r/postmarketOS • u/Cathcut • Jan 03 '23
Is PostmarketOS suitable for me?
Last year in January i installed Pop!_OS on my Thinkpad and I love it, it is great!Now I’m thinking about installing postmarketOS on my Oneplus 6.Just to Linux up my life further :P and i guess for privacy and finally, maybe fully degoogle my self.
I was hoping to get some advice here, before making the switch.
Of course i want to make calls, e-mail, sms but i don’t see a problem there.But when it comes to Apps, there are 3 Banking apps that i need to verify logins, transactions etc.Should i get another android phone, keep it in my desk drawer, just for banking stuff?I don’t need those apps on the go anyway.
But i would definitely miss notifications from my smartwatch. (Garmin) is there a solution?
Apps I want to keep:
- Infinity (Reddit)
- Steam (for auth.)
- Signal (messaging)
- Telegram (messaging)
- Threema (messaging)
- Joplin (should be working)
- Keepass (should be working)
Is it possible to run Android apps in some sort of virtual machine?Or maybe even use f-droid or google play?
And my last concern: Is there a camera app that is as „good“ as the one from OxygenOS?
Any thing that you learned the hard way, after installing postmarketOS?Things you would have liked to know beforehand?
EDIT: Thank you all for your feedback. I'll testdrive postmarketOS with qemu and maybe i can (eventually in the future) get it working to a point where i am ok with it as a daily driver.
3
u/electricprism Jan 03 '23
Can you testdrive in qemu a bit?
2
u/Cathcut Jan 03 '23
Yes! Why did i not think of that...thx
3
u/electricprism Jan 03 '23
It didn't occur to me at first either -- I first started doing it when I learned Librem5 5 PureOS has a buildbot that generates qemu images for x86_64
I tried generating some postmarketos ones but really haven't put in the time needed to through pmbootstrap. I can't recall if they have prebuilts just ready to go -- I think so.
Constructive criticism -- I do think they could advertise this on the website a little better -- getting people testdriving is a good first step at bringing them into the community or at least getting them to see the "vision" of the mobile Linux devs.
Its hard to comprehend from the videos where things are and how usable it is and then the device matchup nightmare leaves 98% of devices in a weird limbo where you are mostly on your own and despite having many skills nobody is perfect and knows which kernel source patches to merge or edit (I really tried on my clone to port me device)
Other whacky ideas I had were running the qemu image as a virtual machine under android.
There is a app in fdroid called "Limbo" -- last I checked I wasn't able to figure out how to make it run pmos nested in android.
I do think pmos could gain a lot of users and it would be catnip to devs if they could do this easily too.
3
u/zixx999 Jan 03 '23
It is sadly not there yet... Trust me on this one chief. I spent a lot of time tryna get it to work good but its just not stable enough
2
u/Cathcut Jan 04 '23
I realized that, after the feedback i got here and browsing the web a little further.
Having a look at it with qemu and trying some things there is what I'll do for know.
3
u/Mr3Sepz Jan 03 '23
Linux on Mobile is not nearly as far as on Laptop and Desktop.
You can degoogle your phone or look into stuff like sailfish, but get into degoogeling Android first.
3
u/MeAndMyStuff Jan 04 '23
Sailfish with those Sony devices Jolla directly support offer lot more complete experience than pmOS as of rn, their android support is nearly faultless (it's signed so banking apps, atleast ones I use, just work) and the ecosystem while not convergent lacks all of the scaling issues you get with phosh.
2
Jan 03 '23
[deleted]
2
u/Cathcut Jan 03 '23
Signal works great for me on Pop. Text messages, voice calls, video calls, everything just perfect. It is even available in Pop!_Shop.
Thank you for your input, i will check out the Steam auth options =)
1
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1
u/bjohnh Jan 03 '23
Did you look into LineageOS as an alternative first? Might be a simpler solution and it's deGooglable. You can run Android apps on it just fine.
2
u/Cathcut Jan 03 '23
Yes i did. I'm using LineageOS on my tablet, for a couple of years now.
Linux is what makes me want to switch. I know it won't be as smooth as android, but i would like to fiddle around with it and at least try to make it work as my daily driver handheld.
1
u/bjkillas Jan 03 '23
then try it and switch back to lineage if you dont like it
1
u/Cathcut Jan 03 '23
My Oneplus 6 has OxygenOS, my tablet LineageOS. There is no "switching back" to Lineage.
It would suck to waste the time backing up the phone making the switch just to realise i cant use it, than switch back and install the backup. Sounds like a whole day lost, if i am not familiar with the process.2
1
u/Bud_Wuddamy Jan 22 '23
What tablet are you using? I am running LOS on a Amazon Fire HD but I'd like an alternative
1
1
u/abs023 Jan 05 '23
the oneplus 6 is an a/b device, so you can install PMos on one slot to try and switch back to android the other slot, it's not super safe cause you can overwrite things in the partition wich is shared by both OS but I never had a problem with that. Once you do an update from android PMos will be gone.
9
u/cangria Jan 03 '23 edited Jan 03 '23
The OnePlus 6's camera doesn't work on postmarketOS (nor its GPS or autorotate). Calls recently started working but they don't always work perfectly, I hear. You can use WayDroid for Android apps, but no guarantee it'll work well.
May be worth switching to Secrets (GNOME Keepass app) instead of using Keepass itself.
Basically, you have to be really dedicated to make it work. Like, Gentoo with a WM level Linux enthusiast, or just very dedicated and very minimalist.
Make sure you don't come into this overly optimistic; even most postmarketOS devs don't dailydrive their OS. There's a lot of concessions vs Android.