I want to donate to a linux phone. I believe in linux and I want a linux phone. Maybe we can use one in very few years as a normal daily driver. It’s getting closer and closer every month.
I want to donate that we get there sooner. But which project? I’m following postmarket but I’m not sure if they are the most promising. What’s your stance on this? To which project would you give your money to accellerate it?
Edit: I don’t want to buy a phone. I want to support the phone os devs. Sorry for the bad wording.
The main problem is political not technical. The market had been allowed to become a duopoly and too many critical things now need an app on an Android or Apple phone. The worse I know is banks needing an app for authentication for their online banking. No separate security device anymore, those are ewaste apparently.
Public EV chargers where you can only control them from an app.
Riding book at theme parks. The cases are growing. Even the app is just wrapper of hidden web page!
Frankly I think regulation is required to get competition in the market. Not the only tech one either. Why is it so hard for law makers to see monopoly in tech?
Can’t Linux phones run android apps pretty seamlessly via waydroid anyway though?
Increasingly lots of stuff won’t work without all of the Google services. Banking apps won’t run on root devices or anything odd they detect.
Even without that, I can say how seamless it is.
Banking apps won’t run on root devices or anything odd they detect.
Banking apps will run in Android emulation layers on GNU/Linux.
That’s good, though I still think it’s a problem they exist. I mean a lot of apps are a webpage wrapped in an app anyway, so why not just a webpage and skip the platform dependence.
None. The sad, infuriating truth is that the makers and devs are a lot like this comments section: focusing on how good of a computer it is (or what apps it has).
You do a little digging and beneath all the hype there is a line buried in every review, so as not to raise suspicions, that says something like “now the call quality isn’t perfect, but…” and what they mean is “it will sound like your friends are playing a full concert on a kazoo trying to talk to you.”
Time and time again. Every linux-based, privacy-respecting, freedom-loving phone team out there seems to have conveniently neglected to make the phone good at being a phone.
Anecdotally, I have been using my L5 for almost a year now and haven’t had complaints of call audio quality once.
What is a review if not just an anecdote from someone who got paid to write it.
It’s good to know, as the Librem 5 was one of the ones I’d seen the aforementioned practice of burying the lede in reviews of.
Is that because of a shitty microphone and speaker in the phones? Couldn’t just use some headphones to solve this?
Tbh GrapheneOS.
Android is Linux.
And unlike desktop Linux it was able to spread secure and private standards
- every app is sandboxed, not some opt-in like Flatpak
- apps start with no permissions (or at least very little), everything is opt-in
- it is like 99% unbreaking, immutable, it just always works while my desktop Linux broke all the time
- there is a webview, which can be hardened. Not Electron, which is insecure and bloated
- energy saving etc work like a charm. 1% battery loss over an entire night!
- hardware security with trusted element is decades ahead of desktop Linux (Ubuntu is just now getting TPM encryption support)
- it is a unified platform, with tons of apps, many of them essential (as the platform is so secure), like 2FA, Banking, public services etc. you can have a full FOSS phone though
I am sure excited for other operating systems but they are just toys. GrapheneOS does amazing work that is a 100% alternative today, for real phones with normal prices, good performance and outstanding security.
Android is Linux.
It runs Linux but it isn’t a “Linux phone” in the sense used here.
Yes I know but the Term is simply incorrect. I dont have a better one though.
And even though I am excited to use some Linux Distro on a phone I own, it will be way worse in stability, security and crucial app support than Android / GrapheneOS.
I dont have a better one though.
I just say non-Android Linux systems. GNU/Linux if I’m talking about that type of system, but there are some like postmarketOS that are strictly not in that group (it’s based on Alpine)
the Term is simply incorrect
LOL
Is this seriously your takeaway from a well-thought out post? This the smugness of reddit that I really don’t miss.
edit: I am refering to the root comment, as that isn’t clear.
I had hopes we could rise above reddit brain, but you can’t take the reddit out of the redditor so easily.
a well-thought out post
LOL
When i think of Android i don’t think of it as part of the gnu/linux ecosystem, but a heavily modified linux kernel turned against the user.
How is it turned against the user? Androids Linux is highly restricted in that it doesnt support a lot of things, but that makes it extremely stable, while this doesnt mean that apps are also “stable” like in Debian
They don’t expect users to do development on android.
(Phones should be used like telephones lol.) I’m going to buy a landline phone
No a phone is an end device. But I dont think GPL or whatever says you need to be able to modify the code on that device.
Makes no sense.
Btw as I only said this in another comment, afaik android runs a tailored LTS linux kernel. It is not as bloated as regular linux as it contains device drivers and also doesnt need all the random drivers for whatever hardware to run on a specific phone.
So you can say android restricts freedom in exchange for security, but “linux kernel turned against the user” makes no sense. Their kernel is just fine.
Their kernel is just fine.
It is just fine, yeah. The things that restrict what the user can do is the interfaces.
@scratchandgame @Pantherina i only have an issue when they dont upstream any of the functionality they add… buuuutttt… a lot of the progress linux has made in recent years has been upstreamed evil corporation™ code so… i dunno… mixed blessing
???
On GrapheneOS right now typing this, love it! I switched over about 2 years ago to Graphene and never looked back. Rarely have any issues, solid battery life, all my apps work, life is good and private.
how are you only getting 1% battery drain overnight? my pixel 7 w grapheneos drains 10% overnight and battery saver makes it worse somehow
I would like to know your secrets
6a is good. The 7 is said to be bad.
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These people know zilch about security
Agreed, now your mission is OpenBSD
Let’s watch if your shit got cared, you can only attacks small projects with peoples who don’t want to write portable code (amd64 and aarch64 only) for “security”
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I do not do that. Pretty sure most said in your thread that you write weird stuff, and I also tried talking to you to no avail.
You are doing that. You dispose contributions like hardened_malloc. Why don’t you spread more misinformation about it? Maybe when hardened_malloc have a bug you will.
You can only laugh on some security bugs of Pixel. You thought “debloat” is enough. This is insufficient. (And using adb to debloat can be considered overkill. Your software recommendation is insane and overkill. Being both insufficient and overkill are the current infamous attitude of current privacy communities, including privacy guides, privsec.dev, grapheneos community and other “degoogled” android communities)
Your OpenBSD fandom sounds like TempleOS meme. Weird. Pass.
???
Android is Linux.
This should be repeated in every “Linux phone” thread.
It’s also possible to install a full GNU userland using Termux, and nowadays a graphical interface is even possible with Termux.
It is repeated in every single damn “Linux phone” thread, and in every single thread an answer like this is needed: No, it fucking isn’t. You know exactly what everyone means, stop being a dick about it.
It is repeated in every single damn “Linux phone” thread
Good. The more people pushing back against falsehoods, the better.
falsehoods
What falsehood are you referring to here?
“Android isn’t Linux,” of course. This is a very obviously false myth that is debunked very easily by simply looking at any Android device or the source code. It is not a myth spread by people who are technologically literate. Yet, this easily verifiable fact upsets Linux fans so much they resort to downvotes and ugly language (I have my ideas why, but it’s probably a waste of time to elaborate in this thread).
Of course, the more savvy among the Linux fandom will admit that Android “contains Linux, but isn’t real Linux” - but “real Linux” is yet another myth; that is, the myth that there is more to Linux than an operating system kernel, a myth that leads to further myths such as the myth of fragmentation, or the myth that distributions are worthless and we need a “unified app store.” It’s a myth that clouds history and assigns the wrong motives to the wrong people and meanings to things that don’t need or deserve them (the misunderstanding that that “Linux” is “about openness” or “against corporations” for example, when large companies are the main contributors to and users of the Linux project). Linus Torvalds himself says he only cares about code, not about freedom or openness or any of that stuff (that’s Richard Stallman’s thing)
The fact that this myth is widely believed is not relevant. We don’t live in a world where a falsehood becomes true if it is widely believed; people used to believe the sun revolved around the earth, for example. Also, a falsehood being widely believed doesn’t mean it deserves to stay unchallenged.
The point of reminding Linux fans that Android is based on their beloved kernel isn’t meant to be a well-actually or anything. It’s a reminder that much of what a so called “Linux phone” can do is already possible without having to switch to an operating system that in many respects is not ready for general use. For example, you can run xfce in Termux - I hope this is enough to disabuse one of the silly notion of “not real Linux.” For some reason. people looking for so-called “Linux phones” desire Android compatibility, and it turns out that because Android itself is Linux, it is far easier for Android to run so-called “Linux apps” than it is for so-called “mobile Linux” to run Android apps.
Android is Linux and that’s a good thing. I should point out that it’s not my preferred Linux operating system - I was a Pinephone early adopter and used to daily drive Mobian, I would prefer that or GNU Guix over Android. Still, not only is it a Linux based operating system, it also has its own rich free software ecosystem backed by F-Droid. It’s very usable once you cut out the Google crap and stick to free software only (or as much as possible).
I wrote more on the “real Linux” myth here in case anyone’s interested in more reading material.
“Android isn’t Linux,”
Nobody here has said that. What’s been pointed out is that the phrase “Linux phone” is being used by OP to refer to non-Android phones running GNU/Linux, which is a common use of the phrase.
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Almost everything you said here is false, with the exception of controversy over the developer. However, GrapeheneOS is far from a single developer project, and the former lead stepped down a little while ago.
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There is no freedom in his code licensing
Evidence required.
Most of them grant infinite freedom, with one requirement. (Not restrictive like *GPL.)
Others like vanadium are restrictive under GPL
https://github.com/GrapheneOS/hardened_malloc/commit/c3a580727a9a844da05ae4e2787a937253b09427
You guys should not listen to TheAnonymouseJoker, this is the evidence of him spreading misinformation.
(Please note I’m not in GrapheneOS community (banned), nor putting myself in the class of privacy racers.)
Edit: since this clown calls me “misinformation” spreader and asks for evidence, it is easy to look at one of the two long investigation articles I wrote, in which in share DivestOS XMPP room chat logs with Micay bullying DivestOS dev into banning me otherwise he will initiate a harassment campaign on social media against him.
Don’t think that’s related
Similar stuff was done (calling neonazi in issue tracker) against Bromite project that used what should be open sourced code, but is not.
https://twitter.com/GrapheneOS/status/1537851090514890752
That’s personal emotion against bromite and lead to unacceptable wording. But Micay can’t force others to remove their code if they do not violate it. nevertheless, Vanadium code is free in Linux communities’ opinion, right?? (I’d not consider that since it is GPL)
simply: The license of vanadium is still gpl and is it free in your opinion?
harassing and witch hunting any critics
You can criticize GrapheneOS just because Micay will care about your words. But you can’t do with something like OpenBSD because the developers are much knowledgeable and they never cared your words. They maintain an operating system for themselves and will not develop features to please users.
You can only criticize some small project with a developer that isn’t good in communication. You are truly a petty person.
having a little social media army with sockpuppets to do this
No loser, the community is the army. (their quality isn’t better than any Calyx or Lineage). The developers don’t even have enough time to please user with a beautiful user interface then why they would screaming on social medias like you are doing.
But they maintained hardened_malloc and you never take a word for it.
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Can you take some word for hardened_malloc or linux-hardened?
The problem with mobile phones is that they have big differences between each others in terms of hardware, so it’s really hard to come up with a “unified solution”, thus making development really slow.
Right now, the two distributions which came further in development are PostmarketOS and UbuntuTouch, but they are still far from being a reliable daily driver.If the reason you’d like to chip in is not just Linux per se, but FOSS in general, there are plenty of fully free and open source Android roms that are a great deal in terms of usability, privacy and support, notably LineageOS, GrapheneOS, /e/OS and the one I chose for myself which is CalyxOS
Edit: when I talk about a phone being a “reliable daily driver”, in my mind I think “a phone you can conduct a business with”, so call and chat with clients, take pictures, exchange e-mails, have a working GPS and Bluetooth. And all of these features must be flawless and always available and sadly Linux phones aren’t there yet.
+1 for Graphene
In my opinion postmarketOS is the most promising mobile Linux OS now. But the phones? Only OnePlus 6 is good. PinePhone is a project to look at as well but the hardware is not as good from the regular user’s perspective
I think the Fairphone 4 is also worth checking out. It works great with Ubuntu Touch, SailfishOS seems to be doing well on the device, and there’s developments towards PostmarketOS. :)
Ubuntu Touch is almost dead, Sailfish is proprietary and many many phones have that kind of postmarketOS support. I’m talking about things that are already usable
Why do you think Ubuntu Touch is almost dead? The development community is pretty active. They recently finished the huge task of upgrading to 20.04, and are hard at work getting up to speed with 24.04, at which point they will have paid back a lot of technical debt.
Ubuntu Touch on a supported device is probably the most usable experience you can have with Linux phones as a daily driver at the moment, especially as Waydroid runs quite well on many devices to fill the gaps.
Fairphone looks really cool, but I feel like too big for my weak little hands
I’d probably just refurb an old old Android phone. Would love to buy hardware that is more ethically sourced though
In the end, nothing is better than second hand!
Pine64 has also had terrible communication for a while now and their site has had technical issues for a month. They have not filled me with confidence as of late.
postmarketOS is great though.
Well, I can at least say that any of my recent orders promptly arrived in perfect working condition, even though the communication is absolutely very lacking.
If you want to support a Linux phone project, the PinePhone looks most promising. If you want an actual usable phone that runs open source software, offers great privacy and security, good (open source) app support and doesn’t come with ads, trackers or any other bloatware, get a Google Pixel and install GrapheneOS and F-Droid.
If you dont feel too happy about owning a Pixel phone; I would also suggest a Fairphone with CalyxOS as an alternative.
The GrapheneOS team has already absolutely dismanteled the Fairphone on Mastodon:
Fairphone is an insecure device with substantially delayed privacy and security patches. It receives the Android Security Bulletin patches consistently 1 to 2 months late and receives the recommended patches years late. It has a broken, insecure verified boot implementation. They have also misled their users about support by claiming their devices will get 6 years of support when they can only provide 2-3 years of security patches. That is not a privacy first device at all.
The GrapheneOS team is security focused to the point where it is detrimental to the regular user experience. I.e. “Secure App Spawning” increases app startup time considerably on older devices like the Pixel 4a.
GrapheneOS is security focused and it’s great that they point out security issues, but for most people security updates being late isn’t an issue. Half the people I know have devices without security updates for months to even years.
Also, with the Fairphone 5 using an automotive SOC with 13 years of updates, the FP5 might actually be able to receive Android updates for 6 years. Iirc the FP3 still receives security updates, albeit not monthly and a bit late. Edit: The last security update for FP3 is from 2023-12-05. Edit 2: The FP3 got the 2024-02-05 security update on 2024-03-01.
Also, the GrapheneOS team has very high standards for security features supported by a phone. Basically no phone besides Pixel supports those features, which obviously isn’t a big problem for most people (else we’d have a big problem).
Anyway, I’ll keep recommending Pixel + GrapheneOS, but imo Fairphone is also a solid choice.
The GrapheneOS team is security focused to the point where it is detrimental to the regular user experience. I.e. “Secure App Spawning” increases app startup time considerably on older devices like the Pixel 4a.
That’s why Graphene allows you to disable the security features. Turning off secure app spawning won’t make your device incredibly vulnerable, it will just be set back to normal AOSP security level.
Also, the GrapheneOS team has very high standards for security features supported by a phone. Basically no phone besides Pixel supports those features, which obviously isn’t a big problem for most people (else we’d have a big problem).
You know which phone has basically all of those security features? The iPhone. GrapheneOS is not building something insane, they’re just hardening Android to a point where it’s actually comparable to iPhone security. Sure, usability might not be perfect because Google only releases base Android as open source software and keeps all their fancy apps proprietary, but it’s not in a state where it’s totally unusable either.
Sure, usability might not be perfect because Google only releases base Android as open source software and keeps all their fancy apps proprietary, but it’s not in a state where it’s totally unusable either.
Agreed. GrapheneOS/AOSP feels a bit like desktop Linux, where the base OS is there but many components like screen time have to installed seperately (e.g. screen time/app usage). Compared to many phone manufacturers installing apps for ads or other unnecessary bloat.
That’s why Graphene allows you to disable the security features.
That’s what I did the second time I tried GrapheneOS. The worse ootb performance made me install CalyxOS again, until I found out Secure App Spawning can be disabled.
All smart phones are *NIX, i don’t even think the Windows phones were really Windows. Pick whichever UI you like best.
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Linux phones are not going to be daily driver worthy in a long time.
My friend’s daily driver is a PinePhone. So daily driver worthy.
To which project would you give your money to accellerate it?
I would reign in your hopes of accelerating a project using money, unless you have enough money to pay someone’s salary for a significant period of time.
That said, I’d suggest postmarketOS or Mobian might be the most worthy of donations.
Don’t do this.
Android is already Linux on a phone and it’s bad.
Donate to normal Linux on computers. There is an ever expanding mess of packages that need to be updated, fixed, hosted, maintained, streamlined, back ported and generally massaged into functionality with whatever goofy distro you pick.
Donate to Linux on computers instead.
For the vast majority of people these days, a phone/tablet is their computer, and a laptop/desktop cannot fulfill the same use cases. So if someone makes the very reasonable request for a phone recommendation, telling them to just use a laptop/desktop doesn’t make any sense. It would be like someone asking for a recommendation for a moped, and responding “don’t bother, just get a Ford F150”.
For all the people using phones as their computer I doubt there would be many who want to use linux. It’s a bit like someone asking for recommendations for a moped and you tell them to build it themselves.
I’m all for wanting linux on phones and supporting that but I have never ever known someone to be interested in linux and only use a phone/tablet. I can’t imagine working a CLI with a phone keyboard.
It’s not clear to me why you believe Linux on mobile implies typing into a CLI interface using a phone keyboard. We choose to use the CLI when it makes the most sense as an input method for the platform, not because it’s required by Linux.
As the post above pointed out, android is already Linux, so that’s already an option. But OP’s goal would be to have a FOSS phone given that phones are increasingly the computing device of choice for people, and there are very few feature complete FOSS options in that space right now.
I’m not saying it is CLI, I’m saying that I don’t want CLI on my phone. Android for instance is based on linux and isn’t a CLI for the most part.
Again, why I say it’s like asking someone to build it themselves when people who only use phones and not desktops/laptops don’t typically want to build it themselves.
Cool then don’t use a CLI on your phone, I don’t know anyone who would.
Android is Linux, you don’t need to build it yourself. That’s not a precursor to using Linux on mobile any more than using a CLI is.
Android is kinda linux, I think most people would find it weird to call it a linux distro. OP also isn’t looking for an android phone when they say a linux phone. For a linux phone there is a lot of build-it-yourself and people generally don’t want to flash their device to install it, especially people who only use a phone as their computer.
Android isn’t kinda Linux, it is actually Linux. It includes other proprietary stuff too, but Google regularly contributes their changes upstream. Like it or not, android is a prime example of what is possible on mobile using Linux.
Yes, I agree that OP isn’t looking for Android and wants to support an alternate option. But here’s where I think our disconnect is: the goal wouldn’t be for the alternate option to be a difficult to use, niche, build-it-yourself headache. That’s never anyone’s goal for anything. The goal is to make something roughly as good as, or better than Android, except FOSS.
It’s just that it takes funding and vision to make something as feature rich as android, and both are hard to come by.
There is a commercial phone linux: SailfishOS. IMO also the most polished one.
If those fuckers at Microsoft hadn’t intervened with Nokia, we might have these things on much more devices. Meego was so promising 😔
Maemo on Nokia N900 was awesome. But even before Microsoft Nokia and Intel decided to rewrite a perfectly working phone OS from scratch and stopped development for years while trying to build Meego. At the time android didn’t have multi-tasking, but on Maemo you could play a video on vlc on the background, and it kept playing while switching windows, inside the list of little windows. It used qt for ui and you could even write native looking apps in python. It had full access to the camera api, people were writing crazy scriptable camera apps for the thing, such as the frankencamera. Why would you throw away a perfectly working os and waste time trying to rewrite the exact same thing for years Nokia!? why!? it could have been an actual Linux phone revolution years ago. and no, I don’t think Android is already Linux phone. fight me.
Lineage os seems to be the most promising. We already have F-droid so the apps are there and the good news is that for every component that Google makes proprietary Lineage os is creating and maintaining a free software version.
I would not call Android a Linux. It may have the kernel but it isn’t much GNU in it
It may have the kernel but it isn’t much GNU in it
Wait, does this mean Alpine Linux is not Linux?
AOSP. Sad but true.
When first pinephone came out I really believed it’s heading somewhere. It thought that it will be kind of like raspberry Pi (fun, cheap platform to play with) and that we’ll quickly see copycats and it will slowly grow the way Linux on desktop did. AFAIK nothing like this happened. You still can’t get a phone with decent Linux support which for me shows that we’re stuck with android. I think most people that would help Linux phone happen are simply satisfied with LineageOS so there’s no incentive to put as much effort into it as it requires.
AOSP is dying as Google is killing off all the apps in favor of proprietary Google ones.
Lineage os is slowly becoming its own thing as they are maintaining basically all of the system apps at this point.
I like the security measures that Google takes for Android.
I don’t like how Google fucks everyone over in everything else
Yeah, I love having to use a custom ROM to get security updates and subsequently root my phone to be able to pass safetynet so I can use banking apps on my phone. Else I have to do as designed: Buy a new phone every 2-3 years :))))))
Not Google’s fault alone, but the way Android and ARM both have proprietary components combine into a delightful piece of hot crap that stifles users freedom and innovation.
An Android phone isn’t what’s referred to when people say “Linux phone”. What they’re referring to is a phone running GNU/Linux, typically running one of the GNU/Linux phone shells/desktop environments.
Not necessarily, F-droid combined with Lineage os or other free software ROM gives you the same freedoms are the Linux desktop does.
You can’t even compile any of those FOSS apps without running propietary build of Android SDK. No one managed to build current versions of Android SDK from the source code yet.
Android is like one big blob and changing anything in it require giant effort. Meanwhile making new feature for a Linux phone with common Linux tech stack is super easy and any mid-tier developer can change something in Phosh for example.
I don’t believe that is the case
The benefits are there, some of ideas out of my head:
Better networking for administrator, access to /etc/hosts file, not being tied to a single VPN slot.
Using old mobile phone as a simple server, having access to firewall tools and normal remote control.
Installing simplier graphical interface for eldery people.
Lifetime updates for many system components that are not device specific.
Simple backups and cloning with standard tools like rsync or borgbackup instead of Google Drive. Also backing up whole system.
Everyone can add a feature, you can make a difference, no need to mess with Google’s Android developing pipeline.
Making native apps for mobile and desktop at the same time, no need for bloated web-like abstraction layers.
Apps made in Python, C, Rust… No need to fit into Android SDK. And no forcing Android SDK and Android Studio!
Customizations of the interface look via CSS files (Phosh have it to some sort).
Someone give more ideas?
Oof, now I am sad on the account of what could have been.
Apple Vision Pro
Lol, well *I* thought it was funny:-P. You might get fewer fake internet point reductions if you threw in a /s.
