Debian for Mobile

While technically correct in that it is not the 'official' Debian project, the Mobian project fills the gaps to actually make Debian usable on mobile. It's a minimal set of packages to make the Pinephone usable and work is being done to upstream the packages. I've found it's pretty much the only way to use an otherwise vanilla Debian install on the Pinephone.

A good percentage of contributors are Debian Developers or Maintainers.

The Mobian project is uploading the majority of its packages into Debian already and the goal is to reach 100%.

At that point it will be only plain Debian.

Thanks.

Privacy&security trustworthiness-wise, Mobian is an unknown quantity (at least, to me).

That should be a big concern for something as sensitive as a smartphone/handheld, which tend to handle people's electronic communication, authentication for even more sensitive resources, etc.

One path to trust would be to become an official Debian project, and to be scrutinized by broader Debian people.

> This website looks like it got put together by a bunch of hackers,

Yeah, we try not to gatekeep folks from editing the Wiki, which is a double edged sword, like you said.

> which is fine, but to attract even more contributors and other enthusiasts it might be good to at least put an intro and screenshots on the main page.

Thank you for the feedback! would there be anything specific you would want to see for an intro/screenshots?

I’m very attracted to this project because of all the Linux experiences I’ve had Debian is the one that reliably works - specifically with RPi, hardware, drivers etc.

No questions but one suggestion - it would be great to ease the process of making PWAs for the Linux space. My background is designer -> JS -> node -> mucking around with C/C++, and I think this would be a great way to seed experimentation and creativity around apps - essentially hooking into the curiosity of someone chancing on the project but then being able to pick through examples, boilerplates etc and getting excited at prospect of experimenting with some core HTML/CSS/JS skills for a side project - also specifically outside of the cloying business space of android/win/iOS. The problem with Electron is you embed an entire browser with each app - perhaps some sort of version manager that links PWAs + GTK webviews?

Any plans on porting it to more mainstream phones? It seems to be aiming for "first-world phones" at the moment which is nice since they are more open and you don't have to worry (too much) about proprietary blobs and firmware but leaves a big chunk of the world out.

> But the default UI based on Phosh is problematic.

Why do you say that? EDIT: Sorry, I did not read your whole comment. I would offer that Phosh has gotten more and more mature, and I find it to work extremely well now.

> Also, no project mailing list?

Most communication with Mobian happens on the Matrix Channel: https://matrix.to/#/#mobian:matrix.org

Semi-unrelated:

I’ve been eyeing the Pinephone for quite some time now. Do you use yours as a daily driver? Or have you paired it with an a more-mainstream iPhone/Android?

I’m currently using an iPhone as my social circle uses primarily uses iMessage and I’ve found it hard to migrate. As a secondary device for debugging, testing, and a “burpsuite playground” I’m using an extremely cheap Nokia I picked up a few years ago.

I think a Pinephone would be cool to replace the Android I have.

Isn't the point of open source to contribute rather than complain about what others haven't done?

If one of the devs purchase one, and it runs mainline linux, it would be a good candidate!

This is also a pretty good link: https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php

Its a wiki for a lot of tips and tricks to get Mobian working on the Pinephone. It has a couple of other devices it will run on, but the Pinephone/Librem 5 are the most mature.

(Disclaimer: I'm one of the devs for Mobian).

They need to make that the homepage, atleast temporarily!

Yeah, PWAs will be critical to the survival of third to market OSes which can't get large developer investment from major brands. I live in constant frustration that Windows Mobile was shut down the release prior to Windows supporting PWAs.