/e/ OS as best Linux (and other OS?) desktop companion

I am using KDE Connect with Manjaro Xfce successfully. There are some How-to` s to achieve this easily.

Greetings from Berlin

Marcus

1 Like

Lots of good ideas have already been shared.

For myself, I would like to have a digital agent in my phone that is superior to existing digital assistants developed by Google, Amazon, Apple, and so on.

I eventually want my phone to participate in federated machine learning.

you just have to look for: a2dp (alternatively hsp/hfp) sink linux audio bluetooth
in your search engine of choice :slight_smile: if you don’t find anything come back to me :wink:

Integration with my GNU/Linux homeserver would be a huge feature. The most promising projects in this space seem to be Freedombox and YUNOhost. Having a little box host services that are tightly integrated with a mobile device would be great. For example:

  • Automatic backup to the homeserver
  • VPN to your home for when you have to use untrustworthy wifi access points
  • use a selfhosted search engine
  • wallabag
  • tiny tiny rss
  • access media files that are securely stored in your home

It’s a different strategy from the one that is used at the moment (/e/ centrally hosting and providing services) but I think for some services selfhosting would make a lot of sense.

update:
I just realized that this is about a integrating with desktop Linux systems. I still think the overall user experience could benefit from tight integration of desktop, smartphone and an always online homeserver.

2 Likes

Anything that helps sync our phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops is a big plus.

I’m kicking myself for getting an Apple laptop (expensive as hell and not worth it) and a iPhone (also freakishly expensive) because they work well together.

On the flip side, I’ll be able to use my old crappy Samsung S7 to put your OS on it and see how it integrates with my linux desktop and Samsung tablet.

After that, I hope to switch and never look back.

I’m a journalist and need to access a few communication tools, Whatsapp, WeChat, and more. I need access to WordPress and sadly one of my publication uses Gmail :frowning:

1 Like

Thank you! I somehow completely missed that this is actually possible via bluetooth without any special action. On a current Manjaro Stable with KDE I just had to pair the phone with audio enabled and the Phone becomes just another audio source in the system.
So, if anybody stumbles across this - it is actually much easier than expected.

2 Likes

Instead of providing just one iso/virtual drive (kde neon was suggested in OP) to install from /e/ here’s my suggestion…

A while back I supported a kickstarter project named pISO. It was an absolute game changer for a professional pc tech and linux user. Previously I had been carrying around a box of thumb drives containing an endless number of ISOs, from bootable AV scanners to Windows installers (many versions) to bootable firewalls and disk utilities and of course linux distros.

The device enables the user to create virtual disks in fat32, ntfs and ext4. You can then store an endless number of ISOs in any virtual disk and selectively boot them on any pc. The problem with software driven multi-boot generators is that they are never compatible with every ISO you need and depending on the ISO you might need a different disk format (ntfs for windows ISO).

While I love using the pISO device it is still something extra to carry with me. And everyone already carries a phone. So would it be possible to integrate the virtual disk/ISO multi-boot software into /e/? That way we can load ISOs onto a virtual drive on the phone, select an ISO to mount it, plug the phone into a PC usb port and boot the ISO.

Another feature I would love to see in /e/ is a built-in ftp server so I can wirelessly browse files and up/download them from my laptop using a client like filezilla. That feature is also built-in to the pISO software.

2 Likes

at least your last point about the ftp server is already doable with nothing more then the amaze file borwser in fdroid :slight_smile:

Ok, that’s amazing! Had no idea that file manager included an ftp server. Thanks for the tip.

Did I misinterpret the OP suggestion regarding KDE Neon? I assume it means having the iso mounted or a separate partition containing the iso files. Then plug phone into PC usb port and boot Neon, right?

1 Like

Two wishlist items:

  1. my main desktop application is Simplenote, so a smoothly syncing minimal notes app is the number one for me.
  2. I’d love to have a ‘grand central’ communications app, that unifies both sms and email streams into a single inbox. The incoming method is the default send method.

perhaps jitsi, a powerful open source video conferencing and desktop sharing solution for browser based desktop utilization and mobile phones, could be an interesting extension of /e/ and the /e/-cloud services.

2 Likes

A couple of years back I used Foobar2000 Controller app on mobile to control the Foobar2000 player on pc. It wasn’t very modern, but I was able to browse my music library and control the playback from my phone. I remember it required a software by Apple named Bonjour installed on pc side. I wonder if there are more solutions like that today, for desktop audio player control through mobile.

1 Like

I use the Cross Platform Clementine Music Player on laptop. It has a very good remote control app for Android available on F-Droid
https://www.clementine-player.org/

1 Like

I’m using KDE connect. It works great on gnome with GSConnect. You can share files, link, notifications, clipboard, view your messages… and even control your PC remotely, use any terminal commands you’ve already set.

1 Like

It does. Somebody mentioned Zorin Connect above, but there’s a lot more, e. g. GSConnect for Ubuntu. I guess, there’s a port or wrapper-thingy for almost all systems now.

Since this thread is still open I figure I’d drop this here as it seems to apply.

Create your own Linux ecosystem with Nextcloud, DavX5 and KDE Connect.

It’s a video on TILvids from a couple/few months ago that I just noticed. I searched the forums and couldn’t find if this was already mentioned. Apologies if so.

The author uses /e/ for his mobile device. He really likes it. When referring to Nextcloud there’s no mention of the /e/cosystem but one could substitute I guess.

On my Linux & BSD setups I haven’t done any “connecting” just yet other than using TBSync in Thunderbird to bring over contacts and calendar.
However, on the PinePhones I do (where possible).
On SailfishOS, for instance, I used an app that seemlessly linked Documents, Music, Pictures, etc. from eDrive to their respective directories in the OS’s home dir. Similar to what he mentions in the video.

Anyway, I thought it was an okay video.

4 Likes

Interesting information :+1:

1 Like

I like that video, ecosystem is key. But there’s a kicker: he mentions there’s no easy single-step setup for Calendar/Tasks/Files, but this really is an ElementaryOS issue, the (I think excellent) distribution he’s using. The upstream gnome-online-accounts package had Nextcloud/Owncloud/WebDAV as source for a long time and it’s even configured in the firsttime-install-wizard, couldn’t be easier. Elementarys fork pantheon-online-accounts doesn’t include it when I had a look at the 5.0 iso (Edit: there’s ongoing work in switchboard-plug-onlineaccounts)

Elementary is of course an excellent Distro, but these are the pitfalls of spinning your own downstream (as /e/OS itself must be well aware by forking Ownclouds Files Android App). You will not have the benefits of network effects and less users. The WebDAV integration in Gnome is rudimentary, one really does need the Qt based official Nextcloud desktop app or setup the like of rclone with webdav to get a second filesystem copy locally.

1 Like

What are you missing? I just tried the latest Manjaro-Gnome Distribution. It asks for account information for Nextcloud during first start and all Nextcloud folders are mounted as network storage in the standard file browser “Files” (version 3.38.2) after relogin. For me it looks fine.

Rudimentary was an unfair term, I didn’t exclude calendar and tasks sync, because those are very well supported, it is really good and I’m happy GNOME implemented that.

For files and sync, you could name a drive mount rudimentary - it merely makes the contents accessible, without features as selective synchronisation or any sharing-properties surfaced. But - all that is fine for extra software (the official desktop app) to provide.

My reply to the Ecosystem video was really focused on Elementary, the Distribution used in the Video. I wanted to point out the duplicate efforts that I’m sure every Linux User is aware of that Distributions bring along, as upstream prior to forking and reimplementation (in Vala) offered the Nextcloud account integration.

And that’s also fine, as there are upsides to all the forking - namely control and thus innovation.