system.autoUpgrade = {
        enable = true;
        dates = "daily";
      };

------
eltoozero
What is the best way to help the project?

I’ve got an old Sprint Samsung Epic 4G slider (WiMAX, the old 4G), that would
love to be a little mobile terminal...might be a little too dated though...

Anyway, this is a fantastic project and I’m eager to contribute!

~~~
ollieparanoid
> I’ve got an old Sprint Samsung Epic 4G slider (WiMAX, the old 4G), that
> would love to be a little mobile terminal...might be a little too dated
> though...

Give it a try then, here's the step-by-step porting guide:
[https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Porting_to_a_new_device](https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Porting_to_a_new_device)

> What is the best way to help the project?

See
[https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Contributing](https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Contributing)

> Anyway, this is a fantastic project and I’m eager to contribute!

Happy to read that \o/

------
vardump
It's nice to see obsoleted hardware made useful once again.

I can see this becoming only more popular over time. Phones show already a
slowing pace of improvements, so maybe in the future devices can be useful (at
least in some form) way beyond current 2-3 year period.

------
_bxg1
Much as I admire the goal and the scrappiness, doesn't it make way more sense
to start with an AOSP foundation (without Google Services) and invest one's
energy improving (or even forking) that experience instead of reinventing such
an enormous wheel?

~~~
geowwy
They give pretty good reasons for what they're doing on their website:
[https://postmarketos.org/blog/2017/05/26/intro/](https://postmarketos.org/blog/2017/05/26/intro/)

~~~
cwyers
The reasons don't really seem to address why Android has the issues it has --
device manufacturers don't upstream their code changes to the mainline Linux
kernel, Linux doesn't have the same level of abstraction around hardware as eg
Windows does, and the state of ARM SoCs isn't like the x86 platform where
there's a lot of standards you can follow, everybody just ships bespoke code
to boot their SoC and only their SoC. I don't see how shipping a "real"
GNU/Linux userland addresses that.

~~~
Twisell
The reasons are very clear, while I trust Apple so far, it’s both important
and awesome that a bunch of nice peoples start building a real FOSS
alternative in case they are actually screwing us.

Android can’t be trusted anymore unless major change of policy. By extension
AOSP are better but still dubious since they can’t totally cut the cord from
Google if needed (as far ad I understood).

~~~
ewoodrich
What do you mean by "cut the cord?", AOSP doesn't use Google Services and it
could be forked at any time (but would admittedly be difficult to maintain
without Google's resources).

~~~
zozbot123
The mainstream Linux stack is getting closer to parity with AOSP and
ChromiumOS anyway, gaining features like touch-screen-first input, small-
screen support, phone calls & SMS, GPS location, privacy-focused sandboxing
etc. It's all about having a _single_ system for the community to focus on,
thus reducing fragmentation. AOSP app support can then be layered over the
basic system if needed.

~~~
majewsky
> The mainstream Linux stack

Without taking away anything from your argument, I'd like to point out that by
most objective measures, Android is _the_ mainstream Linux stack.

~~~
bubblethink
I think they meant mainline.

------
petemc_
Really good idea, fair play to everyone working on it. I generally try to keep
my phone as long as possible but the main driver to make me get new phone is
the diminishing battery capacity. This isn't helped by the fact it is very
hard to get a replacement battery shipped to where I live.

~~~
zozbot123
If you control the OS and hardware drivers on your device, you can preserve
its battery capacity substantially by keeping its state-of-charge around 50%
as far as practicable (keeping it from reaching not just "lows" which you
should _always_ do, but "highs" as well). We aren't even close to reaching the
_full_ amount of battery optimization that's possible on mobile.

~~~
yorwba
I wonder how that advice applies if the battery capacity has already degraded
significantly. For example, my current laptop's battery reports itself to be
"100% charged" at 60% of its original capacity. Should I keep it around 30%? I
don't really know enough about battery chemistry to understand how high levels
of charge cause damage.

~~~
zozbot123
No, keep it hovering around 50% as much as you can, provided that it _never
ever_ reaches really low states of charge, 15% or less. State of charge is
always relative to the capacity at current time, not the original factory
capacity.

------
amiga-workbench
I've got piles of old devices, I wouldn't mind having a go at getting this to
boot on my Xperia Z5c and Z3.

I'm so glad this project exists, with smartphones being designed to be
disposable embedded devices with none of the conveniences the IBM PC
architecture provides this is going to be an uphill battle.

------
herogreen
Very very nice project. Did you communicate with the lead developper of the
Zero phone ?
([https://www.crowdsupply.com/arsenijs/zerophone](https://www.crowdsupply.com/arsenijs/zerophone))
These two projects could be a great match I think.

I hope to start hacking on my Motorola E 4G (surnia) for which works has
started on the wiki but it is my main phone and I need to keep it working :(

------
bodo-rab
Nice blog-post and nice project! Rock on!

~~~
ollieparanoid
Thanks! :)

------
ac130kz
This is something really interesting and great. Unfortunately, even to get the
basic functionality (calls, audio) working, one has to spend a lot of time and
effort.

------
opless
I am sure I’m missing the point, but surely getting the GSM/3/4G radio working
for a voice call would be the whole point here and there’s zero calls made yet
by postmarketOS, in over 600 days that’s a pretty bad state to be in. No? Is
this supposed to be a Linux phone or not?

 __confused __

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
Getting radio working is not the sole point. The original motivation as was
presented to me in early announcements was to give smartphones a 10-year
lifecycle [1]. So more about getting extra life out of all these old phones
people have laying around rather than specifically getting them to work as
people's primary mobile device.

[1] [https://liliputing.com/2017/08/linux-based-postmarketos-
proj...](https://liliputing.com/2017/08/linux-based-postmarketos-project-aims-
give-smartphones-10-year-lifecycle.html)

~~~
opless
Hmm. I can't say I can see the utility of doing that.

But if they're enjoying themselves doing it, that's utility, in a way, all on
it's own - I guess.

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
The utility is that instead of throwing away your old phone every two years,
you can reconfigure it into become something else useful.

~~~
opless
Usually by the time two years are up, my phone is usually not holding much of
a charge and the mechanical bits are starting to fail.

I'm pretty sure iPhones are not alone in being designed to last around 18-30
months

------
alrs
I've found that it kinda-sorta works, on some hardware. I really wish they
were targeting Debian instead of something as prone-to-broken as Alpine, but
beggars can't be choosers.

~~~
ollieparanoid
> something as prone-to-broken as Alpine

How do you come to that conclusion? Sure, Alpine's edge repository has
breakage, but so does Debian sid.

~~~
morganvachon
Alpine doesn't make for a stable desktop OS, however it was never meant to be
used on the desktop. I wonder if OP was referring to that.

