It’s official. Mobian on Pinephone is an unpleasant circus. I don’t think this is the Pinephone’s fault, I blame Linux, which, either because of or in spite of decades of talent being poured into its ecosystem, remains a rabbit warren inside a dumpster fire.
The manifold and petty ways in which mobile linux on Pinephone appears to be broken is not compelling. Someone needs to hack this product back to basics. An attempt to overlay and implement the features of commodity smartphones upon the bloat of GNU/Linux is neither approachable nor maintainable. The hardware is nice, and it's begging for paradigm-shift minimalist OS, not 1.6GB of GNU/Linux desktop packages stuffed into a pantomime Android costume.
The experience is summed up in my mind by the conclusion of Joyce's "Araby" (an excellent read if you haven't), "Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity" ... should have spent the pennies of my weekend more wisely here.
@d sad to read this but good to know.