What's a good phone for use without Google's Play Store? F-Droid only. No Google account.
I'm happy with my Fairphone FP4 with LineageOS, but that just one datapoint.
I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux
271–280 of 540 posts
Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux
#272Doesn't Android already use the Linux kernel?
The top of the article addresses this a bit: yes, Android in theory is AOSP [Android Open Source Project] which is still Linux based. (For now, lots of rumors every Android release that a kernel switch is coming.) But AOSP has lost a lot of power as Android moved so many things to Google Play Services [closed source], which leaves room for Linux-based phone OSes that disown/disavow AOSP entirely because what's the point of playing ball with a half-closed ecosystem anyway? (The article discusses the Ubuntu Touch fork still seeing some maintenance despite Canonical giving up and decides on Sailfish OS.)
Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux
#273I really want to love mobile Linux, and have given it multiple shots before. But I just don't see how it will catch up with iOS/Android in the same way it caught up with Windows/Mac: - OEMs have poured an enormous amount of resources into the camera software, Linux cameras are years behind from what I understand. - Android/iOS have thoroughly optimized the UX in all sorts of subtle ways, the big one being their keybo…
Linux desktop is still not caught up with Windows/Mac in regards to graphics, gaming, and laptops hardware support.
Gaming, it is mostly Windows games via Proton, hardly any different from using MAME, FS-UAE, Amiberry,...
Graphics, most of the well known commercial packages for VFX, 3D modeling, visualisation, lack a Linux version.
Laptops, just two years ago I failed to make UEFI work with the myriad of distributions I tried out, unless booting from external USB drive, and even then there was the whole termal configuration.
Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux
#274the right answer is to deliver a usable SECOND device which happens to be linux based, and which has serves a purpose. Then over time, apps get ported.
realistically, this device would need to tiny to justify the extra weight, device-to-keep-charged, etc.
one idea: make it wifi-only and tether from your primary mobile device. This skips all the carrier nonsense, to focus entirely on the core use case(s).
Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux
#275Google Play Services ruins dream of this. I've noticed that automotive digital keys don't work with Graphine OS due to how Google Wallet works.
I think a Linux phone probably appeals to the same kind of person who prefers real keys over digital ones.
More like those that make copies of their physical keys at home, after having analysed dozens of key cutting machines for that exact purpose.
Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux
#276I really want to love mobile Linux, and have given it multiple shots before. But I just don't see how it will catch up with iOS/Android in the same way it caught up with Windows/Mac: - OEMs have poured an enormous amount of resources into the camera software, Linux cameras are years behind from what I understand. - Android/iOS have thoroughly optimized the UX in all sorts of subtle ways, the big one being their keybo…
Apple's mobile keyboard is the worst I've used. I basically have to correct about half the words I type.
Agreed. I got an iPhone from work and I can barely type on that thing while my Pixel with Gboard just works and gets it right 95 % of the time even if I type gibberish.
Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux
#277If only a few techies will be able to use Linux phone, banks will freely lock payment services access down to two platforms: ios and android. No way out, it's happening right now (in the name of "security", of course, but surprisingly it does not stop scam from happening). Web will be locked down too, via secureboot stack browser integration (not -s, it's already actually monopolised to chrome only, as FF lives on fu…
It's what felt like what really killed Windows Phone. Too many things became "only available" through an iOS or Android app. Windows Phone was free as in beer towards the end and there's a possibility there would have still been a small but devoted techie audience on it, if so many things weren't already so broken from disappearing/vanished app support.
It always seemed insane to me that people accepted so easily to have everything locked behind "app stores", crazy garbage, even worse having SO MUCH PREINSTALLED BLOATWARE OUT OF THE BOX.
Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux
#278There are too few apps on Linux phones, otherwise I would have migrated there
> too few apps
Temporary. The age of LLM aided development is current.
Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you expand on this? I did follow the “Moblin/Maemo/MeeGo” forks back in the day and it struck me as odd Android pulled off the HAL layer but “Linux” was unable to.
Every [Linux based] OS usually needs some sort of HAL to wrap [ioctl] driver calls into APIs that can be consumed by more than one process at a time. Nokia/Moblin/Sailfish use Freedesktop style HALs, i.e. stuff like Wayland, Pipewire, anything accessible over DBus (which also implies extremely slow IPC by any standards; mach ipc on apple's darwins is probably faster [ sobs ]). Basically I'm suggesting that we might n…
I guess we just need the DBUS developers to get their heads out of their asses, that's all: https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/6/23/657
Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a powerlessness to using Android. It's difficult to just do things. Even windows feels more "free." Phone OSes are built like prisons. Ideally Android would let you drop into a real shell, without having to deal with android sandboxing. Regardless, I use termux and tasker to get my automations done.
Probably because carriers don't want a bunch of poorly secured devices on their networks.
If that was the reason then Windows laptops with WWAN wouldn't exist.