Episode: 2983
Title: HPR2983: my phone
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2983/hpr2983.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 14:17:33

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 2983 for Wednesday 8 January 2020.
Today's show is entitled My Phone. It is hosted by Jezra
and is about 8 minutes long and carries a clean flag. The summer is
new Linuxy in my pocket.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org.
Support universal access to all knowledge by heading over to archive.org
forward slash donate.
timezone appropriate greeting to you HPR listener my name is Jezra
and today's episode is about my phone.
Phone is probably a bad word for me to use to refer to my phone
because I don't consider my phone to be a telephone. To me it is a pocket
computer that I use to do computer things.
All of my computers run some form of Linux and my pocket computer is no
exception.
However, being such a fan of GNU Linux it is important to me to get that same
experience of those GNU tools on my pocket computer.
So here we go. My phone currently is a Google Pixel XL.
It is device name Marlin. When choosing a pocket computer
there are two firm requirements that I have.
One, the device needs to work on the Verizon network.
No other provider can get a signal to where I live. Therefore I'm stuck with
Verizon. Verizon doesn't have the greatest signal
but horrible signal is better than no signal.
The second requirement is a user unlockable bootloader.
Most computers come with a lousy operating system that needs to be
replaced. For example laptops and desktops typically ship with
Microsoft Windows. The best way to improve the operating system is to
remove Windows and install some sort of GNU Linux.
Pocket computer is no different. If the device ships with Android pre-installed
then there is a bunch of bloat and one might say spyware for Google
that is also installed on that device. And if I own a device it is in my best
interest to put the operating system on it of my choosing.
My phone is running Lineage OS version 16. Lineage OS version 16
is based on Android version 9. However when I install Lineage I do not
install any of the Google apps because I don't need them and they provide
no value to me. What I do install first and foremost
is F-Droid. F-Droid is a free open source software repository and just about
everything else that I use on my phone comes through F-Droid.
For example, Fennec which is Firefox for mobile. My preferred browser on the
desktop is Firefox. My preferred browser in my pocket computer is Firefox.
Wow fancy that. Aside from Firefox for browsing I also install open camera.
I find it to be a improvement on the default camera that ships with
the Lineage operating system. I also install SkyMap which is an application
that will tell me which stars are which where the planets are that sort of
thing because I spend a lot of time outside under the stars and I like to
know what is up above me. Sat stat is another application that I use
frequently. It allows me to view all of the
sensor data on my pocket computer. That is it will display altitude, direction,
angle, tilt, the signal strength for CDMA, GSM, LTE,
always important to know when signal strength is weak, what one's signal
strength actually is. Getting readings that say oh I have one bar of
signal means absolutely nothing but if one could say oh I have
negative 116 decibels of signal then that is a bit more accurate.
And certainly not least from FDroid I install termux.
Termux is a terminal emulator and Linux environment that is to say not only
does termux emulate the terminal but termux provides
apt package management for a plethora of GNU Linux software.
Using termux I will apt install Ruby, RSync,
image magic and whatever else I need should the need arise.
As I take pictures with my phone, pocket computer, whatever,
camera. Yeah it's a camera. When I take pictures with my pocket camera that
is also a GNU Linux device I back up those images locally to a server in my
home using RSync. I open up termux terminal and run a shell script that I
wrote that backs up the images. I also have a script in there to
backup using RSync recordings from audio recorder.
There's also a script to backup screenshots.
Aside from installing applications using FDroid there are certain utilities
that are web based and I use those through Firefox and have bookmarks on the
phone's home screen that launch that utility.
Two that I use most often are radio.gesera.net that is an audio player for
the public radio stations I listen to most often.
And twilock.gesera.net that is a twilight computing clock.
Really it's just a fancy SVG based on where one is geographically
and it uses GPS coordinates to determine when some rise and sunset will be.
Very useful to have if you are on a farm and need to know when is sunset
today because I got to put the sheep hair. For transferring files off of the
device mostly I am using RSync in some sort of shell script.
To transfer files to the phone I typically use
Bluetooth if going from another mobile device to the phone.
If I need to get music onto the phone I will always use a cable
and connect the phone directly to my laptop and then transfer files
directly into the music folder. When non music files need to be transferred onto
the phone from a desktop. A simple server is run on the desktop
that will provide access to a directory on that desktop.
Then I open up Firefox and enter in the URL bar the host name
of the machine that is then serving the files.
In this way I can edit a video or image on my desktop using very robust tools
and then transfer that image onto my phone
for deploying to wherever I need it to go.
And that in a nutshell is how I got the most
good new Linux experience out of an Android device.
Thank you for listening. Have a wonderful rest of your day.
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