Today I give SXMO a try on my PinePhone Pro and share what the experience is like. SXMO is rather bare bones feeling compared to phone shells like Plasma Mobile or even Phosh. But it does have its own kind of charm.
It's a phone shell made for Linux power users and is customizable in a way that you would expect. All of its gestures and buttons are configurable from a text configuration file. It opens the configuration file using vim.
Having said that, the UX is a bit confusing and sometimes feels unresponsive. As you are learning SXMO, you probably should start with the user manual to get an initial overview. Without it, the start of your journey will be much more stressful than it should be.
For the purpose of the introduction skit, I used the phone to make the LinuxPay script. This was my first chance to really try the keyboard and interface to try to do something non-trivial. Unfortunately, many of the keys you will be using for programming are hidden behind the AltG modifier key making it much more awkward to use for programming. This includes period, the arrow keys, pipe and tild. Because of this, the onscreen keyboard is still debatably better than the physical keyboard. The physical keyboard is larger than the virtual keyboard, but it doesn't pay off any of the benefits
a physical keyboard should. Having said that, it is still a cool thing to show people.
Blender sort of runs on the PinePhone Pro, but only in software rendering mode. Because of the lack of multi-touch scrolling, it is very difficult to use and the software really does require a larger screen. But the fact that it runs at all is a ton of fun.
Overall, SXMO is a lot of fun and the first phone OS that I feel is targeted at people who love Linux. While it is still rough, I think it has a lot of possibility for the future. If you like Linux, if you like Terminals, you will love the possibilities of this SXMO even if it isn't mature yet.
#sxmo #PinePhone #linux #blender #opengl #keyboard #review
15 окт 2024
