[Linux-aus] Screen/keyboard/touchpad for server maintenance

[Les Kitchen]

On Sat, Nov 29, 2025, at 14:52, Arjen Lentz via linux-aus wrote:
...
> On November 28, 2025 8:02:38 PM GMT+10:00, Russell Coker via linux-aus 
> <linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au> wrote:
...
>>Yifei and I are still working on FOSS mobile phone stuff and Yifei will have 
>>two such devices at EO2026 for doing phone as laptop demos.
>>
>>We will run at least one BoF related to Linux on mobile phones.

That reminded me, yes, that I also have been using my Crowview
Note for that "convergence" setup, phone as laptop, with
Pinephone, Pinephone Pro and Librem-5.  I haven't been doing it
much — normally when I want to do stuff on a phone from a
laptop-like setup, I'll ssh in or use VNC or similar from a real
laptop — but it does work pretty well.  While I guess it
theoretically should work via a single USB-C cable, as I
recollect I've had to do it via a USB-C docking bar or similar,
running power and HDMI and USB cables.  One minor gripe is that
while Phosh (which is what I use mostly on all phones, with
Mobian) works nicely on a mobile phone, the swiping actions are
not so convenient with a mouse or trackball (or trackpad) setup.
I've stumbled on a few keyboard shortcuts that help.  Another
minor gripe is that the USB-C port on the Pinephone is a bit
loose, and with the docking bar and all the cables on the table,
it's easy to bump something and disconnect the phone.  And with
the Pinephone being rather underpowered, the peformance with the
attached screen is rather sluggish, though still usable.  For
reasons I don't understand, using kgx (which I think is Kings
Cross terminal emulator) was unbearably slow (on the HDMI
attached screen, though fine on the phone screen), but
lxterminal worked fine on the attached screen, though its
controls weren't set up for convenient use on the phone screen.
I found that a convenient way of working was to have a screen
session running on the phone, and attach to it via kgx on the
phone, but via lxterminal in convergence mode, and that worked
pretty well.

One adventure I had: I tried running a headless VNC X server on my
Pinephone to connect to from my laptop (this is before I got the
Crowview Note, so a different way of doing stuff on your phone
using a bigger screen and keyboard).  But that didn't work
because of the X Window System / Wayland mismatch.  Then I
installed LXDE on the phone, but I think that tried to make
itself the default desktop environment, and made the phone
unusable.  With a clearer head, I probably could've repaired the
system, but I was travelling, without my usual kit and not much
time to play around, so I took the expedient of just doing a
total fresh install on the phone.  Since then I've learnt about
SwayVNC, and using that could've made things work.  But that's
a bit separate from this discussion about gadgets like Crowview
Note.


— Smiles, Les.