Messages

1

Gemini PDA - Linux / Re: Anyone using Firefox?

« on: August 17, 2020, 11:21:40 am »

I guess you are referring to scrolling performance? Firefox benefits above average from disabling glamor on the gemini, takes scrolling from 0-1fps to 30+ fps. Note you have to switch to a different login screen (eg lightdm) and lose the ability to run any 3d accelerated applications

2

Gemini PDA - Linux / maxcpus=5

« on: March 22, 2019, 07:43:57 am »

This definitely did work in the past, i.e. running a heavy multi threaded process fired up all 10 CPU cores

3

Gemini PDA - Linux / Lockscreen Freeze [Partial workaround found]

« on: March 21, 2019, 07:10:28 pm »

Hi together,

I still have this bug. When I close the lid I get a black screen and can`t login anymore.
I have read, there should be a solution in TP2? I think I am already up to date with my packages?! I walked thru the guid to enable TP2 repository and update/upgrade with apt.
ut I have not updated the Kernel, yet. I am not sure which partition is the right without messing up my Sailfish boot partition.

I also disabled the lid watcher as described on github.
Can someone explain how to identify the right partition for updating the linux kernel, please.
For now my workaround is a hotkey on the silver button to kill the desktop manager. But it closes all the applications, too. I have to start everything again after login.

I really want debian as my daily driver but the "screen black" bug makes it a no go. It seems the battery power drains much faster as on Android or also Sailfish.

Thank you

You need to update the kernel

4

Gemini PDA - Linux / Installin for double/ treble booting

« on: February 25, 2019, 08:02:25 am »

We are at an awkward point for fresh installs that want triple boot. It used to work that you had main partitions for Android and Linux, with the Linux one having a primary OS, and then other OS's in a '.stowaway' folder. You then place your kernel images on the boot partitions and part of that includes a cmdline switch to pick (or not) a stowaway.

The new way is that from the flash tool you only get to pick Android (or not) and one non-Android OS (eg Sailfish) in a LVM setup, if you check other recent posts here about you'll see others are also confused by this, and occasionally I reply asking folks to install the recently released items (Sailfish and Kali) and then report back as to the LVM layout (eg with a sudo lvscan or similar). We plan to release a new Gemian/Debian in the due course and as long as we use the same PV name but different LV names we should be able to get back the tri (or more) boot options. So the idea is that you install for example Sailfish from the flash/partition tool, then shrink your LV's to give space, create new LV's for Gemian/Kali/etc, copy the root system to the new file system and pop on a different kernel on one of your boot[N] partitions etc.

So far I've only heard reports of the new Sailfish using LVM, no idea what Kali is using, but I'm hoping its the same. I've only one device and still working on various improvements on Gemian in various states of completeness so not particularly keen on spatting that just to figure out what other upstream community folk have decided to move towards. So take my suggestions with a pinch of salt, they are based upon second hand incomplete information, but you can help if you want. This is also a plea for other community folk to tell us what they are doing and work together.

On one hand LVM sounds like a great solution to the problem

On the other, what on earth are Planet doing not sending out development devices to people working on Linux support? They can't expect us to come up with something of daily driver quality without having a device we can actually treat as a daily driver (necessitating a separate throwaway dev device that can be formatted without a second thought)

5

Gemini PDA - Linux / Final call for TP3

« on: February 24, 2019, 03:51:41 pm »

How do you disable Glamor? I would like to try. Thanks.

I believe I rebuilt xf86-video-hwcomposer without --enable-glamor-hybris, cant remember if there was more to it than that

It can be disabled by setting         Option          "AccelMethod" "None" in the device section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf, for example:

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "MediaTek HWC"
        Driver          "hwcomposer"
        Option          "AccelMethod" "None"
EndSection

If you update to latest libhybris and xf86-video-hwcomposer from Gemian repos, chromium will still work, but with color channels flipped. Might be interesting to compare performance though. If it is really much better without glamor, we could look into dri3 support without glamor, which would allow EGL applications to still work, although a bit slower due to buffer copy involved.

An update on this: I've updated everything and reverted all packages (except for repowerd and gemian-lock) to unmodified versions - unfortunately it's still slow with glamor enabled. The effect is most noticeable in Firefox which literally goes from 15-30 fps to < 1 fps, but you can also feel the difference scrolling in terminals and other apps. I will say it is improved though compared to when I last tried

But thank you for that AccelMethod config tweak, saves me maintaining a modified xserver-xorg-video-hwcomposer package!

6

Gemini PDA - Linux / Wayland desktop environment for Gemini PDA?

« on: February 24, 2019, 01:53:39 pm »

Plasma Desktop gets my vote

But from a less biased perspective, go for whatever has (or is likely to have) the widest use outside of the Gemini, so that we are not totally on our own development wise

Also I think that key requirements should be functionality of X11 and GLES applications, otherwise there's not really any benefit

7

Gemini PDA - Linux / Touchscreen as touchpad - relative mouse input

« on: February 15, 2019, 02:51:32 pm »

Installed, but have problem getting the button in lower left corner of screen to work now.

I can get taskbar to be visible (it is set to auto-hide to get more vertical height on screen) and can select the button in lower left (it turns blue color), but I cannot get it open up to see all the program selections by tapping on it with finger.

Is there a way to do this with finger tap or is there a key combination to get it open up or

Also, is there way to calibrate cursor on screen. It is far off from my finger tap.

Thanks for any help.

Mark

The whole point of this is to disconnect your cursor from your finger so you can see what youre aiming at and make finer mouse-like actions

It sounds like you're still trying to use the touchscreen like a touchscreen. This behaves more like the Teamviewer or MS RDP apps on Android if youve used those

8

Gemini PDA - Linux / Final call for TP3

« on: February 03, 2019, 10:33:23 pm »

- https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=35185 (better to build from source and disable acceleration) - can't imagine using Gemini without this

I thought I'd persuaded someone to report back to me when they had the perfect config for that mouse thing so I could branch it into gemian, they never got back to me, very happy to add that. I can add you to the project on github or whatever suits.

Sounds good I'm happy to contribute whatever way works best

I'm still using the config as posted in that thread, no complaints using it regularly once you get used to the different gesture for dragging than what people might be used to on laptop synaptics touchpads, everything else feels pretty natural

- I've found a vertical panel works well, not something I'd normally use but it feels natural on the Gemini. (I don't think you need two bars, one double-width icon-only one is plenty)

Sounds interesting, I did try the double bars version for a while but lost the config when I got the digital rain and never got round to doing it again after a pointless reflash. Digital rain just needs a flat battery/disconnect to fix. If folks with interesting layouts could post screenshots then we can pick what we think is the most generally useful as a default, and the others would make a good set of examples for folks to see whats possible.

This is my current layout:

[img]https://imgkk.com/i/ab7p.png\" border=\"0\" class=\"linked-image\" /]

(Really could do with https://github.com/lxqt/lxqt/issues/131)

- I can't remember if it's in already, but I've got lxqt-runner bound to alt+space, nicer than the fiddly start menu imo

Cool, I've put that in, very useful.

Awesome, couple more things I've just remembered I added that might be useful...

In lxqt globalkeyshortcuts.conf

Code: [Select]

[Print.20]
Comment=scrot
Enabled=true
Exec=scrot(+ dependency on scrot) for screenshots on Fn+R (key that looks most like it should take a screenshot imo)

Code: [Select]

[XF86TopMenu.34]
Comment=show desktop actual
Enabled=true
Exec=/(somewhere)/minimise-all

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/bash
for i in {1..20}
do
xdotool getactivewindow windowminimize
done(+ dependency on xdotool) for a winkey+d/m like behaviour on Fn+D, since the lxqt show desktop command doesnt work (can't remember if this is a side effect of no compositor)

9

Gemini PDA - Linux / Final call for TP3

« on: February 03, 2019, 02:26:25 pm »

Any chance you could fix the KDE keyboard situation?

It's soooo much more powerful and better suited for the high-dpi screen than LxQT. Among its many advantages, you can actually use the taskbar. Icons can be probably sized as well.

I've got no issues with DPI scaling on lxqt, it works excellently

I have the following env vars set:

GDK_DPI_SCALE=1.75
GTK_CSD=0
GTK_OVERLAY_SCROLLING=1
QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=1
XCURSOR_SIZE=48

And xdefaults

Xft.dpi:     192
Xcursor.size: 48

And 96 dpi set in lxqt

Basically all from https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI

Have you ever tried KDE Plasma compared to LXQT? It is about 3 or 4 times more useful. All of those settings can easily be adjusted with a GUI, for instance.

The Gemini is more than capable of running it, except the keyboard doesn't work correctly.

Yeah it's my desktop of choice, but I find lxqt fits the Gemini's limited hardware and screen area better. It's a shame that it's kind of unfinished software, especially the version shipped in stretch

10

Gemini PDA - Linux / Final call for TP3

« on: January 31, 2019, 09:53:13 am »

I hope that TP3 will fix the problem I am encountering. I had to reflash my gemini with android and debian, when I did the dist-upgrade and install kernel I had not taskbasr come up after rebooting the gemini, I only had the background and was unable to access any menus.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

@TheKit:
Thanks, good to know.

Then (obviously) I would also like the Wayland solution, but as you told, this would be too much for TP3. The kernel part is a bit unfortunate, really hoped for an update. 3.18 is pretty much EOL... Also hoped for a newer kernel fixing the sd card performance after sleep issue, present in both, Android and Debian.

Regarding GPS apps, it should be possible to run navit on the gemini, still using this on my old n900, but there are quite some more, i.e. kismet supports GPS, via gpsd if I remember correctly.

It's a dependency issue in the new pulseaudio update, I had assumed it was 'just me' with the amount I've changed things but I guess not

You can fix it by installing ubuntu-application-api3-touch via apt

11

Gemini PDA - Linux / Final call for TP3

« on: January 30, 2019, 02:17:25 pm »

The one big thing I think would go down well is defaulting to no Glamor - disabling it transformed my device from alpha-quality to daily driver.

How do you disable Glamor? I would like to try. Thanks.

I believe I rebuilt xf86-video-hwcomposer without --enable-glamor-hybris, cant remember if there was more to it than that

It can be disabled by setting         Option          "AccelMethod" "None" in the device section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf, for example:

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "MediaTek HWC"
        Driver          "hwcomposer"
        Option          "AccelMethod" "None"
EndSection

If you update to latest xf86-video-hwcomposer from Gemian repos, chromium will still work, but with color channels flipped. Might be interesting to compare performance though. If it is really much better without glamor, we could look into dri3 support without glamor, which would allow EGL applications to still work, although a bit slower due to buffer copy involved.

That would be a good idea if possible

I've done a lot of work with gl + mali on android, it's borderline impossible to upload textures without heavy stalling using the standard GLES userspace api (even with pixel buffers etc), as glamor is doing (or was when I last checked). It must be possible at some level though for android itself and apps using things like hardwarebuffer/graphicbuffer to be unaffected

12

Gemini PDA - Linux / Linux phone or mini laptop?

« on: January 30, 2019, 01:52:44 pm »

Close it to the last cm ish (until the screen turns off), pause for half a second, then shut it the remaining amount

Mine doesn't do that.  No matter how close I get to shutting it (mm or 2). I don't use whatever window manager was the default (I used stumpwm) so maybe there's something being configured that I don't do.

I manually (via a script) turn X off and then shut the lid. Not ideal but works.

Love that hardware consistency /s

Here's hoping the new kernel fixes it for good

13

Gemini PDA - Linux / Linux phone or mini laptop?

« on: January 30, 2019, 12:14:31 pm »

So how do you close the lid the right way?

Close it to the last cm ish (until the screen turns off), pause for half a second, then shut it the remaining amount

The issue is because the keyboard is not ignored instantly, and keys are pressed when the lid is fully closed

14

Gemini PDA - Linux / Final call for TP3

« on: January 30, 2019, 12:12:19 pm »

Any chance you could fix the KDE keyboard situation?

It's soooo much more powerful and better suited for the high-dpi screen than LxQT. Among its many advantages, you can actually use the taskbar. Icons can be probably sized as well.

I've got no issues with DPI scaling on lxqt, it works excellently

I have the following env vars set:

GDK_DPI_SCALE=1.75
GTK_CSD=0
GTK_OVERLAY_SCROLLING=1
QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=1
XCURSOR_SIZE=48

And xdefaults

Xft.dpi:     192
Xcursor.size: 48

And 96 dpi set in lxqt

Basically all from https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI

15

Gemini PDA - Linux / Linux phone or mini laptop?

« on: January 30, 2019, 08:55:08 am »

I use the Gemini as a mini-laptop exclusively.

Although the power management could be much better (ideally along the lines of what you state), it does get me through the day which is no worse than the (much bigger) laptop it replaces and I use it more.

I would consider using it as a phone if it had had a decent camera as that's the only function of my existing phone that the Gemini cannot replace.

It is possible, I've swapped out connman for NetworkManager and am calling nmcli r all off/on in repowerd when entering/leaving sleep. Same is probably possible with connman but I've not looked into it

Power usage with wifi off in deep sleep is about 1-3% per day, as long as you close the lid the right way, though I believe there has been a kernel fix in the past few days for letting the lid slam closed preventing sleep