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

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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.

[ArchiMark]

Hi,

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

Debian works great as of TP2 version....

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.

Check out the thread here about updating display usage.

Have a pocket size desktop computer now....

 

Mark

[depscribe]

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!

[Thiago Alves]

I'm using my Gemini almost daily for about two months now and I finally came up with a stable Linux install for it. Check my reply here for my quick guide: https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showto...mp;#entry292387

Also, I'm using Android for some light gaming (mostly old-school emulators that I like to play during flights) since Debian has no support for hardware acceleration. Recently this Android installation has come in handy for something else other than games. Android supports HDMI out, and from there I can chroot to the Debian install on the other partition and have Linux running with HDMI out. This is perfect for a quick/temporary office desktop replacement. Here is the guide: https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showto...mp;#entry292388

[depscribe]

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!

[depscribe]

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!

[ArchiMark]

Sorry, in midst of deadline at work, but quick note to say that I have not had problem with wifi......have you been using ConnMan app?

Works fine for me with wifi....

If I get more may be able to reply further...

Best,

Mark

[mithrandir]

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.

 /dev/mmcblk1p1

[depscribe]

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.

[Varti]

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.

Sorry for the late reply: from your description it seems that you have your display mode set to Outline; to see every thread as a whole you need to switch it to Standard (or Linear+, which is almost the same). You can find this option at the top right part of the thread, by clicking on the Options pulldown menu, see here:

 [ Invalid Attachment ]

Varti

[depscribe]

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.