Linux has long been the most practical laptop OS for me, but I can't see it ever being competitive with mobile OSes, and that's coming from someone who wants it to succeed (I've installed postmarketOS on a OP6T). I just don't see how it will overcome the various issues (app support, tap-to-pay, camera quality, etc).
The fact I thought it was a custom UI over stock android means they got this well rounded.
What are the best phones/distros to use phosh with?
I have a oneplus6 and use a mobile version of Debian called "Mobian". postmarketOS is a really good choice, and they have a wiki of supported devices: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices
Seemed interesting until I read that Phosh pulls in GNOME - gnome-settings, gnome-session etc. Seems like a very strange bundle to bring in for an extremely power constrained device, where every % of increased battery drain is noticed by the user
Why? What's particularly heavy in these gnome tools?
Like the particular programs are no issue, but the whole UNIX-userspace as done in the mainframe era and still is. Like you definitely need cooperative program suspend/resume like on Android for any kind of sane battery life, but that's unfortunately completely missing in case of GNU/Linux.
Gnomes' a massive memory hog
I was looking at this and thinking maybe it would improve a cheap android phone. But now I know it's running gnome I won't even consider trying
Do you have any numbers? The last numbers I remember seeing, had XFCE around 500 MB and gnome around 700 MB. I'm trying to find some current numbers, but it's a pretty tough thing.
Without any different numbers, I think saying a massive memory hog is a little hyperbolic. Applications in use, especially browsers, are going to dwarf the desktop environment anyway. Having the polish is well worth it to many people, myself included.
I would definitely like to see less memory requirements for the various desktop environments, but at the end of the day I don't pay for any of this
Every desktop environment is a massive memory hog. Do you really want something minimal like xfce on a touchscreen?
Even that will be a massive energy vampire compared to android, that had top notch engineers working on it for close to 2 decades...
It doesn't run GNOME Shell, which is the main memory hog of GNOME.
It uses some GNOME services, namely so it doesn't have to invent it's own. None of these services are memory heavy and all have a purpose (e.g. managing Bluetooth)
Phosh is not based on gnome-shell and nobody cares if you want to run openbox on your phone.
Phosh is not based on gnome-shell and has its own settings and apps, but it does use parts of gnome, no reason to reinvent the wheel.
> Seems like a very strange bundle to bring in for an extremely power constrained device, where every % of increased battery drain is noticed by the user
I'm sure you can make your Frankenstein version that would be 10% as usable and secure as phosh by removing everything but for most users, 100mb more ram and 1% more battery drain for an OS aiming to be a daily driver is something that's worth it.
It works kind of okay for recent devices as phones are very powerful nowadays, Phosh on a <2015 device is much more painful though.
The name sounds like someone driving by at high speed ...
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Terrible name. It's going to fail on those grounds alone.
Not that it would really succeed otherwise. You need Android app compatibility to stand a remote chance.
Oddly enough I am using Win10 right now on my laptop. On my main computer I use linux but I also got tired having to set up things specifically for the laptop or be locked down in a specific distribution; plus, I also have to run various software on the laptop and when the rest of the class or group uses Windows, and you are the sole Linux person, it feels very lonely. So I fake being a win user in that case.