Peter Gamma (Physiologist & Director) Meditation Research Institute Switzerland (MRIS)

                                                                         Table of Contents

Issues with office mobile on the Pinephone, LibreOffice, Abiword & Gnumeric

Posted bypg@petergamma.org

Last Updated on December 7, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org

  • The Pinephone is known to be a great privacy phone. So if we want a privacy mobile phone for office mobile why not to choose a Pinephone?
  • Martin Braam has shown that it is possible to install LibreOffice on the Pinephone. But to do this is or was much more difficult as for instance on a Raspberry Pi4.
  • What are the advantages of a Raspberry Pi 4 over a Pinephone for office mobile?
  • If we buy a Raspberry Pi 4 which is happily available again after Corona, we can install LibreOffice right away on it. There is also a version of Raspberry Pi OS available with pre-installed LibreOffice.
  • With the Pinephone it took us almost a month to install LibreOffice on it working every day a little bit on it:

https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=16614

  • Then we have let LibreOffice on the Pinphone go since LibreOffice is not very well suitable for the Pinphone screen.
  • We tested Abiword and LibreOffice for the Pinephone. Both apps work, but development of these apps basically stopped 10 years ago.
  • We had some issues with Abiword and Gnumeric, such as Abiword does not allow key board short cuts to be asigned freely and Gnumeric only to a limited extend.
  • Then we tried to write files with Abiword to the external SD card of the Pinephone to process these files further on our PC. This basically only worked if we where supported in the Pine64 forum for every step. But we are physioloigsts and not software debuggers, therefore we gave up this project, too.
  • When we came back to LibreOffice on the Pinephone someone has worked on it an the installation process was easier than when we started. Furthermore there where no issues anymore with the menues.
  • Still LibreOffice is not adapted to the Pinephone screen. To adapt it is too much work for our application and we decided to choose another solution.
  • We invested a lot of time in LibreOffice on the Pinephone an thought that it is one of the greatest application for the Pinephone.
  • LibreOffice writer, calc, basic etc. is a very powerful desktop application, and to have this desktop application on a mobile phone is great. Which Android phone offers this comfort?
  • We therefore promoted the idea to adapt LibreOffice to the Pinephone in the LibreOffice forum. Unfortunately this project was stopped by the LibreOffice forum master who deleted all our posts there:
The LibreOffice forum flags our posts as spam what they are not – does not LibreOffice harm a great project and that is LibreOffice on the Pinephone?

Does the LibreOffice forum not want to support our project LibreOffice on the Pinephone? Developers welcome to pick up our projects here since we currently have on plans to develop it further. Still we miss LibreOffice on the Pinephone. To have LibreOffice on the Pinephone would great since to have such a powerful dektop application on a mobile phone is something extraordinary an we miss that it is not available in way so that it can be easily used.