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Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

thefoggiest.dev

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Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#151

Post by seba_dos1 »

AAAAaccountAAAA wrote: post #116
margalabargala wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at what's missing from their roadmap here: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ No videos? Fine, I rarely take videos. No bluetooth? Mildly annoying, but especially with the 3.5mm jack, I could live without it. No GPS? This one would be a deal-breaker for me. But depending on the person I can see it being usable.

Ouch. It seems to be even more incomplete than I thought. The lack of Bluetooth and GPS is kind of surprising, since those things have worked on Linux laptops for at least a couple of decades or so.

Both work fine on Librem 5 as well and have worked for years now.

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#152

Post by rahen »

418tpot wrote: post #132
rahen wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I currently run LineageOS and am constantly frustrated with its limitations every day. On desktop linux I can quickly write up a program to do most anything I want in pretty much any language, and in my text editor of choice. I don't know anything about android development and I don't really want to invest time in learning Google's proprietary GUI toolkit when QT/GTK, or even raw OpenGL is more portable. I once looke…

You absolutely can write something in C, Rust, Go, or whatever on Lineage. Just install Termux and the relevant packages (e.g., pkg install rust, etc.).

AOSP is still vanilla Linux under the hood, just with a touch interface on top. Plus, ART is open-source and works great for GUI apps.

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#153

Post by seba_dos1 »

0_____0 wrote: post #84
seba_dos1 wrote: post #72

Earlier 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.

I have been using an Altair 8800 as my daily driver for about 50 years now. It's really not a big deal to enter instructions through the switch panel, especially with good gloves, and it does basically everything I want it to.

Good for you, though I prefer my device to be reasonably capable for real world tasks and hassle-free while providing me the ability to run the latest software and to hack on it however I want. Otherwise I would stay on N900, as I still miss its keyboard.

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#154

Post by seba_dos1 »

teddyh wrote: post #127
margalabargala wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at what's missing from their roadmap here: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ No videos? Fine, I rarely take videos. No bluetooth? Mildly annoying, but especially with the 3.5mm jack, I could live without it. No GPS? This one would be a deal-breaker for me. But depending on the person I can see it being usable.

That image is seriously out of date. Bluetooth, GPS, and even recording video all work fine.

Video recording implementation could be better though, but other stuff works well indeed :)

In fact all things from that chart are there and have been there for years now, including 20h battery life and encrypted SIP calls.

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#155

Post by margalabargala »

teddyh wrote: post #127
margalabargala wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at what's missing from their roadmap here: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ No videos? Fine, I rarely take videos. No bluetooth? Mildly annoying, but especially with the 3.5mm jack, I could live without it. No GPS? This one would be a deal-breaker for me. But depending on the person I can see it being usable.

That image is seriously out of date. Bluetooth, GPS, and even recording video all work fine.

That's great to know; but Purism really ought update that, I'm sure they are losing sales from that being so out of date.

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#156

Post by seba_dos1 »

Rooster61 wrote: post #81
seba_dos1 wrote: post #72

Earlier 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?

It works fine for me, I'm typing this on one right now. I'm still waiting for something that could replace it as it gets older, but I don't see anything viable out there yet.

The question is whether you're able to live without Android & iOS, perhaps with some limited help from Waydroid. If the answer is yes, as it is for me, then it's a great daily driver.

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#157

Post by rahen »

guappa wrote: post #130
Tepix wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We‘re talking about AOSP Android here

It cannot be compiled as it is, so it's nothing that runs on any phone.

I definitely would switch to Lineage or /e/OS or anything more vanilla if I had a Samsung phone.

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#158

Post by mixmastamyk »

hnpolicestate wrote: post #90
Y_Y wrote: post #85

Because Android and iOS serve other masters. Its's not just that this is morally unsound, it's fucking infuriating. Imagine JD Rockefeller had arranged it so that your pen and paper constantly nagged you and tried to trick you into buying things. I'm calling it now, society is going to collapse and it's going to be because of software and hardware working together in tandem to make life miserable and expensive and on…

Digital fascism is the future. The majority don't care. A friend wanted to stream a clip from YouTube with me on discord and actually chose the completely DMR ridden YouTube Discord app instead of just streaming directly from YouTube. Why would someone make that their first choice? I don't know but they do.

It's the present, for several years. And if you're connecting discord with youtube you've already lost. :-D

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#159

Post by kernal »

rixed wrote: post #135
kernal wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lengths people go to for a horrible Ui/UX and app experience is bewildering. I guess they justify it by not caving into Google or Apple. Of course, all of their privacy concerns and safeguards go away when the credit cards, utilities and services they use all circumvent their precious Linux phone. But hey, at least you’re running Linux on your phone, right?

It is unclear to me what alternative you are proposing, apart from bending to Google and Apple?

There is no alternative. Unless you pay by cash and have verified that all of the utilities and services you consume are not laundering your data then you’re just wasting your time by putting up with a horrible phone OS experience.

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#160

Post by AAAAaccountAAAA »

kernal wrote: post #159
rixed wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is unclear to me what alternative you are proposing, apart from bending to Google and Apple?

There is no alternative. Unless you pay by cash and have verified that all of the utilities and services you consume are not laundering your data then you’re just wasting your time by putting up with a horrible phone OS experience.

The perfection fallacy?
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