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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Opinion (mine only) (by Brad on 2022-02-07 01:38:19 GMT from United States)
The PinePhone is unfortunately, a misnomer - it should be referred to as Pine.
2 • facepalm (by 0800-COVIDIA on 2022-02-07 02:57:49 GMT from New Zealand)
PlagueOS - seriously? I think I am joined by 99% of the population wanting to forever forget the last two years ever happened. :)
Of this ending in ---OS, a review maybe of RebornOS could be scheduled in? Ideas being fresh and reborn is at least positive.
3 • Phones (by Romane on 2022-02-07 03:08:06 GMT from Australia)
I grew up in the days when a phone was a phone, and a computer was a computer. Then, it seems, everybody forgot the adage: "Just because you can, doesn't mean you have to."
I would not call the current day offering either a phone or a computer, just some hybrid monster created from the two. Not everybody will agree with me, and that is perfectly OK. I have absolutely no use for most of the functionality manufactured in. I don't like or want a phone that pretends to be a computer.
But the manufacturers then get greedy and want more money for something that has less. Fie upon them all. I continue to live in hope that they will one day produce just a phone without all the goo-gaa's I nether need nor want, and at an acceptable price (i.e not driven by greed).
Romane
4 • Pine Phone as a general purpose device (by Jeff on 2022-02-07 03:25:33 GMT from United States)
How many of the Raspberry Pi could I buy for the price of a single Pine Phone? Two? Three? More?
That is why as a general purpose device it is a fail.
Of course they could reduce the price if they would remove all the phone hardware, since as a phone it currently appears to be a failure.
For those who have suggested using it with WiFi and VoIP to use it as a phone; that would make it no better than a cordless handset connected to a landline, which are available far cheaper.
5 • PinePhone reviews (by eco2geek on 2022-02-07 03:52:33 GMT from United States)
Please hold off on the PinePhone reviews until the device actually works as a phone.
6 • LMDE and the PinePhone (by Simon Plaistowe on 2022-02-07 04:19:20 GMT from New Zealand)
Interesting expansion on the previous explanation for LMDE's existence. Makes perfect sense.
It's early days yet for the PinePhone. Based on previous reviews, it seems totally experimental and not much use for practical purposes yet. But give the pioneers a chance to take a few more arrows for the rest of us. You never know, perhaps one day it'll be better than an Android phone. Then I'll buy one.
7 • PinePhone (by Dave on 2022-02-07 04:25:20 GMT from United States)
I agree with other commenters that we’ve heard enough for now about the PinePhone‘s current (and apparently still very rough) state.
Maybe revisit it in a year to check progress and see if it’s come any closer to being an actual mobile smartphone capable of replacing an android or iOS device as a daily driver.
8 • Linux Mint Debian Edition (by Dave on 2022-02-07 04:35:58 GMT from United States)
> *LMDE is not a priority, certainly not compared to Linux Mint itself*
That’s why most users who want a distro based directly on Debian will be better served by MX Linux or Debian itself.
9 • PinePhone reviews (by Alexandru on 2022-02-07 07:56:10 GMT from Romania)
Please, make some research before deciding what OS to install on PinePhone and then claiming it is less a phone. I am sure some OSes installed on perfectly working phones will make them unable to be used as a phone.
For further reviews, it would be interesting to look at the following results from actual users of PinePhone - https://www.pine64.org/2022/01/31/pinephone-community-poll-results/.
10 • PlagueOS hardware settings (by FormerlyChuck on 2022-02-07 10:42:16 GMT from United States)
As PlagueOS is a hypervisor it requires VT-x/AMD-V enabled to boot. This means nested virtualization must be enabled for your host PC in the BIOS, and for the VM in VirtualBox settings. This is similar to running SmartOS or Proxmox in a VM.
11 • Price (by Jesse on 2022-02-07 12:19:47 GMT from Canada)
@4: >> How many of the Raspberry Pi could I buy for the price of a single Pine Phone? Two? Three? More? That is why as a general purpose device it is a fail.
That is one way to look at it. You could get three Pi computers for the price of a PinePhone. But those Pis would not have any storage drive, battery/UPS, touch screen, power supply, keyboard, or wireless card.
When I bought my Pi B it was $35 next to about $150 for the PinePhone. However, once I bought a microSD card, the power cord, the WiFi card, the cable to attach it to my monitor and a keyboard my cost was around $100 and it still didn't have a battery or its own screen.
So in the end the two devices cost about the same in an apples to apples comparison. The PinePhone might even be cheaper if you consider the battery a cheap UPS.
12 • no comment (by Tad Strange on 2022-02-07 15:26:12 GMT from Canada)
Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth PlagueOS the failed?
Though I'd like to know more about "doas" - why it may be preferred over sudo or use of root.
I have PCLinuxOS on a laptop, which defaults to forcing you to use root to perform updates.
I don't have a problem with this - I just thought it might be something to try this doas thing on.
On to a segue: I just found out that Snap requires SystemD, so anything running a different init, like PCLOS does, is SOL.
I wanted to try Anbox, which is only distributed as a Snap.
13 • doas (by Jesse on 2022-02-07 15:47:57 GMT from Canada)
@12: "Though I'd like to know more about "doas" - why it may be preferred over sudo or use of root."
The doas tool does the same thing as sudo, but it's smaller, less complex, and the configuration file is easier to read. This makes it easier to set up without making a mistake and less likely bugs will be found like the ones which hit sudo last year. For comparison, here is the sudoers file on MX Linux without the comments and whitespace:
Defaults env_reset
Defaults mail_badpass
Defaults secure_path="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin"
root ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
%sudo ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
@includedir /etc/sudoers.d
Now here is my doas.conf file which accomplishes, for all practical purposes, the same thing for my user, but with tighter security restrictions for anyone else using the computer:
permit jesse as root
14 • Have you ever heard the tragedy of the joke told too late? (by CS on 2022-02-07 16:28:19 GMT from United States)
@12 you beat me to it
Mine was going to be "Did you ever hear the tragedy of PlageOS the unwise?" Terrible name.
I don't have much interest in PinePhone at all - but if there is anything more about it the main question is, how well could it function as an alternative to mainstream phones. Voice, text, navigation, rideshare, photo/video, some games, etc.
15 • Linux Phone (by John on 2022-02-07 17:03:23 GMT from United States)
Hmm....
How about a version of Linux 'phone' and web access running over a WIFI access point.
Simple. No Google giggle, Microsoft paper or Apple rot.
John
16 • Pinephone (by Michael Doblado on 2022-02-07 18:03:20 GMT from United States)
I've been using a beta pinephone for over a year. I use it only as a phone and after switch to the Manjaro Phosh build, have had no problems. Like another commenter, I've never taken to using a phone as a general purpose computer (I like my phones dumb). I realize that's not how Pine markets the device and maybe seen as something of a fail, but it works for me.
17 • Slackware (by John on 2022-02-07 18:33:25 GMT from Canada)
Congregations to Slackware on another good release, it was long in coming, *but* the changes were immense and well worth the wait.
The high quality if the release reflects the hard work the Slackware team put into this release without having to compromise its philosophy.
18 • @13 doas - Jesse (by Andy Prough on 2022-02-07 23:03:29 GMT from Switzerland)
Hi Jesse,
I've used doas quite a bit, and it works great for the most part. But some gui programs that need elevated privileges don't seem to be able to start with it. For example, if I want to start the Synaptic package manager in a session using a minimalist window manager, I can type 'sudo synaptic' to get it to start. But 'doas synaptic' does not work.
Could you write something one of these days about how to get doas to be more of a complete replacement for sudo, and cover any of these kinds of edge cases?
Or maybe the answer is I shouldn't be using sudo or doas for that purpose, that I should be using something like pkexec instead. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
19 • doas (by Jesse on 2022-02-08 00:26:06 GMT from Canada)
@18: Due to the extra permissions graphical programs require, when you use doas you need to add a flag to your doas.conf file to enable GUI applications. This is covered in the doas.conf manual page. It is also covered on the main page of the doas project. See the section called Desktop Applications. https://github.com/slicer69/doas
20 • Pine and old phones, and @3 (by Dr. Hu on 2022-02-08 02:10:17 GMT from Philippines)
Although I agree with @1 about the misnomer, the Pinephone or other Linux phones have some advantages over Android phones, not as phones necessarily, but as Jesse has done, as server.perhaps The ability to swap OSes easily is great. I've done some Android phones, and they are a pain. I still have one semi-bricked that I have to get back to sometime. Then there is convergence. Convergence was tried and abandoned by Microsoft and Samsung, not because it couldn't work, but because there are not enough takers. In Linux, all you need is enough interested people to keep a project alive. No investors or shareholders to satisfy. I wouldn't buy one yet, but I wish them well.
@3 "I grew up in the days when a phone was a phone, and a computer was a computer." I think people tend to idealize the past rather than remember. When I was a teenager, a computer took up a whole room and required attendants. To make a phone call, I had to find a working phone booth somewhere, or find a store let you call and pay by the minute. Picking years at random: In 1971 in New York City, the basic rate for a phone was $7.12 plus phone rental. International calls could be $3.00. This was in 1971 dollars. Multiply by 6.88 to get today's values. A phone is a communication device, and today's smartphones are to old phones like those phones were to the telegraph. Yesterday I bought a Samsung phone as a gift, for about $100. It has better specs than one from 2016 at less than half the price. A Princess phone (remember those?) would have cost almost twice as much in the 1980s. My phone has dual sims. I pay about $6 to one telco for data, and $2 to another for call and texts within the country. I have two phone numbers in the US which will ring on my smartphone, and which allow free calls within the US. I can set a conference video call on different apps with people from this or other countries. Try that with an old landline or a dumb phone. If this is the result of greed, then greed is to be applauded.
21 • Pine Devices (by Mathirajan on 2022-02-08 20:32:26 GMT from United States)
My experience with the hardware released by www.pine64.org is that they are all developer devices and not a consumer device. While they focus on the hardware, the software seems to be totally left to the community and the software quality is very bad. This seems to be the case for several of their products.
22 • Ultramarine Linux (by bgstack15 on 2022-02-09 15:57:27 GMT from United States)
I chose Korora Linux as my start into the desktop usage of GNU/Linux. It used Fedora as the base, for the rpm/yum-based world like my server experience, and included the media codec repos and a nice theme. I've been moving away from the Fedora-based world for overarching reasons, but if I were sticking to it, I would try out the Ultramarine Linux.
I'm glad somebody is still making spins of Fedora. With all the Ubuntu-repackaging efforts going on, Fedora needed some love.
23 • Korora/Ultramarine, spins of core linux distros (by Otis on 2022-02-10 14:44:32 GMT from United States)
In the review it's stated that oft observed: "The project can be considered a spiritual successor to Korora Project."
"Spiritual successor." As we see distros slough off and flame out for a variety of reasons. Fedora has been around from close to the beginning.. so yes there are spins that'll come and go but Fedora remains. Similar to Debian and its spins, Slackware and its spins, Arch and its spins.
I find myself behaving with these spins the same as so many linux users; rather than go to the Daddy/Mommy of them, use the spins instead.. not sure why but maybe it has something to do with the promise of less work to do by the makers of the spins. The spins vanish, often spawning a successor, but the core distros that inspired the lot remain.
24 • Want better phones/devices? (by Somewhat Reticent on 2022-02-10 18:25:37 GMT from United States)
@2 "If this is the result of greed, then greed is to be applauded." It is not.
Greed left unregulated gives less, not more.
Competition motivates both productivity and innovation.
If one person can use a Pinephone for a year, it clearly works.
Discipline and patience required may be repellent to fans of other products.
So?
25 • PinePhone, et. al. (by R. Cain on 2022-02-10 23:36:25 GMT from United States)
Let me say at the outset: (1) Pine makes great hardware, and (2) I *used to be* a flaming apologist for Pine’s products (1) until being ‘saved’ from buying a Pinebook Pro (a really GREAT piece of hardware) by a Forum report of a fatal flaw (‘fatal’ for a laptop “daily driver”, which still has not been fixed almost three years later); and (2) until I did some serious thinking, AND READING, about a situation which seems almost to good to be true---a Linux phone which will run ANY ARM-based OS, and which has a keyboard!
Yes, one *might* be able to run any OS, but “just any OS” won’t accommodate the keyboard.
Here are two conflicting statements from the Pine Store’s phone-keyboard description:
(1) “...This add-on effectively turns the PinePhone (Pro) into a PDA with an in-built LTE modem.
The keyboard case is supported by multiple mobile Linux operating systems including, BUT NOT LIMITED TO [emphasis mine]: Manjaro Linux, DanctNIX Arch Linux, postmarketOS and Mobian...”
...followed by...
(2) “Not all mobile OSes support the keyboard case. At launch the keyboard is supported by: postmarketOS, Manjaro Linux, DanctNIX (Arch Linux) and Mobian.”
There is also an “eye-opener” here, an item (in the Store’s Keyboard listing) stated as
“...A programmable open firmware by Megi...”
You absolutely must read this, by one of the very dedicated individuals who attempts to “finish” Pine’s work for them; it includes the surprisingly candid “megi's PinePhone Development Log “. In particular, read
“2021–08–10: Wrapping up Pinephone keyboard firmware development”.
One needs to face hard facts: Pine Micro relies on “the community” to FINISH THEIR PRODUCTS for them.
One need look no further than the Pine Forums to find all the customer reports of non-working product due to non-working software. This cuts across most all of Pine’s products: Pinephone; Pinephone Pro; Pinephone keyboard (serious charging problems: will NOT work with most OSes); Pinebook Pro; OneNote; Pinecil (a SOLDERING IRON!); PineTab; PineTime; PineCube...
Yes, it is absolutely true that Pine gives all manner of warning that all their product is only for people who do not want a *finished* product; but only for people who want to invest time in “getting it to work properly” The hardest part to get past, and the saddest, is---again---that Pine *makes great hardware*...and that’s all.
https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-pinephone-pro-keyboard-case/
https://forum.pine64.org/
26 • @24, better phones. . . (by WhoKnew on 2022-02-10 23:57:41 GMT from United States)
"Discipline and patience required" Really? We are talking about using a phone, not piloting an airliner or getting a graduate degree.
"Competition motivates both productivity and innovation." Agreed! And regulation often stifles both. Remember Ma Bell? So let Pinephone compete in the open market and see how well it does and why.
27 • UltraMarine/Fedora-spin (by Jan on 2022-02-11 02:40:31 GMT from Netherlands)
Reading the Ultramarine test I got MontanaLinux in my mind (https://img.cs.montana.edu/linux/montanalinux/ ).
It is another interesting live-DVD Fedora-spin with very frequent updating of Fedora-versions Live-iso's, so always very actual up-to-date with Fedora-live-iso's (2x a month).
The only problem I see (out of experience with Linux-distros) is that distro's with a one/two-man show (no matter how brilliant) which will inevitably lead to fail.
Maintaining a distro is obvious a dull time-consuming business.
28 • Pinephone (by HeadacheAnon on 2022-02-11 04:17:31 GMT from United States)
Distrowatch has always been about "putting the fun back in computing" with Linux, BSD and other alternative operating systems.
When it comes to the Pinephone, people seem to forgotten about "the fun part".
I would go ahead and continue doing reviews on mobile operating systems, it is an area that is seriously lacking in many ways and Distrowatch can provide the attention through an unbiased opinion and reviews.
Yes the phone is a "developmental platform". So what? I have both played around and used the Pinephone for day to day use. It does need work, but has progressed along nicely over the last year.
Yes, I would like it to do things both IPhone and Android do, but its not there yet. But it offers things the IPhone and Android cant do, like giving a user control over what one wants to work on a phone, and that the user can modify whatever a user wants to do on such a platform.
My phone runs PostmarketOS. It does work with the following:
Phone calls work
SMS texting works
Wifi and Mobile Cellular works
Phone is encrypted (LUKS)
Bluetooth works
Camera works (not great), but does
VPN works (OpenVPN setups)
Hotspot (works)
Linux based apps (not the greatest, but browsing and other items do work)
Waydroid - Android app emulation works (Loading F-Droid and other alternative app stores), depending upon the Android app, some work great (e.g., Spotify, Brave and Tor Browsers) other
Android apps are hit and miss.
So.....on with the reviews....provide the positive aspects but also provide the critiques.
29 • @3---Phones; computers (by R, Cain on 2022-02-11 20:37:18 GMT from United States)
"I would not call the current day offering either a phone or a computer..."
...but it IS a computer!
A lot of people are somehow missing the point: it may not be a good phone, but, with its Converence Package, it has more computing power and flexibility than my Acer netbook,which only has a single-core CPU and no GPU (but which still is a VERY good computer, by the way). With its keyboard and appropriate (very good) OS, you have available to you a relatively powerful Linux computer---with all manner of connectivity---which fits in your pocket.
"...I don't like or want a phone that pretends to be a computer."
Fair enough. What are your feelings about a computer which pretends to be a phone?
One can always ignore any pretensions, and revel in the owning of a highly portable and very flexible COMPUTER (which, because of its connectivity, can always be attached to a full-sized keyboard, a mouse, and full-sized display).
Perhaps Pine Micro is missing a sure thing by not (re-)naming this device 'The PineComp'.
Number of Comments: 29
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| • Issue 1172 (2026-05-11): Fedora 44, dealing with extra fonts, Fedora plans to provide AI tools, problems with Ubuntu's new coreutils, TrueNAS extends its development cycle, postmarktetOS improves the boot splash screen, Redox ports tmux |
| • Issue 1171 (2026-05-04): Xubuntu 26.04, extending memory with VRAM, Ubuntu plans AI features, Devuan developer forks GTK2, Mint introduces hardware enablement builds, Linux running on a PlayStation 5, local kernel exploit found in Linux |
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| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Full list of all issues |
| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
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| Random Distribution | 
Linspire
Linspire is a full-featured operating system (based on Debian GNU/Linux and Ubuntu) like Microsoft Windows XP or Apple Mac OS X. Linspire offers the power, stability and cost-savings of Linux with the ease of a Windows environment. In addition, Linspire features exclusive Click-N-Run (CNR) technology that makes installing software on Linspire fast and easy. Note: Linspire was acquired by Xandros Inc. in July 2008 and discontinued as a Linux distribution shortly afterwards. Linspire was later purchased by PC/OpenSystems in 2017 and sold as an Ubuntu-based commercial distribution.
Status: Active
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| TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite
Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
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| Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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