I'm now using my Pebble with my Linux phone (news.erebion.eu)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by erebion@news.erebion.eu to c/linuxphones@lemmy.ca

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Noticed an MR that fixes building outside of UBPorts: https://gitlab.com/muhammad23012009/rockwork/-/merge_requests/4#58cb4f58166586c1ed7f076c568d41682df3661c

How to build:

cmake .  
make

Wrote a simple systemd unit to start rockworkd:

# /home/mobian/.config/systemd/user/rockworkd.service  
[Unit]  
Description=rockworkd  

[Service]  
ExecStart=/home/mobian/bin/rockworkd  

[Install]  
WantedBy=default.target

With this, you only need to:

put the binaries rockwork and rockworkd into a folder, ~/bin in my example
create the unit, systemctl --user daemon-reload, systemctl --user enable --now rockworkd.service
create ~/.local/share/applications/rockwork.desktop

[Desktop Entry]  
Name=RockWork  
Exec=/home/mobian/bin/rockwork  
#Icon=/home/mobian/some/path/to/image.png  
Terminal=false  
Type=Application

Now it works.

Hints:

pairing is done via whatever tools your "desktop environment" uses, not using Rockwork
at least in my case notifications were empty (but everything else works fine it seems)
if you can, package it for your distro, once the MR is merged :D

EDIT: The build instructions assume an ARM machine to build on or just building on the phone

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[-] erebion@news.erebion.eu 8 points 7 months ago

Just noticed another thing that does not work, at least on Phosh:

changing the volume of music, but I can skip and pause

Other than that it is great, just two small bugs I noticed. Finally a working Pebble app for Linux phones. \o/

Seriously, I feel like every single day one tiny thing that annoys me gets fixed.

Until now the Pebble app and better camera have been the reason to carry an old Android phone around. Now it's just the camera and patches for that are also in the works and I guess after two years I will soon be back to a single phone and no longer carry around two. :D

[-] erebion@news.erebion.eu 4 points 7 months ago

Also, according to the MR, the app store doesn't work, but it seems to work now. Perhaps the author didn't update that yet. :)

[-] erebion@news.erebion.eu 1 points 7 months ago

Also, not sure why the app shows the Pebble screenshot with incorrect time. A bit later it showed the correct time.

[-] natecox@programming.dev 5 points 7 months ago

I’m looking for a Linux phone. What’cha got?

[-] erebion@news.erebion.eu 3 points 7 months ago

Pixel 3a, running Mobian after porting it... But I will not blindly recommend anything without knowing what you'd expect from a phone, so tell me and I'll see if I can come up with something helpful.

[-] natecox@programming.dev 3 points 7 months ago

Oh I don’t really need help, just looking for if you like what you are using or not.

[-] null@piefed.nullspace.lol 3 points 7 months ago

Sick! What phone are you using and how do like it?

[-] erebion@news.erebion.eu 3 points 7 months ago

Pixel 3a, I ported Mobian to it.

It might not be ready for what you are looking for.(Camera isn't great yet, calls in suspend do not work yet, stuff like that. All issues are currently being worked on, though)

[-] allpurposemat@mastodon.gamedev.place 1 points 7 months ago

@erebion hey, that's my MR, awesome! I'll see if I can ge a few more things working :)

[-] erebion@news.erebion.eu 1 points 7 months ago

Thank you for your awesome work! I've been hoping someone would do what I didn't know how to do ever since I ported Mobian to my phone, almost three years ago. :)

I was actually wondering something: What is the list of dependencies? Have you figured that out? I've just installed a lot of lomiri and qml packages, until it worked. This is not ideal, however.

I'm considering requesting Debian packaging on the Debian bug tracker, so it'd be useful if I could include info on what Rockwork requires to run. :)

[-] allpurposemat@mastodon.gamedev.place 1 points 7 months ago

@erebion you're welcome!
The actual desktop backend was done some time ago by a Mobian contributor named xelageo; I don't want to take credit for their work. I just rebased it, packaged it, and made a MR. I *do* plan to add the missing features once the initial "minimal" implementation is upstreamed :)

I wrote a Nix devshell for building it: https://git.allpurposem.at/mat/rockwork/src/branch/main/flake.nix

Here's the APKBUILD for Alpine: https://git.allpurposem.at/mat/rockwork-apkbuild/src/branch/main/APKBUILD

[-] allpurposemat@mastodon.gamedev.place 1 points 7 months ago

@erebion I would ask you to wait for the MR to go upstream before requesting an official Debian package. There's some things broken with it currently (icon, appstore), though this is the kick I needed to finally look at fixing them, so hopefully this weekend it'll be ready :)

[-] erebion@news.erebion.eu 1 points 7 months ago

I'd mention this in the request as well. It could take a really long time to find someone willing to package it. I'd say it should be packaged once the few remaining issues are solved.

Current state wouldn't make much sense to have in Debian, yes.