description: A description of my current Linux phone and its setup
date: 2024-02-23 00:00:00+0000
image: postmarket.png
math:
license:
hidden: false
categories:
- Linux
- Mobile
- PostmarketOS
tags:
- linux
- postmarketos
- phosh
---
## Configuration
This is the current configuration i am using while daily driving linux on mobile.\
I am using a [OnePlus 6T](https://www.oneplus.com/it/6t/specs) with [PostmarketOS](https://postmarketos.org/) and the [Phosh](https://phosh.mobi/) user interface.
As a daily driver the phone is basically 100% functional for my use case, your experience may vary depending on your needs.
## Known issues and problems i have experienced
Current issues i have found:
- brightness resets at phone reboot
- default audio output resets at phone reboot
- notch blocking some informations in the top bar (workaround)
- camera not functional
- browser notification not passing through
- gesture to close applications difficult to use
- notifications are not removed when read
## Installation
There are pre-built images of PostmarketOS that can be use if a custom compilation is not needed. The installation of these images if incredibly simple and well documented [here](https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/OnePlus_6_(oneplus-enchilada)).\
Pre-built images can be found [here](https://postmarketos.org/download/).
## Applications
These are the applications that i am currently using/testing:
"Calls" is the default application to call used in the OS. As of the writing of this post the app is 100% functional, it can receive and make calls without any issues (at least so far).\
"Chats" is the default application to send and receive SMS and MMS messages. I have not tried MMS yet, SMS work perfectly out of the box, no particular setup needed. The app is quite complite and responsive.\
Features include: archiving messages, messages receipts, emojis, seach function and more. Fully functional
Thunderbird is very good state overall, i have not needed to look at potential alternatives yet, given how everything i need is in the app already. With a a couple of changes to the view settings it is possible to create a very usable setup.\
Notifications work visually if the app is open in the background, but i have not being able to make the sound of the notifications work.
Once open, emails are fully readable and navigable, they render correctly and have all the standard options available and working (reply, reply list, archive, just, forward, etc).
The extended support release of Firefox is the default browser of the OS and arrives with **mobile-config-firefox** package already installed, making it usable from the start.\
The browser is fast and responsive, the only issue i have found is that the tabs menu is not working correctly when more tabs than the maximum the view allows are open. I wasn't able to swipe to reach the tabs outside of the view of the menu.\
Giara is a a Reddit client release under the GPL3 license, written using python and GTK. The app works very well, shows everything the site does, from comments to thumbs up to dates and edits.\
Has the option to copy to the clipboard a comment or post and to open them in the browser. Currently has a slight issue swiping the main page.
Formely gtkeddit, it is written in C++ and it's an archived project. It's currently still working great, probably slightly faster than Giara, but the UI is older and i don't like the way it manages trees of comments. Still very good as a Reddit client.
Famous RSS/Atom feed reader for the terminal written in C++. Somewhat functional after a couple of easy modifications i have found improved my experience. Instructions will follow.
Written using flutter, works very well out of the box. Notifications works visually as long as the app is among the open applications tray. Only important piece missing is the ability to play audio messages.\
Requires flatpak installation and flathub repository addition.
To use Newsboat to read RSS feeds (inlcuding the feed of this site!) you can change a couple of things to improve your experience. The default browser used by Newsboat when using the "o" command to open an article in the browser is Lynx.\
Using Lynx in the phone's shell is not impossible but impractical. What i found much better is to pass the Firefox-ESR binary as a variable when launching Newsboat, by editing the **newsboat.desktop** file in ```/usr/share/applications``` like this:
This will launch the Firefox-ESR binary and use firefox as the browser. The binary will be executed in the same terminal in which you lanuched the Newsboat binary, so, in order to go back to newsboat, you will need to close Firefox first.
