Manjaro ARM Plasma-Mobile Beta1 (PinePhone)

[oberon]

The Manjaro ARM project is proud to announce the first BETA release of Plasma-Mobile for the PinePhone!

This image uses kernel 5.10.1 optimized for the Pinephone (megi)

A ton of work has gone into plasma-mobile development since our last alpha builds with this desktop. See the details here.
From a packaging standpoint we have gone to great lengths to make available latest versions of plasma-mobile- and mauikit-apps by adding a dedicated [mobile] overlay repo providing fixed git-snapshots of the complete KDE-Framework- Plasma- and PlaMo-packages ( … a set of ~170 packages )
Preinstalled apps include basically everything you expect from your typical smartphone, including a torch, camera app megapixels and many applications familiar from a plasma desktop.

Known issue

With some specific network providers In order to be able to make calls, you need to change the modem configuration manually. This issue is still being worked on.
Current workaround:

• open the terminal application on the device
• download script:
  wget https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/network/ofono/ofono.git/plain/test/set-tech-preference
• make executable:
  chmod +x set-tech-preference
• run ./set-tech-preference gsm

Download Pinephone PlaMo Beta1

About the device

PinePhone:
Perhaps you’re in a line of work where security is a must, or a hard-core Linux enthusiast, or perhaps you’ve just got enough of Android and iOS and you’re ready for something else – the PinePhone may be the next Phone for you. Powered by the same Quad-Core ARM Cortex A53 64-Bit SOC used in our popular PINE A64 Single Board Computer, the PinePhone runs mainline Linux as well as anything else you’ll get it to run.

The purpose of the PinePhone isn’t only to deliver a functioning Linux phone to end-users, but also to actively create a market for such a device, as well as to support existing and well established Linux-on-Phone projects. All major Linux Phone-oriented projects, as well as other FOSS OS’, are represented on the PinePhone and developers work together on our platform to bring support this this community driven device.

Order

The Manjaro Edition of the PinePhone is already sold out
BUT: In the Pine64 shop you can now already order the PinePhone KDE Community Edition running PlasmaMobile on a Manjaro aswell as the Convergence Package.
(Delivery scheduled for mid January 2021).

How to install

Download the image/xz file from the download location. Verify that the download completed successfully.

After that, install Etcher ( sudo pacman -S etcher if on Manjaro) and burn the to an SD card (8 GB or larger).

The PinePhone should recognize the SD card as a bootable device and boot from it.

The preconfigured users are:
User: kde
Password: 123456

User: root
password: root

Donate

Please consider supporting Manjaro ARM directly via Patreon , Ko-Fi or Open Collective.
You can also donate to our upstream, which is Arch Linux ARM .

[oberon]

Bugtracker

If you face issues with this editon, please open a new issue on our bug-tracker

[paju1986]

I found an Issue, when I install Firefox, i cant get keyboard input, the keyboard doesn’t appear at all.

[utezzy]

The first Plasma beta just in time for christmas! Awesome! Thank you Manjaro team.

Regarding Firefox, I have been monitoring the usability of it over the various alpha/dev versions and the keyboard works sometimes and then an update breaks it, then it works again and so on. Firefox flickering is also a recurring issue, sometimes fixed sometimes not. And no scale-to-fit equivalent of Firefox on phosh seems to exist.

I can respect the ambition of the Plasma-mobile team to want to ship their own browser, however that is a very complex task and it is going to be difficult to match Firefox. If they want to pursue it then at least Firefox should be made usable first, keyboard working, no flickering and the same ui scaling that phosh has for Firefox. Then they can focus on Angelfish if they want.

Right now a browser without an adblock and other privacy extensions isn’t really usable on the modern web, and it is especially important for a privacy-focused phone like Pinephone. Adblock is supposed to come to Angelfish but right now it isn’t activated. Still, there are other addons which make Firefox indispensible.

[LMalilil]

How do you edit the APN settings? My sim card auto populates a useless ota.bell.ca APN and all i can do is activate it or deactivate it. Cant seem to figure out how to set my own (the proper one for my provider)

[Kiyoshi]

Hi, does somebody have problem with connection to telekom ?

Merry xmas

[xonq]

I am not having this issue, but this likely suggests your modem is not being detected. try dmesg | grep modem and report the output perhaps.

[Kiyoshi]

yop, here is it:

[xonq]

yes, your modem is not powering on.
Try researching mmcli, ModemManager, and ofonoctl for leads. There are specific commands for turning your modem on with the first two options - first find your modem number by listing the modems, then attempt to power it on. The help menu for the first command should show you how.

i wish i could be more help, but i switched back to phosh as phone functionality was not working (my modem is working though)

[LMalilil]

My personal opinion on this “beta” is that it has no place being called a beta release. A rough alpha at best. Phone is no where near functional no matter how much you mess around with CLI to try and make things work. It’s definitely got promise but far from a beta

[Kiyoshi]

OK, I will try
thank you so much

[gibbz]

Edit: managed to get it to boot by unplugging power first and booting while only on battery.

Issues:

1. touch screen does not work
2. power button flicks screen off then on
3. volume keys dont work on lock screen

I cant progress any further as the touchscreen doesnt work.

[xonq]

Yeah, LMalilil, I normally would brush off a comment like yours since this is development software, but I agree that this is not a “beta” phone software. The speed improvement and fluidness of this OS is definitely among the best at this point and is a substantial improvement over the alphas - however, the phone software is not in my experience. Deadlines I suppose.

[Contrillion]

My first post on the forum but I’ve been using Manjaro for some time, new to ARM though after recently picking up a PinePhone.

I agree with the comments so far, but from trying one of the alpha builds about a month ago, Beta1 is a lot more stable and usable overall. I love the Plasma Mobile UI the best so prefer to use it, but the alpha was so buggy I ditched it for phosh until now.

Now with Beta1 I think overall usability is on par with phosh for my use. Coming from Phosh Beta4 the things I’m most enjoying are the Plasma Mobile notification bar and quick settings menu, which is a fair bit more practical and helpful, and seems to work fairly well. I’m also enjoying the fact that I’ve hardly run into any app UI scaling issues. While it’s something that Phosh has improved a lot on, plasma mobile seems to have this taken care of.

The main issues I’m seeing on Beta1 is it can be difficult or impossible to wake it after a longer period of idle. The power button on the side might not wake the screen, or if it does the screen doesn’t respond to the swipe-up gesture to open the password/PIN entry screen. There are also issues here and there with having the virtual keyboard show up, or getting rid of the virtual keyboard to access the software buttons at the bottom of the screen.

Also not really an issue, but something I’m missing is a maps app (geared towards nagivation, rather than an atlas-style). Phosh has one out of the box which works okay, but I haven’t been able to find an equivalent on plasma mobile. There’s none built in and nothing quite the same in Discover.

[zash1958]

Any way to disable the lockscreen with its login?

I would like it greatly to boot up or switch on and are on the working desktop

Have someone tested autologin to plasma-mobile?

[Pak0st]

Heh, small find - you can scroll the line with command shortcuts (Cancel, Esc, Tab, etc) left and right. I wonder how many other swipe gestures are hiding in plain sight - the first one I found was swiping down on the keyboard to hide it (can’t use up swipe to bring it back though - in the terminal I’ve found that you can bring it back by opening+closing the notification shade).

[anon80447176]

Does the root partition automatically resize to fill the empty space on the eMMC/SD card, or do I need to do it manually before booting the device?

[anon89812132]

@Feakster - You have to resize it.

[anon80447176]

Ok. Thanks for letting me know.

[coolguy129]

Is anbox working in this build? And thanks heaps for the huge amount of development that has gone into this build.