Hello. I created this account to show my appreciation for MNT as a company.
Unlike Software, the Hardware world is extremely closed off and hard to work with. I really appreciate that Minute had the courage to start this many years ago, when the hardware world was even more unforgiving and harsh.
Kudos to all the MNT staff, thank you!
I’m really excited for the possibility of the MNT Reform Touch becoming reality.
It’s the perfect form factor and I believe it will revolutionize Linux Mobile.
As of right now PostmarketOS largely relies on reverse engineering proprietary drivers, progress is slow, understandably.
I can see so much potential if PostmarketOS were to adopt the MNT Reform Touch as the reference design and work towards getting it working really well for the average user. Not the 0.001% Linux hacker, but rather the 3% of Linux users.
I know the Librem 5 and the Pinephone/PRO exist, but they’re too underpowered for modern realities.
Last but not least, the idea that I could easily upgrade the CPU + RAM of my phone/cyberdeck blows my mind!
I just had a small conversation with your name-relative f_ or funderscore in IRC and was making sure that you two are actually two different people.
I’m happy that you are excited! I’m not excited about touch screen devices (I have a neurodegenerative disease and my hands do not work well anymore) but then I have also said that I wasn’t excited about the Pocket Reform and now I carry it around with me all the time. Just yesterday I was showing off the Pocket Reform to people interested in open hardware at a festival and everybody is really impressed to see what can be achieved with open hardware today. Early prototypes of the MNT Vector (that’s how Lucie calls what was earlier called the Reform Touch in IRC since April 2nd) were based on the Pocket Reform. I’m not involved in MNT internals at all but I personally hope that there will be a lot of sharing of hardware between the Pocket and the Vector to allow cross-grading and sharing between the different MNT products.
I understand that PostmarketOS is based on Alpine. I’m the maintainer of the reform-tools package and while it was originally desigend for Debian, @stephano has refactored the codebase to make it work on ArchLinux as well. I would be happy to see your patches to make reform-tools ready for Alpine as well!
And neither of them are as open with their 3D models and KiCAD files as the devices from MNT. The MNT Reform was already independently built by third parties. I do not think that either the Librem 5 or the Pinephone have that property. Lucie said a few times that one of the goals of MNT is that it should be possible to keep using, developing, improving and manufacturing the devices even in case MNT no longer exists just as it is with free software today. You can fork the device and make your own if you like.
Not yet a phone but maybe… The modem slot’s PCM lines of the Pocket Reform are connected to another SAI of the imx8m+ and Lucie managed to make voice calls with the imx8m+ in the past, so it works in principle. But then nobody seems to have had enough interest since then to make more out of it than a proof-of-concept.
LOL I interacted with them on Mastodon, it’s a funny coincidence.
Interesting, I didn’t know that, I only follow them on Mastodon.
That’s brilliant!
Funny enough that’s the part that I least care about. It’s been a long while since I made an actual phone call. But I do understand it should be possible to slot in a modem on the M2 slot and make phone calls, for the people that need it.
I actually would mostly use that to have mobile internet.
