Getting photos off my phone

I’ve tried using KDE Connect a few times, and in my hands it’s (a) not been 100% reliable and (b) absolutely refuses to transfer files to my PC. I kept getting Receiving file (Failed) Received incomplete file errors which could be anything from Battery management (on the phone), a mismatch on the Android and Debian version of KDE Connect through to firewall rules. I did try

sudo ufw allow 1714:1764/tcp
sudo ufw allow 1714:1764/udp
sudo ufw reload

followed by

kdeconnect-cli --refresh

but I never could get it working.

What I did instead was to install adb which is a command line tool. I needed to enable USB debugging on the phone, and hold the USB lead very carefully. But from that point, adb devices listed my phone, and

adb pull /sdcard/DCIM/Camera ~/Documents/moto

copied over all my photos. It turns out adb shell ls /sdcard lets me explore the filesystem of the phone.

USB debugging was non trivial, I needed to go to Ajustes <- Systema and tap the Developer Options seven times. Then I had to search for USB Depuracion and I get a pop-up menu (eventually) whenever the USB is connected to a computer which asks ¿Permitir depuración USB?.

Anyway, that done I could copy all my photos off the phone into my PC storage (which is backed up etc.)