Michael wrote:

Hi Nik,

As much as possible I'm trying to avoid Google, so not yet...

Most of the others I mentioned had ways to exclude the google sphere (playstore and all the hidden crap).

To me a phone is just a phone.  Mine now complains all the time that I should "enable Google services" since I blocked everything google I could find.  Humours as hell when it's the caculator app.

I am using Sailfish OS as continuation of the MeeGo project, and there is licensed AlienDalvik extention that provides Android emulation in the phone. It works well (most of the time) but has it's bugs and limitations.

If I could get a decent LineageOS phone I would, but the location I'm at the phone has to be 5G for reliable service.

I am not sure how well Sailfish OS supports 5G. I do not even use the 4G and most of the providers are going to decommission 3G. 2G will most likely stay for a while until all devices are upgraded (if at all in near future)

Anyway, thanks for the reply, as a last resort I will, as all I really want is to play a few mobile games with friends...

For this buy a phone that coveres the requirements for the games and use it with the wireless router - you do not even need a sim card (except for the initial registration to the play store AFAIK)

BR

On Wednesday 06 April 2022 11:01:30 Michael wrote:

On Monday 28 March 2022 12:53:28 pm deloptes wrote:

...

Michael wrote: For this buy a phone that coveres the requirements for the games and use it with the wireless router - you do not even need a sim card (except for the initial registration to the play store AFAIK)

Hi BR,

I’ll probably do what you basically suggested, get a LineageOS phone just for games, never put a sim card in it, and then run it through wifi. I did read up on Sailfish OS to see if I could do somewhat the same with it, but it’s region locked to just [Europe?] so I can’t use it here.

For those that are interested here’s my summary of what I found and (links to) my attempts to get several to work: https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php?p=677813

Best All, Michael

Hi Michael,

I read your summary on MX Linux forum, and have followed it here. I am interested because, well, I do have a smartphone, and I usually hate it, and have turned off everything, block access to internet, use it basically just for calls and text, and for non-internet features like the calculator, etc. I do use it sometimes to listen to internet radio stations over wifi, using Orbot and Tor.

In short, I have gone right to the brink of rooting my phone, but hold back because I don't want to end up with a brick. And recently my phone service was discontinued because some details had changed in my account, and they somehow thought that I was dead, or whatever; and now I am waiting to be reconnected. Not sure how that happened, but it's a good example of what I hate about the new technology and the evil uses to which it is put.

So my question is, Are you using your phone "through" your computer without a sim card? I hear something about games, but I have no interest in them. I do have some interest is having phone service through my computer, so that I would always be able to make calls over wifi, For example, when my phone company believes that I am dead, and discontinues my service without warning. Right now it would be really nice to be able to have an alternative. (We do have an old telephone in this building that accepts change, but it's more complicated for anything but local calls; and anyway, anybody can listen in.)

Some years ago I tried some of those phone-over-wifi gadgets (such as Magic Jack), which worked not so well as I hoped -- although I did have a friend who used it for a while, before he gave up, too.

If I could connect my phone to my computer, and use it over my computer's wifi connection, that would be very cool. Just sayin' ...

Just picking your brains for ideas here, folks.

Also, if there is any TDE gui interface sort of program that would allow me to manage that connection, then I could say that this post is not off-topic, so that Slavek won't put me on probation.

;-)

Bill

On Thursday 07 April 2022 04:16:38 pm J Leslie Turriff wrote:

On 2022-04-06 17:56:58 William Morder via tde-users wrote:

...

If I could connect my phone to my computer, and use it over my computer's wifi connection, that would be very cool. Just sayin' ...

Just picking your brains for ideas here, folks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_over_IP#Consumer_market https://duckduckgo.com/?q=linux+voip+client&atb=v301-1&ia=web example: https://linphone.org/

Thanks Leslie!

All I had to offer was the term VoIP. linphone seems cool (didn't know about it)

As a note: Torrenting (even 1 torrent) generally kills VoIP (and online gaming) through lag introduction in the router.

On Thursday 07 April 2022 14:16:38 J Leslie Turriff wrote:

On 2022-04-06 17:56:58 William Morder via tde-users wrote:

...

If I could connect my phone to my computer, and use it over my computer's wifi connection, that would be very cool. Just sayin' ...

Just picking your brains for ideas here, folks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_over_IP#Consumer_market https://duckduckgo.com/?q=linux+voip+client&atb=v301-1&ia=web example: https://linphone.org/

Leslie

Years ago I tried VoIP, and I believe that I remember trying linphone (among others). None of them seemed to work too well, although for a while there was one ... dialpad? ... that sort of worked, except that back then bandwidth was more of an issue. Although I could make calls and it worked, the lag was 20 or 30 seconds sometimes (from my speaking to the other's hearing me), so that it was impossible to carry on a conversation; always trying to figure out what we were talking about, never coherent.

This was in my pre-Linux days, before 2006 or so. I was trying phone over internet since at least 2000.

Then smartphones took off, and I like the convenience of carrying a phone in my pocket, just not some other things that they do. And I could connect my phone to my computer, transfer files back and forth, etc., but could not use my smartphone over my computer's internet connection.

Now I see linphone can be installed on an Android? Not sure how it works, but I'm willing to give it a go. Looks like I might need to find that old headphone/microphone combo, and get some more attachments for the laptop.

Bill

On Thursday 07 April 2022 17:02:00 Curt Howland wrote:

On Thursday 07 April 2022, William Morder via tde-users was heard to

say:

...

Now I see linphone can be installed on an Android? Not sure how it works, but I'm willing to give it a go. Looks like I might need to find that old headphone/microphone combo, and get some more attachments for the laptop.

Signal has excellent voice quality and sends calls across the 'Net rather than using cell minutes. Since it's end-to-end encrypted it's the best thing I know of at this time.

My first puter-to-puter voice attempt was PGP Phone, back around 1994 or so. Then Skype came along and worked so very well, until bought by Microsloth.

VoIP requires a server and trunk lines, tons of pre-configuration, more work than it's worth now that cell phones are ubiquitous.

Curt-

My main interests here are:

First, to have a backup plan, for when things like this happen to me, and my smartphone temporarily doesn't work.

Second, to be able to connect my smartphone (and any other devices) to my main machine, the Mothership. I would prefer to do this by direct connection, rather than over wifi or bluetooth. I just want to plug in and sync like that, to make sure my addressbooks are all complete, or to copy other contents.

Third, if I could somehow use my smartphone over my computer's wifi connection, that might be useful.

Right now I save everything to SD cards, but then I have to shut down the phone to take out the SD card and copy files back and forth.

It occurs to me, by the way -- thinking of Michael's original question here -- I wonder if the whole Android device could be copied via dd to a partition inside a VM, and somehow be got to run from there? That must be like the Holy Grail.

Something tells me that my phone provider would be able to tell that it's not actually my phone making and receiving calls.

Bill