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Will Linux phones stay around this time?

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Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#371

Post by kingsuper20 »

smhost wrote: post #131
j-james wrote: post #114

I don't understand the desire for a Linux phone as so described in the article as a daily driver. The Android platform represents an enormous amount of work that encompasses a more secure base kernel, an unparalleled selection of applications designed for mobile usage and written in a memory-safe language, fantastic sandboxing and user privacy features leagues ahead of any desktop operating system, and great diversit…

Personally, I just want it for completeness. With phone hardware getting powerful enough to run mid-to-high end games, I want to be able to carry around a phone that I can hook up peripherals to and use it just like I would use a desktop. The Android ecosystem is pretty good in its own way, but it's qualitatively different compared to the Linux ecosystem for my use case. Windows and several popular Linux distros are…

>Personally, I just want it for completeness.

You know, that's an interesting point. There's a lot to be said for using one as a desktop. I've got a Motorola Droid laptop thingie around here somewhere that turned a phone into a pc-like device and it was actually pretty cool. A few generations of speed improvements and it would be fine for most uses. It's nice to have a single non-cloud state for your stuff.

My main need is for a phone to do the following: be as private as possible, make calls, send messages, occasional browser use, hotspot. I'm tired of being dragged along with everyone else in terms of complexity.

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#372

Post by wjertyj »

mch82 wrote: post #299
konart wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you are joking. I have Fedora 34 with Gnome 40 right now on my gaming PC as a second system and I can barely find two windows (not even apps, just two windows) that can be defined as "nicely done". Everything else is terrible. Even worse once you start looking for apps on he net. Everything that is not Electron-base is simply ugly, constructed without any thought about UX.

You might have hit on a solution here: Electron, or, ideally, a really nice mobile-first web browser with access to APIs provided by the underlying Linux OS. I’m essentially imagining a phone OS that decouples the front-end and backend design. Implement the apps as APIs. Implement the UI using HTML5 so more designers can use their existing skills to contribute & the GUI layer can be replaced more easily. The experien…

You're basically describing WebOS and FirefoxOS.

WebOS lives on as LuneOS (and runs on the pinephone), but FirefoxOS effectively went closed source and became KaiOS.

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#373

Post by swiley »

j-james wrote: post #114

I don't understand the desire for a Linux phone as so described in the article as a daily driver. The Android platform represents an enormous amount of work that encompasses a more secure base kernel, an unparalleled selection of applications designed for mobile usage and written in a memory-safe language, fantastic sandboxing and user privacy features leagues ahead of any desktop operating system, and great diversit…

Android is:

Incredibly heavy and slow

Very hard to hack on

A pretty mediocre OS (lots of functionality is just missing or poorly implemented.)

Uses a driver model that encourages closed drivers (this means it never gets updates after Qualcomm stops releasing updates to their BSP)

A tool used by Google to force computing to be the way they want.

Really the only nice things about Android is the sandbox (which you don't need often on Linux because all the software is community maintained anyway) and the sleep features (doze, which takes a very small amount of work to re-implement at least on OpenRC and push notifications but Firefox already has that anyway.)

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#374

Post by matkoniecz »

zxzax wrote: post #370
AussieWog93 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's simpler than that. Unpaid developers overwhelmingly prefer to work on the intellectually "sexy" problems such as encryption or compilers, to the detriment of the boring-yet-important stuff like UI improvements and hardware compatibility (let alone proper QA).

If you're suggesting that this is done out of selfishness or intellectual fervor then I don't think that's true. I wouldn't say they "prefer" it but it's certainly easier and more economical for a skilled person to contribute to those tools because the developers and the users are the same group of people. Once you decide you need to do user testing and hardware testing, the cost shoots up. You need to start procurin…

> Once you decide you need to do user testing and hardware testing, the cost shoots up.

It is not so bad.

Take three people who never used given software, ask them to do the most basic tasks. And fix the most common problems.

Your (and mine) software is much harder to use than you expect.

You do not need UI/UX people, massive scale testing to fix low hanging fruit.

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#375

Post by wjertyj »

chrisseaton wrote: post #368
wjertyj wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people you know are wealthy then.

The phones are the same price, you know. The carriers don’t literally ‘subsidise’ or give you a ‘free’ phone - it’s built into the contract price. It’s nothing to do with how wealthy you are because it’s the same price!

Yes, and wealthy people are in the position to plunk down that money up front. People who are less privileged frequently have to take advantage of that form of "financing" offered by the carrier.

Remember, by being wealthy, we frequently have to pay a lot less than people who get by month to month. There should be no shock here.

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#376

Post by KozmoNau7 »

fsflover wrote: post #361
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know, however it also costs $800 for middling performance at best and is backordered probably until early 2022. It's close and getting closer, though.

> for middling performance at best I am curious, what do you need in terms of performance? It can play 3D games and show videos on a big screen. > backordered probably until early 2022 This is indeed a problem. Pinephone (with a worse performance) also has convergence and should be more available.

> "I am curious, what do you need in terms of performance? It can play 3D games and show videos on a big screen."

Better real-world performance than my X220i, so at least able to play some games from my Steam library, play 1080p60 videos, multitasking, that sort of thing. I assume the Librem 5 can probably do all of this, although I'm highly skeptical of running the desktop version of Firefox on just 3GB RAM. As a do-it-all mobile device, I would also need better battery life than my current smartphone, so 1-2 days of normal usage.

As an aside, that X220i cost me ~$370 in 2018 and is a 2012 vintage machine, so not even close to current laptop performance. I appreciate what Purism are trying to do, but you'll certainly pay a price for being an early adopter.

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#377

Post by matkoniecz »

watwut wrote: post #179
matkoniecz wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Linux desktop is nowhere this is as untrue as "Year $YEAR will be year of Linux on desktop" was so far (posting from laptop running Linux) > A linux phone is simply unthinkable Linux phones exist already > You can't race It is not always necessary to win completely and crush competition to reach goal

Linux phone exists, but they are super niche product bought basically only by people who want Linux on phone specifically. They are not competitive in general market.

Oh I agree. I was responding to "A linux phone is simply unthinkable" that is ridiculous and blatantly untrue.

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#378

Post by dudul »

chrisseaton wrote: post #368
wjertyj wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people you know are wealthy then.

The phones are the same price, you know. The carriers don’t literally ‘subsidise’ or give you a ‘free’ phone - it’s built into the contract price. It’s nothing to do with how wealthy you are because it’s the same price!

It absolutely has to do with being wealthy. Where a wealthy person can afford to spend $500 on a phone, someone not as financially comfortable has no other options than to go the "financing" route. Yes, the price ends up being similar, but it is much more possible for modest people to spend $20/mo for 2 years than $500 on the first day.

This is a well studied phenomenon that wealthy people who can afford to pay everything on day 1, buy in bulk and all end up paying less than poorer people.

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#379

Post by aflag »

mch82 wrote: post #329
aflag wrote: post #231

Is it possible to run Android apps in the Linux phone? If I could run WhatsApp and my bank’s app (which I need to in order to get into my account) I would definitely switch.

Does your bank require the app, or is using a website an option?

It requires the app for two factor authentication. Even when using the website I need the app in order to perform certain operations.

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#380

Post by f6v »

rolandog wrote: post #331
f6v wrote: post #127

Anyone who thinks Linux can gain a momentum on mobile should look at Samsung and Huawei efforts to get off Google. It seems almost impossible even if you already have a foothold in mobile industry.

I didn't know they were trying to de-Google. Would that have anything to do with user concerns about privacy?

Samsung announced Bada in 2010, back then not everyone new what Android is. Then there was Tizen. And Chinese had that tech export ban going on.
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