No, it’s just that when you use a mainline kernel, you’re just not reusing all the Android (often user-space) drivers that make cameras work on Android and due to that stuff, starting from drivers for the SoC camera interface to the camera sensor have to be re-implemented. Whether you are on glibc (e.g., on Debian/Mobian) or musl/Alpine does not really matter.

Also, Camera APIs and the whole “desktop Linux” camera stack (think of things like debayering, white-balance) is nowhere near as developed as what Android has (and that, IUC, Ubuntu Touch can reuse on Halium by plumbing things together).

A Pixel 3a may be a good choice. It’s older, but not huge—and it’s very well-supported in Ubuntu Touch (and Droidian, both use Halium/libhybris to re-use the Android kernel drivers), and also in postmarketOS (mainline Linux 6.9.3 as of this message).

On postmarketOS, camera support is not fully there—the front camera is somewhat supported. Also, Wi-Fi is still a bit annoying, calls only work with headset on postmarketOS, so I would say: Use Ubuntu Touch or Droidian for now, and maybe move on to postmarketOS once it’s a bit more solid.

It should be. With zram, I can use similar software even on a 2 GB RAM device somewhat comfortably, unless I open too many tabs in Firefox.

It’s somewhat SoC dependent, but the actual feature support depends on auxiliary chips. Of the well-supported phones, only the Shift6mq supports it in hardware - software support on mainline is not there yet though. The Fairphones 4 and 5 also have the feature. I have the 5, and display out works with postmarketOS, but audio support is still lacking, and USB peripherals (e.g., keyboard, mouse) are not supported.

Here’s a list of more devices: https://www.uperfectmonitor.com/pages/list-of-smartphones-with-displayport-alt-mode

That said, there are other ways like DisplayLink and or GUD that may enable you to connect a display to a OnePlus 6 or PocoF1 anyway, some people have done it (and left video evidence on social media or YouTube. It definitely requires a customized kernel, and unfortunately, AFAIK the efforts have not been documented/shared (kernel config and necessary packages).

I don’t think reporting the USB ID thing to Plasma is useful and will go far - for 99% of users (that use some kind of Android/AOSP) the modus operandi is fine and helpful. With many Android devices and OSes requiring you to do something on the device after plugging it in, testing does not seem to be feasible to me.

There’s no need to add the edge repo, as the latest release of mobile-config-firefox should be in v23.12 by now (it’s been updated there since my last post). The command I posted does not add the repo, but only uses it for the one package without adding the repo permanently.

I recommend trying to use KDE Connect (or scp, rsync … another network based way) to send the screenshot from the phone to your other computer instead.

MTP/other file transfer protocols do not (yet?) work with mobile Linux, so this failure is to be expected. It only shows up for connection, because if your device ran Android, it would be an option — AFAIK, Plasma acts this way because of the USB ID of the device.

Also, regarding your main issue: While you can report this to Mozilla, please be aware that Firefox is being “patched” to better work on mobile by https://gitlab.com/postmarketOS/mobile-config-firefox. I suggest you to install the latest, not yet in postmarketOS 23.12 mobile-config-firefox package from edge first by running:

sudo apk del mobile-config-firefox
sudo apk add mobile-config-firefox --repository http://mirror.postmarketos.org/postmarketos/master

While it may not fix every issue possible, it should improve the experience.

Alpine edge testing apps are in postmarketOS edge. So yeah, not all of them make it to stable, but quite a few do:

For software listed on https://linuxphoneapps.org/ the count is as follows: Alpine 3.19: 160 Alpine edge: 198

(Source: https://linuxphoneapps.org/packaged-in/)

The difference should be mostly the apps that have not made it beyond testing, yet.

Please note that you can also try installing testing apps on stable by apk add PKGNAME --repository=http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing, or, maybe as more safe way of doing this, use distrobox, install alpine:latest in it, and changing /etc/apk/repositories/ to make it edge instead of 3.19.

You can also try to build some software that’s not packaged by coming up with your own APKBUILDs, I did so a while ago on https://framagit.org/linmobapps/apkbuilds, maybe the notes I left there can be helpful to you.

Regarding Wikis: They always get stale, so clarifications and additions are surely welcome!

Yeah man, I think the article I initially read about PP Mobian situation was this one here just for reference if I am even remembering right – https://blog.mobian-project.org/posts/2023/09/30/paperweight-dilemma/

Someone stepped up (see https://blog.mobian.org/posts/2024/01/08/highlights-of-2023/ and afaik a-wai also mentioned this at fosdem (https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-3290-towards-a-bright-future-with-mobian-/), also long standing issues like the out-of-tree-WiFi/BT driver are being worked on currently.

Very much not. GNOME Shell Mobile was funded by the German Prototype Fund in 2022 IIRC, way later than Phosh was created (funded by Purism for their Librem 5). GNOME Shell Mobile will eventually be part of GNOME proper (meaning it’s Mutter, and GNOME Shell, patched to work on small devices), currently it’s a patch set on top of multiple GNOME components that’s packaged in postmarketOS and the AUR (if you consider AUR stuff packaged).

Phosh was created on based on wlroots (which is also used in Sway and other wayland-native window managers) and GTK3, as a Mobile Shell. Ironically, this way was pursued because Purism developers where told by the GNOME Shell people that an adaptation of GNOME Shell for Mobile would not be feasible.

Both rely on designs created by (at least then) Purism-employed designer Tobias Bernard IIRC, and thus may seem quite similar despite being based on a different tech stack, and both are hosted on GNOME’s Gitlab, using all the same apps.