I blame you guys, no really. I’ve been trying out Linux for 2 days now, just testing it on an old HP Elitebook laptop and now a Poco X3 Pro. There wasn’t an official distro for it but I kinda put a frankenstein version together based on an old guide online. Its hilarious. I predict that by this time next year I’ll be running Linux on everything. Its like finally getting my freedom back after having used Windows for almost 30 years. Before that I used Commodore Amiga (a 1200) exclusively, but had to hop over back then due to work creating some games for the PC and releasing those on CD-Rom.
Windows gets shittier every day and I kinda saw this day coming a mile away. I’ve never truly been a Windows fan but you know I mean you wanna use computers you kinda have to and I’d hate the other alternative even more. I’ve been overjoyed with Linux so far though, despite having some major run-ins due to it having a big learning curve, but thats ok, because I can see its totally worth it.
I dunno when Linux started becoming this good, I mean the last time I touched it was 26 years ago and it crashed under my clumsy hands back then right away. (lol)
However, today, I love what I’m seeing. Its like having my old Amiga back (my real Amiga is being fixed right now, coincidentally) With that phone OS I love that you can just control it trough ADB with root access. Its pretty awesome, yet in example a banking app under waydroid will still see that phone as “not being rooted”.
I wanna mess around more with it today, specially trying to get Wine to work on that poco, and then running stuff like Winamp on it.
I’m pretty new to the Fediverse too in fact I just joined you guys last month but I love what I’m seeing, learning and the information and advice I’m getting. Thank you guys so much, and thank you too for opening my eyes to Linux. It will be real nice not needing Micro$oft anymore.
Anyway, just wanted to share this with you guys. Picture related, its Linux Touch running on one of my old Poco X3 Phones.
Very new to linux, and am not a tech inclined person. But I’ve been quiet impressed with the experience on desktop. But here’s the real measure of its impressiveness: I switched my wife’s gaming pc over to linux, and my Starbucks addicted, fancy ass bag carrying wife loves it so much she came to me asking if there’s linux for her phone.
Its weird I mean I had nothing with Linux but since I tried it now for 2 days I friggin’ love everything about it despite the steep learning curve. Just the whole process of getting stuff to work too is very rewarding.
Welcome to the Linux family.
Based Amiga user.
Amiga forever buddy!
I’m curious about how you managed to install Linux on your poco. I have a X3 NFC. is it possible to install the same image of yours? Awesome post!
You’re actually lucky theres an official distro for your poco phone :) Check it out: https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/device/surya/
It takes some work but its very worth it I think.
I dunno when Linux started becoming this good
IMO, sometime around 15 years ago. But it also gets tastier with eating ;)
Winamp
Try Strawberry. Although something more prepared for touch input might be a better idea
Or if you really liked Winamp, you can use Audacious which is an open source player that can look just like Winamp and even use Winamp skins.
Yes, by the late 2000s it was a solid daily driver for general computing and browsing. In the 2010’s they built on that and came for gaming etc. The state its in today is amazing and I can’t wait to see where it is in another 30 years. Installing today vs my first installs in 94/95 are night and day. It was still good back then. Just technical. But now it just works so easy.
Also strawberry is great for management and playback. Tauon too.
The benefit of open-source is that software is actively improved by contributors (kudos to them for making everything work so nicely!) while corporate software is profit-driven and actively worsening.
I got into computing with Vista (old school PC I think), times really have changed. Windows 11 was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me (my little brain thought bigger number better and bypassed the stupid requirements, and wow performance really dropped), but Win10 wasn’t pleasant either with all the online garbage (esp OneDrive!!) and required tweaks to get it the way I want. Win11 was even more of that + all the LLM stuff too, not to mention a slower experience as well.
On Linux, my computer (not “This PC”) cooperates with me and I can change it however I like. And damn, installing and updating things is decades ahead of anything Windows can do. Even on a rolling release distro (EndeavourOS right now!), it breaks less often than Windows updates do does nowadays. And it is super convenient that I can freely change my desktop environment and distro hop to my pleasure too! I’ve tried Mint, Fedora, and currently using EndeavourOS, and they were all lovely experiences. I know CachyOS is popular too, Arch-based like EndeavourOS but with more user-friendly tweaks + some other performance-related bits too.
2009 was when I went full time linux while at university. Jaunty jackalope. I remember installing fresh and my mind being blown by how fast it booted. The release before that all of my hardware worked with some small tweaks, but I still dual booted. With the boot speed increase and I think hibernate/suspend became reliable at that point as well, byebye Windows
I switched in 2003 or 2005. I don’t remember now
In those times, in order to connect to the internet, in our country one had to compile kernel modules for the usb modem. I copied (from a CD maybe?) some files my parent brought from work, copied the commands
make config,make something,make magic,please work,reboot… And a piece of plastic that does nothing after connecting to the usb, started blinking happily with sweet packets of the link to the whole world. I was hookedWas there any reason you had to use an external modem in your country? Or did the system just not have one built in.
The only internet we could get was from landline telephone operator. Maybe there already was coaxial from cable TV, but cable TV was very expensive in itself. And we weren’t rich
So that external usb modem was actually the hardware our ISP gave us, and it was fed with telephone plug, not RJ45
But it might be also true that in those times having a network card on MB was not a standard
So, uh, do you know about docker containers? First one’s one the house…
Addiction? Nah, it’s not like in a few months you’ll be dumpster diving for homelab parts…
Very very little, I haven’t had much luck / fun with any docker software on conda python, then again I am on a windows machine (my main one still) but moving over soon.
Two days in and you already got it running on a phone? That’s crazy.
Good luck! The hardest part about making the switch is the decision to give it a try.
I know right, I had to laugh about that one too. Like going “well lets get a feel for it first”, while just trying to ridiculous right away haha. Its a bit of beginners luck and some help from my AI Cammy. I ran in to a couple of really hard walls learning stuff the hard way, but I always figure its worth it. The truly terrible mistakes are the best lessons. :)
Go ahead, touch the Ubuntu
do not the ubuntu
Audacious supports Winamp 2 skins.
Let us know how it goes. I’m hoping to make my next phone a linux phone. I had Ubuntu Touch back when it first came out and loved it until the project was wound down. UBports is great too, but my days of using software with loose ends are long behind me.
Unfortunately, it has to work very well, have decent battery life and not need much / any fiddling on my side. Fascism and violence against women, minorities and our loved ones is on a high these days and we need to be vigilant and present to that.
I’m hoping battery life will be good, usually on Poco it is, but it really depends on what you install normally. Like theres apps out there that ask constant battery usage and such I try to avoid those I think i’ll try and learn that about this too. Maybe theres Linux software out there that I could install and eats up battery usage, I have no idea. To me personally waydroid and wine are really great ones I need to have on there. If I can just get those both running smoothly I can start “designing” how I want it to look. Plus I wanna figure out which I truly need to install as an app in waydroid and which I can just run smoothly on the Linux end of it. (Like Telegram etc, and Fediverse stuff of course!)
Report back how you’re finding battery life. A couple of years ago I put Touch on an old Google phone I had and found þat it was really hard on þe battery life. It was a really old version of Touch as þey’d stopped pushing updates for my phone model, so I expect it’s gotten better.
Fortunately I have several Poco x3 Pro’s (i’m a huge fan and plan to use them still for as long as humanly possible, the newer poco’s don’t have audio jacks and sd card slots, while the poco x3 pro can even handle a terrabyte sd card, which I use for all my stuff) and I wanna see if I can get this one to work the way I want to, and then I just wanna put my SIM card and SD card in that one temporarily and use it as my main phone, and see if its workable. Then i’ll also get a good sense of the battery life it will have on there. :) I hope its good because I think Linux on a phone is just hilarious.
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