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.
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?
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
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.
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.
At the time android didn’t have multi-tasking
Android always had multitasking. Part of the issue with android 1 and 2 was that it didnt have any way to properly manage the task managers which lead to people installing task killers(which had utility in those days) and auto task killers(which due to how android handles caching just lead to a cycle of killing, thing popping up, killing, and etc). My g1 with a swap partition was probably my best android phone at keeping things in memory without auto killing it until I got a phone with 6gigs of ram.
Depending on your tolerance for frustration you can daily a phone running SailfishX. But the reality of it, at least for me, is that you will be running mostly Android apps using the Android emulator.
The emulator and the relatively easy access to Android apps makes it the most promising for me.
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
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.
Postmarketos with phosh works “fine” with the pinephone.
Been enjoying my L5 for nearly a year. There are for sure problems but really it works as a phone and as a small Linux PC. I really want Crimson to come though, PostmarketOS and Mobian look very attactive.
I love my Pinephone, not enough to use it as my main phone thou.
It’s running Mobian, mostly because everything else I have is running Debian in some form, but it looks like the largest project is PostmarketOS.
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To people down voting you, it’s important to note that Google-free, pure FOSS Android based OS do exist.
This is what you should be looking at if you want a fully Open Source phone OS, with no privacy issues (no phoning to Google servers).
All smart phones are *NIX, i don’t even think the Windows phones were really Windows. Pick whichever UI you like best.
I found Ubuntu Touch/Droidian the most promising when I last tried to get a good Linux mobile setup. Everything was working and i could run any linux app i wanted. The only problem was mobile data configuration with ISP here in the UK. I would donate to whoever is making the best progress and having the most impact. There is so much variety of hardware with phones that a single (or very small number) of compatibility layers needs to emerge.
None, because a phone is useless without applications.
Edit: I’m all for a truly open-source phone with no tracking but at some point things must be useful as well and applications from the Play Store or App Store are something people have to get and use everyday. For instance in my country, if you exclude browser-based banking no bank will work those Linux phones and the NFC / contactless payment system here requires either Apple Pay, Google Wallet or a proprietary app develop by a banking alliance. Govt provides electronic versions of your identity card, driving license and a ton of other cards related to the govt that also require an Android/iOS app they make… Even something simple like setting up a TP-Link Tapo wireless security camera will require an app these days.
applications from the Play Store or App Store are something people have to get and use everyday
I haven’t made the full switch to mobile Linux yet, but my Android phone has 0 proprietary apps besides the firmware and it’s 100% usable
in my country, if you exclude browser-based banking no bank will work
Well, the question is why are you excluding web banking? While it’s less convenient at times, banking apps collect every piece of info about you they possibly could collect, they try to prevent you from “messing” not only with the banking app, but with the phone itself - they are one of the most egregious cases of “normalized privacy invasion”, so web banking is much preferable to banking apps. If you’re allergic to webapps for some reason (which would be a very weird thing to say for someone who installs banking apps), fine, switch to a bank that allows doing operations via SMS (that’s the only feature I miss from Sberbank).
the NFC / contactless payment system here requires either Apple Pay, Google Wallet or a proprietary app develop by a banking alliance
Why are you using contactless payment? Unsatisfied with the amount of data your bank collects, you want to give the same data to Apple/Google? What’s the problem with just carrying a card with you? I genuinely don’t understand. This certainly isn’t a “100% unavoidable requirement”, but just a fad you didn’t even think whether you could do without
Govt provides electronic versions of your identity card, driving license and a ton of other cards related to the govt that also require an Android/iOS app they make…
That’s absolutely true, which is egregious. You should petition your government to open-source those apps (public money = public code), you should reverse engineer those apps to get their functionality without the proprietary code (if they just show a barcode/qr code/picture, it’s easy, but it gets harder if it uses NFC). Either way, this isn’t something you “need”, as carrying your documents around really isn’t a problem… for me, anyway, YMMV I guess
Even something simple like setting up a TP-Link Tapo wireless security camera will require an app these days.
…first you buy an IoT device that connects to “the cloud”, then you say you need proprietary software to access it. Of course you do, that’s the kind of device you bought - the vast majority of IoT devices are made with zero regard to the user’s privacy and security, to hackability or right to repair.
That said, it’s very easy to find hackable devices if you do the bare minimum research. Examples from my home - Valetudo (FOSS robot vacuum firmware) on Viomi V2 Pro, Tasmota (ESP32 firmware) on an AiYaTo light bulb. This is not a problem with mobile Linux, but rather you choosing a device that’s made to collect data from your phone.
In conclusion, everything you listed so far isn’t a problem with mobile Linux, but a problem with your approach to software/hardware freedom. Chances are, you aren’t a hacker, and by extension aren’t a part of the target audience of a Linux phone. That’s fine, but don’t pretend there’s some insurmountable barrier preventing anyone from using it - it’s just that you don’t need it. Waydroid exists, which makes all of the claims in your comment invalid (besides maybe banking apps which may detect Waydroid), but you won’t consider Linux phones viable anyway - because, again, you don’t need it.
So while I agree with some or the majority of your commentary I would like to add a bit of context.
Well, the question is why are you excluding web banking? (…) If you’re allergic to webapps for some reason
I’m not allergic, I just happen to live in a country where banks unfortunately force you get their mobile app for certain operations / you can’t do everything on their web app because of “security” . There’s a big thing in Europe around secure transaction authorizations that require a secure 2FA methods (not SMS) and banks here decided to implement that in way that their mobile apps kinda work as a 2FA to the web version. Heck I can’t even generate a virtual credit card here without installing an app. Compatibility layers / emulation, such as Waydroid, even GrapheneOS is flagged by most of the banking apps here as well and they don’t allow you to proceed.
Why are you using contactless payment? Unsatisfied with the amount of data your bank collects
If I’m using the app from the banking alliance they won’t gather more info than what they already do whenever I swipe a debit or credit card on a payment terminal. I kinda becomes about convenience at that point. Obviously the same can’t be said for Apple Pay / Google Wallet and I avoid them.
Govt provides electronic versions of your identity card (…) Either way, this isn’t something you “need”, as carrying your documents around really isn’t a problem…
Actually that’s something I need, let me tell you why: I’m required to digitally sign a LOT of documents everyday and here you’ve two ways to do that. The classic one is by having a smart card reader in your computer, open a desktop app, choose a file and place the identity or professional card into the reader and type a PIN code. The second way is to open the application and click “sign with your phone”, this will prompt you to open the govt phone app and enter a PIN / biometric authentication there and the document will get signed as well. While the first option works fine it’s just annoying to have to carry a card reader around to meetings and other places and it also takes way more time for the desktop app to respond and sign the document if you se the identity card.
…first you buy an IoT device that connects to “the cloud”, then you say you need proprietary software to access it. Of course you do, that’s the kind of device you bought - the vast majority of IoT devices are made with zero regard to the user’s privacy and security, to hackability or right to repair. (…) That said, it’s very easy to find hackable devices if you do the bare minimum research
You proceed to give examples of vacuum cleaners and other stuff that is indeed easy to find more open.
I’m all for open-source IoT, I like it as an hobby and I run HomeAssistant and most of my IoT is DIY ESP32-S2 devices with sensors and relays. I also have some cheap relays and plugs from Aliexpress that are BL2028N and I managed to flash with ESPHome / Libretiny however things become a LOT harder when it comes to CCTV.
Cameras in general aren’t as easy as cheap plugs to deal with. There’s the OpenIPC project but it seems only to support very specific chips that are sometimes older, hard to find or not price/feature competitive with TP-Link offers.
For what’s worth TP-Link Tapo cameras (TC70, 71 etc.) aren’t that bad when it comes to privacy, there isn’t much “cloud”. They do require you to use their mobile app to setup the camera but afterwards you can just run them on an isolated VLAN / firewall them from the internet completely and you’ll still be able to use all of the camera’s features. Those cameras provide a generic rtsp stream that even VLC can play and there’s also a good HA integration that provides all features of the TP-Link Tapo application like pan / move / download recordings from the camera’s SD card and whatnot 100% locally / offline.
but don’t pretend there’s some insurmountable barrier preventing anyone from using it
No, but it would make my life considerably worse or at least impractical in some cases.
For me, the best is e/OS, which is based off of LineageOS, but with extra privacy features to de-google. Just get a compatible phone, and run that.
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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.
