which linux phone is the most promising?
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?
There's a large ecosystem in the Android space. Right now F-droid and Lineage os are making leaps and bounds.
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.
Does anyone know what's going on?
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.
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. :)
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!
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.
Oh I thought they weren't planning to update it further than 20.04
Tbh GrapheneOS.
Android is Linux.
And unlike desktop Linux it was able to spread secure and private standards
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.
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.
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(tm) code so... i dunno... mixed blessing
???
Being pixel only makes me cry
Me too man, me too
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 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)
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.
LOL
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.
I have a 6a, which I tolerate for GrapheneOS. The battery life is absolutely terrible.
For me its 2 days when I use it rarely.
The 6 series was when google introduced the tensor which is where the stereotype for worse battery life, worse performance, and less efficient radio come from.
I have a 6a too and for the price it's fine, and I think a lot of the battery concerns are overblown, and for a budget phone competing with other budget phone devices tensor was great. That said the things that would make the tensor in the 7 bad are as present in if not more so in the 6a.
I dont know. I had a 7pro and that thing got hot and was like a tablet. I 100% cannot reproduce this on a 6a. Its battery life is better than my 4a and before my Nokia 7plus.
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.
What phone are you getting 1% over night on with Graphene?
I'm getting less than 1% battery loss over night. But I have the unihertz tank and it has a 22000mAh battery.
6a, nor now the last non EOL device that is tolerable I guess
5a was the last one with a headphone jack 😑
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.
Good. The more people pushing back against falsehoods, the better.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Been daily driving SailfishOS for absolutely years. Originally ran it on a Nexus 4! It's by far the most polished not-Android/iOS phone OS going right now.
Is sailfish OS on a libre software license?
Yes and no. The core of the OS is opensource, but the UI is proprietary. At least last time I checked.
No. The bits that make it Sailfish, the UI, are proprietary.
Then I guess I would not put muy 5 cents there.
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.
pine phone
(also you should get their usb-c powered soldering iron... pinecil )
Unusable as a daily driver. It’s a nice gadget, just expect the worst user experience ever.
yeah well i was responding to:
so... yeah, i know it's not super useable as a daily driver (to a pussy)
but seriously it is getting a lot closer..,
My friend's daily driver is a PinePhone. So usable as a daily driver.
Pine phone is a nice gadget but I don't think they contribute to software development as much as Purism does. Not that I recommend buying anything from Purism because of their business practices.
What's wrong about that to you? I've a laptop and a phone from them and I'm happy with them.
Have a scan through the posts in https://reddit.com/r/purism
I know better than that.
I got my phone after 5 years of waiting too, it's a nice paperweight. I power it on twice a year, do a full update, play for an hour and put it back in the drawer.
Same. I was fine supporting the effort but it isn't a replacement.
https://mobian-project.org/
When I was looking a couple years ago Ubuntu Touch was by far the most developed and stable. Primarily because Canonical poured millions of dollars into its development before giving it up and dropping it, but the community has gone a long way to make it what it is today.
Probably not a popular choice on this community though.
It's a friendly community, and Lomiri is a great DE that people have also gotten up and running on [other distros].
For the time being it runs better on Android devices than on "pure" linux phones such as the PinePhone, but I have great experiences with it. If you don't depend on other IM services than Signal you could probably use it as a daily driver on several phones already.
The community is very small and it is kind of broken in a bunch of ways.
Its better to use Postmarket os or something else that's more flexible
I think either PostmarketOS or Mobian would be the best existing candidates right now.
Hardware wise, the Fairphone 4 is probably the best option, especially compared to something like a Pinephone.
I tried Phosh (Gnome mobile shell) on an exhibition a while ago and honestly loved it.
However, I'm absolutely not confident in those tbh, in terms of reliability. The whole thing is highly experimental right now, and I wouldn't trust them as a daily driver.
Phosh is also available for Fedora, especially Silverblue (available as ARM iso), since you are, with me together, probably one of the most prominent Fedora Atomic fanboy :D
I see big potential in a uBlue-phone spin maybe. I tried making one myself, but I absolutely don't have a clue what I'm doing and don't want any responsibility for such a project.
Do you know if or how we could organise such a project?
I really wish PostmarketOS worked with more recent hardware, especially some of the Pixel line.
Your welcome to port it.
Thx! Sounds like it'll be postmarketos
It's porbably best to connect with ublue devs on their discord
Don't use Discord, rather use the official uBlue-forum. That way, everything is public, better organized, accessible and not in the hand of some chinese corporation.
Look at
startingpoint, I would be down to join effords but tbh I dont have a phone until some kernel gets patched to work on a Pixel 4a (or until I repair a "community supported" oneplus I found)I’m ngl I think Fairphone 5 might actually be better, I think more of the hardware is supported in postmarketOS compared to the 4.
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.
What kind of a response is that? "just give up", "your contribution is worth nothing", "your money is useless", "anyway if you want to do something worth nothing, do it there".
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
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.
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:
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/110272102808113949
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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'd suggest editing the post's title as well.
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.
OP is asking who that is.
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.
I would go with Lineage os on your current device. You can install F-droid so you won't need to worry about Google and there proprietary ecosystem of data collection
All smart phones are *NIX, i don't even think the Windows phones were really Windows. Pick whichever UI you like best.
@GravitySpoiled
I'll trying to buy a pine phone as my first Linux phone as it's cheap. Not great but would be okay for tinkering.
@linux
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.
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.
Android is Linux-based, even if it's not a Gnu/Linux distribution. Besides, eOS is different enough from Android, since it barely works with existing Android apps (you'll need to use the microG lib to do so, which is optional). Its UI is iPhone-like too,so it's not comparable to other Android looks either. In other words, I'd say e/OS sits in a place that it's kinda its own. Not Gnu/Linux and not quite Android either.
And let's face it, no gnu/linux distro is mature enough to be a daily driver on a phone. Not a single one. I've tried them all. The best options are still Android-based: LineageOS if you don't care to be truly an Android, or e/OS if you want something that it's kind of its own beast (still based on LineageOS underneath). And that's why I suggested e/OS.
So not the topic of OP's question.
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.
https://linuxphoneapps.org/
And Waydroid also exists
Oh yeah, my bank will definitely support Linux phones lol
Mine was fine with me using a rooted Android after an in person meeting - they just provided me a hardware 2FA device to use instead.
As long as your bank is as understanding, you could use Waydroid or their PWA on a GNU/Linux device
Banking apps run in Android emulation layers on GNU/Linux. Your bank doesn't need to support Linux phones.
If your banking app is proprietary then I'm not sure its worth supporting. Software should serve the user not the other way around.
If you must do mobile banking use a website as you can actually have some limited control.
Are you drunk, what bank doesn't have a proprietary application? lol
It doesn't have a proprietary application I would use.
I have two banking apps that both run perfectly on Sailfish OS's Android support layer. Obviously I'd prefer a native/webapp at a push but if for some reason you really need to use the banking app there are ways to do it.
The rain why I need nativa banking apps is because there are some features that are only available through the app and not with web banking. Another thing about those support layers is that banking apps usually know how to detect rooted devices and stuff like that and won’t work.
That’s unfortunate but it is what it is.
Android emulation layers emulate secure, non-rooted devices and banking apps work.
No, it isn't.
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
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).
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
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
...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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
No, but it would make my life considerably worse or at least impractical in some cases.
That's why Lineage os and F-droid are probably the better bet.
Yes, even GrapheneOS or Calyx will provide a much better experience.
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.
It uses the Linux kernel yes but not what OP is asking at all
I would not call Android a Linux. It may have the kernel but it isn't much GNU in it
Wait, does this mean Alpine Linux is not Linux?
It can be free like Linux so it counts in my book. I wouldn't consider Google Android free but Lineage os counts
It is released under apache 2 license, not GPL. It is certainly free software, but I wouldn't say it is as free as linux.
https://source.android.com/license
True, but the Linux kernel is GPLv2 and Google nor any other company or organization can't change that
That makes it sound more like it is Linux, but not GNU. Which is accurate
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.
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".
No, it’s not like that at all.
The op didn’t ask for a phone recommendation and I didn’t recommend instead that they use a laptop or desktop.
The op said they want to donate to a Linux phone because one day they believe they’ll be able to use a Linux phone. They want to pick the right one to give money to so it’ll have the best effect towards that end.
I said they shouldn’t do that because they can already use a Linux phone and there are tons of other Linux based projects where the money will go much farther.
We ought to be looking at this from a completely different perspective though: op is trying to maximize the value their donation has, and that’s a bummer. They should just donate to the one they like and not worry about effectiveness.
Apologies if I misunderstood your meaning when you said "android is already Linux on a phone and it's bad". If android is sufficient for your mobile Linux needs, that's fine, I use it too. But it doesn't fit the bill for everyone, and that's the point of OP wanting to support an actual FOSS mobile effort. The alternatives you list don't get them closer to what they're looking for.
You’re right. I didn’t tell the op how to get what they’re looking for.
I told the op that they’re looking for the wrong thing, which is more helpful advice than dissecting the difference between pine and postmarket.
Fair enough!
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.
The point of Linux on phones isn't to have a phone that requires you to constantly fix it with CLI tools. The point is to have a free and open software platform for a device that is increasingly necessary for daily life.
As a side effect, developing Linux for phones would probably help us eliminate the need to reach for the terminal on desktop Linux as well. I believe snaps (which laid the groundwork for flatpaks) were originally developed for Linux on "smart" devices. The whole ecosystem improves when we try to bring Linux into a new domain.
P.S. I use termux (a terminal for android complete with its own tiny Linux environment) from time to time when I need to access my server over SSH. It's a bit clumsy, but super handy!
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.
Sometimes the code to make a mouse or any pointing device (TS included) work with a cli can be 15 times more than the cli itself. Cheap low powered devices for the masses (globally) would perform competitively if it wasn't for all the heavy gui work they have to do.
@Tak @teawrecks
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.
No, it's kinda linux.
It's based off of linux but not literally linux and why if you call it a linux distro you'll be questioned. Just like English is based on French but if you start telling people you speak French because of it you'll have confusion.
It's common for Linux distros to make changes specific to their distro. Adding and removing modules, adding custom changes, and offering those changes back to mainline. This is how Linux works and what makes it so great.
It's not as though Google hard forked Linux 15 years ago and have just done their own thing ever since, they're regularly merging Linux LTS. Here's a diagram from Google of what that looks like.
MacOSX is a hard fork from Mach, which fits your French analogy more accurately. Android is more like a Boston accent; it's a dialect but never very far from it's origin.
You do realize that kinda linux right? You're right it's closer to a boston accent but if you generally ask people about the american accent it's not going to be boston they think of. I'm not denying it is based on the linux kernel because it is but Android is the most popular OS in the world, it can be it's own label as opposed to saying it's linux. To nit-pick further is some real "It's not linux, it's GNU/Linux" energy.
Yeah, I feel like at this point you're not even disagreeing, you're just saying I'm wrong because you don't want to be wrong. You didn't even give me anything to refute this time. That's fine, you're right, cheers.
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.