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Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

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Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#71

Post by Nux »

amelius wrote: post #46
Nux wrote: post #7

Earlier 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/

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 ...

Alright, perhaps "routinely" is a strong word, but all my phones run non-stock and I don't buy devices I can't do this on.

All in all I must have installed 3rd party roms on 6-7 devices with good results.

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#72

Post by seba_dos1 »

greatgib wrote: post #19

If 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…

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.

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#73

Post by seba_dos1 »

hnlmorg wrote: post #22
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.

“The year of the Linux desktop” has always been a stupid statement because it never quantifies what the success criteria is. For example, we now have first class games support via Proton. First class application support via Electron and other web technologies. Linux used in schools via Chromebooks. Etc Linux was never going to be Windows-killer but I’m constantly amazed at just how easy it is to use vanilla GNU Linux…

The year of Linux desktop already happened in 2006.

That's when I switched to it full-time on my desktop and never looked back. It's the only success criteria I care about :)

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#75

Post by immibis »

mrheosuper wrote: post #63
immibis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term "Linux operating system" refers to Mozilla/systemd[optional]/Xorg/bash/GNU/Linux and does not refer to Google/Facebook/Samsung/Linux

And who decided that ?

The same people who decided the meaning of words like "who", "decided" and "that": all of us

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#76

Post by holowoodman »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #69
holowoodman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully agreed as a former N900 and now Fairphone+LineageOS user. Some more things to add: On the N900 updates were quick, easy and painless to a degree that no current phone OS matches: You just to "apt update && apt upgrade", reboot will only happen when really necessary, otherwise any small component (which are just .deb packages as in Debian or Ubuntu) will just be upgraded and restarted in place, without a big dow…

I switched from Nokia N900 to Librem 5 that I'm writing this from and I'm still enjoying these things. I miss the keyboard though.

Yes, hardware keyboards are another good thing from the past that got lost...

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#78

Post by ForHackernews »

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…

This is a solved problem if you trust the packaging folks for your distro. Most end-users will never need to install some random stuff from npm or pypi: these are developer-specific concerns.

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#79

Post by taeric »

guappa wrote: post #67
xorcist wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Server software is usually compartmentalized in uid:s but desktop software seldom is, if ever. Package managers and maintainers could do a lot here to make it easier. Some things long time Linux users like to do, like running Firefox as a separate user, is still a much more involved process than it should be. A lot of it is probably standards and culture work, like where a user can expect to store files and have them…

You're going to deal with the users who can't attach a file to an email because the firefox process has no access to it?

To be fair, if firefox had the intelligence to know that it was being asked to attach a file it didn't have access to, it could prompt for a password. I don't expect full TRAMP like smarts from Emacs, but I don't see why this wouldn't be doable?

Granted, I'm viewing this as far easier than the sandbox "fake file system" approach? Firefox would be able to see the file exists, most likely, but just not have read rights to it. Yes, you can have some things it can't list, but I would expect that to be low on probability to want to attach to an email?

Re: Daily driving a Linux phone, but why?

#80

Post by taeric »

aragilar wrote: post #66
xorcist wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Server software is usually compartmentalized in uid:s but desktop software seldom is, if ever. Package managers and maintainers could do a lot here to make it easier. Some things long time Linux users like to do, like running Firefox as a separate user, is still a much more involved process than it should be. A lot of it is probably standards and culture work, like where a user can expect to store files and have them…

For user-facing stuff, I agree it's hard because of the challenge of managing access to data (and I would argue no system does this well, Android has a different set of failure modes, and I've not used QubesOS but presumably it has it's own issues as well), but in the top-level comment, the concern was around using pip/npm, which to me is almost a solved problem if you care enough and are willing to put the effort (a…

Completely agreed on this. Linux, by and large, should actually be far easier here? Have a "work account" for your machine where you do these tasks and you are basically there. Switching to a gaming account or your banking/etc. seems easy enough?
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