Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

thefoggiest.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 237 posts

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#161

Post by seba_dos1 »

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.

I don't use GNU/Linux on my phone for "privacy". It's an added benefit, but not the point.

I use it because it's familiar, hackable and respectful to my attention. It works the way I want it to work and it's capable enough to fulfill all my needs. Switching to Android would be a downgrade on all these aspects. I'm aware that it would be an upgrade in some other aspects that I care about less.

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#162

Post by johnea »

Getting it to boot is barely even a first step.

If the author especially liked the camera of that phone, it was probably because of the custom app that interfaced to the sensor.

Getting good photography on a linux phone has been one of the enduring problems. Akin to overcoming custom graphics drivers for early linux SoC development.

Like the other (currently top ranked) comment, I highly recommend the furiphone as the current peak of linux phone development.

https://furilabs.com/

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#163

Post by progbits »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #96
codethief wrote: post #40

> 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…

> Meanwhile here I am on my Linux machine, constantly anxious that sooner or later one of my bazillion npm and pip dependencies will get compromised, and secretly praying that one day proper sandboxing and an Android-security model will be common on the Linux desktop, so that I can erect security boundaries between my applications and repositories. Why wait? You can shove your pip/npm uses into docker/podman and remo…

Docker is not a security barrier. There have been plenty of container escape attacks in the past, and plenty more to come.

But I agree it might remove the 90%.

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#164

Post by thebruce87m »

npodbielski wrote: post #133
d3Xt3r wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

300 euros does not seem much. Worth a try.

> Your purchase includes a 12-month Sailfish OS full license subscription valued at €59.88 (€4.99/month), granting access to all releases, commercial components, and feature upgrades. After the first year, you can choose to continue your subscription and support Sailfish OS development further. Even without renewal, your device will continue to function, but future software updates and commercial component upgrades will not be available.

Just a note of something I came across when looking just now. Don’t mind paying for continued development but worth knowing before you buy.

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#165

Post by ponorin »

quotemstr wrote: post #12
forty wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GrapheneOS only supports a few specific Google phones, so it's not an option for most cases

It still makes zero sense to take the XDG/dbus/whatever stack and make it run on a phone, suboptimally, when AOSP is right there and has already solved all the thousands of integration issues you'll run into --- plus, it's already free software. NIH is the only rationale for the "Linux" phone thing and it's why it will be forever fringe. People working on "Linux" phones as anything more than a diversion (why not play…

> it's already free software

I'd just like to interject here for a moment. The word Free Software has a specific meaning that AOSP does not meet. The only component of AOSF that is Free Software is the Kernel, due to GPL, and aside from low-level Android-specific modules such as binder there's no secret sauce in Android kernels; even the vendor modifications are mostly gutted out in favour of Project Treble and GKI. Everything else is only Open Source and not Free Software, and even then developed privately and only published upon release. Because nobody releases a pure AOSP phone (Google Play Services alone changes the OS behaviour dramatically, punching through all the usual app sandboxes) and the source code for the modification, it's effectively proprietary with open source components.

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#166

Post by 418tpot »

rahen wrote: post #152
418tpot wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, but that is still severely limited in my experience.

Like I can't bind these programs to run on keyboard shortcut (or I guess the mobile equivalent would be a button on the home/lock screen?)

I can't do basic UI-- even if I don't write a QT/GTK app sometimes I want to pipe to imv, mpv, present a list of options via dmenu/rofi, send a notification to dunst/mako via notify-send, copy strings to the system clipboard, write a script that calls wtype to emulate keystrokes, etc.

I don't have access to the whole filesystem too, right? Last time I tried writing a script in termux I couldn't access the photos my phone took.

One concrete example: I use music player daemon to play music throughout my home. On the phone the answer is to download an app that implements the protocol, but the app isn't great. Instead, I wish I could bind dmenu to open up when I press volume up for example that just shells out to mpc. These are the types of things that I like to set up on my desktop to get a really ergonomic experience tailored to my workflow, but on mobile I'm at the mercy of what apks are available.

I also haven't found any great solution for setting up a phone declaratively. On desktop I can use NixOS to codify my configuration, on mobile, flashing a new OS means pecking around settings/fdroid like a point and click adventure game for an hour to get everything to a somewhat usable state.

Perhaps this is all just user error and everyone else has figured out how to do these things, or they just suck it up and build their own android apps. But for me, this is really what I'm asking for when I say I want Linux on mobile.

> Plus, ART is open-source and works great for GUI apps.

This requires writing the app in java and building it in android studio, right? Is there an easy way to just compile an apk from a non-android project?

Also if I invest a lot of time in learning ART and building apps for android, I will have a much worse experience running these apps on desktop linux (for example under waydroid) which is where I spend a vast majority of my time.

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#168

Post by dzhiurgis »

I'm trying to imagine how few things could and couldn't if moved from iPhone:

1. Does bluetooth headphones work? Kinda dealbreaker to go back to cables.

2. Music apps? Soundcloud web app probably ok. I don't use Apple Music much, but I know they have web app.

3. I don't even dream HomePod or HomeKit support. I use HomeKit to open my house, but probably could move it to Home Assistant.

4. Messenger/Instagram web apps suck balls, but I manage to cope.

5. Government Id app - this one ties to phones hardware. Very useful but I'm not extremeley dependent on it.

6. Car Key - dealbreaker to go back to keys/cards

7. Payment card - it's been a decade or so since I use this.

8. Myriad of apps that technically don't require a phone to operate - could probably have a burner phone for this - DJI, Eufy, Tuya, Deye, Wyze, Ewelink, Aqara.

9. EV charger apps - afaik none of them have web interface. Keyfobs are an option, but another thing to loose.

10. Supermarket loyalty apps - screenshot normally works

11. I assume some sort of video calling app exists for it? Is it cross platform?

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#169

Post by dzhiurgis »

amlib wrote: post #137
jasode wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No bluetooth? Mildly annoying, but especially with the 3.5mm jack, I could live without it. For most people, it can be difficult to predict future scenarios for Bluetooth that's unrelated to wireless earphones. I always use wired earphones and didn't think I ever needed Bluetooth and always had it disabled. However, I was later forced to use it to configure new devices. E.g.: - internet router (Eero) from ISP has no…

> offload the configuration UI to the customers' smartphones... which necessitates pairing via Bluetooth. And an app that eventually gets delisted or whatever and your interfaceless device gets turned into a pumpkin...

At least we can hope - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Bluetoo...

Last week for the first time I've used WebUSB to configure flight controller for my drone/wing. Felt like magic.

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#170

Post by kalupa »

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.

A+++
Post reply on HN