Arch barebone image brought to become a desktop Plasma-Pinephone, ...update

I have set up a Pinephone starting from a barebone Arch-Linux
image,

and set up a plasma phone, since I did not like the Manjaro
version of it : - )

Still, it has to be perfected, but it is a good start.
There is a yt demo video linked to the picture, it is my first self
produced yt upload so bare with me.

20210907_135211

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Yeah it’s still pretty early days, but they making quite some progress :stuck_out_tongue:

yes, but this is a standard plasma desktop which I installed on top of barebone arch tty2, over ssh completed with plasma DE, modem manager, call app…
and adjusted for touchscreen handling, cause I was not happy with Manjaros take on the plasma phone…

I have tried their image on my pine-phone its alright I guess

okay :slight_smile: not with me, had to unlock myself every minute, I tried even suspend energy saving,
set button handling, timeout set …
to avoid, did not work. You can not use a device when you most of the time
use to unlock it. Phosh wasn’t
better :slight_smile:
Then I like to group my apps, there were all in a single block.
And I like to have more than one desktop plus be able to personalize. …and so on
So I find it to be in handling, nearly as bad as an iphone and clearly worse than android
---- So I was expecting from KDE plasma something different.
With my construction I have now all those features :slight_smile:

Good job @ycom1 :slightly_smiling_face::clap:. Must have been difficult to set up.

THANKS : - ) , so step by step, first ssh over USB, then ssh over wifi,
setup desktop with qtvirtualkeyboard that sddm loads it
for the first login. That meaned I had to create a sddm
config with nano.
Thenhad to configure sddm for wayland / and plasma
startup.

Create onboard keyboard support.

Sadly wayland did no advantage as to right-click emulation.
So I stuck with plasma session.
Then figured it out that plasma desktop mode was better
compared to folder view for the touchpad functionality.
Only the legacy launcher worked well enough for touchpad
input.

Set up the panel, that I have all functionality under
one hood.

Then installed all those apps like discover, modem, dolphin, call, nextcloud …

Still not finished with bluetooth, GPS, some map app, also want to mount

the internal emmc as swap partition… that is the current stage.

P.S.: I installed AUR right click emulation but it had no effect, do you have
any idea to that ?

1 Like

Thanks for the text. I don’t have a Pinephone to test though :sweat_smile: .

I use onboard too. I stick with X11 because it won’t work on Wayland.

Were you trying this?: GitHub - PeterCxy/evdev-right-click-emulation: Implement Long-Press-to-Right-Click on Touchscreen Linux Devices with Xorg or Wayland

If it doesn’t work, perhaps you will need to create an issue through their github page.

I’m interested in knowing if all the phone sensors work correctly

yeah thanks, that is the package, it kinda seems working now, : - ) will keep you posted,
as I am all finished , would post a polished demo with explanation audio,…

1 Like

a short update to this Pinephone project, if somebody eventually finds
interest ; - )

I had a password issue so that I was locked out of my phone, so
there came an idea to build like a rescue system into the phone
for emergencies.

For that I grabbed that jumpdrive ISO from danctnix page,
and flashed the internal emmc of the phone with a further
barebone arch ISO, this also from the danctnix project.

Starting from that rescue drive, then inserted the corrupted
installation of my plasma phone, chrooted to the root of
the corrupted sd installation over ssh,
and the phone “lives” again.

I thought, that this might be an interesting story to tell.
( a pinephone with a rescue system build in :slight_smile: )

2 Likes

Personally, I really enjoy SXMO on the pine. Super smooth. that being said, appreciate the effort that went into your setup.

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seems interesting, and sure is lightweight, I give it a try someday : - )

The good thing about pinephone is, that as long you have some spare
high-end SD cards, you can try out whatever you want;

With Jump Drive you do not even need SD cards…you can write directly on the eMMC . Regardless, it is a lot of fun! Enjoy.

1 Like
# setting up a classic plasma pinephone using the arch barebone image:




download: Pinephone barebone ARCH image


to be transferred to the SD-card with e.g. Etcher ev. in your repo
or as AppImage.


Connect to USB SSH  with the user “alarm”
and password “123456”. ( The root password is BW “root”
 )

ssh alarm@10.15.19.82

# then go and change the default passwords still being in SSH
# but give quick and simple password like a random number e.g “0909” 
# because there is a lot of typing password ahead also this time
# you can take the same numbers for root as well...


sudo passwd root

sudo passwd alarm



# activate  a network connection, in order to have internet connection

**sudo nmtui**   

# you can then ping google.com to confirm internet connection 

# you can now also switch over to SSH over network:

*ssh <user>@<network IP address>*
*with the password  you created before*


# then go for update system

sudo pacman -Syy

sudo pacman -Syu  ( this can take a while eventually need to restart @ finish )

sudo pacman -S qt5-virtualkeyboard plasma-meta onboard sddm

# takes # quite a time : - ) 







# Create the following directory and file:


sudo mkdir /etc/sddm.conf.d

cd  /etc/sddm.conf.d


sudo nano virtualkbd.conf


# and paste the content:  

[General] 
InputMethod=qtvirtualkeyboard 

# and save

# create your own user with directory, create password ( recommended to keep it simple ),
# replace “andy” with your own user name !!

sudo useradd -m andy
sudo passwd andy

# add your user to sudo group # replace “andy” with your chosen user name 
sudo usermod -a -G wheel andy  

# create sddm config file
sddm --example-config | sudo tee /etc/sddm.conf




# add autologin option for your user to sddm.conf by altering the lines accordingly


sudo nano /etc/sddm.conf


[Autologin]
# Whether sddm should automatically log back into sessions when they exit
Relogin=false

# Name of session file for autologin session (if empty try last logged in)
Session=plasma

# Username for autologin session
User=andy


[General]
# Halt command
HaltCommand=/usr/bin/systemctl poweroff
InputMethod=qtvirtualkeyboard


# save the altered config file, exiting nano
# enable sddm

sudo systemctl enable sddm



# check on xorg packages and some essentials


sudo pacman -S calls telegram-desktop flatpak kde-utilities-meta 

sudo pacman -S gnome-contacts kaddressbook communicator thunderbird

sudo pacman -S nextcloud-app-calendar nextcloud-app-contacts midori 

sudo pacman -S navit qt5-connectivity simplescreenrecorder

sudo pacman -S modem-manager-gui spacebar kdeconnect 

sudo pacman -S korganizer kaddressbook base-devel
# now it is quite finished, reboot
sudo reboot
1 Like

You can perhaps post here too:
*so…pinephone…is it for me?. * https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmasterrace/comments/qb5k19/sopinephoneis_it_for_me/