PinePhone

This repo contains my notes for using the PinePhone. It includes some steps for setting up Arch Linux the way I like it, and some workarounds to compensate for things that aren't quite working yet on the PinePhone out of the box. These notes are mainly for me, but they're up here incase they may be useful to anyone else :)

I've been using my PinePhone as my daily driver since July 1st, 2021.

Installation

Dreemurrs's script for installing Arch on the PinePhone/PineTab with full disk encryption works perfectly. It can be found here -> archarm-mobile-fde-installer.

Initial Setup

Done with phone in hand.

1. Get things updated with sudo pacman -Syu.
2. Enable ssh sudo systemctl start sshd.service, only do this at home while you've got password auth enabled (especially with password 123456).

Done via SSH.

0. SSH in to do the rest of this so that it's not all phone screen typing nonsense.
1. Change password for alarm user (keep numeric so pin works) passwd. Then su root and passwd to change the root password...then exit.
2. Make ssh directory mkdir ~/.ssh.
3. Install some usefull stuff via sudo pacman -S wget vim
4. Download keys for key auth wget https://github.com/d0n601.keys -O ~/.ssh/authorized_keys.
5. Exit the session and ssh in again with no password to verify functionality.
6. Disable password authentication to ssh via sudo vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config, and setting PasswordAuthentication no.

Install GUI File Browser

1. sudo pacman -S nemo

Install Gnome Podcasts

1. sudo pacman -S gnome-podcasts

Install and Enable Cronie

1. sudo pacman -S cronie
2. sudo systemctl enable cronie.service

Install and Configure zsh

0. Install zsh and git via sudo pacman -S zsh git.
1. Install ohmyzsh via sh -c "$(wget -O- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)".
2. Set my favorite theme via ZSH_THEME="duellj" in ~/.zshrc.
3. Clone zsh-autosuggestions plugin git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions
4. Set very convenient auto suggestion plugin via plugins=(git zsh-autosuggestions) in ~/.zshrc.
5. Bonus: sudo pacman -S cowfortune and add cowfortune to the bottom of ~/.zshrc.

Gnome Icons

I used Manjaro with Posh for a while before switching to Arch, and I missed the look of the default Manjaro setup.

1. Clone the repo git clone https://github.com/Ste74/papirus-maia-icon-theme.git.
2. Make the directory icon sudo mkdir /usr/share/icons/Papirus-Dark-Maia.
3. Copy all the files from the dark theme over sudo cp -R ./papirus-maia-icon-theme/Papirus-Dark-Maia/* /usr/share/icons/Papirus-Dark-Maia.
4. Set the icons gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface icon-theme "Papirus-Dark-Maia".
5. Reboot.

Bluetooth Audio

Some headphones worked, some didn't. I found the steps below allowed me to pair the nicer set of headphones I've got that weren't working before.

1. Install Pulas Audio Bluetooth sudo pacman -S pulseaudio-bluetooth.
2. Add Enable=Source,Sink,Media,Socket to [General] section of /etc/bluetooth/main.conf.
3. Then pulseaudio -k.

Wifi Hot HotSpot

sudo nmcli device wifi hotspot ifname wlan0 con-name Hotspot ssid YOURKOOLSSID password APASSWORDHERE

Workarounds

This sections is for temporary workarounds for things that aren't quite working on the PinePhone as of writing this. Hopefully this section will dwindle away to null in the future.

Desktop Apps

While there aren't many applications with a GUI built for mobile devices, it's helpful to use desktop apps in "scale-to-fit" mode (if your eyesight is good enough).

1. gsettings set sm.puri.phoc scale-to-fit true

Protonmail Bridge

1. Clone repo here via git clone https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge.git
2. Install dependencies sudo pacman -S gcc libsecret go.

Alarm Clock

Right now the alarm clock won't wake the phone from deep sleep, which means it will not work as an alarm clock. Currently Posh users can install the birdie app instead, which works excellent. I forked it to change the alarm sound to the more familar Ubuntu Touch alarm I'm used to, and to increase the snooze time significantly ;)

1. Install dependencies if you've not done so already via sudo pacman -S python-pip make gcc.
2. Clone the original, or in this case my fork, via git clone https://github.com/d0n601/birdie.
3. Move into the directory cd birdie.
4. Install the dependencies via pip3 install -r requirements.txt.

Modem Losing Connection

The modem will drop connection from time to time. Instead of having to pay attention to it, make a cronjob and script to reset it if it's dropped off.

1. Create script called test-and-connect-modem.sh.

#!/bin/bash
FILE=/dev/ttyUSB2

if ! test -c "$FILE"; then
  systemctl restart eg25-manager
fi

2. Set privileges and ownership of script sudo chown root:root test-and-connect-modem.sh && sudo chmod 700 test-and-connect-modem.sh.
3. Enable cron to run every minute via sudo crontab -e and add * * * * * /home/alarm/test-and-connect-modem.sh.

MMS

Sending and recieving MMS now works simply by enabling the settings in Chatty and having mmsd-tng installed source.