Re: Planet Cosmo Communicator
 

Some more things - my Fn key doesn't work as such, but as Win key, even though I selected Cosmo keyboard in the settings. Do you know how I can fix this, as currently I'm using a Logitech wireless receiver for the keyboard?

Also seems Bluetooth is not working.

Re: Planet Cosmo Communicator
 

The driver compiled and installed, but seems the kernel is compiled without DRM support. This is dumped in dmesg when I insert the device in an USB-C port.

Re: Planet Cosmo Communicator
 

Looks like they are using the hwcomposer driver with the help of libhybris.

Interesting that there are other Mali Midgard drivers available for this platform. I wonder if I would be able to compile and use them.

Re: Planet Cosmo Communicator
 

It is Mali Bifrost, not Midgard on Cosmo. For using with Panfrost, the problem is that it is kernel 4.4 and has no DRM driver for display subsystem (CONFIG_DRM could be enabled though to allow your DisplayLink module to load).

I looked into running mainline kernel a bit, MT6771 seems to be closely related to MT8183 MediaTek had been mainlining for Chromebooks. I got it to boot to ramdisk with USB host based on MT8183 support, but getting the display will be likely problematic still.

Re: Planet Cosmo Communicator
 

According to Debian wiki, Midgard and Bifrost are most likely identical.

https://wiki.debian.org/MaliGraphics#Kernel_drivers

Also there seems to be both Bifrost and Midgard drivers in the kernel sources. Dunno if they can be of any help.

https://github.com/gemian/cosmo-linu...k/gpu/gpu_mali

Re: Planet Cosmo Communicator
 

... and mobile broadband?

Thank you for asking the right questions.

Re: Planet Cosmo Communicator
 

I was holding off getting a Cosmo until cellular support in linux was a thing. It was added in July so I placed an order for an in-stock unit and received it in just a few days (drop-shipped from HK).

Phone calls and SMS messaging seem to work OK. Working on testing mobile data now.

So far I am cautiously optimistic. Adam Z. Lein posted a review where he recommeded using mtrack to make the touchscreen function like a touchpad which makes the full desktop experience very usable. link

My biggest concern right now is the success rate I've had just installing and running software in linux. Kodi, cairo-dock, firefox, octave all installed & ran fine. Libre-office was also successful, tho I had to hold the SMS messaging package or apt would try to remove it. VLC, blender, stellarium all failed to run with various OpenGL errors or outright seg faults.

I don't prefer KDE so installed the MATE desktop and that worked fine. When I tried to change the display manger the system failed to boot, so I need to reinstall again. There is a problem where the screen occasionally freezes. Sometimes the mouse will still move when this happens, but so far I haven't found a recovery option from this frozen state outside from holding the power button for 10 seconds and rebooting. There are no F-keys so changing TTY isn't an option. Next time I'll setup an ssh server so I can try that.

Re: Planet Cosmo Communicator
 

Have to try this. :)

Btw, I've tried to get DisplayLink support in it (for USB-C devices), but couldn't get the driver compiling with the previous version. Might have more luck now.

Re: Planet Cosmo Communicator
 

Mobile data works too. Posting this using t-mobile service at 4G speeds.

Re: Planet Cosmo Communicator
 

Does anyone else with a Cosmo have this problem?

When I close the screen the entire first row of keyboard keys (the number keys) all get pressed. When I open it I am presented with the linux unlock screen where about 9 gazillion characters have been entered into the password field.

When this happens the best recovery is to wait until the screensaver comes back on, and then wake it up and I have an empty password field.

Re: Planet Cosmo Communicator
 

Thanks again.
Which Linux (distro) are we talking about here?
Did you install it yourself?

Re: Planet Cosmo Communicator
 

I'm using the planet computers debian-based "gemian" distro because it has all the cellular packages preinstalled. The device comes with android, and planet has instructions at their site about how to download and install gemian, it was extremely easy.

As for loading other distros, i opened the flashing scripts and all it does is use dd to flash the main filesystem partition and boot partition from the sd card to the device internal storage.

Now that ive got lightdm and mate configured the way I like i'm going to backup this filesystem so I can reflash back to this.

I can try other distros if you can point me to the images. I tried flashing maemo leste but not sure what to use for the boot partition.

Re: Planet Cosmo Communicator
 

It's Dave, man. Open up.

No. I'm Dave, man!

Re: Planet Cosmo Communicator
 

The real, one and only Dave999 returned a while ago, but focused on a single thread, until he had his core issue with Jolla ultimately settled: He received the full refund for his Jolla tablet order!

Jolla really seems to be in a better shape, financially.
But unfortunately this has not bettered their software quality (yet?).

Re: Planet Cosmo Communicator
 

I picked up a Gemini and a Cosmo second hand because I was really fascinated by the lineage of the Psion 5 to these devices. I haven't put Linux on the Gemini yet, but I got it on the Cosmo and while running from the internal eMMC I was seeing some issues where the KDE screensaver/unlock seemed to hang, once I got rid of KDE and switched to i3 I haven't had that issue with i3lock.

I also installed UBports which turned out to be WAY easier than I expected, and it works pretty well though the touch first interface isn't optimal on the keyboard first Cosmo.

After I got i3 going I decided I wanted to see about Gemian from SD, and it took a little bit, but I was able to get it working, though I used the TWRP slot so I don't think I'll be able to get cellular working in the SD installation, see below for details.

One thing that sort of sucks is there are 4 slots on the eMMC for bootloaders and the first seems to be Android+Recovery, the second is pre-labeled TWRP by the Cosmo Linux installer, the 3rd and 4th are regular BOOT partitions. I currently have Android, Gemian_SD, KDE_Gemian, UBports in the slots, but UBports is interesting in that it shares the "userdata" with Gemian, and the rootfs lives in the root of the Gemian install and is pointed to by its bootloader.

When it comes to the cellular communications, with the Cosmo Linux you have to use an alternate connection manager because NetworkManager apparently doesn't do the ofono setup properly, but I haven't really had much luck with the cellular in Linux.

So far I've been pretty happy with the wifi only functionality of the SD install, and I'm hoping to use that as sort of a playground to avoid wearing out the eMMC while experimenting, and then I am going to try and backup my configuration changes and migrate them to one of the "regular" boot slots and test it out with cellular (also need to swap my Fi data only SIM to a voice+sms+data one to properly test the full functionality).

One other thing to note is the CoDi software which allows you to use the outer touchscreen as a touchpad is interesting, but definitely could use more tuning because it seems to be fairly slow, not sure if it is the "bus" between the display (has its own STM32 CPU iirc) and the primary CPU/system, or if it is just the CoDi server that is written in Python that is slowing things down a bit, but it is a really cool option even if a bit awkward in my aging mitts.