I use PostmarketOS

Posted Jan 29, 2026 18:22 UTC (Thu) by phm (subscriber, #168918)
Parent article: Open source for phones: postmarketOS

I use PostmarketOS (with phosh) on a PinePhone. The modem crashes if you look at it funny but most of the time I can call, text, and use mobile data on it. It's pretty fun to see the horror on people's faces when I show text messaging with Vim. It's my "daily driver" but that's because I barely use a cell phone in the first place.

I also use it on a Kobo Clara HD, where it's plenty usable for reading eBooks.

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I use PostmarketOS

Posted Jan 30, 2026 8:29 UTC (Fri) by taladar (subscriber, #68407) [Link] (2 responses)

Never mind the modem, how do you use vim on a touch screen keyboard? Half of the important keys are missing.

I use PostmarketOS

Posted Jan 30, 2026 12:31 UTC (Fri) by phm (subscriber, #168918) [Link] (1 responses)

The on-screen keyboard is very close to a regular ANSI keyboard. It has ESC, CTRL, TAB, ALT, :, etc. If you really wanted to you could use Emacs with the default keybindings.

I use PostmarketOS

Posted Feb 3, 2026 16:18 UTC (Tue) by MKesper (subscriber, #38539) [Link]

When running Android, you can also install keyboards featuring all needed keys, one of the first was Hacker's Keyboard which lives on as a layout pack for AnySoftKeyboard or more recent, CleverKeys.

I use PostmarketOS

Posted Jan 31, 2026 11:52 UTC (Sat) by jkingweb (subscriber, #113039) [Link] (1 responses)

Are there practical advantages to the Kobo usage? I'm curious, but I'm also not dissatisfied with my reader's built-in software.

I use PostmarketOS

Posted Feb 3, 2026 23:07 UTC (Tue) by phm (subscriber, #168918) [Link]

Not really. Outside of the dedicated ebook software, nothing on the Linux desktop is really geared towards an eInk display.

(The last eReader I used before this was from ≈2010 so I have no reference for what a modern eReader experience is like. I bought the Kobo Clara specifically because I could put PostmarketOS on it, and I've never used it with the stock firmware.)