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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?

#41

Post by aragilar »

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…

One could ask why AOSP was created when there was an existing userland on linux that could be used (and was, by Nokia).

More seriously, I think the reason people want to do this is threefold: 1. Android vendors almost universally seem to make it hard to run stock AOSP (and do the Windows bloatware thing that Windows vendors were known for), so a "linux phone" lets people run what they want and remove what they do not 2. AOSP, while open source, is not developed in any way like a community open source project, so their ability to change anything, especially anything Google does not want to change, is limited and means constant rebasing 3. AOSP doesn't really solve the "run a modern/non-buggy kernel" issue on existing vendor hardware (as far as I know), so if you're going to spend time on getting the kernel to work, you probably want to have a userland that is amenable for getting the kernel working, so AOSP isn't helpful there, and by the time you've done all this, you can probably just run the rest of the standard setup with a distro and tooling you are already familiar with

I think the interesting thing would be if the modern kernel work from (3) could be used by an AOSP build and get the best of both worlds, or if by the time you do all this AOSP is too resource intensive to run on the device, and so running the alternative is the only option.

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#42

Post by fsflover »

Tepix wrote: post #8

Isn'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/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque...

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#44

Post by staunton »

d3Xt3r wrote: post #13
OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #3

This 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.

> after waiting decades for the Linux desktop to pickup Linux desktops are very much usable now, especially if you choose a competent DE like KDE, and a decent distro (ie, not Ubuntu). Is there anything particular you find the Linux desktop still lacks majorly, preventing you from switching?

What's wrong with Ubuntu?

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#46

Post by amelius »

Nux wrote: post #7
Animats wrote: post #2

I run an older Android phone without a Google account. All apps are from F-Droid. Google services are all turned off. Mail is Thunderbird, browser is Fennec. Is it still possible to initialize an Android phone without a Google account?

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/

Routinely? How often do you buy a new phone? :)

Or maybe it is because mobile computing is just stuck, and it won't move even in decades ...

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#48

Post by jrflowers »

I get that the appeal of using a Linux phone is being able to say “my phone is a Linux phone” but you could also just say that about any phone anyway. Most people will just nod when you say that and occasionally somebody will get incandescently angry. That is fine, good even. Variety is the spice of life

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#49

Post by guappa »

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…

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?

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#50

Post by guappa »

mpol wrote: post #9

Anyone using PostmarketOS on a phone? And I mean as a daily driver, with no other phone. I have been following it for years and would like to switch someday, but that moment hasn't happened yet. Currently I use Sailfish from Jolla on a Sony phone. For a linux phone, it serves my needs. I would be open to change.

I used mobian for a few months, but I normally have 2 sim cards, and battery life was really short.

Not that android with 2 SIM cards works good, but it seems no phones with 2 sims are supported by linux at the moment.

The geniuses at google can't comprehend the concept of "call numbers from country X with number from country X, do the same for country Y" so I must manually select by myself every single time and I get charged some obscene amount of money if I click wrong.

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