This isn't like a paper notebook at all! I carry two of those every day and they never, ever kernel panic.
Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?
101–110 of 237 posts
Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, I do this routinely. Check devices supported by 3rd party distros like LineageOS which out of the box have no Google services. Ironically Pixel phones are very well supported. Xiaomi, OnePlus, too. There are quite a few: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/
It should be said though that only Pixel, Fairphone, and maybe some Motorolas support relocking the bootloader with a custom OS. Without that ability, anyone can plug in to your phone and write whatever they want to the internal flash and your phone will be none the wiser.
Some Sony models (not the Verizon one last sold in the USA) should too, no?
Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an Android device with an old unsupported kernel that runs a hacked up Debian-ish userspace on top of Android layer. While that may be good enough for some, it's not what some of us want. I'll stay with my Librem 5, which is also totally usable, runs actual Debian, runs Waydroid too, and does not bring me Halium pain.
Most of what I have read has indicated that the Librem 5 is NOT a great daily driver (which was a huge letdown for me). How do you like it?
I'm just a single data point, but FWIW after the first week the only time I ever (literally) dust off my librem 5 is to show people what a joke of a phone I waited 4 years for. Purism had the right goals (mainline linux kernel, no run-time loadable closed sourced blobs, user-serviceable, hardware kill-switches) but the implementation is only worthy of a participation trophy. The phone would randomly drop calls (though I've heard this is finally fixed), the UI was terrible (UI elements rendered partially off-screen, a useless maps application that complained about a missing location service), the battery life is so terrible that carrying around a 2nd battery is common advice, and the hardware was anemic back when the phone was announced which made the difference even more noticeable when the phone finally came out half a decade later.
I'm glad I own the phone for the same reason that I regret not holding on to my G1 (the first android phone): Its a neat piece of history. But alas, it will never see use as an actual phone.
Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?
#104Isn't every Android phone a Linux phone? OK, i guess we want something that is less encumbered and more transparent with more digital sovereignty for the user than the Android that we get from the various big phone vendors. What's the difference between an AOSP Android phone and a Linux phone? For me, there is no substantial difference. The Android based phone is likely to be way more usable the various "Linux phones…
> What's the difference between an AOSP Android phone and a Linux phone? The latter is: - not being developed by Google which chooses what's better for them, - provides convenient development tools, - runs any desktop Linux software, can serve as a desktop when connected to a keyboard/screen, - native terminal, including ssh, sshfs, X forwarding etc, - allows to choose the OS you run. More: https://source.puri.sm/Lib…
Those are very relevant for a Linux laptop, but much less so for a Linux smartphone. An AOSP-based distro like LineageOS, GrapheneOS, or /e/OS paired with Termux provides almost a
all of this, with the added benefit of ART - quite possibly the most polished runtime in the Linux ecosystem.
You can even plug a bluetooth keyboard and run Emacs on your Android / AOSP phone nowadays.
Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firejail and apparmor have existed for years. If you don't use them maybe it's your fault? Also the very same npm backdoors have already hit android apps. What can sandboxing do if you backdoor a dependency of your banking app?
Sandboxing should be built in and by default, not DIY and glued on, like with apparmor and firejail. "Your car does not come with a seatbelt? Seatbelt parts are easy to order online and assembled on any car, it's your fault for not using one." > Also the very same npm backdoors have already hit android apps. What can sandboxing do if you backdoor a dependency of your banking app? The whole point of sandboxing is that…
Fedora Silverblue is this
Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?
#106I too am looking for a Linux phone as a daily to decouple from Google.
Currently using a Fairphone with \e\OS. microG is prone to crash on the latest system update but not a big issues. Navigation work just fine too across the USA.
Ordered the FuriPhone and tried to get it in before the Tariff Wars. Currently waiting for it to enter shipping limbo from the manufacturer.
Hoping that the USA Government's treatment of foreign counties helps ignite the push to move away from Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and others. Linux and BSD are most likely to benefit in the tech transition. Lower cost to bring up infrastructure and features allow for removing larges USA corporations as daily drivers.
I'm getting tired of all the Enshitification those companies are jumping on to as the new business model.
P.S. We need to stop using the "Gated Community" analogy when speaking of Apple and Google with phones. A real gated community allows owners the addition of more personal security; guards, cameras, and security systems. Apple and Google do not allow owners to improve security; firewall, direct backups, and removal of useless applications. The closet analogy I can come up with is "Prison Community".
Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?
#107If you want a Linux phone that could be your daily driver, I would highly recommend the furiphone of furilabs ( https://furilabs.com/ ). I got one from the Fosdem and it is truly amazing! Contrary to previous things I tried, like the pinephone, this one is really totally usable for everyday with everything that you could need (phone, SMS, 4g/5g, ...). Especially, for one time it has a very good camera, on par with so…
For completeness sake, here are a couple of other decent alternatives to the FuriPhone: 1. The Volla Phone Quintus, with Ubuntu Touch: https://volla.online/de/shop/volla-phone-quintus/ 2. Jolla C2 (or any other supported Xperia device), with SailfishOS: https://commerce.jolla.com/products/Jolla-community-phone
[dead]
Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?
#108But why, indeed. Years ago, I met someone (through another friend) who worked in CS, and was super into digital privacy. He was the first person I knew to run a Linux phone, for privacy reasons. He tried to pay for as much as possible by cash, and maintained his accounts manually on paper. The only way to contact him was by text message (intermittently, unreliably) or via a specific client using the Matrix protocol.…
i feel you, but these downsides have nothing to do with a linux phone, but with your friends privacy preferences. i am trying to be like that friend, except that i keep more communications channels open. i mean, verifying contacts face to face is one thing, but then we ought to at least have one unverified channel to arrange a meeting or a video chat. also there are more safe options, like deltachat that don't depend…
> but with your friends privacy preferences.
Network effects and human nature combines to make this a completely insurmountable obstacle. You'll likely never convince even a sizable minority of your own friends & family to do tech things the hard way because you think it's more private that way.
That is the argument in favour of being a bit more mainstream - you get to interface with the rest of humanity with much less friction.
Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?
#109> Many will point out that a Linux phone is less secure than Android or iOS, but that highly depends on your personal threat model. Linux phones and their apps are all open-source and do not depend on ads or surveillance to sustain some nefarious business model, which means there is much privacy to be won. Meanwhile here I am on my Linux machine, constantly anxious that sooner or later one of my bazillion npm and pip…
Just another reason not to needlessly update dependencies. To say nothing about the risk of compromising legacy code. And if you are someone who updates your dependencies constantly just because, consider that for many of the packages you are updating into they don't even do that and use some ancient dependency themselves owing to legacy code issue and the fact everyone for some reason wants to rename all their functions and flags every major version change.
Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?
#110This website is hostile to scrolling on mobile, I've never seen a worse UX pattern in my life. But for me, I see so much potential in Linux phones, but after waiting decades for the Linux desktop to pickup, I won't hold my breath.
I've been daily driving a posix compliant unix desktop since mac os 10.4. It has been picked up my friend. Somehow people forget that mac os is the most polished desktop unix distro.