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PinePhone Devs Finally Decide on a Default Distro and it is Manjaro ARM running Plasma Mobile
(www.omgubuntu.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2021
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KDE Plasma is a great choice. I thought that Phosh would be the shell chosen, because there's Purism team developing it. But Plasma is definitely a very good option. KDE Connect works great with Android. I'm sure that they'll make it work even better in Linux phones
Hmm, I feel like Plasma Mobile fits better to the PinePhone:
You're probably buying the PinePhone as a secondary device, and so it not being yet-another-Android/iOS (which is what Phosh feels like to me), is probably a selling point.
It's marketed as a tinkerer's device, so the tinkerer UI is a good fit.
They market it as a community effort, so choosing the community-developed UI over the company-developed UI makes sense. And probably also just gives them a certain form of independence.
Interesting, most people seem to think Plasma Mobile looks more like Android than Phosh does. That's not a bad thing imo, it's what most people are familiar with so they can get used to it quickly.
Yeah, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. For Purism, it's probably a selling point to be relatively similar to existing platforms, because with that price tag, customers are more likely to buy it as a replacement for their existing phone and then it's really good, if it works similar.
But if you're buying a PinePhone as a secondary device, which makes a lot more sense with its price tag, then you'll be a lot more willing to discover a fresh UI. Since if you're struggling with the UI, you can go back to your Android/iOS device easily.
But I also wasn't just talking about looks. I also imagine that Phosh isn't very customizable (prejudice, because GNOME isn't very customizable).
And even if the default experience is similar, you may want a very customizable UI just for playing around and because you expect something to be different/better from your OSs so far.
And if it isn't clear yet, I should also point out that I know practically nothing about the things that I'm saying here. I'm still saying them, because I have that perspective of a potential customer.
I guess not wanting to depend on an actual competitor (as friendly as this competition might be) probably played a role in the decision not to go with Phosh.