Distrohopping on Librem5

 In continuation to my previous blog-post expressing my excitement/happiness at receiving the librem5, being a distro-hopper (maniacal) in the beginning times of my GNU/Linux journey, I couldnt hold myself. So went ahead prepared an SD card and installed my first distro of choice, Debian GNU/Linux on the librem5. However, the experience was anticlimactic. The stable version did not boot and the weeklies just gave me a "glimpse" of the mobian logo. Yes, there are other methods like "jumpstart", but, I do not want to go that route. I want my librem5 as pristine as possible. It is already running GNU/Linux and lots and lots of users and devs are putting continuous efforts to have the latest and greatest on the device. For now, I will stay with installing alternate GNU/Linux on the SD card. 

Since Mobian GNU/Linux did not boot successfully, I went towards the next effort, Postmarket OS. I am just amazed by the amount of effort put by this team and the long distance which they have already traveled. The tools developed by the team are beautifully documented. It was a joy to go through the documentation. It is like they want every individual to be able to boot Postmarket OS and they want it to do the heavy lifting themselves absolving the user from the initial resistance to free their phones. Kudos to the team and all the users. I just went to the Postmarket page for librem5 and blindly followed the procedure to get PMos on the SD card. It was so straight forward, I just remembered the first book I had bought to learn Redhat Linux 6, my first GNU/Linux installation. GNU/Linux has come a long way and the tools developed by the devs, just for the passion, is unbelievable. In the initial install, I chose the --fde(Full disc encryption) option. However, the device repeatedly asked for the passphrase. I changed the passphrase on the installation (Again thanks to the use-case already available and documented). Now,  PMos went past the passphrase window and stayed at the boot screen. Waited for half an hour, then powered the phone off. By this time, I would have removed and re-inserted by SD card not less than 10 - 20 times. The sim/sd card tray is very flimsy. Be very careful while handling it. Dont worry, I have very nimble hands.

I am a seasoned distro-hopper. I dont give in that easy. On the next day, I flashed PMos, without fde. Now, it booted and landed me onto a text login screen. No keyboard. Luckily, I decided to give the device some time. The device logged me into an empty screen with a wallpaper. Empty screen. Yes, that is what I like to see on any desktop. That is the reason I love window managers. That is the reason I have been on i3 since ... (I have forgot the count). Again, why empty screen? Well, I had chosen the choice of sxmo environment heavily inspired by DWM and i3(sway of course). I had seen few videos of sxmo running on the pinephone. However, the video I had watched was very hardware intensive. That is the actions were performed by a combination of hardware buttons on the device. I hate using hardware buttons on any device. I prefer double tapping the screen to unlock the screen and double tapping the screen again to lock the device. I want the hardware buttons for that rainy day. I want the hardware buttons to get into fastboot. Went to the sxmo website. Mind blown. My God!!. What an idea!? The gesture system is one of the best I have come across. It is the most intuitive gesture system I have come across. Oh, did i just indicate that to boot from the SD card, you just have to power the librem5 with the vol down button held down for at-least 05 seconds. You have to immediately hold down the volume down key after powering up the device. 

Let us continue about sxmo. The sxmo project has a very nicely curated set of apps. The most important contribution from the team are the scripts. The project has exposed many of the phone related activities as hooks for the user to tap into and make scripts to accomplish tasks when triggered by clicking the name of the script or a combination of hardware buttons. The present scripts written by the project devs are readily available from the script menu(swipe diagonally from the top right towards the center of the phone). The menu, when accessed through the documented shortcuts are context sensitive. That is the menu is displayed based on what is available on the screen. If it is a Firefox window, the menu will give an option to open a new window or a new tab, you get the idea... Tiling is a first class citizen on sxmo. It was a joy to see multiple windows stack one below the other. Other Operating systems took years to reach this level of window management. Anyhow, I will write on only "sxmo". Thanks again to all the devs and users making the GNU/Linux stack a reality on phones.