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I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux

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Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux

#231

Post by azalemeth »

thelastgallon wrote: post #219
zx8080 wrote: post #198

If 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…

Perhaps we can think of this? Use a linux phone and an android phone as VM. For apps that are not immediately available as Linux apps, we continue to use the android VM. We continuously make better apps available on Linux and maybe, just maybe eventually switch completely to Linux phone.

Alas, the android VM will fail safetynet by not passing bootloader attestation.

I really hate modern Google.

Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux

#232

Post by remix2000 »

doublepg23 wrote: post #36
remix2000 wrote: post #13

Switching from Android style Linux HAL to FreeDesktop style Linux HAL… I honestly think we need more Linux HAL options than just those two, when one is threatening to self-destruct and the other is arguably the single worst interface design ever conceived, by all measurements.

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 need a whole new OS on top of the Linux kernel.

Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux

#233

Post by LtWorf »

dotfrag wrote: post #21

May as well just get an old school Nokia and skip the smartphone technology all together. Get yourself a nice flip phone and go back to the early 2000's. If you need to do something online, just bring your laptop with you - some are so small that they're easy to carry around in a backpack or side bag.

You cannot get an old school nokia because 3g networks are gone, so they won't work.

Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux

#234

Post by LtWorf »

MrDrMcCoy wrote: post #170

I have Furiphone and F(x)tec devices. They ought to work well as mobile Linux devices, but they very much do not. They are unbearably slow, which I attribute to poor storage I/O optimization and Phosh being an obese sloth.

I had a pinephone and switched from phosh to plasma-mobile. The hardware was very limited but with plasma it was much much better at least.

Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux

#236

Post by jraph »

CalRobert wrote: post #225
tarkin2 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perfect is the enemy of good. Also, you can use the bank's website for most tasks. I think most non-techies could happily do this.

In Europe at least the banks website won’t function if you don’t auth with their app.

I live in Europe and I can use my bank just fine without their app.

I've read somewhere that some banks will let you use their SMS 2FA as long as you haven't already used their mobile app.

Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux

#237

Post by jaidan »

wishfish wrote: post #168

I haven't used it myself but every now and then, I'm tempted to try a Furiphone. Just from what I've read, it looks like the easiest out-of-the-box Linux experience on a phone. Does anyone here have direct experience with it?

Yes. I have been daily driving one for almost 2 years. No it's not as polished as an iPhone of Samsung, but it also doesn't have the backing and history those phones have. In the time I've had it, the improvements have been huge. Some say it's a bit laggy - I don't think it is, I think this is down to not having animations to tide you over between this view and that view. It works. It can run banking apps in Android. It doesn't have to run android. It's a 6 core CPU. The later models have 8GB ram (mine has 6GB and it's fine). I have tried Pinephone and found that to be horrifically slow. I like that I can write my own apps and also use a mouse with it if I want - then you have the dock to use a monitor. Out of the phones mentioned in this article, it sounds like the Furi phone would out perform most of them.

I figure supporting this effort is my little way to make a change in the world and help bring freedom back to our devices, which I now have :)

Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux

#238

Post by jolmg »

summermusic wrote: post #166
jolmg wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PinePhone (Pro) or Librem 5 > run a desktop Linux distribution (or Windows for that matter) that supports mobile features (calling, SMS, and data)? The above use ARM SoCs. Palm-sized x86 with cell modem? Doubt it.

Thank you for the recommendation, but I have a Pinephone Pro and I find it to be so utterly useless because of how slow it is and how buggy the software is. Maybe what I want is just something that doesn’t exist.

I get it. Got one. Compromises are many. Speed-wise, it clears the bar for me of being able to watch Youtube on Firefox and use the controls, but yeah it's got bugs and other issues.

I may be able to tolerate the speed because of how I used my netbook many years ago. Windows XP was completely useless because of how laggy the GUI was. Archlinux with i3 and a focus on using the shell (e.g. hardly ever touched a file manager) with a very light terminal (urxvt; others like gnome-terminal were too heavy) and other very light apps made it very responsive. I've kept that habit of a core set of light programs even on desktop computers. On the PPP, SXMO with sway WM/composer, foot terminal, and wvkbd as a keyboard is very responsive, too. The only gripe I have speed-wise is that makepkg (an archlinux script) is weirdly slow to start up.

Maybe GUIs that have animations are too laggy to be useful; I haven't tried. The eMMC is likely faster than your microSD if the disk is the problem, though I'm on a microSD without issue.

Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux

#239

Post by jogu »

stonecharioteer wrote: post #203
SoftTalker wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's mobile keyboard is the worst I've used. I basically have to correct about half the words I type.

I just got an iPhone as a secondary phone and hate the keyboard so much. How are people putting up with this BS?

Over the past few years I've felt the iPhone keyboard has degraded in quality so much. At first I thought I was just getting old, but I've seen so many people with a similar sentiment that I think it is actually the devices fault.

Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux

#240

Post by ingvay7 »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #191
denkmoon wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you use? both in terms of hardware and software. I love the idea of a linux phone but I'm very skeptical.

I'm currently using a Librem 5 with PureOS 11 and Phosh. PureOS is a bit behind on software releases compared to other available distros, but I find it to be the most polished and stable experience. In the past I have used a Neo Freerunner (with Om2007.2 and later SHR) and then a Nokia N900 (with Maemo 5). The former demanded plenty of your attention but could be made to work well enough, while the latter was a reall…

Was hoping someone mentioned the N900. The best keyboard i have ever used on a phone was the N900 physical slide-out. Maemo 5 also included word prediction and autocorrect features that just worked, perhaps its nostalgia but I always recall using that keyboard as a great tactile experience and great example of nokia build quality. Still have that phone with me.
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