Messages

1

Gemini PDA / Good case for Gemini found

« on: March 26, 2024, 04:53:16 pm »

I got a nice Turtleback case for my Pixel phone (running GrapheneOS), and it's a little too big. Turns out, it fits the Gemini perfectly, not loose and not tight. Magnetic closure. Strong belt clip. Holds device vertically.

2

Gemini PDA - General Discussion / Current use of Gemini?

« on: March 26, 2024, 04:42:07 pm »

Hi, everybody!

Still have my Gemini. Still mint, still works perfectly. Just got it out, fired it up. Single boot to Debian. Everything is of course outdated, with no hope of easy upgrade. I may try to get Proton VPN running on it, using the old OpenVPN recipe.

Thought I would check and see if anyone has come up with new and imaginative use for the Gemini. I kind of like the little guy (except for the carefully sharpened hinge ends) and would like to put it to use. If cellular had ever been made to work reliably I'd spring a few bucks a month for Mint Mobile or something for it.

Anybody cook up anything interesting for the Gemini?

3

Gemini PDA - Linux / Re: upgrading linux on gemini

« on: August 24, 2021, 12:35:43 pm »

Many thanks -- I'll give it a shot. It has been gadget hell this week, and I have been hoping not to reflash anything. So far:

-- I did manage to get the iPhone working again, sort of, I think, just now.

-- Thought I'd resurrect my Xperia X running Sailfish. Had to run the SFOS upgrade twice. It lost everything. I had backups, but they didn't contain anything I wanted to save, such as VPN and ProtonMail stuff. SFOS ain't soup yet, imho.

-- The SFOS dual boot on the Gemini won't connect to wifi. Great. Connects fine in Debian. But I do not now nor have I ever had any phone stuff working under Debian, because it didn't exist last time I was using the Gemini, so I have no idea how to invoke it.

The iPhone debacle has made me realize the necessity of having at least two working cellular gadgets, so I'm hoping to get the Xperia X and Gemini totally updated and working and keeping them that way.

This stuff used to be more fun . . .

4

Gemini PDA - Linux / upgrading linux on gemini

« on: August 22, 2021, 01:51:35 pm »

Hi, everybody . . .

My little iPhone is at least temporarily dead due to the "No Service" malfunction installed as the main part of iOS 14.71, so I'm returning to the Gemini, last booted many months ago.

My question is simple: is it safe to run the regular "apt update" and "apt upgrade" on it, or are there other contortions and tricks I must do? I've fallen entirely out of sync with the Linux-on-Gemini community, and the Sailfish OS situation looks to have gotten pretty weird.

Does the phone now work with Linux? If so, what need I install to bring it about (besides my SIM card)?

Thanks in advance!

5

Gemini PDA - General Discussion / News from Planetcom re: Linux & Android plans & support

« on: October 10, 2019, 12:25:06 pm »

The Gemini was advertised to Indiegogo backers, and is still being advertised to prospective purchasers, as a dual-boot Android/Linux device, with no mention of limited functionality in Linux or of basic Android functionality (such as calling, SMS, and mobile data) available only if proprietary Google-ware is also installed.

Yup, it's been a disappointment in that regard. Frankly, it's a disappointment in some other ways, too. But fact is, it's a cute little computer that under a small subset of circumstances can be a sort of rubbish telephone. We rolled the dice and got a portion of what we thought we were buying. Which puts us ahead of some other vaporware campaigns. So . . .

6

Gemini PDA - Linux / KDE is usable after all

« on: October 03, 2019, 10:22:35 am »

I'm discovering a bit of a shutdown problem witk KDE. The onscreen shutdown options in the KMenu and RMB click kill much but not all -- the mouse cursor remains and the machine doesn't shutdown. Is there a workaround? Have I missed something really obvious? The only way out I've found is to open Konsole and do [div class=\'codetop\']CODE[/div][div class=\'codemain\' style=\'height:200px;white-space:pre;overflow:auto\']sudo shutdown -h now[/div]
Pretty sure this isn't how it's supposed to work.<g>

7

Gemini PDA - Linux / Back to Gemini after a year -- what's changed in Gemini/Linux?

« on: October 01, 2019, 08:02:13 pm »

Okay, I'm back at it. I seem to have everything set up to flash the device, but during the process it throws a box that says:

[div class=\'codetop\']CODE[/div][div class=\'codemain\' style=\'height:200px;white-space:pre;overflow:auto\']ERROR:STATUS_PROTOCOL_ERR (-1073676283) . MSP ERROE CODE : 0x00.

[HINT][/div]

Anyone know how to fix this or how to get past it?

Thanks in advance.

8

Gemini PDA - Linux / Back to Gemini after a year -- what's changed in Gemini/Linux?

« on: September 21, 2019, 02:28:57 pm »

Having spent numerous spare and fruitless hours on this over the last few days, I've decided to put it away again until the weather turns cold and indoor projects become more attractive again, at which time I'll try to do the Linux-only think (maybe TP3 by then) or else reset it and sell it with its various accessories. As it is, by the time I get it sorted I'll be too tired to use it! I'll squeeze by with the iPhone and the GPD Pocket, which I like a great deal.

Thanks for the advice so far. I'll pick it back up later.

9

Gemini PDA - Linux / Back to Gemini after a year -- what's changed in Gemini/Linux?

« on: September 20, 2019, 04:54:21 pm »

More help needed.

First, is there a way in the settings for this site to make it possible to see threads in their entirety, which is to say scroll through all the threads instead of seeing at the bottom the framework of them? There's a lot of stuff I need to relearn that was down in threads early on, and it's near to impossible to find this stuff if each reply needs to be clicked on individually.

Second, I do not actually know what I have installed here. It boots directly to Linux, which is what I wanted, but I do not believe my new flashing took, so I have no idea whether I'm on my old Linux-SFOS install or a new install.

Third, I cannot get the thing to connect with wifi, in no small measure because of how impressively miserable unmodified LXQT is. This is a mess, because without wifi I can't download any of the tools -- mc, primarily -- necessary to deal with the system when I'm ssh'ed in to it.

Fourth, what is the microSD card called in the Gemini Linux hierarchy? I believe I backed up my old working modified Linux install to it, and it would be good to recover some configurations and such.

Thanks. This is a lot more frustrating than I remember!

10

Gemini PDA - Linux / Back to Gemini after a year -- what's changed in Gemini/Linux?

« on: September 19, 2019, 06:04:21 pm »

Well, damn.

I made sure my Gemini was charged, after having been off for months and months. (In all that time, it was still at 84 percent.) Did the FlashTool thing, or tried to. In the Readback screen I dutifully plugged it in and turned it on; to my surprise, the Linux login screen instantly appeared and told me that it was a date in November 2016 (though the clock was right). Anyway, the progress bar turned red and filled up but never got to the okay screen. I attempted to retry it, but the Esc key turned the device off and now it appears to be stone dead.

I used to know the tricks, but forgot them, and now I have no idea how to get the Gemini back so as to flash it with just Linux. The battery was at 100 percent, so it's not that. Is there a force on or force reboot? (Sitting on the Esc key doesn't do the trick, sadly.)

Have I bricked this thing?

UPDATE: I haven't bricked it, but am lost in the woods (I hadn't booted Linux since installing Sailfish; now, for some reason, it boots directly into Linux). Stay tuned for many questions! And thanks!

11

Gemini PDA - Linux / Back to Gemini after a year -- what's changed in Gemini/Linux?

« on: September 17, 2019, 05:47:10 pm »

Hi,

Sailfish is pretty looking, but I found it 'half baked solution'.

Indeed, alas.

Debian works great as of TP2 version....

Very glad to hear.

Key improvement for me was changing display to as as a big touchpad. Therefore, no longer need to use a mouse. Much better and more practical for me.

Also very good to hear -- it worked that way in KDE early on, but nothing else worked in KDE. (Though I see that someone has apparently come up with a workaround.)

Check out the thread here about updating display usage.

Thanks, I will. Any new tricks for flashing, etc., or must we still have Googledroid aboard?

Have a pocket size desktop computer now....

That was the goal all along!

12

Gemini PDA - Linux / Back to Gemini after a year -- what's changed in Gemini/Linux?

« on: September 17, 2019, 10:58:29 am »

Greetings, everybody . . .

A year ago I put down my Gemini to get an Xperia X and follow it down what has turned out to be the Sailfish OS rabbit hole. (A promising OS, but Jolla's loyalties are understandably with its investors, whose interests are not the same as those of individual users.) So I said hell with it, got a refurbished iPhone SE for $96, and am now thinking of returning to the Gemini as a kind of testbed device.

And at the moment I have absolutely no idea as to the state of Linux on the Gemini (for instance, whether one can make it the sole boot option), whether the pointing situation is any better, and so on. I suppose I could read a year's worth of posts here, but I thought I'd ask first if there's a general, current how-to on Linux on the Gemini. Is there? Have things improved enough that there's a reason beyond stubbornness (from which I suffer!) to install it, and so on.

So -- any good place to learn the current state of play?

Thanks.

13

Gemini PDA - Sailfish OS / Sailfish 3.03 has been released

« on: May 07, 2019, 09:59:57 am »

Release notes say it is available for both flavors of Gemini, x25 and x27.

14

Gemini PDA - Sailfish OS / Sailfish X

« on: February 26, 2019, 12:29:52 pm »

Just bought it after seeing the press release:

https://jolla.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/0...4860&x54860


https://shop.jolla.com/

It is not that different from the community edition, but I like to show my support, and to stay in the loop

Well, it's different in that it has Alien Dalvik, msft exchange support, and predictive text. Otherwise not much different. I got an Xperia X specifically so I could use Sailfish X. After I sorted out a native ProtonMail kludge I deleted the Alien Dalvik stuff. I never used the exchange compatability. So I paid $60 for predictive text, which is nice, though I do not know if it is $60 nice.

The advantage of Sailfish X, to me, is that Jolla says it will be supported onthe device forever. Though there are already cracks here -- some versions of Alien Dalvik, for instance, are supported on newly added devices only, with no plan to provide them on the others. This limits the Android support, which is of concern to those who want to run Android apps but not Android itself.

15

Gemini PDA - Sailfish OS / Gemini discussed at SFOS community meeting today

« on: February 21, 2019, 12:32:55 pm »

There was lengthy discussion of Alien Dalvik, etc., on Gemini at today's Sailfish OS online community meeting. A transcript is here:

http://merproject.org/meetings/mer-meeting...-09.00.log.html