so, i wanted to write that i guess today we are living in the age of cyperpunk already.

i was reading /s/retrocomputing topics, and i wanted to share that i always have in my pocket motorola droid 4 phone.

it doesn't work as phone at all. it has no sim card in it. and i don't like 'phones', since even when using floss lineageos or grapheneos, it's sort of a 'phone os' and not a real operating system. i have a feeling that i use the tv or radio, not a computing device.

do you remember the time when in order to run 'linux', whatever it means, we had to carefully choose the hardware for it. the network card, for instance, that would be supported in kernel.

same here, i use motorola droid 4 with modern linux kernel and devuan based operating system called maemo-leste. it has some open source parts of nokia's maemo fremantle, but fremantle didn't work over official debian, it worked over the fork. and one was not able to just add a debian repo and apt-get install from it. it is perfectly possible with maemo-leste today. i guess it was because nokia's stuff was not interested in anything other than preparing their own operating system by using existing open source solutions. they didn't care if it was compatible with debian version it is based on. they just needed to build something, and push it to the market.

and so i have the device which runs modern, up to date linux distribution. and it runs almost only free software. so i guess using it also can be considered as retrocomputing - it is used as computer.

and when i was thinking about retrocomputing back when i just started to know about the movement, i noticed i really liked when people were writing modern software for the old machines. and to me retrocomputing was also about it.

today, since i love lowtech, and i believe lowtech will always exist, and we will be able to always utilize tech that does not require many dependencies and can be written by one person in feasible time by using tools that were also created by one person in feasible time, i think lowtech will always be alive. and therefore retrocomputers will always be alive, because we can write lowtech enough software to run on them and utilize them. we often do not need something more powerful.

🐙 norayr

2023-07-13 · 10 months ago · 👍 skyjake, StanStani, Ruby_Witch, DocEdelgas, Avalanche

2 Comments ↓

👤 emilis · 2023-07-14 at 06:06:

How long does the battery last?

🐙 norayr [OP] · 2023-07-14 at 10:46:

well, much better than pinephone has with mainline kernel. motorola omap chipsets have very good power management support in kernel.

but of course it depends on the battery. mine is crappy. android on d4 refuses to charge it. it doesn't believe it has a d4 compatible battery. linux charges it, and i have the impression that despite me keeping the phone on charge often, the battery life only got better.

usually it lasts a day, even when running dino always. but of course it also depends on dino. i had to open another xmpp account which has less chats added. with mcabber it certainly lasts till i come home. but i carry a power bank with myself. i got it for pinephone though. and i really prefer d4.