Probably an unpopular opinion, but I don't think most people who buy a Linux phone actually want a Linux phone. They want an open-source phone. The Linux philosophy isn't important to them, they essentially want open-source iOS (with all of the polish and out-of-the-box doodads). They want the ability to make modifications, and they want the freedom and transparency that open-source gives them, but they don't necessarily want to open a PR against the camera app if they want it to more closely match the polish of iOS.
>but I don't think most people who buy a Linux phone actually want a Linux phone. They want an open-source phone.
Both of those are missing the point IMO. What people really want, is a phone that is on their side. iOS doesn't support open standards like Vulkan mainly because it's not in Apple's interest to support them. Not because it's in the user's interest, necessarily.
What people really want is a phone that they can trust to be on their side implicitly. The nugget of brilliance in Free Software is saying "if you do all this stuff, then the power will be so tilted towards you that you will be able to trust your software to be on your side".
People want something that's both polished, and won't [forego polish in one particular area for the sake of the company's interests/$$$].
I want a phone I can own, like my sofa. It is out there in my living room just waiting for me to do whatever I want to do with it.
My Android phone doesn't work that way. The company behind it expects me to do certain tasks with the phone. Some tasks are open for gradual adoption, other aren't, meaning they are mandated. After all those years, I'm beginning to dislike that.
I like open source too, but I'm not serious about it, I want to be able to fix things or file an issue on GitHub or whatever if necessary, but I don't have the energy to worry about proprietary blobs.
Having control of my phone and its configuration like I do my Linux desktop is what I want, but I'm slightly resigned to perhaps not getting it because of app support (I tried Anbox on my desktop, it was buggy and slow, with a fraction of the RAM I dread to imagine) - so I've been thinking about and occasionally working on a Terraform provider for Android instead. So far I'm using it to install all apps, no Play Store at all; I'd like to have it handle settings too.
So yes, it is Linux more than OSS that appeals to me here, because it's control more than openness that interests me in it. (I suppose some wouldn't see a distinction, and that's partly why it is more important to others.)
I've had a Nokia N900 and the few Palm/HP Pre models that were released, the former ran Maemo and the latter webOS. Both OSes were based on Linux.
I want a Linux kernel, because even though today I'd list the modern niceties like namespaces, containers, WireGuard, NFS 4.2+, back in the Maemo days, having a Linux kernel still paid dividends. All of the standard networking and WLAN debugging tools you had on desktop Linux were available in your pocket, FUSE meant you could use sshfs, etc. The userland was the same GNU userland you'd find on most Linux distros, you could use X11 forwarding via ssh, GTK apps worked, and you had apt as the system package manager.
I want that again. Android doesn't come close, and neither does iOS.
At least personally, I want a phone that works similarly to my Linux machines. I have scripts that maintain a synchronized configuration across all of them, and I don't want my phone to be some snowflake that must be treated specially.
I want access to the same applications; I want to be able to run strace on random processes to understand what they're doing; I want to be able to organize my files under $HOME the same way I do in my other machines.
I want a Linux phone (ideally of a similar distro). It being open source is just part of that.
This is also the reason why I'm not really attracted to PineTime, despite it being open source.
If by polish you refer to aesthetic stuff like animations and whatnot, I don't really care about it.
I don't understand this comment. Am I not allowed to use Linux if I haven't ever committed code to an open source project? I've been using Linux for 15 years. Are you taking away my Linux card and am I being banned from the platform?
Because your argument makes no sense at all as to why I might want a Linux phone. I want a Linux phone for the same reasons why I use a Linux laptop and PC. Freedom, control over my computing environment and my data, that sort of thing.
Taking a step back, there is no mobile OS out there that provides the things that I want. The closest that I've seen is Linux for the PinePhone. So, yeah, I want a Linux phone. It's not that my initial premise was "I want a Linux phone". It's "I want control and I want to have the freedom to do what I want with my device, so what system currently offers that kind of freedom while being feasible on technical and usability levels?"
I bought a Pine Phone. I want a Linux phone. I don't want "open-source iOS", whatever that is. I don't care about that kind of "polish", I want access to (a good portion of) the same "Linux software library" that I use on my Linux laptops, VMs and Raspberry Pis. Plus it's nice to be able to make a phone call from it or take a photo occasionally.
I'd want one so I can run some Python scripts in the background. Where I can use apt and install whatever I want from the repositories. Use ffmpeg to record audio and video and stream it in the LAN or even over the mobile network.
Some of these devices already have 12 GB RAM and octacore processors, that's more than a Raspberry Pi.
When these devices reach their EOL as a phone/tablet, they would make wonderful SBCs with integrated touchscreen, camera and microphone, and in the future also good AI co-processors for good on-device speech or face recognition. All this with an up-to-date OS, and not an Android version which is over 4 years old.
Whatever I try with Android, sooner or later the processes get killed.
What's worst is that when Chrome gets updated, any app using a WebView gets killed. Why not just let it continue running and make it use the new WebView after it gets started again manually?
You're probably right but— why buy a Linux phone then? There's LineageOS and F-Droid, or even Replicant if you're all-in on free software and don't mind running on a Galaxy 8.
I'm maybe not the guy to ask, I have curiousity and professional interest in open source phone stuff but I've had an iPhone since the 4, and plan to spend a total of less than 5 hours a year debugging my phone for the foreseeable future.
I'm not sure that pruning apps off my homescreen or rebooting a few times a year to solve some heisenbug really counts as debugging, but it's already closer than I care to be.
I'm not even sure if most users who use Linux computers actually want Linux computers. If they do, why are there so many attempts towards recreating the macOS UI and UX in Linux, such as with Elementary OS? Or back in the '90s/'00s, attempts towards recreating the Windows UI/UX?
Maybe people also do just want general open-source computing, and Linux just happens to be the one that's furthest along, its philosophy and ideology be damned.
Personally, I'm hoping Haiku eventually gets further along to be usable as a Linux alternative, and it's fun to wonder what it would be like as a mobile OS.
The Linux philosophy is important to me in a desktop, but I don't think I'd really care about it on a phone. If it were eventually to be both, then I would, but I never really believed in that goal. If I'm going to use a computer in desktop mode, I'd rather just have a proper desktop, with hardware that is unrestrained by the smaller form factor.
Linux users want phones with comfortable infrastructure that is hackable, and known, and richly powerful, with a wide base of people generating creative contributions. Linux isn't popular (with the hip crowd) because merely because it's better (though it is), or because it's hackable (though it is) Linux is popular because it's a rich technical ecosystem with robust layers of technology operating together but each modifiable, lovingly adopted by power users, each opting in to trying to improve themselves & their systems.
You can recreate the "ability to make modifications" (although you'll struggle to come to anywhere near the seriously integrated layers of technology Linux environments so robustly build). You can offer "Freedom and transparency" to be able to tinker. But it's the co-participation with other tinkerers, with many venerable but separate & adjustable/hackable layers, that makes Linux so rifely diverse & compelling.
In short, my strong belief is: people want Linux phones. The technical ecosystem is more interesting as a whole than any array of boxes/capabilities one might tick.
I definitely want an open-source phone for all the reasons you mentioned, but I absolutely also want a Linux phone.
I'd love to live in a world where BSD or Minix became The Thing™, but since it didn't I basically live and breath Linux for work and that spills over into my personal usage too. Interoperability between my phone and my laptop is huge. I recently started using KDE Connect (and okay - that doesn't have to be Linux-specific) and being able to seamlessly copy / paste between devices, etc. is a game changer for me.
I agree. I love Android philosophy, but it's getting more and more closed with every year. Just one example: call recording. It was available in the past, in modern Android versions those apps no longer work.
I don't know how representative I am, but I just want something that respects my privacy and doesn't try to monetize my every interaction, while being open enough that I can run what I want on it (apps, not OS). Android fails at the first and iOS fails at the second.
I like in principle that Android is open source (minus all the proprietary junk getting jammed into Play Services). I or someone could verify that it's not sending my data to a sketchy third party, but only to a point. Unless the OS and all apps are completely open source, any closed source component could be secretly betray me. Ironically, though, I trust Apple a lot more to write privacy-respecting code even though it's all proprietary. But on Android I do what I can to mitigate these issues, by running as much tracking- and ad-blocking software as I can (a thing that isn't really possible on iOS, at least not to the same extent). And I do have some apps sideloaded that I'd miss if I had an iPhone. But I still assume that Google is not being a good steward of any data it gleans from my Android usage, and that sucks.
I don't care too much about the ability to make modifications. The hurdle to jump to go from a stock to custom ROM is pretty high nowadays, as I expect most financial apps (and probably some others) to aggressively detect enabled root access and refuse to run. And the process of building your own OS images to make tweaks is not particularly fun, and can be a mess to clean up if you make a mistake. It's critical to me that my phone doesn't have downtime, so I'm less likely to mess around with it.
The problem with the current crop of "Linux phones" is that (while they do respect privacy, don't try to monetize every interaction, and are open enough to run what I want on them) they don't have anywhere near the polish of iOS or Android, and are (understandably) missing key applications that I use daily. So anything I use will have trade offs. For better or worse (probably worse) I've chosen the easier path of Android, at least for now.
Having said that, I do think I want to get a PinePhone, not to use as my primary mobile device, but as something to tinker around with. Maybe it's something that eventually could be a primary device, at least for some situations, but I don't see that as being the case without a lot of work, and a lot of customization that I have to do myself, which I don't really care to do all that much.
I guess? But Linux provides those things. Break it apart, what this is saying is, "you don't want X, you want something that doesn't exist that theoretically provides all of the advantages of X."
Which, sure. I could (and do) use LineageOS right now. It's not as good. I still need to go through the Android app development process, I'm still fighting the system every step of the way. It's still a pain to de-Google things, I still have to deal with an architecture that if fundamentally designed to work best with Google services. I still have to deal with what I see as design flaws in Android itself.
So I don't technically need this to be Linux. I recently bought a smartwatch that runs on an ESP32 chip and is programmed using Arduino code/C++. It's not running Linux, but it fits a lot of my needs and it will communicate well with my Linux computer. And you're right, I didn't have serious qualms about that because of the kernel. In fact, the simpler dev process was what made it attractive.
However, there isn't that kind of thing for phones. If you want an Open Source phone that is easy to modify and develop on, Linux is the option that's pushing in that direction.
> but they don't necessarily want to open a PR against the camera app if they want it to more closely match the polish of iOS.
It's deeper than that: I want the ability to fix my own problems. I don't want to open a pull request, I want software that is understandable enough and an ecosystem that is open enough and broad enough that it is reasonable for me to fix my own problems. I (personally) can do that on Linux, but I can't (currently) do it on Android devices, they're a pain to work with and I hate them.
I am used to Linux on my computers, including the fragmentation of software. Sometimes the fragmentation is an advantage because it means there's a diversity of software that is hyper-specialized rather than one or two solutions that are built to kind-of satisfy "most" people's needs. More than Linux itself, what I am used to is the idea that if something goes wrong or if I want my computer to do something, I can make it happen without asking anybody else's permission, without building a giant project that I need to invest serious time into, that I can pull things apart and build pipelines with Unixy tools.
I want that on my phone. It doesn't have to be Linux, but nothing else is providing it, so it does have to be Linux unless someone else is going to build a better OS. I'm not holding my breath for that.
I bought one because I was hoping to tinker with things, and also I wanted to be able to do things that iOS won't allow. (like have a filesystem)
I had imagined that because KDE was so solid on my desktop that it would be really solid on the phone, but I think the phone is not just fast enough.
I was really happy with my feature phone, but had to give it up because I kept pocket dialing the emergency services. I wish I could find a shell that was as simple.
I think they mostly just want a cheaper iPhone that they can mostly play with the cosmetics and have free apps. For most, the ability to improve the code is not really a thing.
My home is top to bottom Linux. Linux media server. Linux laptop for work. My wife is on Linux. My parents are on Linux (since i have to support them).
Linux's rough patches on the desktop/laptop is one thing, and for me - easy to deal with.
on a mobile device, the polish matters in usability in big way. Running into a problem on a phone is infinitely more of a PITA than a machine with a sizeable screen and a full keyboard attached, where remote access is easy if necessary.
OK I'll bite. I wrote a plugin to get mmsd to function with modem manager and I wrote a reference implimentation to integrate MMS functionality into chatty. I also took the time to make sure my patches were upstreamable, and I have taken and worked on every feedback to ensure my patches are upstream able. I filed the ITP bug to include mmsd into Debian proper.
I did all of this back from December to February.
I still have no idea when Debian will bother to look at the mmsd packaging to include it into their repository, nor when my changes for chatty will be integrated. The ofono mailing list and IRC channel (i.e. the original authors of mmsd, but i think they abandoned it as they have said it hasn't been maintained in 8 years) have ignored me, so I doubt my changes will ever go back into upstream mmsd (I just consider what I have a fork now). I'm waiting on the chatty dev to finish off a current project to then get to integrating my MMS patches into chatty.
I still really want to help, but there's not much for me to do except wait for upstream devs to get around to integrating my work.
Being frank, I'm frustrated that I spent all of that time to implement a feature I want and I know a lot of other folks want, but now I'm just in a limbo hoping that others will get around to it.
So I'll ask, if you want folks to help on the boring things or missing functionality, how do you prevent that from happening?
A ton of people want mms support, I really appreciate your work on it. The MMS support is also one of the hard problems nobody wanted to pick up, like the camera support.
The mms stuff in postmarketOS is also still in progress as far as I know, I'm un europe myself, like a lot of the pinephone developers and mms just isn't really a thing which makes integrating these thing quite hard.
I understand your frustration. I'd imagine this is probably the wrong time to be trying to (presumably) be a new Debian developer trying to get new features integrated with everyone focusing on Bullseye. I suspect they'll get around to it once Bullseye is done (thought you might have to ping them to remind them)
Yes I want a Linux phone. But I also want one that has similar app support to Android and iOS.
The problem is not with the Linux phones that are out there, it is that no apps are and likely never will be compatible with (non-Android) Linux phones. Until that is solved, most people (like me) could not switch out their phone for a Linux phone as a daily driver, however much they would like.
Having Linux as an alternative for Windows is a lot easier than having Linux as an alternative for Android/iOS. A lot of the Windows applications we use can be replaced by opensource applications on Linux. And browser based applications already work on both.
However, apps on Android/iOS are mostly tied to cloud services. Unfortunately services that most people need in this age. Messaging systems like WhatsApp and Signal are usually tied to your phone, and going without them would result in social isolation for a lot of people. But also for banking and sometimes government services, you likely need to use their apps. And there will never be opensource alternatives for such apps.
> There are 18 distributions now for the PinePhone ... Still people want to create more distributions instead of actually implementing missing features in the existing distributions or fixing issues in the upstream applications those use.
The author complains about a lack of people interested in developing for the Pinephone, but IMHO the elephant in the room is simply that the PinePhone is too underpowered to enjoyably develop on. Its A64 processor is weak as fuck, and some of us who ordered the PinePhone got the original version with just 2GB of RAM. Not only does it take a long while to build software on the phone, but UI lag for your finished program is long – you will probably have to wait a good 5 seconds just for a window to open.
Back in the Nokia N900 days I did a great deal of hacking on that phone, but that device (even though its specs are much lower than a modern phone’s) had a much more responsive UI and it was actually enjoyable to test out what you had developed.
I have used a Linux phone for 12 years or so. First the N900 and later the Jolla/Sailfish ones.
None of them has been a great product. The software has limited features and there are few apps. The lack of manpower in development cannot be hidden. I cannot buy a subway ticket in several cities and I get difficulties with banks, because I have no Google playstore and we live in a world worse than Orwell's 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 could imagine.
When I want to tinker I have a shell, can become root and I know what I am doing.
Almost all budget and mid range android phones come with invasive tracking, bloat, and ads now. The worst part is you cannot flash a custom rom without crippling your device to almost a feature phone. Many apps use safety net now. You can temporarily bypass it using magisk but Google will get rid of it soon through hardware key attestation.
Flagship phones are too expensive for me and they don't come with features like a good charger, headphone jack, big battery, etc. Most of them also suffer from Android ecosystem problems. Slow security updates and trash apps in the playstore.
iPhone is expensive too and iOS limits your freedom even more. You cannot customize the layout or app drawer too much. You cannot use non-web kit browser. Adblockers are crippled on iOS. Notch and suffers from the same problem as Android flagships. Lack of easy side loading.
All I want is a phone which respects me. I don't care if it's Linux based or not.
This is one of the reasons I highly respect Xiaomi and Google Pixels. They are basically the only phones left that make this painless to do without resorting to dodgy hacks.
Xiaomi have an official bootloader unlock and are simple to put LineageOS on. Pixels are the only phones that are supported by GrapheneOS, which offers substantial security benefits over any other Android phone.
It's giving the consumer freedom and environmentally friendly for when the updates run out/planned obsolescence kicks in. I have a spare phone lay around from 2014 running up-to-date 2021 Android patches and it works perfectly fine, the battery went bad once but this was the days of replaceable batts and it cost $15 online for a new one. If you can accept the tradeoff with no further physical firmware updates it's a much better deal than the rampant consumerism and e-waste that plagues the mobile market.
> Many apps use safety net now. You can temporarily bypass it using magisk but Google will get rid of it soon through hardware key attestation.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this isn't really a criticism of Android as a platform but that apps use DRM for tamper proofing. I suppose Android could try to make this harder but I'm sure hardware vendors would step in with their solutions. You're totally free to do as you please with android/rooting as long as you don't care about those apps -- which I have a strong feeling will never be available on more open platforms, unless somehow they gain market dominance.
There is a very popular Linux phone OS. It's called Android.
This sounds somewhat pat and snarky, but I am trying to make a real point. Let's go to some of what the article says:
==================
Having an "one true way" to use the UI and tons of preinstalled apps is the reason I dislike the android ecosystem...
Megapixels has a fully user-configurable post-processing pipeline basically since the start. It allows you do anything you want after clicking the shutter button in the app since it's a shell script. Still people complain about how they don't like that there's an extra file they don't want (the dng) or photo upload is missing. ITS A SCRIPT, CHANGE IT. Do you really want a Linux phone?
==================
If you're defining "a Linux phone" as "a phone that uses bash scripts for configuration and where nothing works out of the box", then no. People don't want a Linux phone. But then, by that standard Ubuntu isn't catering to a "true" Linux audience. I don't think this is a useful definition of the word.
I have a pinephone but it's not too useable yet. It's a chicken and egg problem. Once it's actually starting to be useable and a lot of basics are in place, e.g. stable base OS, apps will follow.
Another issue for apps might just be the lack of resources to get started. Kudos to you for all the work you're doing on Megapixel.
Let's keep iterating and true FOSS fashion share what we've learned so we all can benefit. And we can simply ignore all the "reviews" that complain about the lack of apps, compare to Android/iOS for polish.
Also for people complaining about performance, the code will be optimized, graphic acceleration will be used, and finally more powerful device will become available.
Of course a $200 Linux phone with immature software does not compare to $1000 subsidized spying devices
I am surprised no one in here has mentioned Sailfish OS. It is Linux based. I really enjoy mine. I own it like I own my couch. I highly recommend it for those that are interested like myself.
Sure, I do not have the latest phone model, I have it on my Sony XA2 and Cosmo communicator. It has issues with some playstore things, but I also do not care. I can do 90% of what I want on them and the rest I save for my computer. I like the separation.
I think the whole Linux-on-the-phone experience would (have) profit(ed) a lot from focussing on real (e.g. mainline) Linux tablets.
It is easier to use the programs which are already available on the desktop due to the fact that GNOME (and probably KDE) already support touch screens. The usage of a tablet only slightly shifts from using a desktop. So it is a more gradual change.
So by rolling out tablets first, development time could be spent on smoothing out hardware acceleration, supporting cameras, responsive UI, optimizing touch, etc.
And then we could tackle phones.
For me as a PinePhone owner, the biggest problem is not apps but overall speed. The OS feels very sluggish. And although I know that it is really old hardware, doing basic things should be much faster. This holds me back from really using it. The other big problem is battery consumption. Any distro I tried drains the battery so fast that I always have to shut off the phone when I am not using it. Even if I don't do anything. On a fresh Manjaro+KDE, I can see the battery drop by 10% after picking it up and using the browser for a few minutes.
And wrt to linux tablets: The PineTab[0] is sadly having really bad resolution (one thing that is excellent on the PinePhone btw.) and it is too heavy. It is a far less attractive package compared to the PinePhone which has "pretty ok" specs througout. So I am really excited for things like the cutiepie[1] or the jingos tablet[2] (if it is not a scam). Although the latter will come with a custom linux kernel which kinda makes the advantage of a (mainline) linux tablet worthless since one still depends on some people maintaining some old linux fork.
I want a linux phone. But you know what I want first?
I want a Visual Studio level IDE that I can develop Linux GUI application in. GTK is an amazing piece of software, and there are some beyond amazing GTK based applications that I found and started using.
As someone who has not done linux GUI development before, the biggest issue is getting started. Android has first class development support, and so does iOS. Linux has Glade for GTK and QtCreator for QT apps.
Vala is an amazing first step, and the code makes design & development super easy. But there is still a disconnect between design and development that hinders adoption. If there was a nice "all in one" application where development can be done like. You could see the hype, and then disappointment, when https://github.com/akiraux/Akira was announced and it looked like such an IDE. But alas.
The Rust GTK Bindings also look really good, but I think the biggest hurdle that needs to be overcome is making Glade either more user friendly and making it tie into an IDE like Builder, or have an IDE like IntelliJ support it.
I personally don't. Unless the phone distribution is something like Red Hat enterprise Linux and it won't break, bend, or do anything fishy.
I'm a Linux desktop guy, but use an iPhone (I don't sign in with appleID). Privacy and libre arguments aside Linux on the phone sounds great at first until you need to make a call and it suddenly drops. Just my 2 cents
I don't necessarily want a Linux phone, I want a trustworthy portable communication terminal. As of today the smartphone is de facto the standard in portable communication terminals, and Linux is the standard in open, therefore trustworthy (PEBKAC issues aside), operating systems for general use.
It is then normal for many people to want a Linux phone, but give us a BSD, or whatever, based phone, and we're in business.
The gist is that most of us simply find unthinkable to use a piece of hardware that we don't 100% trust, for personal communications, writing or receiving mail, keeping personal data and documents, banking etc. therefore we need an open platform because allowing public scrutiny of the code base - device drivers and user apps included - is the only working method to prevent both software and firmware from doing nasty things behind the user. So far, a Linux phone is the closest we can get to that dream device.
I want a Linux phone. I want to buy something which I can just own and do what I want with it without some overlord deciding that I have violated some terms and conditions. All I need is for some basic apps like email, Maps(OSM is fine),Spotify, Twitter, WhatsApp/Telegram and my banking app to work. It covers 90% of my use cases of my phone.
In any case we all have more than one phone in our house. An extra Linux phone will give me and my family options. The junk stuff and games etc can go on my Android.
Please explain to me how android is not linux, because android is open source.
I'm guessing it's the exact same problem that happened with microsoft: drivers are restricted and not open source, which prevents users to really have control over the mainstream devices they bought. It's the same loophole all over again: we don't own the thing we bought.
So in the end, the problem comes with hardware vendors, but most consumers really don't understand and don't care.
So why not just make an open phone, but with the same android OS everybody knows? Without the google play store? Why make a new OS, with worse hardware support?
When it comes to mobile devices, UX is more important than ever. Any time I see a "Linux phone" I just see a complete disaster of Linux quality UI and usability.
What I want is a 100% iOS or Android phone, with a USB port that I can plug into a keyboard/mouse/monitor dongle on my desk, and get a desktop Linux environment that shares my same media.
No clever apps that work in both. No clever Linux UI nonsense. A Phone that's 100% android or iOS in my hand, and 100% Linux or MacOS when plugged in to my workstation.
I shouldn't have any clue that it's a Linux phone when I'm walking around with it.
A Linux phone will absolutely need something compatible with Apple CarPlay and/or Android auto. I assume most people are like me and prefer to use their phone's navigation apps rather than their car's built in navigation (which is always outdated and inferior).
I recently bought a PinePhone and honestly the experience of tinkering with it reminds me of what it was like to tinker with Linux back in the early 2000's. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. You get the same feeling of freedom and realization of just how locked down the incumbent ecosystems are. But, at the same time, there is little that is guaranteed to work out of the box and a willingness to tinker is required (Anyone remember trying to print from Linux to a networked Windows printer back in the day? It was possible, sometimes, but never straightforward.)
I have no doubt that as ARM proliferates, the Linux phone experience will continue to improve, but it is going to take time (and as the article points out, it is going to take development effort from the community). Realistically, though, Linux phones will never reach Android/iOS levels of smoothness until you get a couple companies that want to disrupt the Android/iOS duopoly with a new Linux-based offering....
Until then, Linux phones are a no-go for mainstream users. That being said, mainstream users who just want a working phone that is not a massive data funnel back to FANG already have a really good option with https://e.foundation/
I want a Linux phone because Android even when fully degoogled and secured like in GrapheneOS is still beholdened to Google's grip on their proprietary Play Services framework and 'SafetyNet'.
Basically tons of apps are crippled and non-functional unless you let Google's code run as a system app. Sure it can be tricked, spoofed, and mocked for the time being but doing so basically destroys the security model of Android in the process. There's also a lot of badwill between the 'secure' Android ROM groups which isn't great when the selling point is security and reliability.
A proper Linux phone with a Secure Boot/Verified Boot implementation would be great. Linux phone's ATM seem to be more concerned with userland stuff like camera apps.
In a way, a Linux computer in the form factor of a phone with a modem is probably best but it's the complicated nature of the ARM ecosystem getting in the way. e.g how many forms of a secure boot system for ARM exist between Android, Apple M1, Samsung Knox, et al.
Regarding the camera... I don't quite see why a camera system using MPV + standard webcam capture tool can't be used... I guess it's not user friendly but it would be simple. It's not like Linux+Camera is anything new.
[+] [-] phendrenad2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Qwertious|5 years ago|reply
Both of those are missing the point IMO. What people really want, is a phone that is on their side. iOS doesn't support open standards like Vulkan mainly because it's not in Apple's interest to support them. Not because it's in the user's interest, necessarily.
What people really want is a phone that they can trust to be on their side implicitly. The nugget of brilliance in Free Software is saying "if you do all this stuff, then the power will be so tilted towards you that you will be able to trust your software to be on your side".
People want something that's both polished, and won't [forego polish in one particular area for the sake of the company's interests/$$$].
[+] [-] rodolphoarruda|5 years ago|reply
My Android phone doesn't work that way. The company behind it expects me to do certain tasks with the phone. Some tasks are open for gradual adoption, other aren't, meaning they are mandated. After all those years, I'm beginning to dislike that.
[+] [-] OJFord|5 years ago|reply
I like open source too, but I'm not serious about it, I want to be able to fix things or file an issue on GitHub or whatever if necessary, but I don't have the energy to worry about proprietary blobs.
Having control of my phone and its configuration like I do my Linux desktop is what I want, but I'm slightly resigned to perhaps not getting it because of app support (I tried Anbox on my desktop, it was buggy and slow, with a fraction of the RAM I dread to imagine) - so I've been thinking about and occasionally working on a Terraform provider for Android instead. So far I'm using it to install all apps, no Play Store at all; I'd like to have it handle settings too.
So yes, it is Linux more than OSS that appeals to me here, because it's control more than openness that interests me in it. (I suppose some wouldn't see a distinction, and that's partly why it is more important to others.)
[+] [-] heavyset_go|5 years ago|reply
I want a Linux kernel, because even though today I'd list the modern niceties like namespaces, containers, WireGuard, NFS 4.2+, back in the Maemo days, having a Linux kernel still paid dividends. All of the standard networking and WLAN debugging tools you had on desktop Linux were available in your pocket, FUSE meant you could use sshfs, etc. The userland was the same GNU userland you'd find on most Linux distros, you could use X11 forwarding via ssh, GTK apps worked, and you had apt as the system package manager.
I want that again. Android doesn't come close, and neither does iOS.
[+] [-] jolmg|5 years ago|reply
I want access to the same applications; I want to be able to run strace on random processes to understand what they're doing; I want to be able to organize my files under $HOME the same way I do in my other machines.
I want a Linux phone (ideally of a similar distro). It being open source is just part of that.
This is also the reason why I'm not really attracted to PineTime, despite it being open source.
If by polish you refer to aesthetic stuff like animations and whatnot, I don't really care about it.
[+] [-] ragnese|5 years ago|reply
I couldn't give two flips if it is the Linux kernel that accomplishes that, but I think it's pretty obvious that Linux is our only reasonable hope.
[+] [-] Koliakis|5 years ago|reply
Because your argument makes no sense at all as to why I might want a Linux phone. I want a Linux phone for the same reasons why I use a Linux laptop and PC. Freedom, control over my computing environment and my data, that sort of thing.
Taking a step back, there is no mobile OS out there that provides the things that I want. The closest that I've seen is Linux for the PinePhone. So, yeah, I want a Linux phone. It's not that my initial premise was "I want a Linux phone". It's "I want control and I want to have the freedom to do what I want with my device, so what system currently offers that kind of freedom while being feasible on technical and usability levels?"
[+] [-] Krisjohn|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qwertox|5 years ago|reply
Some of these devices already have 12 GB RAM and octacore processors, that's more than a Raspberry Pi.
When these devices reach their EOL as a phone/tablet, they would make wonderful SBCs with integrated touchscreen, camera and microphone, and in the future also good AI co-processors for good on-device speech or face recognition. All this with an up-to-date OS, and not an Android version which is over 4 years old.
Whatever I try with Android, sooner or later the processes get killed.
What's worst is that when Chrome gets updated, any app using a WebView gets killed. Why not just let it continue running and make it use the new WebView after it gets started again manually?
[+] [-] samatman|5 years ago|reply
I'm maybe not the guy to ask, I have curiousity and professional interest in open source phone stuff but I've had an iPhone since the 4, and plan to spend a total of less than 5 hours a year debugging my phone for the foreseeable future.
I'm not sure that pruning apps off my homescreen or rebooting a few times a year to solve some heisenbug really counts as debugging, but it's already closer than I care to be.
[+] [-] Apocryphon|5 years ago|reply
Maybe people also do just want general open-source computing, and Linux just happens to be the one that's furthest along, its philosophy and ideology be damned.
Personally, I'm hoping Haiku eventually gets further along to be usable as a Linux alternative, and it's fun to wonder what it would be like as a mobile OS.
[+] [-] kgwxd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rektide|5 years ago|reply
You can recreate the "ability to make modifications" (although you'll struggle to come to anywhere near the seriously integrated layers of technology Linux environments so robustly build). You can offer "Freedom and transparency" to be able to tinker. But it's the co-participation with other tinkerers, with many venerable but separate & adjustable/hackable layers, that makes Linux so rifely diverse & compelling.
In short, my strong belief is: people want Linux phones. The technical ecosystem is more interesting as a whole than any array of boxes/capabilities one might tick.
[+] [-] macksd|5 years ago|reply
I'd love to live in a world where BSD or Minix became The Thing™, but since it didn't I basically live and breath Linux for work and that spills over into my personal usage too. Interoperability between my phone and my laptop is huge. I recently started using KDE Connect (and okay - that doesn't have to be Linux-specific) and being able to seamlessly copy / paste between devices, etc. is a game changer for me.
[+] [-] vbezhenar|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kelnos|5 years ago|reply
I like in principle that Android is open source (minus all the proprietary junk getting jammed into Play Services). I or someone could verify that it's not sending my data to a sketchy third party, but only to a point. Unless the OS and all apps are completely open source, any closed source component could be secretly betray me. Ironically, though, I trust Apple a lot more to write privacy-respecting code even though it's all proprietary. But on Android I do what I can to mitigate these issues, by running as much tracking- and ad-blocking software as I can (a thing that isn't really possible on iOS, at least not to the same extent). And I do have some apps sideloaded that I'd miss if I had an iPhone. But I still assume that Google is not being a good steward of any data it gleans from my Android usage, and that sucks.
I don't care too much about the ability to make modifications. The hurdle to jump to go from a stock to custom ROM is pretty high nowadays, as I expect most financial apps (and probably some others) to aggressively detect enabled root access and refuse to run. And the process of building your own OS images to make tweaks is not particularly fun, and can be a mess to clean up if you make a mistake. It's critical to me that my phone doesn't have downtime, so I'm less likely to mess around with it.
The problem with the current crop of "Linux phones" is that (while they do respect privacy, don't try to monetize every interaction, and are open enough to run what I want on them) they don't have anywhere near the polish of iOS or Android, and are (understandably) missing key applications that I use daily. So anything I use will have trade offs. For better or worse (probably worse) I've chosen the easier path of Android, at least for now.
Having said that, I do think I want to get a PinePhone, not to use as my primary mobile device, but as something to tinker around with. Maybe it's something that eventually could be a primary device, at least for some situations, but I don't see that as being the case without a lot of work, and a lot of customization that I have to do myself, which I don't really care to do all that much.
[+] [-] danShumway|5 years ago|reply
Which, sure. I could (and do) use LineageOS right now. It's not as good. I still need to go through the Android app development process, I'm still fighting the system every step of the way. It's still a pain to de-Google things, I still have to deal with an architecture that if fundamentally designed to work best with Google services. I still have to deal with what I see as design flaws in Android itself.
So I don't technically need this to be Linux. I recently bought a smartwatch that runs on an ESP32 chip and is programmed using Arduino code/C++. It's not running Linux, but it fits a lot of my needs and it will communicate well with my Linux computer. And you're right, I didn't have serious qualms about that because of the kernel. In fact, the simpler dev process was what made it attractive.
However, there isn't that kind of thing for phones. If you want an Open Source phone that is easy to modify and develop on, Linux is the option that's pushing in that direction.
> but they don't necessarily want to open a PR against the camera app if they want it to more closely match the polish of iOS.
It's deeper than that: I want the ability to fix my own problems. I don't want to open a pull request, I want software that is understandable enough and an ecosystem that is open enough and broad enough that it is reasonable for me to fix my own problems. I (personally) can do that on Linux, but I can't (currently) do it on Android devices, they're a pain to work with and I hate them.
I am used to Linux on my computers, including the fragmentation of software. Sometimes the fragmentation is an advantage because it means there's a diversity of software that is hyper-specialized rather than one or two solutions that are built to kind-of satisfy "most" people's needs. More than Linux itself, what I am used to is the idea that if something goes wrong or if I want my computer to do something, I can make it happen without asking anybody else's permission, without building a giant project that I need to invest serious time into, that I can pull things apart and build pipelines with Unixy tools.
I want that on my phone. It doesn't have to be Linux, but nothing else is providing it, so it does have to be Linux unless someone else is going to build a better OS. I'm not holding my breath for that.
[+] [-] jay_kyburz|5 years ago|reply
I had imagined that because KDE was so solid on my desktop that it would be really solid on the phone, but I think the phone is not just fast enough.
I was really happy with my feature phone, but had to give it up because I kept pocket dialing the emergency services. I wish I could find a shell that was as simple.
I would love a shell that was as fast and responsive and had the features of my Nokia 3310. I love these phones https://www.nokia.com/phones/en_in/feature-phones
The only thing they are missing in my opinion is a browser.
[+] [-] harrisonjackson|5 years ago|reply
...back when I felt the need to jailbreak at least - now with altstore, ios improvements, or my own dev-ish - I am good.
[+] [-] drivingmenuts|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zepto|5 years ago|reply
Do they really? iOS isn’t just not open source because we don’t have the source.
It’s also not open source because it isn’t developed in the open or intended for a community to work with.
It seems like the thing you are saying people want just isn’t real.
This isn’t to say you are wrong - but if you are right, it just means the people who are buying these phones don’t just don’t understand open source.
[+] [-] loudtieblahblah|5 years ago|reply
Linux's rough patches on the desktop/laptop is one thing, and for me - easy to deal with.
on a mobile device, the polish matters in usability in big way. Running into a problem on a phone is infinitely more of a PITA than a machine with a sizeable screen and a full keyboard attached, where remote access is easy if necessary.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mariusor|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kop316|5 years ago|reply
I did all of this back from December to February.
I still have no idea when Debian will bother to look at the mmsd packaging to include it into their repository, nor when my changes for chatty will be integrated. The ofono mailing list and IRC channel (i.e. the original authors of mmsd, but i think they abandoned it as they have said it hasn't been maintained in 8 years) have ignored me, so I doubt my changes will ever go back into upstream mmsd (I just consider what I have a fork now). I'm waiting on the chatty dev to finish off a current project to then get to integrating my MMS patches into chatty.
I still really want to help, but there's not much for me to do except wait for upstream devs to get around to integrating my work.
Being frank, I'm frustrated that I spent all of that time to implement a feature I want and I know a lot of other folks want, but now I'm just in a limbo hoping that others will get around to it.
So I'll ask, if you want folks to help on the boring things or missing functionality, how do you prevent that from happening?
[+] [-] MartijnBraam|5 years ago|reply
The mms stuff in postmarketOS is also still in progress as far as I know, I'm un europe myself, like a lot of the pinephone developers and mms just isn't really a thing which makes integrating these thing quite hard.
Do you have a link so I can look it up?
[+] [-] blihp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ncmncm|5 years ago|reply
I know a lot of people were looking for MMS support.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kokx|5 years ago|reply
The problem is not with the Linux phones that are out there, it is that no apps are and likely never will be compatible with (non-Android) Linux phones. Until that is solved, most people (like me) could not switch out their phone for a Linux phone as a daily driver, however much they would like.
Having Linux as an alternative for Windows is a lot easier than having Linux as an alternative for Android/iOS. A lot of the Windows applications we use can be replaced by opensource applications on Linux. And browser based applications already work on both.
However, apps on Android/iOS are mostly tied to cloud services. Unfortunately services that most people need in this age. Messaging systems like WhatsApp and Signal are usually tied to your phone, and going without them would result in social isolation for a lot of people. But also for banking and sometimes government services, you likely need to use their apps. And there will never be opensource alternatives for such apps.
[+] [-] alanbernstein|5 years ago|reply
Sounds like linux to me!
[+] [-] Mediterraneo10|5 years ago|reply
Back in the Nokia N900 days I did a great deal of hacking on that phone, but that device (even though its specs are much lower than a modern phone’s) had a much more responsive UI and it was actually enjoyable to test out what you had developed.
[+] [-] usr1106|5 years ago|reply
None of them has been a great product. The software has limited features and there are few apps. The lack of manpower in development cannot be hidden. I cannot buy a subway ticket in several cities and I get difficulties with banks, because I have no Google playstore and we live in a world worse than Orwell's 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 could imagine.
When I want to tinker I have a shell, can become root and I know what I am doing.
Yes, I want a Linux phone.
[+] [-] searchableguy|5 years ago|reply
Flagship phones are too expensive for me and they don't come with features like a good charger, headphone jack, big battery, etc. Most of them also suffer from Android ecosystem problems. Slow security updates and trash apps in the playstore.
iPhone is expensive too and iOS limits your freedom even more. You cannot customize the layout or app drawer too much. You cannot use non-web kit browser. Adblockers are crippled on iOS. Notch and suffers from the same problem as Android flagships. Lack of easy side loading.
All I want is a phone which respects me. I don't care if it's Linux based or not.
[+] [-] BelenusMordred|5 years ago|reply
Xiaomi have an official bootloader unlock and are simple to put LineageOS on. Pixels are the only phones that are supported by GrapheneOS, which offers substantial security benefits over any other Android phone.
It's giving the consumer freedom and environmentally friendly for when the updates run out/planned obsolescence kicks in. I have a spare phone lay around from 2014 running up-to-date 2021 Android patches and it works perfectly fine, the battery went bad once but this was the days of replaceable batts and it cost $15 online for a new one. If you can accept the tradeoff with no further physical firmware updates it's a much better deal than the rampant consumerism and e-waste that plagues the mobile market.
[+] [-] spijdar|5 years ago|reply
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this isn't really a criticism of Android as a platform but that apps use DRM for tamper proofing. I suppose Android could try to make this harder but I'm sure hardware vendors would step in with their solutions. You're totally free to do as you please with android/rooting as long as you don't care about those apps -- which I have a strong feeling will never be available on more open platforms, unless somehow they gain market dominance.
[+] [-] azernik|5 years ago|reply
This sounds somewhat pat and snarky, but I am trying to make a real point. Let's go to some of what the article says:
==================
Having an "one true way" to use the UI and tons of preinstalled apps is the reason I dislike the android ecosystem...
Megapixels has a fully user-configurable post-processing pipeline basically since the start. It allows you do anything you want after clicking the shutter button in the app since it's a shell script. Still people complain about how they don't like that there's an extra file they don't want (the dng) or photo upload is missing. ITS A SCRIPT, CHANGE IT. Do you really want a Linux phone?
==================
If you're defining "a Linux phone" as "a phone that uses bash scripts for configuration and where nothing works out of the box", then no. People don't want a Linux phone. But then, by that standard Ubuntu isn't catering to a "true" Linux audience. I don't think this is a useful definition of the word.
[+] [-] axelthegerman|5 years ago|reply
Another issue for apps might just be the lack of resources to get started. Kudos to you for all the work you're doing on Megapixel.
Let's keep iterating and true FOSS fashion share what we've learned so we all can benefit. And we can simply ignore all the "reviews" that complain about the lack of apps, compare to Android/iOS for polish.
Also for people complaining about performance, the code will be optimized, graphic acceleration will be used, and finally more powerful device will become available.
Of course a $200 Linux phone with immature software does not compare to $1000 subsidized spying devices
[+] [-] sakebomb|5 years ago|reply
Sure, I do not have the latest phone model, I have it on my Sony XA2 and Cosmo communicator. It has issues with some playstore things, but I also do not care. I can do 90% of what I want on them and the rest I save for my computer. I like the separation.
[+] [-] ruph123|5 years ago|reply
It is easier to use the programs which are already available on the desktop due to the fact that GNOME (and probably KDE) already support touch screens. The usage of a tablet only slightly shifts from using a desktop. So it is a more gradual change.
So by rolling out tablets first, development time could be spent on smoothing out hardware acceleration, supporting cameras, responsive UI, optimizing touch, etc. And then we could tackle phones.
For me as a PinePhone owner, the biggest problem is not apps but overall speed. The OS feels very sluggish. And although I know that it is really old hardware, doing basic things should be much faster. This holds me back from really using it. The other big problem is battery consumption. Any distro I tried drains the battery so fast that I always have to shut off the phone when I am not using it. Even if I don't do anything. On a fresh Manjaro+KDE, I can see the battery drop by 10% after picking it up and using the browser for a few minutes.
And wrt to linux tablets: The PineTab[0] is sadly having really bad resolution (one thing that is excellent on the PinePhone btw.) and it is too heavy. It is a far less attractive package compared to the PinePhone which has "pretty ok" specs througout. So I am really excited for things like the cutiepie[1] or the jingos tablet[2] (if it is not a scam). Although the latter will come with a custom linux kernel which kinda makes the advantage of a (mainline) linux tablet worthless since one still depends on some people maintaining some old linux fork.
[0]: https://www.pine64.org/pinetab/ [1]: https://cutiepi.io/ [2]: https://en.jingos.com/jingpad-a1/
[+] [-] lykr0n|5 years ago|reply
I want a Visual Studio level IDE that I can develop Linux GUI application in. GTK is an amazing piece of software, and there are some beyond amazing GTK based applications that I found and started using.
As someone who has not done linux GUI development before, the biggest issue is getting started. Android has first class development support, and so does iOS. Linux has Glade for GTK and QtCreator for QT apps.
Vala is an amazing first step, and the code makes design & development super easy. But there is still a disconnect between design and development that hinders adoption. If there was a nice "all in one" application where development can be done like. You could see the hype, and then disappointment, when https://github.com/akiraux/Akira was announced and it looked like such an IDE. But alas.
The Rust GTK Bindings also look really good, but I think the biggest hurdle that needs to be overcome is making Glade either more user friendly and making it tie into an IDE like Builder, or have an IDE like IntelliJ support it.
[+] [-] happyjack|5 years ago|reply
I'm a Linux desktop guy, but use an iPhone (I don't sign in with appleID). Privacy and libre arguments aside Linux on the phone sounds great at first until you need to make a call and it suddenly drops. Just my 2 cents
[+] [-] squarefoot|5 years ago|reply
The gist is that most of us simply find unthinkable to use a piece of hardware that we don't 100% trust, for personal communications, writing or receiving mail, keeping personal data and documents, banking etc. therefore we need an open platform because allowing public scrutiny of the code base - device drivers and user apps included - is the only working method to prevent both software and firmware from doing nasty things behind the user. So far, a Linux phone is the closest we can get to that dream device.
[+] [-] nutanc|5 years ago|reply
In any case we all have more than one phone in our house. An extra Linux phone will give me and my family options. The junk stuff and games etc can go on my Android.
[+] [-] jokoon|5 years ago|reply
I'm guessing it's the exact same problem that happened with microsoft: drivers are restricted and not open source, which prevents users to really have control over the mainstream devices they bought. It's the same loophole all over again: we don't own the thing we bought.
So in the end, the problem comes with hardware vendors, but most consumers really don't understand and don't care.
So why not just make an open phone, but with the same android OS everybody knows? Without the google play store? Why make a new OS, with worse hardware support?
[+] [-] Waterluvian|5 years ago|reply
What I want is a 100% iOS or Android phone, with a USB port that I can plug into a keyboard/mouse/monitor dongle on my desk, and get a desktop Linux environment that shares my same media.
No clever apps that work in both. No clever Linux UI nonsense. A Phone that's 100% android or iOS in my hand, and 100% Linux or MacOS when plugged in to my workstation.
I shouldn't have any clue that it's a Linux phone when I'm walking around with it.
[+] [-] jcadam|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlkuester7|5 years ago|reply
I have no doubt that as ARM proliferates, the Linux phone experience will continue to improve, but it is going to take time (and as the article points out, it is going to take development effort from the community). Realistically, though, Linux phones will never reach Android/iOS levels of smoothness until you get a couple companies that want to disrupt the Android/iOS duopoly with a new Linux-based offering....
Until then, Linux phones are a no-go for mainstream users. That being said, mainstream users who just want a working phone that is not a massive data funnel back to FANG already have a really good option with https://e.foundation/
[+] [-] KingMachiavelli|5 years ago|reply
Basically tons of apps are crippled and non-functional unless you let Google's code run as a system app. Sure it can be tricked, spoofed, and mocked for the time being but doing so basically destroys the security model of Android in the process. There's also a lot of badwill between the 'secure' Android ROM groups which isn't great when the selling point is security and reliability.
A proper Linux phone with a Secure Boot/Verified Boot implementation would be great. Linux phone's ATM seem to be more concerned with userland stuff like camera apps.
In a way, a Linux computer in the form factor of a phone with a modem is probably best but it's the complicated nature of the ARM ecosystem getting in the way. e.g how many forms of a secure boot system for ARM exist between Android, Apple M1, Samsung Knox, et al.
Regarding the camera... I don't quite see why a camera system using MPV + standard webcam capture tool can't be used... I guess it's not user friendly but it would be simple. It's not like Linux+Camera is anything new.