While i am a KDE plasma stan the #1 feature request i have been getting from users is phosh support, and today i can finally deliver!

Most of the work is DE agnostic, the only things really were the integration with imsd and fingerprintd, both were relativity easy and now live.

My CI is also now building phosh images for the people that want them.

Suspend

One thing that plagues linux phones is higher battery usage, and the lack of true suspend is one of the major rises why. it is disabled on fp6-img currently but im working to fixing it, wanted to include it in this post but its going to take a bit more work so something for next time.

imsd fixes

Please keep the bug reports coming! It is sometimes a bit hard for me to keep up but im doing my best to fix everyone's issues in time.

With every carrier specific bug report i can fix that is another carrier that now works where people can just flash and calls works out of the box, the list keeps growing!

Even as im writing this at 04:33 another fix has just gone live!

sxmo

A developer of sxmo reached out to me, with posh working maybe sxmo next??? please comment if there is demand for this.

A very long discussion about AI

context: https://ani.social/post/37216830/18809885

I have spoken with many people about AI, some agree, some disagree, but i think in all cases it was respectful both ways, but this message prompted me to talk about it, this is going to be a very scattered, long text, feel free to skip if you want.

The man behind the cat

This is going to sound arrogant and i apologize but i want to give some context about my background, so people don't think i am some guy who has never written a line of code and just uses AI without understanding.

Please judge my code, my magnum opus is Crafter.Graphics and i have linked to the time before any AI was used on it. I'm not saying the version i linked is perfect, there was still alot of improving to do, but i believe it shows my credentials.

Heyo! I am Jorijn van der Graaf, 22 year old software developer, I dropped out of public school at 15 because that was the biggest time waste in the world for me, i entered private school and did some odd jobs during it before landing my first real software job while in school at 16, after graduation i started working full time there for a few years before switching to a different job, which turned out to be a big mistake, my main language was C# at that time, i had accepted a C# position. Guess what my actual work turned out to be? maintaining C++ code that was older then me in a windows XP VM using Embarcadero studio... One doesn't realize how good we have it now until you have to use the tools they had back then. But that is neither here nor there. I now have a good job, although its by far not my preferred stack it has good working conditions and good pay, so i should be happy right?

This is going to sound very entitled since many people have it far worse then me, and i also don't want this to be a sob story or people to feel bad for me, judge me by my product not my person, this is just context.

But no i'm not happy, cause i feel my work is completely pointless. Posting under your real name is a bit difficult but lets say i don't fully agree with capitalism and working each day to make shareholders richer is not my definition of a fulfilling life.

Until i found something that i thought would contribute to society.

Enter the FP6

My mom's phone broke so while i was looking for a new one for her i found the FP6, and i ordered two, one is now her daily driver on e/OS and the other one is my pmos devphone.

and then it started 3 months ago with my first post here:

https://ani.social/post/33469765

Enter the AI.

I was both early and late to AI. When first chatgpt released i thought it was great.

I really struggled and although to a lesser degree still do with writing, my posts here all fully handwritten and my own thoughts, but for official things i found/find it very hard, chatgpt was a great tool for this, i could give it my draft and it would polish it up to a nice email.

But for coding? they absolutely sucked, outside of asking for small snippets it produced the worst code known to man when on a project scale.

Then the company i work at went full AI mode for productivity, it started with lovable when it first came out and issues that first took a week now took a day, any product owner is going to choose that no matter what.

I mostly work backend so i interacted with it relatively little and used it for the odd frontend task, there is nothing i despise more then writing frontend code so it was quite handy for me, and lovable is this no code platform so it didn't matter if the code was shit and frankly nobody even cared if the code was shit because nobody was even looking at it anymore.

Enter claude, this was when AI started being used for backend tasks, and while my collegues were vibe coding entire applications i was the single holdout that still fully manually programmed the repos i owned, i once had to implement a feature in one of the other repos and that was so bad that seeing that made me never use AI in my own repos.

When programming manually you make this mental map, you know what each line does and why its there, AI completely shatters that.

But times change and deadlines tighten, i believe it was Opus 4.6 i first used for real coding tasks and i was impressed, it did better then i had expected. At a level where you could give it some tasks and it would execute them relatively well.

And the times continue to change, and now for my work i don't write a single line of code anymore. Why would i? Why would i put my effort to write code manually when AI can do it way faster? The boss expects a timeline based on AI speed and my work gets significantly easier. If i would work myself to death to reach AI speed and write code manually the only person i would be doing it for is myself, and i gain nothing from it.

FP6 + AI

When i got my FP6 i immediately flashed pmos on it and tried testing the features, many things did not work.

And i got the idea, AI is best at menial work, what if i just give it ssh to the phone and tell it to investigate?

This was using opus 4.7 i believe.

And how the times have changed, because that was really rough back then compared to modern models but the root cause was eventually found with the libqmi and AFW.

Then the ball started rolling, My understanding of the kernel got better, my work process got better, and the models got better.

That brings us to the current day, where modern opus 5-5 and fable 5-1 are very capable, being able to execute tasks alot faster and i know what specific instructions to give.

Have there been mistakes resulting from AI overreliance? yes and i try to learn from each of them, and all of it is public so if you want to browse my mistakes its open for everyone to see.

I think hard banning AI is shortsighted, when done well it is the one of the greatest tools for open source.

Assume open source banned all AI, none of this could have been possible, even if you are a god programmer this is far too much work for a single person.

So the corporations who can spend billions on human labor continue to dominate, now a single person can do the same.

r/mobilelinux has completely exploded with an army of people working with AI to progress mobile linux, I'm not sure if this is caused by my posts but the timing does overlap, and 2027 could actually be the year of the linux phone.

Now looking at some of these posts the issue i mostly have is (outside that they are on reddit) is that they are closed source people mostly doing their own thing. i wonder if they will actually upstream it. I hope so but if they do i hope they do it properly.

The issue is when people start sending slop patches that take maintainer time, i have send one slop patch and i am still ashamed of it.

I am also helping nondescriptpointer with this who also uses AI, and its a tip i would give all starting kernel developers that use AI.

DON'T USE AI TO WRITE COMMIT MESSAGES AND COVER LETTERS.

If you can understand the code and use AI for it and have reviewed that code to be good then great, but AI written commit messages and cover letters are so horrendously bad that i would recommend writing it yourself completely atleast to begin with, and later if you are absolute sure switch to reviewing it, but make sure to really review it thoroughly.

AI and beginners

I have teached programming 2 years now at the school i graduated from and am about to go into a third year.

I have tried to ban or regulate AI but that is a pointless effort, i know students are using it as its painfully obvious, i put that on my evaluations. but its a condrum i haven't been able to solve yet.

The conclusion i have reached is that a student is robbing themselves if they use AI, and i can live with that.

The ones that want to learn use AI to learn, the ones that don't say "chatgpt make my assignment". I suppose it does make it easier for me as i know who i put effort in and who i can let go. The one thing that is sad is that the students who put in no effort have better results then the ones that do.

My tip for beginning programmers, don't use AI at all, zero, none.

Which leads me into my next section

AI is both a disease for programming and one of its greatest tools

Full programming with AI is neither fun nor you learn much. Programming is all about learning critical thinking, which you don't learn if you only use AI.

But it can also be one of it greatest tools, the most boring parts of programming can easily be done by AI, but its a slippery slope if you keep taking the path of least resistance.

I suppose its somewhat similar to compilers in the sense, this has been debated alot but here is my take: i learned x86 many years ago and there is a lot of thinking that goes into the machine code which we now export to the compiler. But with that also a massive menial task got exported, making programming alot more fun.

If i am so negative about AI why do i keep using it.

Speed, and AI is undefeatable at that front.

I consider myself an expert at C++, better then AI, but AI is so much faster. I am extremely short on time unless something is absolutely critical and i need to do it by hand the decision isn't AI or handwritten, its AI or it doesn't exist at all.

I mentioned Crafter.Graphics earlier, it is one thing i consider myself an expert at, with a true deep understanding. It has taken around 5 years of building this and its predecessors to gain this understanding.

I am far less good at C or kernel development, not to say i can't do C or kernel if i tried it manually, but there is a massive diffidence between ok, good, and expert.

The only thing i would call myself an expert on is C++ and Vulkan. And that is not me underselling myself, i can do alot more, but im not undervaluing the word expert here.

Being an expert at something takes alot of time to truly understand it, if i were to reach understanding of a single kernel subsystem equal to my C++ and vulkan level that is going take a long time, and im working across several of them.

Is this a good situation? No ofcourse not, i would rather learn it fully and understand it, but i made the decision that a fully working linux phone now with AI is better then one done manually over 5 years. I think that is a honest answer, and its up to the reader to decide if they agree.

And i apologize for the maintainer time i have taken up by doing this.

If a user reports an issue to me, ideally i want it fixed within a day, that is impossible without AI.

I am doing this next to my regular job, i am working deep into the night everyday to further this bringup, i am putting everything into this so people can use it for free, i try to fix issues people have fast, and just view the times my posts are made at, hell last post i worked trough the entire night until morning.

And that is my question for people that attack others for using AI, i don't want you to agree with me, i want you to understand the reasoning.

Suppose i and others fully quit AI, will you make up for the lost time?

Unless the answer is yes i find that position hypocritical.

For these people, is it the burn-out that open source devs get making it that makes it special? and otherwise it is unacceptable to use?

I can respect most positions on AI, but attacking open source developers for using it i can't. They do it completely for free, for the betterment of society, and then a tool comes that makes their jobs easier and they should be attacked for it? I understand if you don't want to use a project that uses AI but don't be an hypocrite that attacks AI use and then uses the projects anyway.

Android is getting worse by the day, and if i can use AI to make linux a viable alternative for people i see that as a good endeavor. The lesser evil.

Back to where it began

In the convo i linked at the start it was said that the code i submit is bad and that i have missed something with the hexagon processor without saying what and instead attacking me.

All i want is to improve it, if you know of an issue that i don't let me know please so i can fix it.

And instead of attacking me here, put your money where your mouth is and call my patch trash on the list and i will happily respond there, and if the maintainers agree then great, we have done something productive and we have made mobile linux slightly better.

But continuing to attack me here gets us nowhere, if your goal is to improve mobile linux do so on the list. If your goal is to attack me then why is that your goal?

If you made it this far and are now mad at me

Fully acceptable, please downvote this post, if it gets downvoted to hell i will understand the message.

If you have donated to me and wish you never donated, send me the payment reference and i will return it no questions asked.

If you donated directly instead of via https://catcrafts.net/shop/donation please send me the account number instead, if you donated via mollie please send me the payment reference and account number, i will return it as fast as possible after you send me the information.

I fully understand if you do, i only ask that you understand my reason and then don't continue to use my work if you don't agree with how it was made. And if may request for people that refund donations, please send it to another open source or mental health organization.

For the people that have supported me and hopefully continue to do so

Thank you, your kind messages have kept me going.

I will continue my efforts, and if i am still welcome here post them!

I have returned, this time with a fully working fingerprint sensor!

But TheMightyCat i hear you say, we already had a working fingerprint sensor made by nick!

And you're right, that's why i specified fully while maybe nick's one is also fully working he doesn't show enrollment or a negative control, so either way it isn't confirmed or not confirmed from his video alone.

Detecting if any finger is on the sensor is the easy part, enrolling and checking if its the right finger is the hard part.

But while it has taken longer then i would have liked it is now fully working!

And it even has a party trick!

As you can see in the video, using my index finger does a regular unlock, my middle finger unlocks and opens the camera, and my ring finger is a duress and removes the super secret file. (the removal of the file is instant, the delay comes from updating the desktop entry)

this is done trough fingerprintd, for root scripts this file is used:

/etc/fingerprintd/actions.conf
right-index-finger /etc/fingerprintd/duress.sh

While for user scripts its published on the net.catcrafts.Fingerprintd1.FingerMatched dbus

expect this to land in fp6-img somewhere this weekend, i was already fighting for my life trying to make the recording and don't have the mental energy left to publish it.

Recording something that requires 2 hands is the biggest pain in the ass ever, these were all the attempts:

ALSO I HATE TEE. THERE IS NOTHING MORE ANTI USER THEN A CHIP WHERE THE MANUFACTURER CAN GO "erm akshually ERROR_ELF_SIGNATURE_ERROR"

See this girl? This is Mia.

She has hacked this computer and jailbroken its TEE

Be like Mia.

hey look the sun has come up, time to go to bed.

News roundup

imsd issues

Thanks very much to 2 members of the community for their patience of me asking them to run scripts, i'm trying to be the least of a bother possible.

If you find any issues with imsd please let me know! the current known issues are:

No call audio on carriers that only support VoLTE (alteast that is the hypothesis for this issue)

Getting called from a landline doesn't work.

I'm working hard to fix these issues, they will hopefully be fixed somewhere next week.

catcrafts.net shop

Ive been thinking hard about this, but there is no business case to be made to sell pre flashed units on my website, its more expensive for the people buying them, it puts a huge administrative burden onto me. and for people that want to finacially support me its much better for the both of us to purchase a unit at your local retailer and then donate on the website instead of purchasing as then it isn't taxed because its a donation, while if its a sale it is taxed. so i don't think im going to do this unless anyone has a good case for it.

RISC-V phone

This project has been low priority while working on the FP6 but i think i have settled on a chip, its probably going to be the spacemiT k1, not the best, but the best for this purpose. Finding a risc-v chip with a low power consumption and good peformance is slim pickings, and while the k1 is not exaclty great its as far as i know the pest peformance per watt.

What's next

Just the camera and laser rangefinder, then the fp6 is officially 100% hardware complete

Mental health

Don't want to make this too personal but it's important, take care of yourselves out there.

Bonus question

One lemmy thing i don't understand

According to the metrics ![email protected] should be more active then here, but that place is completely deserted!

Are all those subscribers just dead accounts?

Technically not a hardware bringup, but still very important non the less!

If you have used i think any linux phone before you may have noticed that if you plug in the charger the system immediately boots, while on android it shows a charging symbol.

This became quite infamous with the PinePhonePro, it's boot consumed more energy then the charger could give, so it was stuck.

This is also how my PPP died and was thus retired to the drawer.

Ive drained my FP6 many times now already with working on it but it always came back, but to not risk it i've now implemented a ultra lower power charging mode.

At boot it detects if the boot reason was because of a charger, then it shuts off everything it can shut off. and enters the charging mode.

While in charging mode you can press volume up to turn on the display, this shows the current battery % and charging rate, pressing it again shuts the display off again.

You can press volume down to enable debug mode, this initializes SSH. Keep in mind that this is mega slow as only a single little core is active and downclocked all the way, fine for fetching logs but if you want more it might be better to bring up more of the CPU.

In charging mode pulling out the charges causes the system to shut off.

In charging mode pressing the power button causes the system to reboot and start as normal.

I suppose my hands aren't really showing it in the video but those are the buttons i press.

Hopefully no FP6 will ever die because of a battery boot loop.

News roundup

As with any of my posts here is the regularly scheduled news roundup:

Mollie terminated my account

If you stalk me you might have read this post:

https://ani.social/post/35846695

My comment here explains "why":

https://ani.social/comment/18286964

So i would recommend anyone doing FOSS work to not use Mollie as they clearly don't like it and will terminate your account suddenly out of nowhere, another example of the grip big tech has on us.

As a result i've had to make the only payment rails on my website a regular bank transfer and cryptocurrency. When i still had access to the mollie dashboard i could see that many payments were already done with bank transfer so i hope its not too much of an inconvenience.

The donation money should be safe, i should be getting it in my bank account next week according to their email, and if i don't i'll be raising hell.

Donations

Thank everyone that donated so very very much, i really can't express my gratitude enough.

https://catcrafts.net/financials is now at a massive €1061.02!!!

I don't know what to say, genuinely thank everyone very very much. I'll be working to fulfill the mission you all have funded and continue to fund.

And that brings me to my next point, which makes me a bit teary eyed that people are so generous to me:

A massive thanks to the kind person willing to donate €500!!! but didn't get trough 3D secure on their card.

I really don't know what to say except your generosity knows no bounds, if you happen to be reading this would you be willing to do a bank transfer instead?

If not i understand, but thank you very much again for willing to donate this massive amount.

Linux 7.2

Linux 7.2 has released and i've updated my image! Anyone using it should just be able to do a regular update via apk and get the new 7.2 kernel, please let me know how it goes!

Fairphone 6+

I think everyone has read my original comment announcing it already but Luca emailed me confirming the FP6 and FP6+ are software compatible, this is also on the pmos wiki now.

Improved Camera

I've also improved the camera color correction again. If we compare with the image from my previous post:

Previous post:

Now:

My white wall is actually white now.

The quality is still pretty bad, but i'm continuing to improve it. The next steps are de-noising on the DSP/NSP/NPU (whatever the hexagon processor is called), maybe even more color correction (running out of ideas on this front i must admit) and a camera app that doesn't store in JPG format.

But probably the best solution to improving camera quality is not taking photos in my dark room at night, but we know that is never going to happen xd its 04:46 and i have work tomorrow send help

Feedback

I don't have any statistics on how many people are actually using the image because that's the point of a privacy focused OS so maybe i'm just shouting into the void here but i can see the image has been downloaded a couple times already. If you are using the image, how's is it going? Any issues? Any good things? Please let me know!

My payment processor just terminated my account and i am reminded once again too self host literally everything.

I already have a self hosted crypto rail but for many people that is not an option, bank transfer is quite easy to do with just checking against my bank's API, but remembering from the data before i got terminated it was around 40% transfer, 40% ideal, 20% card.

Is there anyway to self host those other payment ways outside transfer?

Does anyone have experience with this?

If you do thank you very much!

Quick post today, readers may remember that in the last post that the 112 test was today, so i hope you all set your alarms for this post!

imsd emergency calling works! end to end tested on the live network!

I called 112 in the designated time slot and had full two way voice with the operator, plus NAW data, sadly the AML did not work.

The Netherlands doesn't use the text based AML my code had, ive send an email thanking them for the test and requesting information on the data based AML aswell as a possibility for a future second test when that works.

I do have to say that i can only say this works for the netherlands, i can tell the emergency path works in the modem and it took the genuine correct path, i can't guarantee it. I'm not sure what the risk is that it works here but not elsewhere but i think its right to state this.

Before doing the first test i was so nervous with my phone hovering the call button but im glad it all worked out in the end, the operators were really kind too.

On the slight chance that any 112 operators happen to read this, Thank you very much!

Today i bring the working main camera!

Building on the work nondescriptpointer did on the wide lens camera i have written the driver for the main camera and now its working alongside auto focus and color correction.

The color correction still a work in progress, but you can already see how much it improved the image.

before:

After:

But the after is still very grainy, plasma camera storing in jpg isn't exactly helping either, ill be working to get rid of the grain.

If we look at the same scene form my android galaxy A16 you see that there still is alot of work to be done:

I'll continue to work on the camera, but i wanted to get something out today (mainly so i could send to nondescriptpointer xd)

I asked him what role he wanted to play in the upstreaming and we agreed he would send it and i would review and assist. So i successfully pulled down another soul into the linux phone kernel rabbit hole muhahahahaha

News roundup

Alot of things happend lately so good thing to discuss them, the big one:

Emergency calling test

You may have noticed that everywhere i put warnings that emergency calling is not verified yet. i wanted to fix that but after searching i couldn't find anything about it.

So i just called the police non emergency line and explained the situation, the operator told me that the information wasn't public but provided me with an email to send my application too.

I was a bit sad cause if its a non public thing its probably gated behind being big tech, but i send the email anyway, and much to my suprise i got back.

De testen zijn goedgekeurd voor dinsdag 18 augustus tussen 13:30 en 14:15 uur.

Met vriendelijke groet,

(name censored) B ICT,

Tactisch & Technisch Beheer 1-1-2 (TB112)

Translation:

The tests have been approved for Tuesday, August 18, between 1:30 p.m. and 2:15 p.m.

Kind regards,

(name censored) B ICT,

Tactical & Technical Management 1-1-2 (TB112)

So Im really excited for this, and then you know for sure that you can reach the emergency number with your linux phone.

Fairphone 6+

So the Fairphone 6+ has been officially announced an as soon as i can buy one im buying one, testing my image, and fixing any issues.

Im really glad for the donations so i can justify to myself this purchase instead of spending 650 euros for a phone that i already have.

Donations

I'm really grateful for all the people that donated and still continue to donate, i was over the moon when i got my first donation and i never expected to get this much. From the bottom of my heart thank you all very much.

I want to be open on where it's going. And i think as donators you deserve to know that its being spent wisely. so i made a script that builds this page from my bank statement:

https://catcrafts.net/financials

If it all works then donations should be reflected live and it will show the expense for the FP6+ when i buy it, net will drop in the negative as the remainder is coming out of my pocket.

If you want to send a donation please do so to the updated link: https://catcrafts.net/shop/donation this will be reflected in the dashboard live and for tax reasons its now mega clear that its a donation.

Catcrafts as a company

Im contacting a notary with the plans to have Catcrafts corporated as a non profit company (stichting), this is is depending on all the legal stuff however so this isn't set in stone.

If and if this company goes somewhere and i could quit my job, i will pay myself a salary to live on that will be publicly visible on the financials page. Dutch law requires for non profits that salary to be at max market confirming and not a shadow way for paying out dividends, so its guaranteed that any money in the company will go towards furthering the mission.

I think a non profit phone company has a genuinely good proposition, i praise fairphone alot for the things they do right but in the end they are still an profit seeking business so im a bit wary, and they still post on Musk's X so my long term judgement on their company is still out there

I applied to be a fairphone partner with in my eyes a pretty good pitch, if they accept my opinion will be improved ;) hopefully i just need to have more patience or they are ghosting me ;-;

Shipping restrictions

I'm sad to announce this but i don't think i can do worlwide shippng, earlier i said i would be shipping worlwide but i must sadly retract that statement for reasons out of my control. I will be shipping worldwide with the following exceptions:

US, CA: It's seemingly impossible to get a Bedrijfsaansprakelijkheids­verzekering (corporate liability insurance) for the United States and Canada in the netherlands, its all worldwide excluding US and CA. Getting coverage for those requires "contact us" with probably a very hefty premium, and selling without insurance is too risky as that would mean financial ruin if i get sued.

I would appreciate if anyone that isn't a massive company has experience with this, will be contacting my insurer aswell to see what's possible on this front

RU, BY, KP: Sanctions make it a criminal offense for me to ship to these countries.

imsd

Thanks to the community we now have 4 confirmed working carriers! If you are using the image please let me know so i can add it to the list!

Making a Linux phone

Ever since this project i've been dreaming about making my own linux phone, i've been looking into it here and there and while this might just be the sleep deprivation talking i think i can do it.

Making a good linux phone however is the hard part, and i don't think i can make an better arm linux phone then the fairphone 6 as those qualcomm chips are impossible to buy.

So im not going to, i'll make a RISCV one. will it be bad? yes, will it end up like the pinephone? most probably, will it run hot and have terrible battery life?, most likely. will it cost me a ton of money?, yes.

BUT

It will be a phone as open as i can make it, with good software, and a (in my eyes ethical) non profit company backing it. i think there is a good business proposition to made there, whatever the case its very long term anyway.

Meeting the lead pmos dev

Correction: There is no lead pmos dev, and the developer in question has since responded here: https://lemmy.world/comment/25358433

I'm keeping the original text here for transparency sake but i shouldn't have called him out like this.

My sincere apologies.

Original:

Imagine my surprise when i see the lead pmos dev on a dutch tech forum, and i'm named, and then heart sank trough the floor when i'm being made out for something that can be disproved with a 10s search.

Luckily the record was set straight fast!

Translation:

I don't want to hide context so here is the full thread:

https://tweakers.net/nieuws/250872/fairphone-gaat-smartphone-met-12gb-ram-uitbrengen-voor-649-euro.html?showReaction=22462270#r_22462270

What's next

1. More color correction
2. Laser rangefinder autofocus instead of software only.
3. Selfie camera
4. Fingerprint sensor
5. Extensive testing

And then the FP6 is done, i will open my shop and continue with the FP6+

Since a long time i feel purpose in my life again, and i have alot of stuff still planned! And getting all the patches upstreamed is also probably a half year commitment atleast.

If you made it this far thank you for reading! As always ask me anything in the comments and ill do my best to answer.

Hello again!

I have returned with more patches, this time i bring you. All the sensors!

This entire collum can be made green.

We are nearing 100% completion, but im afraid true 100% might never happen.

I was working on the fingerprint sensor aswell, but its gated behind the TEE, and can't be read from the kernel. This is going to be an issue.

So the end state might not be 100% sadly, but i hope people don't miss the fingerprint sensor too much? (ill see if i can get it working but this is one thing i cannot promise)

But we are nearing the end, With the sensors done the only thing left is the cameras.

I contacted the person who's blog was posted here: https://ani.social/post/34679544

and cool guy, we agreed to coordinate our efforts with the camera, so expect that one coming soon.

My hot take on the current discusion

This might earn me some hate but i am against Jolla, many people argue "don't let perfection stand in the way of good" but we have perfection right here, its the FP6.

For several reasons:

This is blatant false advertising.

The Jolla phone is not based on Big Tech technology

Yet it uses a Big Tech kernel. There is a huge difference between a mainline linux phone and a linux phone using an android kernel.

Combined with the fact that has much debated that there are closed source components and it can't run wayland apps.

There should be no excuse for closed source components period, no matter if they are small or easily to remove, if there is close source anywhere that means that open source is not an required but a marketing strategy.

And that is the issue i have with Jolla, it gives me the wrong vibe, big tech wearing foss clothing.

Jolla is a Finnish company specializing in privacy-first OS and Edge AI solutions. Founded in 2011, we continue the legacy of Nokia and MeeGo, driving mobile innovation into the human-centric AI era.

We develop Sailfish OS, the only European mobile OS, trusted globally for over a decade, and now enhanced for AI-driven applications. Our AppSupport technology enables Android™ apps to run on Linux platforms. Our privacy-focused Jolla Mind2 AI computer delivers secure AI capabilities across industries.

With over 60 successful software release deliveries and a proven track record across multiple hardware platforms, we collaborate with partners in the automotive and telecommunications sectors to drive innovation with our OS and Edge AI technologies.

https://jolla.com/

This really makes my alarm bells whistle, are they a private phone company or an AI company??? Why this marketing language?

Let me give you an example:

These are the FP6 wire diagrams, free to download at https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/37795041144082

This is commitment to open source, this single document has allowed me to do this bringup.

Does Jolla publish one? not that i can find. If they do i retract this point but i haven't been able to find it.

So why don't they? If they truly believe in openness why not publish these documents? My hypothesis: they don't care. Its all just marketing.

Soon the FP6 will be fully ready, a true daily drivable modern mainline linux phone.

I believe in maximum openess, so lets define mainline:

its the https://github.com/milos-mainline/linux staging kernel, combined with my patches.

All my patches have already been submitted on the list, but these will take time to be reviewed, it will be a very long time before they will be integrated in the kernel itself.

But they have been submitted, and im activily working on the maintainer feedback, these will make it eventually.

Once cameras are done, i will make an easy to install script and post it here. Simultaneously i will begin selling preflashed units on my shop: https://catcrafts.net/shop/fp6-pmos

These will be identical if you flash it yourself, these are for people that can't otherwise buy one, don't want to flash it themselves, or want to support me.

I also want not only the code to be open but also the business to be open and honest, i take whatever price i can source the phones at and add a €50 euro markup, none of this ending the price in 99 nonsense.

I do this to cover the administrative costs and labor costs.

This is cheaper then the Murena /e/OS version:

https://murena.com/shop/smartphones/brand-new/murena-fairphone-6/ Which is currently priced at €599 as of time of writing.

And this might cost me alot of money but im willing to stand by it:

When a product does have to travel (a hardware fault, or a product so far gone it no longer responds to recovery tools at all), the shipping is paid by Catcrafts, both directions

https://catcrafts.net/legal/terms

This applies worlwide.

I also looked at the privacy policy of the Jolla website:

We may also permit third parties and services providers to use Cookies on our Site to better tailor the services, products and advertising on our Site and other websites.

https://commerce.jolla.com/policies/privacy-policy

THIRD PARTY ADVERTISING COOKIES ON A COMPANY THAT MARKETS ITSELF AS PRIVACY FOCUSED????

What a joke. This is a privacy focused policy: https://catcrafts.net/legal/privacy

The only thing i collect that i don't need is request logging, but i hope you understand why i do that.

No cookies, no advertising, nothing.

No i don't want to make this sound as advertising myself, i want this to sound like what the example of a open, honest, and privacy focused company should look like.

If you made it this far thank you for reading my rant, if anything is wrong or i have made a mistake please let me know in the comments and i will correct it.

While celebrating my previous post of working call audio @[email protected] left this excellent comment:

https://ani.social/post/34656971/17805917

And this reminded me something that i and many devs sadly often forget, if its works for me it doesn't mean it works for everyone.

My philosophy is that linux should be as accesible as possible, nobody should be forced to be stuck with big tech.

So i tried my best to add orca screenreader support to plasma-mobile.

I mad this statement on my previous post

But a successful one!

But i genuinely don't know if i can claim that today, i don't use a screenreader so i don't know what the user experience should look like. I will glady incorporate feedback.

As with my kernel patches i will be working to upstream this with KDE, since this is probably not controversial i think it should be accepted quite quickly.

Small celebration:

I was quite happy when i saw this in my inbox:

https://lore.kernel.org/all/[email protected]/

+maintainers:

• • Jorijn van der Graaf [email protected]
• • Srinivas Kandagatla [email protected]

It looks like im being upgraded from linux contributor to linux maintainer!

Selling fp6 with pmos preflashed and with my patches preinstalled

Some comments mentioned this and it got me thinking, would there be demand for this?

I would be selling them on my catcrafts.net website, payment methods would be my bunq so wero, bancontact, credit card and crypto.

If you are interested in this, please upvote my comment, ive been looking into this and there is quite alot of administration that comes with it, so i would like to only do this if there is actual demand.

I would be shipping to any place i can. I will be shipping from the Netherlands, so keep that in mind for import duties and shipping costs.

At first, man thinks he controls the modem.

But after the 20th reboot, man learns the modem controls him.

— Epictetus

So here it is! working VoLTE calls with audio on linux!

What a rollercoaster it has been i'll tell you that.

The frequency between my previous posts was only a few days, as you can see from the time since my last post this has been a far harder project.

But a successful one!

Now fully powered trough my new imsd project:

https://forgejo.catcrafts.net/Catcrafts/imsd

As i said in a my previous comment no matter what i did the regular modem route wasn't working, so i had to come up with my own.

This has several advantages however, call audio is now just routed trough wireplumber & pipewire, so its integrated much better.

Both inbound and outbound calls work.

How do i get this???

The patient route is waiting until my patches get accepted upstream, a few already have and are coming in 7.3 probably (pmos runs 7.0 currently still oof), a few will probably take longer, 7.4 or beyond.

but for the ones that want to jump right on ive published everything on my forgejo:

https://forgejo.catcrafts.net/Catcrafts

I will soon be publishing a shell script that does the entire installation soon for easy installation.

Sadly there is no way to just plug in an android and do it, so there are still a few manual steps needed, but i believe the path to adoption is reducing friction as much as possible, so ill do my best to make it as easy as possible to use.

imsd

So what is an "imsd"?

its a full userspace implementation of the IMS protocol, which drives VoLTE (4G) calls.

Normally the modem firmware drives this, but this is quite difficult to work with, now it runs fully via a standard daemon on linux!

Along with several d-bus helpers that integrate it with standard plasma-dialer.

if made a APKBUILD for pmos that is mutually exclusive with 81voltd, and loads imsd instead. so installation should be easy.

Now will this actually work?

That's where you come in!

I am just one guy with one phone with one carrier.

I can say it works on the Fairphone 6 with KPN. it might work with other carriers and other Qualcomm phones aswell, so potentially this could work for the entire linux phone ecosystem, but i have no way to test that.

If you end up trying it, no matter if it works or doesn't work, please send me a message or open a PR, then we can make sure it works for everyone!

donations

I really was surprised when people asked me this, i just see myself as a guy doing this in his free time, "why would people want to send donations to me?" i thought.

I still stand by my previous point, i have a job, and this project costs me nothing except for time, i don't have any costs. So i felt kinda guilty receiving money from people.

But i would much rather spend my time making software that benefits society instead of the B2B stuff i do at my job.

I really feel greedy for saying this, but if you want to send me a thank you then that is now possible at: https://bunq.me/catcrafts

Please don't feel any pressure to do this, doesn't matter what i get im still continuing with this bring-up. And if you don't want to donate to me there are many linux organizations that could really use the support! In my eyes we are all in the same boat with the same goal.

If you do decide to, and i cannot express my gratitude enough if you do, please write in the description that it's a donation, as this makes tax easier.

What's next?

Ive got a bunch more stuff coming soon, while i haven't posted here in quite a while i've been plenty busy on the mailing list:

So except some more posts soon.

Bonus round

Having fully working hardware is great, but a phone that has no apps is pointless for most people, so i would like to start a discussion in the comments.

What apps do you need that are preventing you from switching to mobile linux?

My quest to 100% feature completeness continues!

Today i bring before you... The working microphone!

Now everyone is going to ask:

Does this mean working calls?

I asked the same thing, and with maybe a bit too much excitement i inserted my SIM card.

But the answer is no, neither audio nor mic work in calls.

It seems having them work in userspace is not enough.

So it seems that that requires additional work (coming soon!)

To give updates on my previous posts aswell.

For all 3 (GPS, NFC, audio) patches have been submitted, i've had contact with the freedesktop and maintainers on the LKML and they have requested changes, and a v2 is out for all. But don't expect them to reach phones anytime soon.

GPS:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mobile-broadband/libqmi/-/merge_requests/470: maintainer requested some renames, adressed and waiting for review.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mobile-broadband/ModemManager/-/merge_requests/1463: stuck as draft until libqmi patch lands

NFC:

https://lore.kernel.org/all/[email protected]/ Sashiko AI review found a bug in my code and maintainer requested small change, both addressed in v2.

audio:

https://lore.kernel.org/all/[email protected]/ maintainer requested significant changes, addressed in v2

https://lore.kernel.org/all/[email protected]/ awaiting review

https://lore.kernel.org/all/[email protected]/ RFC patch resulting from requested changes, i think this one might get quite the tail...

Audio is turning into quite the story, way more then i expected.

When having a working patch ive learned the work is far from over.

I was thinking of maybe hosting my own downstream kernel with all my fixes, if there is demand for it.

(also open letter to the mods if these posts are becoming spam and if its turning too much into my personal blog?)

Well that was easy.

Here i was thinking audio was going to be the boss fight...

These were small easily identifiable kernel changes, not the entire investigations that GPS and NFC needed.

Ill be working to getting calls fully working, but this is already a big step.

And speaking about NFC, i just submitted the kernel patch for it to the mailing list! very nervous and excited to see how that turns out.

No new features today, just wanted to make a short post.

It is completely possible to do linux development on the go!

Is it convenient? Probably not.

Is a laptop better? Most likely.

Is it funny? Yes.

Also a double table is definitely better:

While we are mostly focused on Linux mobile development, it is easy to overlook that all you need is a bluetooth keyboard and mouse and it becomes an (albeit tiny) linux desktop!

This is the continuation of my ongoing effort to get the FP6 fully feature complete with linux.

I chose NFC cause i thought it would be relatively easy like GPS, well that assumption turned out to be wrong.

But alot of time later and as you can see in the video now reading works! card emulation is a whole other can of worms that i want to tackle after.

Unlike the GPS which was a userspace problem this is a true kernel patch and im quite nervous about submitting it, if anyone happens to have contributed to the kernel please tell me how it went, i would really appreciate any advice.

I'm trying to flip all of these to a green wall of "Works":

GPS is now a solid green works when my patch gets approved, NFC now is partial.

Mobile Linux development mini guide for beginners

Disclaimer: This guide is written by some guy who only vaguely knows what he is doing, please don't take this as authority.

I will mostly write this in the perspective of the FP6, but it applies to other phones aswell since i'll try to keep it generic. I don't want to dig into the tech here but more the general process with some common pitfalls.

1. Pick a phone with a cooperative manufacturer, Fairphone is excellent in this but there might be more.
2. Don't just flash linux onto it directly, First test every hardware feature running on stock android, then you know 100% for sure it's not a hardware problem. i made this mistake and when i was really stuck with the NFC i thought maybe my phone is just broken since i never tested it on android and had to flash android again, turns out the hardware was fine as shown in the video.
3. Android is your friend, use it, I know software devs love reinventing the wheel but don't, looking at android is the biggest help there. ideally you have a same model phone running (rooted) android by your side so you can directly compare, i know it's a hard ask to purchase 2 phones but i cannot understate how much it helps. what i did is i purchased the linux one for myself and the android one for a family member, which i borrow for development. During the GPS and NFC work i really just compared what the android driver transmitted vs the linux driver and it helps a ton.
4. Get a folder with all your research material Clone the linux kernel, your downstream kernel if there is one for your device, an android kernel, and device trees from the manufacturer, and any technical documents you can find: for the FP6 i am using these:

downstream kernel

Fairphone kernel

e/OS kernel

Fairphone 6 technical manual (most of the document is not very interesting, but all the way at the bottom are wire diagrams, these are very helpfull)

1. Start small, don't just grab the most valuable task from the beginning, start with the easiest task that ideally can be done in userspace.

2. Think before you act, This is more of a do as i say not do as i do, cause i don't follow this rule fully myself but it is very important, you don't want to brick or fry your device, when flashing or working with voltages look twice before you push.

3. Keep your device charged, When working on your device you probably have it connected to your PC 99% of the time, but your PC might not provide enough power to have a net positive while you look at your phone and go "oh it's charging so it's fine" hook it up to a dedicated USB charger every once in a while if this is the case on your device

I wanted to cover these pitfalls specifically, there are probably better technical guides then i can write out there on stuff like adb, fastboot and the kernel.

And if you only know basic C that is genuinely not an issue, good linux knowledge is far more important as you spend far more time troubleshooting then programming (atleast in my experience)

And finally, you need alot of patience, it is not extremely difficult, just very time consuming.

I get it is not for everyone, and i don't want to make it so like im pressuring people, but nobody is going to do this except us, the clock is ticking until android gets locked down, and big tech would much rather have us on their proprietary software where they can squize our wallets dry then free software.

I really want to turn this phone into my daily driver, so i started working on one of the features i would want in a daily driver, working GPS.

This is the current component support table of postmarketos:

i think audio is too complex for me, so i decided to tackle GPS, as you can see its currently listed as broken, but not anymore!

It really helped i have another FP6 running android, i could directly inspect how it was talking to the modem to get it working.

So i started pulling threads and here we are. I want to upstream this and i'm making an account so i can submit patches for modemmanager and libqmi, but i have never upstreamed something before, so advice is appreciated!

If you have a linux phone and want to use it as a daily driver, see if you can contribute it! this is how we build up the linux ecosystem.

This is my second linux phone and coming into it i had high hopes and low expectations, the result was a mixed bag but generally positive.

My first was linux phone was the PinePhonePro and i really liked it at the time as a concept, but it was hard to use it as a daily driver, i think i lasted around a month before buying an android.

The PPP had several problems, it was very slow, would get very hot, and my primary concern as i said here its battery was terrible.

And the battery has since fully died, so sadly i can't run side by side tests.

So that brings us to the FP6.

The installation was pretty smooth, follow the steps from the wiki and for me they worked perfectly.

The usage itself feels alot more snappy compared to the PPP, general UI work is comparable to a normal android i would say, and no longer each action has a delay.

So i wanted to tackle the battery point, i ran a few tests, please take these with a grain of salt as they were not done professionally, but they should be indicative:

Idle (not full suspend as the SSH connection was still active):
Power	0.43 W (98 mA @ 4.44 V)
Drain	2.2 %/hr (45.4h)
CPU	0.9%
GPU	264 MHz

Idle with screen on:
Power	0.95 W (214 mA @ 4.43 V)
Drain	4.9 %/hr (20.4 h)
CPU	3.0%
GPU	277 MHz

Watching 1080p H.264 video with BT headphones:
Power	1.57 W (359 mA @ 4.36 V) 
Drain	8.1 %/hr (12.3h)
CPU	20.7%
GPU     278 MHz

Peak CPU:
Power draw : 6.15 W (1437 mA @ 4.28 V)
Drain rate : 32.6 %/hr (3.0 h)
CPU usage  : 100.0 %
GPU        : 277 MHz

Temprature stayed fine across all tests only during the CPU test did it became warm but not too much, which is in stark contrast to the PPP which would get very uncomfortable to hold, and be severly battery drained.

I think these values are interesting when compared to the same test on e/OS, well atleast that's what i would say if i could gather it.

Sadly i was not able to gather detailed power data on android.

Idle with screen on:
CPU usage : 18.7 %
GPU usage  : 11.7 %

18.7% seemed very sus, but it checks out?

58% 3760/foundation.e.blisslauncher: 49% user + 9.3% kernel / faults: 13209 minor
21% 1476/surfaceflinger: 14% user + 6.9% kernel / faults: 18 minor
12% 1383/vendor.qti.hardware.display.composer-service: 6.7% user + 5.5% kernel / faults: 137 minor
4.9% 972/crtc_commit:137: 0% user + 4.9% kernel
4.2% 986/android.system.suspend-service: 0% user + 4.2% kernel
2.3% 3353/com.android.systemui: 1.6% user + 0.6% kernel / faults: 8031 minor
2.3% 2364/system_server: 1.1% user + 1.1% kernel / faults: 5054 minor
2.1% 26001/kworker/u16:8-qc_ufs_qos_swq: 0% user + 2.1% kernel
2.1% 25893/kworker/u16:3-kgsl_devfreq_wq: 0% user + 2.1% kernel
2% 539/irq/153-24091000.qcom,bwmon-ddr: 0% user + 2% kernel
2% 15/rcuog/0: 0% user + 2% kernel
1.7% 4284/foundation.e.advancedprivacy: 1% user + 0.6% kernel / faults: 693 minor
1.1% 14/rcu_preempt: 0% user + 1.1% kernel
0.9% 25150/kworker/u16:13-events_unbound: 0% user + 0.9% kernel
0.7% 973/crtc_event:137: 0% user + 0.7% kernel
0.7% 946/kgsl_hwsched: 0% user + 0.7% kernel
0.7% 25148/kworker/u16:11-wmi_rx_diag_event_work_: 0% user + 0.7% kernel
0.5% 23213/kworker/u16:0-wmi_rx_event_work_queue: 0% user + 0.5% kernel
0.6% 1393/vendor.qti.hardware.perf2-hal-service: 0.1% user + 0.4% kernel / faults: 38 minor
0.4% 26004/kworker/u16:12-events_unbound: 0% user + 0.4% kernel
0.3% 1338/android.hardware.audio.service: 0.1% user + 0.2% kernel / faults: 34 minor
0.4% 1362/android.hardware.wifi-service: 0.1% user + 0.2% kernel
0.3% 23453/kworker/0:2-events: 0% user + 0.3% kernel

Watching 1080p video:
CPU usage 19.6%
GPU usage 7.3%

it seems the launcher from e/OS really is slurping down CPU.

So where does this leave us?

Would i recommend this as a daily driver?

No. If i gave this phone to someone who is not a linux fan they would probably get very frustrated.

Is it usable as a daily driver?

I think this is the more interesting question, if you really wanted you could definitely use this as a working daily driver, if you don't mind not having a camera or audio that is. BT works fine, so when combined with voip its a usable phone. and does all the phone things you would want it to do. Also if you are photosensitive it might not be a fit as there are currently some graphical flicker glitches. The audio driver is in the works if i look at postmarketos so if that gets fixed it would become much more daily driver worthy.

For the people interested i have also uploaded the vulkaninfo

cross-posted from: https://ani.social/post/16779655

GPU	VRAM	Price (€)	Bandwidth (TB/s)	TFLOP16	€/GB	€/TB/s	€/TFLOP16
NVIDIA H200 NVL	141GB	36284	4.89	1671	257	7423	21
NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell	96GB	8450	1.79	126.0	88	4720	67
NVIDIA RTX 5090	32GB	2299	1.79	104.8	71	1284	22
AMD RADEON 9070XT	16GB	665	0.6446	97.32	41	1031	7
AMD RADEON 9070	16GB	619	0.6446	72.25	38	960	8.5
AMD RADEON 9060XT	16GB	382	0.3223	51.28	23	1186	7.45

This post is part "hear me out" and part asking for advice.

Looking at the table above AI gpus are a pure scam, and it would make much more sense to (atleast looking at this) to use gaming gpus instead, either trough a frankenstein of pcie switches or high bandwith network.

so my question is if somebody has build a similar setup and what their experience has been. And what the expected overhead performance hit is and if it can be made up for by having just way more raw peformance for the same price.

This post is part "hear me out" and part asking for advice.

Looking at the table above AI gpus are a pure scam, and it would make much more sense to (atleast looking at this) to use gaming gpus instead, either trough a frankenstein of pcie switches or high bandwith network.

so my question is if somebody has build a similar setup and what their experience has been. And what the expected overhead performance hit is and if it can be made up for by having just way more raw peformance for the same price.