tl;dr: I installed postmarketOS, an “alternative” Linux-based operating system, on a OnePlus 6 phone, and it rocks.

What is postmarketOS

postmarketOS is a fantastic, much-needed, project.

One one level, postmarketOS is a Linux-based replacement for the default operating system on some phones. (Note: unlike LineageOS, and other similar alternative Android installations, postmarketOS is not Android.)

But, more importantly, postmarketOS is a way of reducing eWaste, and giving new life to devices which have been rendered unsupported by their manufacturers.

We believe that hardware should be used sustainably and not thrown away just because its creator no longer supports it. Your device should not track you or help others collect and sell your data, and it should not constantly demand your attention in order to show you advertisements. Your device is yours, and you should be able to use it as you wish. These are the goals that drive postmarketOS.

We can’t afford to churn through technology for the next shiniest thing, and a project which helps keep devices useful is vital.

Long live postmarketOS, and major applause for every one of you who works on, or has worked on, it.

Why a OnePlus 6?

I first used postmarketOS a few years ago, with an old tablet, and I’ve been yearning for an opportunity to try it again, but on more modern, more powerful, hardware. And the OnePlus 6 is well supported.

A fedi friend - thanks Justine! (Justine’s snac instance) - kindly sold me her OnePlus 6, so that I could give this a go.

Installing postmarketOS on a OnePlus 6 without full disk encryption

When I first got the device, I just wanted to give postmarketOS a try, so I used the pmOS WebUSB in-browser installer with Chromium (since it doesn’t work with Firefox).

It was incredibly slick. Very, very easy, and it resulted in a working postmarketOS installation with virtually no effort from me.

Genuinely, this is superb, and makes postmarketOS accessible to a much broader range of people, who may not be comfortable with a Linux terminal.

The default password is 147147.

While I didn’t want an installation without full disk encryption, this experience was enough to convince me to try the seemingly more complicated installation to get full disk encryption working.

If you don’t want full disk encryption, and you have a supported device, this really is the way to go (IMHO).

Installing postmarketOS on a OnePlus 6 with full disk encryption

One cannot use the browser-based installer to an installation with full disk encryption, and I wanted full disk encryption.

To do that, one needs to use pmbootstrap.

This was… more challenging.

On the first evening that I tried, I got postmarketOS installed, but I had terrible trouble with Unl0kr and full disk encryption - duplicate virtual keyboards sending multiple sets of keypresses, and, even when I had worked out that I didn’t need to use the button at the top of the screen to enable a keyboard, I could just use the invisible keyboard already on screen (but not showing), I could enter the passphrase, but it didn’t do anything.

Figuring that that couldn’t be the answer, I tried again on another evening and that time, it worked.

How I got there was informed by the wiki, but not by following it exactly. My feeling - and I could be wrong - is that the wiki might be more of an information dump than a proper guide. At least, it seems to contain a lot of steps which I did not need.

Or perhaps I just installed it wrongly and it will come back to bite me :)

Here’s what I did:

I used Power + Volume Up to enter fastboot.

Then, I just double-checked that it was unlocked, even though that seemed obvious from the fact that the browser-based installation worked. (As an aside, I’m not sure if there is a way of locking the bootloader again afterwards, for security.)

I ran

fastboot oem unlock

And it said that it was unlocked. Excellent.

I already had pmbootstrap installed from a previous project with an aging Galaxy Tab (postmarketOS worked, but it was very slow, to the point of not being usable for my needs, sadly).

But I wiped that installation, and removed the config file (~/.config/pmbootstrap.cfg), then reinstalled itpmbootstrap` again, from git. That way, I knew I’d have an up to date version.

To start the configuration, I used

pmbootstrap init

This was quite straightforward, with the on-screen instructions. I chose the edge release, for oneplus enchilada, and I picked gnome-mobile.

At this point, I found it a little hard to follow the instructions to work out what I should do next.

I used

pmbootstrap install --fde

That gave me the option to set the user password and disk encryption password (two separate passwords).

The output of that told me to next run

pmbootstrap flasher flash_rootfs

The first time I did that, I got an error:

"Sending 'userdata' (2330166 KB)                    FAILED (remote: 'Requested download size is more than max allowed"

I restarted the bootloader (i.e. back into fastboot), then I ran the command again. (It turns out that this is covered in the wiki. I wish I’d noticed that sooner :))

It completed successfully:

Sending sparse 'userdata' 1/4 (733013 KB)          OKAY [ 16.708s]
Writing 'userdata'                                 OKAY [  0.001s]
Sending sparse 'userdata' 2/4 (782236 KB)          OKAY [ 25.289s]
Writing 'userdata'                                 OKAY [  0.001s]
Sending sparse 'userdata' 3/4 (762948 KB)          OKAY [ 19.869s]
Writing 'userdata'                                 OKAY [  0.001s]
Sending sparse 'userdata' 4/4 (51968 KB)           OKAY [ 32.629s]
Writing 'userdata'                                 OKAY [  0.001s]
Finished. Total time: 94.531s

I then ran

pmbootstrap flasher flash_kernel

Again, I got an error, but a different one:

"fastboot: error: Failed to identify current slot"

Again, I restarted the bootloader (i.e. back into fastboot), then I ran the command again.

Same error.

I ran the command again without rebooting. This time it got further - it started to send the boot files - and then hung.

I ran the command again. This time, it showed “waiting for device”. So I restarted the bootloader, and it completed rapidly.

This felt like progress!

I rebooted the device:

fastboot reboot

noting that the wiki expressly said to reboot using fastboot rather than the device buttons, to ensure that everything was saved.

I then pressed a key on the device to reboot… and it booted into postmarketOS, with a working Unl0kr setup (no invisible / duplicate keyboards!), to enter my full disk encryption password.

Success! It worked.

I had a working postmarketOS installation, with full disk encryption, which I could decrypt.

Next steps

I spent some time yesterday evening setting it up.

It connected to Wi-Fi immediately, and I started installing some software.

I sent my first toot from it.

I’m so impressed.

I’m going to keep on playing with it, and using it, before I write up much more but, in a few days, I hope to add some thoughts about how I am getting on with it.

Even with full disk encryption, I don’t know enough about postmarketOS security to feel comfortable swapping my main phone (running GrapheneOS) to it yet. Perhaps I’ll learn more about it, and get comfortable, but right now, I’m not in that place.

For now, I am chuffed to bits that I’ve got it work - thank you so much to everyone who has spent time on the postmarketOS project - and I am very much looking forward to getting to grips with it properly.

This isn’t just a fun technical project - although it is a fun technical project - it is part of an important movement of recognising and mitigating the impact of electronic waste and excess consumerism, and giving perfectly functional hardware a new lease of life, without ads or trackers.

Now wouldn’t it be nice if there was a postmarketOS for “smart” TVs…