[SOLVED] Will Linux Phones ever become commercially viable and decrease to a price point of 200-400 USD?

Jerald@lemmy.ml to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 154 points –

Don't say, hey android has Linux in it, yeah no, idc, I want to know how far we are from buying a Linux phone at a price point of 200 USD.

A Linux phone is one which is built completely on Linux, uses Linux apps and most important has a terminal.

I don't want a Linux Phone for privacy, although that's a great reason, but I want it for the freedom it provides me. Hell, I don't care if Android itself comes with a terminal and has similar features to Linux, I just want a Terminal which can install apps, where I can write commands and it will execute it. Complete Control on my phone and how it behaves is what I want.

I want to tell it when to sleep, when not to sleep, when to boot, when to edit a file and how, when to take a screenshot and what to do with it and where to save it, etc, etc. I hope you get the idea.

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Android with a custom ROM. I won’t mention it

do you know of any projects which has good support (and reputation) which has something like a terminal in it? I mean, I just want a terminal.

Also, I will be happy to spend 500USD on a Linux phone just to support it, but I wanted to know how far they are. Thank you for your comment.

If you just want a terminal you can install termux from github right now. No need for a custom ROM. It will be fairly locked down but you can use almost all programs that there are for linux. I use yt-dlp in Termux to download youtube videos

I like you lol. btw, can I do stuff like control volume using Texmux? Like idk, switch on or off my wifi and turn off airplane mode and stuff

I'd guess not, at least without root, as Texmux is still an app and Android won't allow apps that much control over the phone.

I think this lack of real control via the terminal vs 'real' Linux is a key point.

Root access is pretty easy to get. People don't reccomend it much anymore but I've had zero issues on a Pixel 7 aside that I can't use the phone's tap and pay feature. Bus passes and plane tickets still work.

Pretty easily if you go a different route.

  • Download something like the Terminal Emulator app. This gives you access to the CLI on any Android phone. Now you can already control some things over CLI, basically anything you can control without root.
  • If you want more, root your phone. Now you can controll all of the things you mentioned from CLI
  • Install a full Linux in a chroot (you can use LinuxDeploy for that, which is outdated, but that only means you need to update the Linux environment like a regular Linux). Inside of that, you can mount your Android system. Now you have a full Linux that can do all usual Linux things, and also control your phone. This Linux can be either accessed via shell (through Terminal Emulator app) or via VNC to view it's GUI.

Now you have a full Linux inside Android that you can use as a full Linux, and that can control your phone from CLI.

If you are crazy enough, you might even get stuff like calling to work from inside Linux, but what's the point? You still got a full Android to do Android things with it.

Linux in a chroot is so much real Linux, that I managed to get FEX (x86/x64 emulator) to work inside it, and Wine on top of FEX, so now I can even run Windows x86/x64 programs on my phone.

You can control volume using termux with termux-volume command nand wifi with termux-wifi* commands. Not sure about airplane mode but reboot is possible with adb only

You need to use root or pass through some other access control mechanism to control network interfaces or audio devices on Linux too, Android's access control mechanism for those things just isn't built with shell scripting in mind because using a terminal on a phone is a pain...

You can also install Debian through Termux if you want Ivon Blog

Note: i recommend nano over vim in the tutorial, easier to use haha

custom ROM

I'm using CalyxOS on a Fairphone 4, works pretty well, appart from getting Playstore apps from Aurora Store without a Google account (I search for apps in firefox and open the link with Aurora which is clunky but works). You can install a terminal emultor from F-Droid, not sure why you would tbh but I've found several.

Pine phone and Jolla/Sailfish are the only real ones out there.

Librem is a scam, they don't have a real product. (Go watch Louis Rossman's newest videos if you care).

Pine phone is... not exactly usable as a main phone. It's very much beta. But it is a Linux device in the shape of a phone, and even though it's incredibly basic hardware, it at least exists, it can be bought right now and some parts of it work.

Jolla have been doing their thing for a while. Afaik they don't sell their own devices anymore, but you can flash their OS onto other phones, like e.g. the Fairphone 4. That kinda works in some regards, but at the moment e.g. mobile data just doesn't work on that phone.

More to that here: https://forum.fairphone.com/t/fp4-sailfish-os-4-5-0-18-for-fairphone-4/97052