[Replicant] Replicant 6 on i9300 user feedback

Wolfgang Wiedmeyer wreg at wiedmeyer.de
Thu Dec 29 21:02:31 UTC 2016


Hi Simon,

sorry for my late reply!

Simon Josefsson writes:

> Hi all.
>
> I took some time to build replicant 6 for i9300 from scratch on a fresh
> Debian 8 virtual machine, following the instructions on the forum page
> https://redmine.replicant.us/boards/21/topics/12057 and the wiki.  Below
> are some observations.
>
> *) In general it appears usable as a day-to-day phone with SMS/MMS,
>    Phone, Web browser, fdroid, apps, etc.  I'm switching from my old
>    Replicant 4 setup to this today.  Compared to regular Android/CM,
>    graphics is slow, but it feels snappier than replicant 4.  ZXing does
>    not work, and the small app screenshots in the task switcher does not
>    work -- these are known graphical issues.  Previews in the Gallery
>    now works, compared to Replicant 4.  VLC video playback does not work
>    (crashes replicant, see below), and this worked in replicant 4 so
>    this is the only regression I've noticed.

I'm on the ZXing issue. I have fixed it some time ago in the ZXing app
quick and dirty, just as a POC. I'd rather fix it on the Replicant side
because quite a view apps implement their own preview capture for QR
codes or barcodes in general and they only seem to use the "backend" of
ZXing. So even if my fix somehow gets merged in ZXing, the other apps
won't work. And it's very unlikely that the fix gets merged because the
issue very likely only affects Replicant users. I found the places in
the base framework where the fix likely needs to be placed and I
hopefully can implement it soon.
You can probably fix the VLC crash by going into the settings and
disabling hardware acceleration.
The next version of Replicant 6.0 will also include a few noticeable
speedups.

> *) I put my build files https://josefsson.org/replicant6/ -- I did not
>    get the sign-build script to do anything useful for me, so the ROM
>    use test-keys and are signed with my PGP key.

Could you tell me what exactly didn't work with the signing script? If
you run it the first time, it will generate the keys and attempt to sign
your build.

> *) I got front-camera, bluetooth and wifi to work using non-free
>    firmware from cm-10.1.3.  NFC works fine out of the box.  I haven't
>    worked on getting GPS to work.  See non-free firmware notes at
>    https://gitlab.com/snippets/25705
>
> *) Upgrading fdroid fails because it is signed using a different key?  I
>    put the latest fdroid on there so right now this is not a problem for
>    me.

Next version will also have this fixed and F-Droid will be upgradeable
again. I also included the privileged extension which makes automated
background updates possible, among other things.

> *) I've seen hard reboot crashes when doing:
>    * Recording video in camera app
>    * Attempting playback of video through VLC

See my suggestion above regarding the VLC crash. Video recording will
only work if you have the proprietary firmware for the video
encoding/decoding unit in place.

> *) I've seen soft crashes:
>    * Trebuchet crashes when managing icons in a sub-folder on the
>      homescreen

It also crashes when changing the Wallpaper. This is because Trebuchet
contains more dependencies on OpenGl. However, I verified that this
would work with llvmpipe. So we really need to make llvmpipe fast enough
so that it is usable.

> *) Wiki suggestions (anyone wants to grant me write access?)
>
> http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/GalaxyS3I9300Build
> s/ReplicantSources#DownloadingUpdating-the-source-from-the-repos/ReplicantSourceCode#DownloadingUpdating-the-source-code/
> s/ReplicantSources/ReplicantSourceCode/

already fixed by Loic Dachary

> http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/BuildDependenciesInstallation
>
> http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/BuildDependenciesInstallation
> Mention that you need to run on debian-like systems:
> dpkg --add-architecture i386 && apt-get update
> before installing packages -- for zlib1g-dev:i386

already fixed by Loic Dachary

> http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/BuildDependenciesInstallation
> Drop redundant 'curl' from Debian 8 packages.

fixed

Cheers,
Wolfgang

> *) Ironically, the same day I did this, my nexus 5x received Android 7.
>    Still, yay for replicant 6!
>
> Cheers,
> /Simon
> _______________________________________________
> Replicant mailing list
> Replicant at lists.osuosl.org
> http://lists.osuosl.org/mailman/listinfo/replicant


-- 
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