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The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

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Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#41

Post by ognarb »

pmontra wrote: post #20
CogitoCogito wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be totally fine using such a phone for almost everything I do. The only big gap would be using Sweden's identification app BankID and the money transferring app Swish. Unless these were ported to the phone, I would unfortunately lose one of it's most important functionalities for me. Of course I could just have an Apple/Android phone sitting at home for such purposes, but it is definitely less convenient.

Same for banking apps here in Italy and the OTP generator of our id system. Plus some apps I don't strictly have to use but I want to: WhatsApp (to use the web app I should run the android one somewhere it can receive messages with my phone number, cough), Telegram (probably OK), OSMAnd, NewPipe as a YouTube adless replacement (YouTube web is not OK), Google Street View and satellite maps (the web app is vastly worse…

There is a nice plasma mobile replacement for newpipe: https://apps.kde.org/plasmatube/ For telegram the official client works, but you could also use Tok (https://invent.kde.org/network/tok), but yeah for the rest there is no real solution yet :(

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#42

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

nazgulsenpai wrote: post #6
CogitoCogito wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be totally fine using such a phone for almost everything I do. The only big gap would be using Sweden's identification app BankID and the money transferring app Swish. Unless these were ported to the phone, I would unfortunately lose one of it's most important functionalities for me. Of course I could just have an Apple/Android phone sitting at home for such purposes, but it is definitely less convenient.

While I'm not entirely sure on the specifics, this is where Anbox can hopefully create a workable Android runtime layer. While it would be a bit overly optimistic to assume that "secure" authentication type apps would work, it could help with adoption for people like me who are missing that one vitally important app required to make the PinePhone a daily driver.

Unfortunately, Anbox isn’t a longterm solution for non-libre Android apps. The problem is that more and more Android apps require passing SafetyNet. It started with banking apps, then spread to games, and Google may one day simply encourage every app to require it. Even Android ROMs stripped of Google services like LineageOS are finding it a challenge to pass SafetyNet, let alone Anbox.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#43

Post by stirfish »

suby wrote: post #25
pinkybanana wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want a performant Linux phone, put some skin in the game. The reality is that this ain't going to happen. There will be never enough volunteer-based work to enable the level of effort that it requires to develop consumer devices like smartphones. Commercial actors have so much money and power, and people have bills to pay. This is something where full open source model just doesn't work.

Why is Linux Desktop viable (I'm certainly very happy with it at least) but phones are too much work?

Great question. This probably isn't the answer, but it feels to me that I've had the same desktop hardware since the earth cooled, but a new phone comes out every 2 weeks.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#44

Post by pjmlp »

suby wrote: post #25
pinkybanana wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want a performant Linux phone, put some skin in the game. The reality is that this ain't going to happen. There will be never enough volunteer-based work to enable the level of effort that it requires to develop consumer devices like smartphones. Commercial actors have so much money and power, and people have bills to pay. This is something where full open source model just doesn't work.

Why is Linux Desktop viable (I'm certainly very happy with it at least) but phones are too much work?

It certainly isn't viable to make a living selling software to those customers, hence why most app vendors never care and rather target Android.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#45

Post by pjmlp »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #29
suby wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is Linux Desktop viable (I'm certainly very happy with it at least) but phones are too much work?

Because state-of-the-art desktop hardware tends to work with Linux, due to the historical origins of the PC as a relatively non-proprietary technology. The same cannot be said of modern mobile phone hardware.

Non-proprietary only because IBM failed to sink Compaq reverse engineering efforts, and weren't able to drive the PC industry into MCA, PS/2 architecture.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#46

Post by testific8 »

fabrice_d wrote: post #35

The biggest threat to Linux on phones could be Fuchsia. If/when Google decides to switch to a Fuchsia base for Android, all the chipset vendors will follow suit and that will make it even harder to find chipsets that can be used with a Linux kernel - upstream or not. That will dry up the amount of effort put into making Linux a good mobile platform. Maybe the stable binary api of Fuchsia drivers will be usable on Lin…

The pine64 position on binary drivers is not as hard as the purism one (perhaps they try to balance more with cost), but there are still projects to reverse-engineer and replace some non-free firmware, such as the modem firmware: https://github.com/Biktorgj/pinephone_modem_sdk.

I agree that Fuchsia will become a problem going forwards, even if Fuchsia drivers can be reverse-engineered. It's also possible that phone hardware is commodified enough that google will be unable to lock us out, or that google abandons or delays the Fuchsia project.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#47

Post by UbrtrbNchDneRle »

fabrice_d wrote: post #35

The biggest threat to Linux on phones could be Fuchsia. If/when Google decides to switch to a Fuchsia base for Android, all the chipset vendors will follow suit and that will make it even harder to find chipsets that can be used with a Linux kernel - upstream or not. That will dry up the amount of effort put into making Linux a good mobile platform. Maybe the stable binary api of Fuchsia drivers will be usable on Lin…

Don’t you think we will see more general computing ARM chips with the M1’s success? Aren’t we approaching a world where your phone, tablet (hopefully eating the laptop…), desktop and server all run more or less the same chip?

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#48

Post by pjmlp »

testific8 wrote: post #19
gizdan wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced. I'd love a Linux phone but there must be some standard that ensures apps are easy to develop and the apps must grow significantly for this to catch on. Otherwise it'll be just like Linux on the desktop. It'll become a mess of 15 different standards and apps devs will not bother with that. I really hope it'll work out, but we'll see.

There are many standards on linux, but in my experience they are mostly inter-compatable. I have KDE/X11 programs running just fine in my GNOME/Wayland environment. I also have alsa, pulseaudio and pipewire playing nice on my laptop. I've heard binary distribution is a problem, with many overcomplicated methods like Appimage, Snap, and Flatpack. But it doesn't matter because linux users will prefer installing from so…

And so commercial vendors decide to apply to Android instead.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#49

Post by krastanov »

smoldesu wrote: post #2

This is probably gonna come as a shock to some people, but I wholly think I could live with a Linux smartphone today. I really only use my phone for two things: text/calling and staying connected to my desktop/laptop. As long as it supports the KDE/GDE connect protocol (I doubt it doesn't), I could see myself actually being one of the early adopters here.

This is the first time I hear of KDE Connect and I am amazed! Thank you, you just made my electronic-related life significantly easier!

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#50

Post by paulcarroty »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #38
suby wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is Linux Desktop viable (I'm certainly very happy with it at least) but phones are too much work?

Even Linux desktop suffers from a lack of contributors. Even many core-infrastructure projects are shockingly dependent on 1–2 devs who have been unsuccessful in attracting more contributions. One example of where the manpower just isn’t there for both Linux desktop and the PinePhone is a solid maps app. All solutions are little more than tech demos compared to OSMAnd on Android. Yes, OSMAnd itself has grown through…

> Even Linux desktop suffers from a lack of contributors.

After IBM intervention and their contribution to GNOME 40 - I'm not sure about suffering anymore.

So yeah, we need more players on mobile Linux field.

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