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back to article A slick phone Linux for your pocket PDA? Ooh, don't mind if I do, sir

Sailfish has become the fourth OS to be officially supported on Planet Computing's pocket computer, the Gemini PDA, and eager beavers can download an image from Planet today. Planet has also released an official Debian distro for download. The keyboard-toting device boots into Android, while support for the Ubuntu flavour of …

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  1. Christian Berger

    I wonder if they kept all the good stuff from Maemo

    I mean Maemo was great, you could just get root by setting a password. You could install most debian packages simply via apt-get. The only problems I've seen so far was the limited hardware that was available and that it didn't support UTF-8.

    BTW German Gemini keyboards still don't seem to work on Android, even with the most recent firmware. You can select them in that wizzard, but they will always use the english layout.

    10 0 Reply
    1. werdsmith Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: I wonder if they kept all the good stuff from Maemo

      You set a dev password in the developer section of the gui settings apps, then you can devel-su on the terminal command line and root away. I did this just last night so I could edit the Page.qml file to get consistent landscape mode screen.

      I am very happy with Sailfish on the Gemini now, finally I get to be rid of Android.

      4 0 Reply
      1. Lomax
        Reply Icon
        Thumb Up

        Re: I wonder if they kept all the good stuff from Maemo

        You can also ssh in of course, as I do with my Jolla phone (also for file transfers). Root is at your fingertip, and packages are managed with pkcon (PackageKit). Sailfish is a mature and full-featured Linux distro with a Qt based UI, reminiscent of (and inspired by) Nokia's brilliant MeeGo phone OS (Maemo 6). Anyone with more than a passing interest in Linux and open-source software ought to give it a try.

        2 0 Reply
  2. pavel.petrman

    Looks very nice indeed!

    The Debian option was why I backed the thing back then, and this news came a day or two before I would put my Gemini up for sale (since Android is a no go for me). I jumped right at the multiple boot option and installed Sailfish as well. And to my pleasant surprise, the Nokia-kin looks very very nice indeed! To the same extent the Debian seems to suck on my device (x25 variant) the Sailfish seems just to nimbly dance around. No sale, then. Looking forward to the Sailfish X, promised for this autumn. I'm afraid I will not be able to stand up against the urge to dust my Qt and do some QMLing around in the meaintime, though.

    16 1 Reply
  3. A. Coatsworth Silver badge

    I'd love to go full circle and install Sailfish in my new "Nokia" 6. It would be almost poetic.

    But I'm not brave enough to even find out if it is feasible at the time

    8 0 Reply
  4. Challo

    Looks nice and shiny but doubt it would beat my Psion 3c.

    3 0 Reply
    1. werdsmith Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Beat your 3C at what? Connectivity?

      1 0 Reply
  5. onefang

    I wonder if I can debootstrap Devuan onto it?

    4 1 Reply
    1. Paul
      Reply Icon

      devuan

      provided you don't need to replace the kernel, I'm quite sure you could load devuan onto the Gemini... or any other distro that's built to aarch64.

      5 0 Reply
  6. cambsukguy

    All well and good

    But will it run Windows?

    7 15 Reply
    1. ScissorHands
      Reply Icon
      Coat

      Re: All well and good

      Only in a Crysis

      13 0 Reply
  7. Paul

    using my Gemini right now

    using my Gemini right now

    I reflashed over the weekend to triple boot android, debian and sailfish.

    it was fairly easy. the only downside is I had to wipe android and I was too lazy to back up everything, but then I'd not invested too much time setting it up.

    9 0 Reply
  8. 89724102172714582892524I7751670349743096734346773478647892349863592355648544996312855148587659264921

    Too much waiting, I'm getting a GPD mini...

    0 0 Reply
    1. werdsmith Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Completely different species.

      4 0 Reply
  9. dajames

    Thanks for the links

    I find it odd that the Planet -- having made so much fuss about how the Gemini would run Linux, etc. to build it up before the launch -- have not made it easier to find out just how one goes about this.

    It's good to see that they're making more information and assistance available.

    5 0 Reply
    1. Dave559 Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Thanks for the links

      For all their very excellent work, sadly Planet Computers are sadly somewhat unprofessional when it comes to their internet presence.

      I do know that there are literally only a handful of them, but it still took them forever to add a link to their support site from their main website:

      <https://support.planetcom.co.uk/index.php/Main_Page>,

      and you probably still won't find a link to their developer forum anywhere other than hidden in one of their Indiegogo updates to pre-launch backers:

      <https://developer.planetcom.co.uk/>

      (And, professional websites not bouncing http requests to https in 2018? Come on, folks…)

      Ummm, share, and enjoy.

      4 0 Reply
  10. werdsmith Silver badge

    I'm sure at some point in the future Planet will have a PR person or two, but for now just 4 or 5 people have brought this device to market. Despite all the whinging from entitled folk that went on, as a backer I followed the project and was never in any doubt about what was what and where.

    People are too quick to forget they are not buying retail when backing crowdfunder startups.

    4 0 Reply
  11. g00se2
    Linux

    Slurpalike

    <i>You can see an early version of Sailfish on the Gemini here:</i>

    Looks disturbingly like Win10

    0 2 Reply
    1. werdsmith Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Slurpalike

      I'm using Gemini with Sailfish and see no Win10 resemblance. The "tiles" on sailfish are just the open or recently opened apps. The icon style is unique, as is the swipe interface. Definitely no start menu.

      2 0 Reply

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