zlacker

I totally understand the Frustration the author has here. But I'd rather have any working software version than 10 that don't work well at all and that has always been my pine64 experience. Great hardware, barely any documentation, important hardware and software features don't work at all or are locked behind a very old kernel version

>>dtx1+(OP)
How does making alternatives harder to boot and pissing of maintainers of software components they rely on improve their quality long-term?

>>detaro+s
It's an entity that's in a position to make a design decision - "We will have one bootloader flashed onto the eMMC - the same for every device we produce." It creates a standard which users and developers alike can fix themselves to. It is definitely a good thing, if you are worried about productizing -- but perhaps not so great if you want a diverse community of hackers.

>>jovial+e1
Well, with SPI it was the same bootloader too.

>>jovial+e1
> The solution to this is Tow-Boot: a distribution of U-Boot that can be put in that flash chip. With this the U-Boot firmware can just be treated like system firmware and be updated through fwupd independent of what distributions ship. This would work not only for the PinePhone Pro, but would also enable things like installing your preferred Linux distribution on a PineBook Pro by popping in a flash drive with a UEFI installer, much like you can on any other laptop.

SPI + Tow-Boot would have standardized the boot process and made it more robust.

>>dtx1+(OP)
According to TFA (which I don't know enough to verify), the >10 distributions that "don't work well" are the ones pushing the platform forward and solving problems one by one. The blessed monoculture distribution is about packaging other people's work and doesn't really contribute to the development, in fact they only add annoyance due to shitty packaging policy, so with the other distributions pissed off, they won't have stuff to pick up. That's not a promising path to "one working version".

>>dtx1+(OP)
> I'd rather have any working software version than 10 that don't work well

This is a false dichotomy. Picking a (crappy) distribution does not make it magically better.

It's the opposite in fact. By hurting the ecosystem less people contribute to kernel, applications etc, making all distributions worse.

Besides, as somebody else pointed out, if I have to buy a phone that requires me to use only one (untrusted) software stack I can as well use an android phone.

>>oefrha+We
The question is to what extent it's an accurate characterization.

There are two levels to this:

Kernel development / HW specific support. This is mostly being done by people unrelated to any distro, or unrelated to Pine64 at all. (linux-sunxi community, Google, linaro, bootlin, lima project, libreelec, and various individuals) One exception is Martijn, who did initial bringup for Pinephone Pro, and Mobian's maintainer. Nevertheless, vast majority of ongoing improvements, bugfixes, and HW support work comes from outside of mobile distros, and always did, even the work focused directly at the Pinephone SW support. And these efforts were not supported by Pine64 in any comparable way to how distros were supported initially.

Then there's userspace application work, and integrating all the normal user facing SW into a cohesive whole. This is where the distros come in. I don't know much about struggles with that.

So yeah, don't forget that TFA is just a view of one person, and the sky is not falling. (well, aside from the war, and energy crisis, ... but hey)

>>megous+I12
Mobian and pmOS do a huge amount of work wrt. bringing up overall support for OEM devices. The other efforts you mention mostly work at lower levels of the stack, focusing on supporting individual SoC's or IP blocks. Both are very much necessary, but if you care about polishing support for a specific OEM device the mobile distros are doing much of that work.

>>detaro+s
"Making alternatives harder to boot" is really no worse than what you get when trying to install Linux on any off-the-shelf PC with preinstalled Windows.

>>zozbot+o32
I'm talking specifically about pinephone.

>>megous+I62
The point still applies. Do you really expect Linaro or Bootlin to be working on completing mainline support for the PinePhone, Pinephone Pro and other Pine64 devices? That seems like it would be a job for the distros.

>>zozbot+wa2
I don't expect anything. I'm just telling you how it is, as a maintainer of the pinephone kernel that most of the distros use, and the rest heavily borrow patches from.

>>e2le+n4
Late reply, but... The fact that there is a superior solution is kind of irrelevant. Everyone has their opinion on what is the best solution - I'm sure some people would disagree with your assessment of SPI+Tow-Boot. If there is no one who is actually in a position to make that call, you will just have chaos. That's my only point.