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Comment by Mediterraneo10 | Hacker News Reader

> So you probably need Librem 5 for more performance

Librem has its own set of problems and does not change my opinion that this iteration of the free Linux mobile ecosystem is stillborn. My feeling is that we'll have to wait another decade for new players to appear and try everything all over again.

> There is also OpenStreetMap, which is much faster.

The OpenStreetMap.org website is a tech demo, it isn’t really meant to be used for one's map needs. For that, apps are out there. However, as I said, the PinePhone's OSM-based apps are also little more than tech demos that just serve OSM tiles.

> Software updates make it more usable every week.

The Desktop-Firefox-for-PinePhone hack doesn’t get updated often (or possibly at all).

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>The Desktop-Firefox-for-PinePhone hack doesn’t get updated often (or possibly at all).

I still have no idea what you're referring to. It's the same build of Firefox on your desktop. It was just updated from version 86 to 87 this week. Same as the desktop. There is no "mobile Linux ecosystem". Just 1 Linux ecosystem, with some apps supporting a 360px screen width, and some not. It is simply desktop Linux, on a phone.

> It's the same build of Firefox on your desktop. It was just updated from version 86 to 87 this week

Distros like Mobian on the PinePhone don't ship vanilla Firefox. They ship Firefox along with custom UI modifications originally borrowed from the Firefox-for-Postmarket-OS project that make Firefox at least somewhat usable on the PinePhone's screen dimensions.

Even when the version of Firefox is updated, the accompanying Firefox-for-Postmarket-OS hacks do not see much improvement. The upstream Firefox devs have not put work into making Firefox’s UI fully usable at those dimensions, and so for time being phone users are stuck with the limited functionality that the Firefox-for-Postmarket-OS hacks provide.

> for time being phone users are stuck with the limited functionality

This is a pretty pessimistic view. I'm sure the patches will be upstreamed soon. Even Purism works on that according to their "Fund Your App" page: https://puri.sm/fund-your-app/.

The Firefox-for-Postmarket-OS modifications don’t really patch Firefox in a way that can be upstreamed. They are merely UI settings that disable some elements that would take up too much space on the screen, and much of Firefox's UI still won't work regardless. Only significant work on upstream Firefox itself would make a difference, and neither Mozilla nor Purism have the manpower for that.

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