33 ms·

Ask HN: What are the OSS alternatives to iOS/Android?

248 points by benevol 10y ago

jumasheff 10y ago
SailfishOS https://sailfishos.org/ https://sailfishos.org/ UPD: Jolla -- company behind SailfishOS (ex-Nokia people) https://jolla.com/about/ https://jolla.com/about/
- GranPC 10y ago
  Sailfish is not open source, it's just based on other open source work. Most of their original code is proprietary.
  - jumasheff 10y ago
    They are going to make it open (they promise to, at least): https://blog.jolla.com/letter-jolla-ceo/ https://blog.jolla.com/letter-jolla-ceo/
  - skykooler 10y ago
    However, the base it runs on - Mer - is open source, and there is an alternative open UI (Glacier UI). Unfortunately this further limits the applications that can run on it.
- pawadu 10y ago
  I have not touched one of these myself but friends who did had many positive things to say about it. Nevertheless, if Samsung can't push their Tizen into mainstream I doubt a tiny company from Finland can.
  - jumasheff 10y ago
    IMHO, with Russians being paranoic about western "spying" and Russians committing their code to upstream, it's likely that there will be something to see in a couple of years.
    - cornedor 10y ago
      I'm not really sure what this agreement really means, but it seems like they already have made some big steps: https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/29/jollas-sailfish-os-now-certified-as-russias-first-android-alternative/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/29/jollas-sailfish-os-now-cer...
      - stOneskull 10y ago
        ooh, that is pretty big. cool.
  - hocuspocus 10y ago
    Willingness and ability are different things. Samsung never tried to push Tizen on mobile phones. Samsung put itself in a position where the company simply cannot walk away from Google, at least in the mobile space (Tizen is actually pretty "mainstream" in smart TVs and wearables). Market shares are pretty much set at this point, and no alternative mobile OS based on linux has a chance to become mainstream, no matter the size of the company backing it. That doesn't stop a small company like Jolla from delivering viable products though, since they don't need to keep Google happy.
  - ethagnawl 10y ago
    > a tiny company from Finland can Based on what a _single person_ from Finland has achieved, I wouldn't be so sure. ;) Seriously, though, why even mention the country of origin?
    - tomcam 10y ago
      > Seriously, though, why even mention the country of origin? Here's a zany answer: maybe they're proud of their country of origin. Hi-larious, I know, right?
- rollcat 10y ago
  Happy user of Jolla and Sailfish. By the way, the phone runs a real Linux distro. There's Wayland, OpenSSH, bash, systemd (ugh...), RPM's, and a ton of good old commandline software like htop, tmux, python, - heck, even gcc if you feel like rebuilding the kernel :) Native apps are built with Qt & QML. There's very little NIH. There's also support for Android apps. Many of the apps from F-Droid run OK, and even lots of commercial stuff. Oh, and the phone is pretty fantastic for all the normal everyday things, like being an actual phone.
  - jumasheff 10y ago
    Have you tried to develop a (simple) Sailfish app yourself?
    - rollcat 10y ago
      It's somewhere on my TODO list :) I make a "f*ck you Krzysztof" app for every new phone OS I get: there's one for J2ME, Android, now gotta learn myself some QML... Krzysztof is not very amused.
- wallacoloo 10y ago
  Here's a link to Sailfish devices on the market: https://together.jolla.com/question/136143/wiki-available-devices-running-sailfish-os/ https://together.jolla.com/question/136143/wiki-available-de... It looks to me that all Sailfish devices that have ever been available are not compatible with 3G/4G US carriers (but some are compatible with 2G). It seems that if anyone in the US wants to seriously use Sailfish, they need to flash a community port of Sailfish to a US-sold Android device. Not a huge deal - it looks like a few manufacturers are actively supporting this ports (e.g. for the Fairphone 2): https://www.fairphone.com/en/2015/10/22/jolla-community-working-on-sailfish-os-for-the-fairphone-2/ https://www.fairphone.com/en/2015/10/22/jolla-community-work...
deleted 10y ago
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ry167 10y ago
Android is open source: https://source.android.com/ https://source.android.com/
- Synaesthesia 10y ago
  Portions of it, lots of it is not.
  - pawadu 10y ago
    If you think that, how do you define Android?
    - Synaesthesia 10y ago
      There's AOSP admire android. AOSP is open source which is some components of the Android system - however a lot of Android is not just AOSP. A lot of it is Google web services and other proprietary stuff.
      - floatboth 10y ago
        You don't have to use "Google Android" to use Android. LineageOS + F-Droid + microG is a very good setup, I use it on my phone. The real problem is the hardware driver blobs.
      - pawadu 10y ago
        But many of these services are also available on iOS. Would you still consider them part of Android?
gingerbread-man 10y ago
It would be nice if there were a 100% free-software version of Android available, or a way to remove all of the proprietary blobs from an Android phone.
- ptman 10y ago
  Like Replicant? http://www.replicant.us/ http://www.replicant.us/
- spacelizard 10y ago
  See Replicant: http://www.replicant.us/ http://www.replicant.us/ Unfortunately it is not well supported yet, as porting it to any given device seems to require rewriting several proprietary Android drivers.
  - evolve2k 10y ago
    Latest release notes are interesting. Latest supported Android seems to be Samsung Galaxy S3. Looks like the core maintainer could benefit from donated android devices for Replicant to run on newer devices. http://blog.replicant.us/2017/02/replicant-6-0-development-updates/ http://blog.replicant.us/2017/02/replicant-6-0-development-u...
- gingerbread-man 10y ago
  ChromeOS has a dev-mode setting to convert the installation to ChromiumOS.
- jhasse 10y ago
  As the OP is looking for an alternative to Ubuntu Phone, one has to bear in mind that Ubuntu Phone wasn't 100% free-software either (it used the same proprietary drivers and blobs as Android).
deleted 10y ago
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tannhaeuser 10y ago
My best bet would be to restart/re-instantiate a community around CyanogenMod/Lineage OS, Android being F/OSS after all. Though maybe the community around CM is still strong (I honestly don't know). Question is, are you willing to spend money (or testing/integration efforts) on a community O/S for your phone in exchange for knowing that you're not being spied on all the time? I could imagine a model where you pay a reasonable price for a tested/supported third-party O/S, but maybe CM has shown this isn't economically feasible.
- frik 10y ago
  You can thank MS for fxxkxng with CM. Now they sponsors Ubuntu, and see how they shift direction. Worst case scenario is EEE of Ubuntu/Canonical.
- bigbugbag 10y ago
  I don't remember android being floss since google bought it. My exprience of cyanogenMod is bad: support for the devices I owned was shaky to inconsistent through time. Then it turned into a commercial attempt at maximizing profit. IMHO the effort put into cyanogenmod would have been better used if put into building an actual OS. Though this is a mostly unreachable moving target as devices get obsolete faster than one can add support for at best manufacturers do not help. Right now I'm considering jolla/sailfish for the next time I buy a phone which hopefully will not happen before 4 or 5 years.
tray5 10y ago
Well how about the PiPhone? :P http://www.davidhunt.ie/piphone-a-raspberry-pi-based-smartphone/ http://www.davidhunt.ie/piphone-a-raspberry-pi-based-smartph...
Jonnax 10y ago
There is Tizen which is being led by Samsung https://www.tizen.org https://www.tizen.org However news that one researcher has found 40 0-days for it doesn't really sound good: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/samsung-tizen-operating-system-bugs-vulnerabilities https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/samsung-tizen-ope... I remember reading about Plasma Mobile https://plasma-mobile.org https://plasma-mobile.org But it looks like the latest phone they use as a Dev device is a Nexus 5x so it may be stalled/dead
- thanksgiving 10y ago
  Someone linked to two daily wtf on hn the other day and that to me shows tizen under the current management is not simply useless but actively harmful.
  - distances 10y ago
    Code quality seems to be a large issue for Samsung in general (no sources, but some first-hand experience). My gut feeling is that it's caused by the extremely bureaucratic Korean corporate culture. Though I'm sure someone who has actually worked there could shed some light to this phenomenon.
  - pawadu 10y ago
    Didn't find it on HN, is this the daily wtf post you mentioned? https://forums.thedailywtf.com/topic/21368/samsung-insisting-on-tizen https://forums.thedailywtf.com/topic/21368/samsung-insisting...
    - thanksgiving 10y ago
      Sorry, was on Mobile* The story was Samsung's Tizen is riddled with security flaws, amateurishly written https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14036965 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14036965
  - doppioandante 10y ago
    Read this one: https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/15001/enlightened/2 https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/15001/enlightened/2
koehr 10y ago
The problem is that most of the hardware is not open. It is hard to get fully open software running in proprietary environments like mobile phones and networks. The fairphone might be worth a look though: https://www.fairphone.com/en/ https://www.fairphone.com/en/
- simondelacourt 10y ago
  Fairphone might be interesting, but it does not solve the problem of blobs, the open source part must come from the chipset providers and they are not that willing.
- nerdponx 10y ago
  I've wondered lately what exactly "not open" means in the hardware context, and why so many manufacturers do not make "open" hardware. Can someone enlighten me? I do understand what blobs are, but I guess I'm not clear on why they're needed.
  - natch 10y ago
    Part of what "not open" means is lack of publicly released documentation.
  - eriknstr 10y ago
    >what exactly "not open" means in the hardware context As natch said, lack of documentation. This lack of documentation prevents others from developing their own drivers etc. >why so many manufacturers do not make "open" hardware Multiple reasons. The first four of which I am confident that often play a large role, and the two last of which are more speculation. 1. Companies might feel that open hardware would put them at a disadvantage because others could copy them. 2. Company might have licensed portions of the hardware from other companies and therefore must adhere to agreements about not sharing information about the licensed hardware with others. 3. Maintaining an open project is a lot of work for a company. Everything from ensuring that the whole process is repeatable, to having a team of lawyers approve everything for release. 4. There is no incentive. Users buy their phones either way, even if everything is closed and proprietary. 5. Regulations regarding wireless communications hardware might apply? 6. Company might be using software tools in the hardware development process that they can't share freely so even if they did share the files others still wouldn't be able to use the files for anything?
i336_ 10y ago
Long-term (1-2 years or so), keep an eye on Fuchsia. Nobody yet knows what Google's intentions are with this project relative to Android (which has a staggering installed base, btw, and is going to stubbornly stick around like a slightly less terrible Windows Mobile 6); right now it's just a research project. But it can apparently scale from tiny IoT sensors to ARM phones to x86 PCs. https://lwn.net/Articles/718267/ https://lwn.net/Articles/718267/ / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002386 EDIT: This just got downvoted to 0, unsure why...
- jhasse 10y ago
  My guess is that Google's intentions are to get rid of the GPL.
  - sangnoir 10y ago
    Maybe not directly - my guess is that they want to get rid of the Linux kernel: the Linux driver model leaves Android upgrades held hostage by OEMs and SoC manufacturers who are incentivized against old phones getting OS upgrades (planned obsolescence). With Fuchsia, Google has a clean slate and can choose to have 'write-once' drivers with a stable driver interface across kernel/version upgrades.
    - jhasse 10y ago
      > With Fuchsia, Google has a clean slate and can choose to have 'write-once' drivers with a stable driver interface across kernel/version upgrades. Which makes it easier to write proprietary drivers.
      - sangnoir 10y ago
        Writing once-off proprietary drivers for Linux is equally easy, no more, no less. Proprietary Linux drivers have the added downside of not supporting later kernel versions.
        10y ago
unlmtd 10y ago
The problem isn't software. Let's say I have a dozen engineers to develop a mobile UI on top of BSD. What do we use? Nothing, Nada, rien. There is no real hardware. Even Linus can make a kernel, if there is hardware to develop it on! So software isn't the problem.
jhasse 10y ago
Android (without Google Services) is FOSS. Check out http://lineageos.org/ http://lineageos.org/ (successor of CyanogenMod). As a replacement for the Play Store, check out https://f-droid.org/ https://f-droid.org/
- distances 10y ago
  F-Droid is cool but will lack lots of applications, even open source ones. I recently checked what it would require to publish my app there -- alas, can't do that since my app includes an API key that can't be published (according to the rules of the service in question), and F-Droid would need that[1]. [1] https://f-droid.org/forums/topic/what-to-do-with-private-api-keys https://f-droid.org/forums/topic/what-to-do-with-private-api...
  - captn3m0 10y ago
    If the key is published as part of the APK, it is already public. Not committing it on github doesn't really reduce exposure.
    - pmtarantino 10y ago
      I never developed an app so I dont know, but if you cant include in the APK because people can decode it, how do you distribute keys and secret strings?
      - iokanuon 10y ago
        You do it like that and just hope people won't abuse it.
      - PeterisP 10y ago
        What secret strings? You distribute user-specific secrets after a user has logged in over a secure channel. You don't get to have app-specific secrets - since anybody can get and run the app (and modify it!), nothing in it has a reason to be secret. This means that you don't get to have an API that's available only through that app and with limitations set by that app. If you use a third-party API that requires you to enforce limits on its use (e.g. that end users can't redistribute access to that API), this means that you can't meet the requirements of that API licencing.
daccle 10y ago
Ubnutu Phone just works fine on a FairPhone2
beagle3 10y ago
Was there an official announcement on the killing of Ubuntu Phone? There was an official pause announcement, and it might as well be dead - is there an official status update?
- slizard 10y ago
  https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/04/05/growing-ubuntu-for-cloud-and-iot-rather-than-phone-and-convergence/ https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/04/05/growing-ubuntu-for-cl...
dcdevito 10y ago
There isn't (and never was) one worth using, so move on with your life
dandelion_lover 10y ago
To me the best alternative is https://neo900.org https://neo900.org. However, expensive it is. They truly care about the privacy and redesign the hardware according to this goal.
- joecool1029 10y ago
  If it ever sees the light of day. I'm an early backer and they've really had issues keeping their organization together and costs under control. Maybe by 2020 and for $5000 we will have a truly free phone with the specs of a device from 2009!
- bratch 10y ago
  This is what I'm waiting for, but in the meantime I'm still running Maemo 5 on an N900. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maemo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maemo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N900 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N900 There's still a relatively active community going: https://talk.maemo.org/ https://talk.maemo.org/
hcal 10y ago
The http://puri.sm http://puri.sm people are trying to make an open source phone running their distro PureOS (based on debian). They even said on a podcast that they have removed or mitigated the binary blob issues. Apparently they are already working with Gnome developers to make Gnome work on a small screen and build the specialized phone software like a dialer. http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/10/purism-wants-make-truly-open-source-linux-phone http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/10/purism-wants-make-truly-o...
- grizzles 10y ago
  Sadly, it will fail. I spoke to the founder about the project and in my opinion he's underestimated the challenge. He said something to me like "all we need to do is solve the battery life issue". That's like saying, to get to space all we need to do is build the space shuttle. As far as efficiency is concerned, android is the only show in town. Debian won't cut it. What he does works for stuff you plug in, not for battery operated gadgets.
hannob 10y ago
The alternative is Android. Unfortunately the "alternative android" ecosystem isn't very good. My dream would be an android "distribution", that doesn't rely on some murky "update by getting a new image somewhere if you're lucky enough that someone built one for your device". WOuld work more like a linux distribution (packages and updating) and is generic over a variety of phones. Challenge is probably how to handle drivers.
- beefsack 10y ago
  For me, a very interesting option at the moment is Sony's official AOSP builds for a number of Xperia devices[1]. You're able to build an image yourself from their source if you'd like slightly more comfort, and can run it without gapps if you're privacy or software freedom conscious. [1]: https://developer.sonymobile.com/open-devices/ https://developer.sonymobile.com/open-devices/
  - loxs 10y ago
    Interesting - if this is not buggy as hell, it'll be a good life extender of my Z3 Compact
- johncolanduoni 10y ago
  And kernels, and random software the drivers require, and special snowflake bootloaders, ... I'd love to see it, but considering how long it took desktop Linux distibutions to run semi-reliably on most PCs which have far fewer hardware differences and important components without even partially reverse engineered specifications, I'm very suspicious this is a feasible way forward.
- jhasse 10y ago
  > My dream would be an android "distribution", that doesn't rely on some murky "update by getting a new image somewhere if you're lucky enough that someone built one for your device". LineageOS (http://lineageos.org/ http://lineageos.org/) has OTA updates with UI: https://1.f.ix.de/scale/geometry/710x500/q75/imgs/71/2/1/3/6/5/2/2/08-9193144f71369d06.png https://1.f.ix.de/scale/geometry/710x500/q75/imgs/71/2/1/3/6... So your dream has already came true :)
emilsedgh 10y ago
If you want community based FOSS mobile operating system that is actively developed [0], Plasma Mobile is the answer. I think the biggest issue is still device support. [0] https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/plasma-devel/2017-April/thread.html https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/plasma-devel/2017-April/threa...
- Programmatic 10y ago
  Have you actually used Plasma? I would be curious to know your experiences if so.
klunger 10y ago
Well, it isn't Tizen https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/samsung-tizen-operating-system-bugs-vulnerabilities https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/samsung-tizen-ope...
unicornporn 10y ago
My vote goes to https://copperhead.co/android/ https://copperhead.co/android/ I've been running it for some time now and I like it a lot. Support for a lot of phones? No. Wide range of apps available via F-droid? Decent. I'm not a very appy guy though. Most of my needs are browser based.
- mimi89999 10y ago
  It is not FOSS anymore
  - notsrg 10y ago
    You can blame the FOSS community for that one.
  - milcron 10y ago
    How do you mean?
    - notsrg 10y ago
      The project has transitioned to a non-commercial license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) until sustainable funding has been acquired. The code is still open source, but apparently asking to be compensated for work that improves the security of the entire Android ecosystem is too much for FOSS fanatics.
demarq 10y ago
Jolla on a Sony Experia? Sony put everything you need to run your OS on some of their Xperia phones on GitHub as part of their Open Device Program. Jolla which is going to become open source sometime has been successfully (in feburary 2017) run on one of the devices. So in the near future, there is hope in that direction.
- wvh 10y ago
  I second this, I'm pretty happy with my 1st gen Jolla, though it desperately needs an hardware update. To be able to get a terminal either on the device or by logging in with SSH to fix things or make changes is great. Not all the UI components are open source (yet?) though it's pretty close to stock Qt; at least the base system is open-source, and that's more important to me – I think they want to prevent full rip-offs rather than lock down the system from their own users. I've been critical of these computer-in-your-pocket claims a few years ago, but I can see now that if the hardware keeps improving at the rate it does, having a full Linux system based on something like Sailfish or Ubuntu Phone with a keyboard and screen attached could work out for a lot of scenarios.
phh 10y ago
Ok, so Android is open-source as mentioned already by other comments. Now the thing with Android is that, it is just a framework, so saying Android is Open Source is missing big points There are two major limits: 1. What about apps? 2. What about drivers? Today, if you get an Android phone with Google Apps, especially Google Play Store, you have access to many tools that can be considered useful for everyday use, which you won't have with FOSS Android. Here are some examples: With Play Store, you can have (mostly?) any IM, as long as you install the app going with it. The only possibility I know to do that with FOSS Android, is to use matrix or IRC, and have server-side libpuprle connectors. With FOSS Android You don't have factorized push socket: Most apps pushing notifications on Android require GCM. But even if it doesn't require GCM, there is nothing fully open-source an app developer can use. All they can do, is open a socket to their own server, and deal with it, which is a huge battery-killer. Many people are mentioning f-droid as an alternative to Play Store. I'm sorry, but I consider this a joke. I highly respect the work done on f-droid, but this is not a usable alternative. For instance, you want to save your SMS. We call that backup, but not every knows that. Well you search for "save sms" on f-droid. No result. You search for "save sms" on Google Play Store, the second result is SMS Backup+ which is open-source! You search for SMS, the result is on the first page. Same thing happen if you just search for "sms", QKSMS (an opensource SMS application) is much easier to find with Google Play Store than f-droid. Even to look for open-source apps, you're better off with Google Play Store! Again, I totally respect F-Droid devs, this is this way because of their choice of not tracking or saving any user information at all, which is legit. But then, some people might want something intermediary. Just counting the number of installations of an app can be really useful to better sort apps (SMS Backup+ and QKSMS really deserve to be among the top in the results for SMS). Now, about the drivers. Yes Android is open-source, but good luck running a phone with a FOSS Android! At the moment, you have the choice with either replicant, which is old and missing gpu acceleration, or running a mainline Linux kernel with Mesa & stuff, but then you have no radio. Though I have to mention that on the drivers side, Sailfish OS and Ubuntu phone have also those problems.
- bigbugbag 10y ago
  > Ok, so Android is open-source as mentioned already by other comments. Is it ? I thought that only the AOSP part of Android was actually open source and not that useful by itself. I might be wrong here but my understanding is that the opensource in Android is mostly for show/marketing and is getting worse with time.
d2kx 10y ago
The next big OS is going to be Google Fuchsia, which runs on the Magenta kernel (not Linux) and runs apps built with Flutter. Inb4 nay-sayers, but if you have followed Fuchsia for a few months and have seen the speed of development and just how many people and new technologies are involved, you will see why this isn't even a question.
- Programmatic 10y ago
  Given Google's current track record for AOSP with bringing active development into Google Play and deprecating open source components, I am skeptical that it will be good for openness.
- stOneskull 10y ago
  what's in it for google?
Nutomic 10y ago
I'm personally using LinageOS together with microG and F-Droid. MicroG is necessary if you don't have Google apps installed, to get push notifications. Unfortunately, it is still rather complicated to install. http://lineageos.org/ http://lineageos.org/ https://microg.org/ https://microg.org/ https://f-droid.org/ https://f-droid.org/
- floatboth 10y ago
  I wouldn't say its complicated. Just have to patch with https://github.com/ale5000-git/tingle https://github.com/ale5000-git/tingle after every update to keep the fake google signature working.
- kevlar1818 10y ago
  Any advice and/or helpful links for installing microG? I've found the microG documentation a little less than helpful.
  - vinay427 10y ago
    Just install F-droid using the apk from the official site, add the repo [1], refresh the package list if this was not done automatically by F-droid, and install GmsCore along with GsfProxy in F-droid. [1]: You can use the QR code here to avoid typing the URL into F-droid: https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore/wiki/Downloads https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore/wiki...
- colemannugent 10y ago
  LineageOS has given my S5 a new lease on life. Bit of a pain to install on a Verizon phone though.
- hueller 10y ago
  I use lineage, but not microg. Things like Conversations poll effectively enough and it keeps me off the Google. I feel like this isn't a solution for the planned obsolescence inherent in mobile devices though. Every release after Google officially drops support (and provides their own image) gets exponentially harder. The amount of things moving out of AOSP and into Play services grows every month too.
fsiefken 10y ago
* FreeRTOS Pebble (Pebble LIVES!) https://github.com/ginge/FreeRTOS-Pebble https://github.com/ginge/FreeRTOS-Pebble * Tizen OS https://developer.tizen.org/ https://developer.tizen.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizen Alternatively you could use Termux on Android to use the GNU/Linux ecosystem on your phone.
grizzles 10y ago
There is a group called Mediatek Android Developers. They make android work with some pretty low cost handsets.
FossParrot 10y ago
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Main_Page http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Main_Page Project seems to be abandoned?
bikamonki 10y ago
I've faced the same dilemma and ended up stuck in Android bc of one single app: Whatsapp. A phone is (still) mostly a communications tool and 99,99% of my contacts use Whatsapp as the primary tool to chat/call/share. So, unless I want to be an e-hermit I need a phone that runs Whatsapp. (For a little while, there was an unofficial Whatsapp API which I used to bridge chats to my Firefox OS ZTE)
- Spearchucker 10y ago
  I read comments like yours and wonder what the other side looks like. I have never, ever installed WhatsApp on my phone. My life hasn't disintegrated, or even degraded - but that's exactly why I wonder. Would my life be better if I use it?
  - bikamonki 10y ago
    I guess it depends on your cultural background. We latinos tend to be a lot more connected with family and friends. It is also the economic incentive. In a poor country, a Whatsapp over wifi call is basically free. Furthermore, a key selling point for most carriers down here is: unlimited Whatsapp and Facebook.
lloeki 10y ago
I was just reading about webOS[0] lately and it turns out LuneOS[1] exists and is supposed to work wherever cyanogenmod did. [0]: http://www.openwebosproject.org http://www.openwebosproject.org [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LuneOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LuneOS
- patcheudor 10y ago
  I performed numerous security reviews of WebOS and frankly it was a bit of a problem. I never actually made it to the point of doing kernel exploitation since the numerous XSS vuln discoveries kept me pretty busy. What was unfortunate at the time is that the WebOS team didn't seem to take the XSS situation seriously even though XSS on that platform effectively compromised the entire UX. I made at least one POC which emulated WebOS trust dialogs. There's no need to break out of an application sandbox when you can make the application look like WebOS, complete with authentic looking authentication dialogs. I've not looked at it in several years, however. Maybe LuneOS has solved some of the core issues but I'd be skeptical as the whole OS was pretty well designed if your intention was to introduce XSS vulnerabilities.
heuller 10y ago
We need hardware that doesn't need to get upgraded every two years. AOSP doesn't cut it since Google inevitably stops building isos for their hardware and the community can't support a million devices. The whole market is sorely in need of generic drivers. The fact that I can pick up a PC from the nineties and install an up to date Linux proves that we're not there yet in the mobile world. Is there a way currently to install baremetal Linux on a phone without emulating it? A small Linux, usb microphone and VoIP would get me 90% there.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  > the community can't support a million devices If anything the open source community is a lot better in supporting large numbers of devices than closed source has ever been. Witness the incredible hardware support in your average linux kernel. The only reason they're a bit behind the times is because hardware manufacturers are loath to open up their specifications to open source implementers. > The fact that I can pick up a PC from the nineties and install an up to date Linux See, that's exactly the reason why this works.
  - AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
    As someone who still has an HP Touchpad, the unfortunate pattern of AOSP / Cyanogenmod / LineageOS support is the following: 1) One volunteer spearheads the development effort towards keeping phone/tablet/device X supported. 2) Various other people draw on the 90% base work already done by Lead #1, add their own wrappers, tweaks, etc, such that the community on the whole appears to be vibrant and bustling around development for device X. 3) Lead #1 eventually stops supporting the project because he gets a newer device. 4) None of the developer's behind Lead #1's forks have sufficient technical knowledge to continue the base development without him, and all of their forks stop updating as well. 5) Community on the whole for Device X fizzles out. I've seen it happen multiple times on XDA-developers forums. That dozens/hundreds/thousands of people are using an AOSP-based ROM on a device does not mean that the community necessarily has the technical knowledge to continue it without someone to steward the project. The volunteer leads do an incredible job, but at the end of the day, they usually only last as long as the device is the lead's daily driver--after that, they usually stop.
tixocloud 10y ago
How easy would it be to mod the loading screen and basic UI/UX on Android?
elchudi2 10y ago
This one could be an option https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/ https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/
TheAceOfHearts 10y ago
I placed a preorder for a Pyra [0]. I'm hoping it works well enough to allow me to replace my locked down Pixel. [0] https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/ https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/
- andrey_utkin 10y ago
  In mobile FOSS computing, Pyra is The Handheld PC, and GTA04 is The Smartphone. Both being developed partially by same people. Both working with generic recent ARM Debian Linux and recent kernels. Kernels have some non-mainlined parts due to scarcity of engineering resources, but all features are forward-ported on each release and even RC of mainline Linux. My personal expectations from Pyra are very high.
  - bigbugbag 10y ago
    I still have my openpandora from the first preorder batch, it delivered almost all expectations I had for it and sometimes even went beyond battery life got pushed further than 10+hours and had a memory upgrade. I have no doubt the pyra will deliver.
webaholic 10y ago
Maru OS. It installs a debian system along-side Android, not sure if it's alternative enough though. http://maruos.com/ http://maruos.com/
sparkling 10y ago
LinageOS + OpenGapps for a minimal Google Play Services installation (the "nano" flavour). Just make sure to buy a device that has a large userbase and good LinageOS community support [1]. I am using a $170 Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 with LineageOS and could not be happier with it. [1] check out https://stats.lineageos.org/ https://stats.lineageos.org/ for popular devices and also check the devices subforum on the XDA forums
redsummer 10y ago
The ZeroPhone is based on the raspberry pi. https://hackaday.io/project/19035-zerophone-a-raspberry-pi-smartphone/log/51839-project-description-and-frequently-asked-questions https://hackaday.io/project/19035-zerophone-a-raspberry-pi-s... Reddit AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/5nwmfx/im_making_a_pipowered_opensource_mobile_phone/ https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/5nwmfx/im_mak... $50. Calling, SMS. Alarm clock, calendar, calculator, phonebook, file browser, web browser and music player. I expect these will be very simple given the screen.
Apocryphon 10y ago
Plasma Mobile: https://plasma-mobile.org https://plasma-mobile.org https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Mobile https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Mobile
jimmies 10y ago
You are at the point of 2002-2004 of Desktop OS - if you want to use a mobile OSS OS, you're just have to deal with lots of inconveniences. It depends on what are you looking for and what you find tolerable. I have been annoyed with the current paradigms of modern mobile OSes where I'm constantly bombarded with notifications and things that I need to keep up with. So for me, an usable OSS can have lots of drawback that I'm willing to sacrifice - I don't need any of the notifications or apps. If you don't care about the aesthetic, your best bet is Lineage. It is Android without Google and you can still get lots of stuff done. Personally, I came back to a cheap WebOS phone with a cheap plan and after I installed WebOS 2, it has been really usable. LuneOS is supposed to be the continuation of WebOS, but it's just not that usable yet - I see no way to sync with my Google account (which syncs fine with the 10 year old WebOS instance via Exchange). So I would keep an eye on the LuneOS development. For such a niche and small dev team, they have been continuing making improvements. Totally impressed by that.
SamWhited 10y ago
I've been using OmniROM (https://omnirom.org/); https://omnirom.org/); it was a fork of Cyanogenmod when they went commercial initially. Not sure what the difference is between it and LineageoOS or why the lineage people didn't just start developing for omnirom; maybe they still have political differences or something. Regardless, it seems to work well.
chrisdevereux 10y ago
Thought experiment: Say that I have a raspberry pi or similar. What hardware do I need to plug a sim card in and connect to a mobile network? Can I order it from a commodity supplier?
- rocky1138 10y ago
  The Pyra is attempting to do this. https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/ https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/
- MrMember 10y ago
  It's not too difficult to do yourself. http://www.davidhunt.ie/piphone-a-raspberry-pi-based-smartphone/ http://www.davidhunt.ie/piphone-a-raspberry-pi-based-smartph...
- patrickg_zill 10y ago
  Both Adafruit and SparkFun have GSM add on boards. To that, add a microsim card activated with the provider of your choice.
darrmit 10y ago
Am I the only one who has decided that I'm more comfortable with iOS and an AppleID than I am with something like LineageOS and still having to have a Google account - even though I prefer Android? I'm operating under the assumption that Apple is more privacy friendly than Google under pretty much any circumstance. I've done the Cyanogen + F-Droid thing and it's just miserably inconvenient, and none of the "proprietary" alternative app stores have any sort of catalog to write home about.
- manmal 10y ago
  Yes, same here. I'd use iMessage over WhatsApp or Duo (or whatever Google's chat du jour is called) any time. They do have glitches (like the recently exposed iCloud bug where private browsing histories were stored indefinitely), but I don't attribute them to monetizability.
  - ahassan 10y ago
    Why WhatsApp? Messages are E2E encrypted so it's fairly safe to use. Are you worried about metadata collection?
    - manmal 10y ago
      I am worried about backdoors, keys being stored somewhere else, ...
- BeetleB 10y ago
  >I'm operating under the assumption that Apple is more privacy friendly than Google under pretty much any circumstance. I'm curious as to why...?
  - jacobwg 10y ago
    Because Google is primarily (not solely) an advertising / information company, so there's a financial incentive to sacrifice privacy. Apple is primarily (not solely) a hardware / product company, so the financial incentives are different. There's also a stronger history of Apple fighting for user privacy against government requests, etc.
kevinSuttle 10y ago
Am I the only one who misses Web OS and now Ubuntu Phone?
- dade_ 10y ago
  Great point. I didn't know that Web OS was released as Open Source by HP, or that LG bought it... http://www.openwebosproject.org/ http://www.openwebosproject.org/
alinspired 10y ago
LineageOS with your choice of google apps. Easy to do with opengapps config file or "aroma" gapps: https://github.com/opengapps/opengapps/wiki/Advanced-Features-and-Options#include-or-exclude-gapps https://github.com/opengapps/opengapps/wiki/Advanced-Feature...
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248 points by benevol 10y ago

SailfishOS https://sailfishos.org/ https://sailfishos.org/ UPD: Jolla -- company behind SailfishOS (ex-Nokia people) https://jolla.com/about/ https://jolla.com/about/

GranPC 10y ago
Sailfish is not open source, it's just based on other open source work. Most of their original code is proprietary.
- jumasheff 10y ago
  They are going to make it open (they promise to, at least): https://blog.jolla.com/letter-jolla-ceo/ https://blog.jolla.com/letter-jolla-ceo/
- skykooler 10y ago
  However, the base it runs on - Mer - is open source, and there is an alternative open UI (Glacier UI). Unfortunately this further limits the applications that can run on it.
pawadu 10y ago
I have not touched one of these myself but friends who did had many positive things to say about it. Nevertheless, if Samsung can't push their Tizen into mainstream I doubt a tiny company from Finland can.
- jumasheff 10y ago
  IMHO, with Russians being paranoic about western "spying" and Russians committing their code to upstream, it's likely that there will be something to see in a couple of years.
  - cornedor 10y ago
    I'm not really sure what this agreement really means, but it seems like they already have made some big steps: https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/29/jollas-sailfish-os-now-certified-as-russias-first-android-alternative/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/29/jollas-sailfish-os-now-cer...
    - stOneskull 10y ago
      ooh, that is pretty big. cool.
- hocuspocus 10y ago
  Willingness and ability are different things. Samsung never tried to push Tizen on mobile phones. Samsung put itself in a position where the company simply cannot walk away from Google, at least in the mobile space (Tizen is actually pretty "mainstream" in smart TVs and wearables). Market shares are pretty much set at this point, and no alternative mobile OS based on linux has a chance to become mainstream, no matter the size of the company backing it. That doesn't stop a small company like Jolla from delivering viable products though, since they don't need to keep Google happy.
- ethagnawl 10y ago
  > a tiny company from Finland can Based on what a _single person_ from Finland has achieved, I wouldn't be so sure. ;) Seriously, though, why even mention the country of origin?
  - tomcam 10y ago
    > Seriously, though, why even mention the country of origin? Here's a zany answer: maybe they're proud of their country of origin. Hi-larious, I know, right?
rollcat 10y ago
Happy user of Jolla and Sailfish. By the way, the phone runs a real Linux distro. There's Wayland, OpenSSH, bash, systemd (ugh...), RPM's, and a ton of good old commandline software like htop, tmux, python, - heck, even gcc if you feel like rebuilding the kernel :) Native apps are built with Qt & QML. There's very little NIH. There's also support for Android apps. Many of the apps from F-Droid run OK, and even lots of commercial stuff. Oh, and the phone is pretty fantastic for all the normal everyday things, like being an actual phone.
- jumasheff 10y ago
  Have you tried to develop a (simple) Sailfish app yourself?
  - rollcat 10y ago
    It's somewhere on my TODO list :) I make a "f*ck you Krzysztof" app for every new phone OS I get: there's one for J2ME, Android, now gotta learn myself some QML... Krzysztof is not very amused.
wallacoloo 10y ago
Here's a link to Sailfish devices on the market: https://together.jolla.com/question/136143/wiki-available-devices-running-sailfish-os/ https://together.jolla.com/question/136143/wiki-available-de... It looks to me that all Sailfish devices that have ever been available are not compatible with 3G/4G US carriers (but some are compatible with 2G). It seems that if anyone in the US wants to seriously use Sailfish, they need to flash a community port of Sailfish to a US-sold Android device. Not a huge deal - it looks like a few manufacturers are actively supporting this ports (e.g. for the Fairphone 2): https://www.fairphone.com/en/2015/10/22/jolla-community-working-on-sailfish-os-for-the-fairphone-2/ https://www.fairphone.com/en/2015/10/22/jolla-community-work...

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ry167 10y ago

Android is open source: https://source.android.com/ https://source.android.com/

Synaesthesia 10y ago
Portions of it, lots of it is not.
- pawadu 10y ago
  If you think that, how do you define Android?
  - Synaesthesia 10y ago
    There's AOSP admire android. AOSP is open source which is some components of the Android system - however a lot of Android is not just AOSP. A lot of it is Google web services and other proprietary stuff.
    - floatboth 10y ago
      You don't have to use "Google Android" to use Android. LineageOS + F-Droid + microG is a very good setup, I use it on my phone. The real problem is the hardware driver blobs.
    - pawadu 10y ago
      But many of these services are also available on iOS. Would you still consider them part of Android?

gingerbread-man 10y ago

It would be nice if there were a 100% free-software version of Android available, or a way to remove all of the proprietary blobs from an Android phone.

ptman 10y ago
Like Replicant? http://www.replicant.us/ http://www.replicant.us/
spacelizard 10y ago
See Replicant: http://www.replicant.us/ http://www.replicant.us/ Unfortunately it is not well supported yet, as porting it to any given device seems to require rewriting several proprietary Android drivers.
- evolve2k 10y ago
  Latest release notes are interesting. Latest supported Android seems to be Samsung Galaxy S3. Looks like the core maintainer could benefit from donated android devices for Replicant to run on newer devices. http://blog.replicant.us/2017/02/replicant-6-0-development-updates/ http://blog.replicant.us/2017/02/replicant-6-0-development-u...
gingerbread-man 10y ago
ChromeOS has a dev-mode setting to convert the installation to ChromiumOS.
jhasse 10y ago
As the OP is looking for an alternative to Ubuntu Phone, one has to bear in mind that Ubuntu Phone wasn't 100% free-software either (it used the same proprietary drivers and blobs as Android).

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tannhaeuser 10y ago

My best bet would be to restart/re-instantiate a community around CyanogenMod/Lineage OS, Android being F/OSS after all. Though maybe the community around CM is still strong (I honestly don't know). Question is, are you willing to spend money (or testing/integration efforts) on a community O/S for your phone in exchange for knowing that you're not being spied on all the time? I could imagine a model where you pay a reasonable price for a tested/supported third-party O/S, but maybe CM has shown this isn't economically feasible.

frik 10y ago
You can thank MS for fxxkxng with CM. Now they sponsors Ubuntu, and see how they shift direction. Worst case scenario is EEE of Ubuntu/Canonical.
bigbugbag 10y ago
I don't remember android being floss since google bought it. My exprience of cyanogenMod is bad: support for the devices I owned was shaky to inconsistent through time. Then it turned into a commercial attempt at maximizing profit. IMHO the effort put into cyanogenmod would have been better used if put into building an actual OS. Though this is a mostly unreachable moving target as devices get obsolete faster than one can add support for at best manufacturers do not help. Right now I'm considering jolla/sailfish for the next time I buy a phone which hopefully will not happen before 4 or 5 years.

tray5 10y ago

Well how about the PiPhone? :P http://www.davidhunt.ie/piphone-a-raspberry-pi-based-smartphone/ http://www.davidhunt.ie/piphone-a-raspberry-pi-based-smartph...

Jonnax 10y ago

There is Tizen which is being led by Samsung https://www.tizen.org https://www.tizen.org However news that one researcher has found 40 0-days for it doesn't really sound good: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/samsung-tizen-operating-system-bugs-vulnerabilities https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/samsung-tizen-ope... I remember reading about Plasma Mobile https://plasma-mobile.org https://plasma-mobile.org But it looks like the latest phone they use as a Dev device is a Nexus 5x so it may be stalled/dead

thanksgiving 10y ago
Someone linked to two daily wtf on hn the other day and that to me shows tizen under the current management is not simply useless but actively harmful.
- distances 10y ago
  Code quality seems to be a large issue for Samsung in general (no sources, but some first-hand experience). My gut feeling is that it's caused by the extremely bureaucratic Korean corporate culture. Though I'm sure someone who has actually worked there could shed some light to this phenomenon.
- pawadu 10y ago
  Didn't find it on HN, is this the daily wtf post you mentioned? https://forums.thedailywtf.com/topic/21368/samsung-insisting-on-tizen https://forums.thedailywtf.com/topic/21368/samsung-insisting...
  - thanksgiving 10y ago
    Sorry, was on Mobile* The story was Samsung's Tizen is riddled with security flaws, amateurishly written https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14036965 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14036965
- doppioandante 10y ago
  Read this one: https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/15001/enlightened/2 https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/15001/enlightened/2

koehr 10y ago

The problem is that most of the hardware is not open. It is hard to get fully open software running in proprietary environments like mobile phones and networks. The fairphone might be worth a look though: https://www.fairphone.com/en/ https://www.fairphone.com/en/

simondelacourt 10y ago
Fairphone might be interesting, but it does not solve the problem of blobs, the open source part must come from the chipset providers and they are not that willing.
nerdponx 10y ago
I've wondered lately what exactly "not open" means in the hardware context, and why so many manufacturers do not make "open" hardware. Can someone enlighten me? I do understand what blobs are, but I guess I'm not clear on why they're needed.
- natch 10y ago
  Part of what "not open" means is lack of publicly released documentation.
- eriknstr 10y ago
  >what exactly "not open" means in the hardware context As natch said, lack of documentation. This lack of documentation prevents others from developing their own drivers etc. >why so many manufacturers do not make "open" hardware Multiple reasons. The first four of which I am confident that often play a large role, and the two last of which are more speculation. 1. Companies might feel that open hardware would put them at a disadvantage because others could copy them. 2. Company might have licensed portions of the hardware from other companies and therefore must adhere to agreements about not sharing information about the licensed hardware with others. 3. Maintaining an open project is a lot of work for a company. Everything from ensuring that the whole process is repeatable, to having a team of lawyers approve everything for release. 4. There is no incentive. Users buy their phones either way, even if everything is closed and proprietary. 5. Regulations regarding wireless communications hardware might apply? 6. Company might be using software tools in the hardware development process that they can't share freely so even if they did share the files others still wouldn't be able to use the files for anything?

i336_ 10y ago

Long-term (1-2 years or so), keep an eye on Fuchsia. Nobody yet knows what Google's intentions are with this project relative to Android (which has a staggering installed base, btw, and is going to stubbornly stick around like a slightly less terrible Windows Mobile 6); right now it's just a research project. But it can apparently scale from tiny IoT sensors to ARM phones to x86 PCs. https://lwn.net/Articles/718267/ https://lwn.net/Articles/718267/ / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002386 EDIT: This just got downvoted to 0, unsure why...

jhasse 10y ago
My guess is that Google's intentions are to get rid of the GPL.
- sangnoir 10y ago
  Maybe not directly - my guess is that they want to get rid of the Linux kernel: the Linux driver model leaves Android upgrades held hostage by OEMs and SoC manufacturers who are incentivized against old phones getting OS upgrades (planned obsolescence). With Fuchsia, Google has a clean slate and can choose to have 'write-once' drivers with a stable driver interface across kernel/version upgrades.
  - jhasse 10y ago
    > With Fuchsia, Google has a clean slate and can choose to have 'write-once' drivers with a stable driver interface across kernel/version upgrades. Which makes it easier to write proprietary drivers.
    - sangnoir 10y ago
      Writing once-off proprietary drivers for Linux is equally easy, no more, no less. Proprietary Linux drivers have the added downside of not supporting later kernel versions.
      - 10y ago

unlmtd 10y ago

The problem isn't software. Let's say I have a dozen engineers to develop a mobile UI on top of BSD. What do we use? Nothing, Nada, rien. There is no real hardware. Even Linus can make a kernel, if there is hardware to develop it on! So software isn't the problem.

jhasse 10y ago

Android (without Google Services) is FOSS. Check out http://lineageos.org/ http://lineageos.org/ (successor of CyanogenMod). As a replacement for the Play Store, check out https://f-droid.org/ https://f-droid.org/

distances 10y ago
F-Droid is cool but will lack lots of applications, even open source ones. I recently checked what it would require to publish my app there -- alas, can't do that since my app includes an API key that can't be published (according to the rules of the service in question), and F-Droid would need that[1]. [1] https://f-droid.org/forums/topic/what-to-do-with-private-api-keys https://f-droid.org/forums/topic/what-to-do-with-private-api...
- captn3m0 10y ago
  If the key is published as part of the APK, it is already public. Not committing it on github doesn't really reduce exposure.
  - pmtarantino 10y ago
    I never developed an app so I dont know, but if you cant include in the APK because people can decode it, how do you distribute keys and secret strings?
    - iokanuon 10y ago
      You do it like that and just hope people won't abuse it.
    - PeterisP 10y ago
      What secret strings? You distribute user-specific secrets after a user has logged in over a secure channel. You don't get to have app-specific secrets - since anybody can get and run the app (and modify it!), nothing in it has a reason to be secret. This means that you don't get to have an API that's available only through that app and with limitations set by that app. If you use a third-party API that requires you to enforce limits on its use (e.g. that end users can't redistribute access to that API), this means that you can't meet the requirements of that API licencing.

daccle 10y ago

Ubnutu Phone just works fine on a FairPhone2

beagle3 10y ago

Was there an official announcement on the killing of Ubuntu Phone? There was an official pause announcement, and it might as well be dead - is there an official status update?

slizard 10y ago
https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/04/05/growing-ubuntu-for-cloud-and-iot-rather-than-phone-and-convergence/ https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/04/05/growing-ubuntu-for-cl...

dcdevito 10y ago

There isn't (and never was) one worth using, so move on with your life

dandelion_lover 10y ago

To me the best alternative is https://neo900.org https://neo900.org. However, expensive it is. They truly care about the privacy and redesign the hardware according to this goal.

joecool1029 10y ago
If it ever sees the light of day. I'm an early backer and they've really had issues keeping their organization together and costs under control. Maybe by 2020 and for $5000 we will have a truly free phone with the specs of a device from 2009!
bratch 10y ago
This is what I'm waiting for, but in the meantime I'm still running Maemo 5 on an N900. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maemo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maemo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N900 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N900 There's still a relatively active community going: https://talk.maemo.org/ https://talk.maemo.org/

hcal 10y ago

The http://puri.sm http://puri.sm people are trying to make an open source phone running their distro PureOS (based on debian). They even said on a podcast that they have removed or mitigated the binary blob issues. Apparently they are already working with Gnome developers to make Gnome work on a small screen and build the specialized phone software like a dialer. http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/10/purism-wants-make-truly-open-source-linux-phone http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/10/purism-wants-make-truly-o...

grizzles 10y ago
Sadly, it will fail. I spoke to the founder about the project and in my opinion he's underestimated the challenge. He said something to me like "all we need to do is solve the battery life issue". That's like saying, to get to space all we need to do is build the space shuttle. As far as efficiency is concerned, android is the only show in town. Debian won't cut it. What he does works for stuff you plug in, not for battery operated gadgets.

hannob 10y ago

The alternative is Android. Unfortunately the "alternative android" ecosystem isn't very good. My dream would be an android "distribution", that doesn't rely on some murky "update by getting a new image somewhere if you're lucky enough that someone built one for your device". WOuld work more like a linux distribution (packages and updating) and is generic over a variety of phones. Challenge is probably how to handle drivers.

beefsack 10y ago
For me, a very interesting option at the moment is Sony's official AOSP builds for a number of Xperia devices[1]. You're able to build an image yourself from their source if you'd like slightly more comfort, and can run it without gapps if you're privacy or software freedom conscious. [1]: https://developer.sonymobile.com/open-devices/ https://developer.sonymobile.com/open-devices/
- loxs 10y ago
  Interesting - if this is not buggy as hell, it'll be a good life extender of my Z3 Compact
johncolanduoni 10y ago
And kernels, and random software the drivers require, and special snowflake bootloaders, ... I'd love to see it, but considering how long it took desktop Linux distibutions to run semi-reliably on most PCs which have far fewer hardware differences and important components without even partially reverse engineered specifications, I'm very suspicious this is a feasible way forward.
jhasse 10y ago
> My dream would be an android "distribution", that doesn't rely on some murky "update by getting a new image somewhere if you're lucky enough that someone built one for your device". LineageOS (http://lineageos.org/ http://lineageos.org/) has OTA updates with UI: https://1.f.ix.de/scale/geometry/710x500/q75/imgs/71/2/1/3/6/5/2/2/08-9193144f71369d06.png https://1.f.ix.de/scale/geometry/710x500/q75/imgs/71/2/1/3/6... So your dream has already came true :)

emilsedgh 10y ago

If you want community based FOSS mobile operating system that is actively developed [0], Plasma Mobile is the answer. I think the biggest issue is still device support. [0] https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/plasma-devel/2017-April/thread.html https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/plasma-devel/2017-April/threa...

Programmatic 10y ago
Have you actually used Plasma? I would be curious to know your experiences if so.

klunger 10y ago

Well, it isn't Tizen https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/samsung-tizen-operating-system-bugs-vulnerabilities https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/samsung-tizen-ope...

unicornporn 10y ago

My vote goes to https://copperhead.co/android/ https://copperhead.co/android/ I've been running it for some time now and I like it a lot. Support for a lot of phones? No. Wide range of apps available via F-droid? Decent. I'm not a very appy guy though. Most of my needs are browser based.

mimi89999 10y ago
It is not FOSS anymore
- notsrg 10y ago
  You can blame the FOSS community for that one.
- milcron 10y ago
  How do you mean?
  - notsrg 10y ago
    The project has transitioned to a non-commercial license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) until sustainable funding has been acquired. The code is still open source, but apparently asking to be compensated for work that improves the security of the entire Android ecosystem is too much for FOSS fanatics.

demarq 10y ago

Jolla on a Sony Experia? Sony put everything you need to run your OS on some of their Xperia phones on GitHub as part of their Open Device Program. Jolla which is going to become open source sometime has been successfully (in feburary 2017) run on one of the devices. So in the near future, there is hope in that direction.

wvh 10y ago
I second this, I'm pretty happy with my 1st gen Jolla, though it desperately needs an hardware update. To be able to get a terminal either on the device or by logging in with SSH to fix things or make changes is great. Not all the UI components are open source (yet?) though it's pretty close to stock Qt; at least the base system is open-source, and that's more important to me – I think they want to prevent full rip-offs rather than lock down the system from their own users. I've been critical of these computer-in-your-pocket claims a few years ago, but I can see now that if the hardware keeps improving at the rate it does, having a full Linux system based on something like Sailfish or Ubuntu Phone with a keyboard and screen attached could work out for a lot of scenarios.

phh 10y ago

Ok, so Android is open-source as mentioned already by other comments. Now the thing with Android is that, it is just a framework, so saying Android is Open Source is missing big points There are two major limits: 1. What about apps? 2. What about drivers? Today, if you get an Android phone with Google Apps, especially Google Play Store, you have access to many tools that can be considered useful for everyday use, which you won't have with FOSS Android. Here are some examples: With Play Store, you can have (mostly?) any IM, as long as you install the app going with it. The only possibility I know to do that with FOSS Android, is to use matrix or IRC, and have server-side libpuprle connectors. With FOSS Android You don't have factorized push socket: Most apps pushing notifications on Android require GCM. But even if it doesn't require GCM, there is nothing fully open-source an app developer can use. All they can do, is open a socket to their own server, and deal with it, which is a huge battery-killer. Many people are mentioning f-droid as an alternative to Play Store. I'm sorry, but I consider this a joke. I highly respect the work done on f-droid, but this is not a usable alternative. For instance, you want to save your SMS. We call that backup, but not every knows that. Well you search for "save sms" on f-droid. No result. You search for "save sms" on Google Play Store, the second result is SMS Backup+ which is open-source! You search for SMS, the result is on the first page. Same thing happen if you just search for "sms", QKSMS (an opensource SMS application) is much easier to find with Google Play Store than f-droid. Even to look for open-source apps, you're better off with Google Play Store! Again, I totally respect F-Droid devs, this is this way because of their choice of not tracking or saving any user information at all, which is legit. But then, some people might want something intermediary. Just counting the number of installations of an app can be really useful to better sort apps (SMS Backup+ and QKSMS really deserve to be among the top in the results for SMS). Now, about the drivers. Yes Android is open-source, but good luck running a phone with a FOSS Android! At the moment, you have the choice with either replicant, which is old and missing gpu acceleration, or running a mainline Linux kernel with Mesa & stuff, but then you have no radio. Though I have to mention that on the drivers side, Sailfish OS and Ubuntu phone have also those problems.

bigbugbag 10y ago
> Ok, so Android is open-source as mentioned already by other comments. Is it ? I thought that only the AOSP part of Android was actually open source and not that useful by itself. I might be wrong here but my understanding is that the opensource in Android is mostly for show/marketing and is getting worse with time.

d2kx 10y ago

The next big OS is going to be Google Fuchsia, which runs on the Magenta kernel (not Linux) and runs apps built with Flutter. Inb4 nay-sayers, but if you have followed Fuchsia for a few months and have seen the speed of development and just how many people and new technologies are involved, you will see why this isn't even a question.

Programmatic 10y ago
Given Google's current track record for AOSP with bringing active development into Google Play and deprecating open source components, I am skeptical that it will be good for openness.
stOneskull 10y ago
what's in it for google?

Nutomic 10y ago

I'm personally using LinageOS together with microG and F-Droid. MicroG is necessary if you don't have Google apps installed, to get push notifications. Unfortunately, it is still rather complicated to install. http://lineageos.org/ http://lineageos.org/ https://microg.org/ https://microg.org/ https://f-droid.org/ https://f-droid.org/

floatboth 10y ago
I wouldn't say its complicated. Just have to patch with https://github.com/ale5000-git/tingle https://github.com/ale5000-git/tingle after every update to keep the fake google signature working.
kevlar1818 10y ago
Any advice and/or helpful links for installing microG? I've found the microG documentation a little less than helpful.
- vinay427 10y ago
  Just install F-droid using the apk from the official site, add the repo [1], refresh the package list if this was not done automatically by F-droid, and install GmsCore along with GsfProxy in F-droid. [1]: You can use the QR code here to avoid typing the URL into F-droid: https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore/wiki/Downloads https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore/wiki...
colemannugent 10y ago
LineageOS has given my S5 a new lease on life. Bit of a pain to install on a Verizon phone though.
hueller 10y ago
I use lineage, but not microg. Things like Conversations poll effectively enough and it keeps me off the Google. I feel like this isn't a solution for the planned obsolescence inherent in mobile devices though. Every release after Google officially drops support (and provides their own image) gets exponentially harder. The amount of things moving out of AOSP and into Play services grows every month too.

fsiefken 10y ago

* FreeRTOS Pebble (Pebble LIVES!) https://github.com/ginge/FreeRTOS-Pebble https://github.com/ginge/FreeRTOS-Pebble * Tizen OS https://developer.tizen.org/ https://developer.tizen.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizen Alternatively you could use Termux on Android to use the GNU/Linux ecosystem on your phone.

grizzles 10y ago

There is a group called Mediatek Android Developers. They make android work with some pretty low cost handsets.

FossParrot 10y ago

http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Main_Page http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Main_Page Project seems to be abandoned?

bikamonki 10y ago

I've faced the same dilemma and ended up stuck in Android bc of one single app: Whatsapp. A phone is (still) mostly a communications tool and 99,99% of my contacts use Whatsapp as the primary tool to chat/call/share. So, unless I want to be an e-hermit I need a phone that runs Whatsapp. (For a little while, there was an unofficial Whatsapp API which I used to bridge chats to my Firefox OS ZTE)

Spearchucker 10y ago
I read comments like yours and wonder what the other side looks like. I have never, ever installed WhatsApp on my phone. My life hasn't disintegrated, or even degraded - but that's exactly why I wonder. Would my life be better if I use it?
- bikamonki 10y ago
  I guess it depends on your cultural background. We latinos tend to be a lot more connected with family and friends. It is also the economic incentive. In a poor country, a Whatsapp over wifi call is basically free. Furthermore, a key selling point for most carriers down here is: unlimited Whatsapp and Facebook.

lloeki 10y ago

I was just reading about webOS[0] lately and it turns out LuneOS[1] exists and is supposed to work wherever cyanogenmod did. [0]: http://www.openwebosproject.org http://www.openwebosproject.org [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LuneOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LuneOS

patcheudor 10y ago
I performed numerous security reviews of WebOS and frankly it was a bit of a problem. I never actually made it to the point of doing kernel exploitation since the numerous XSS vuln discoveries kept me pretty busy. What was unfortunate at the time is that the WebOS team didn't seem to take the XSS situation seriously even though XSS on that platform effectively compromised the entire UX. I made at least one POC which emulated WebOS trust dialogs. There's no need to break out of an application sandbox when you can make the application look like WebOS, complete with authentic looking authentication dialogs. I've not looked at it in several years, however. Maybe LuneOS has solved some of the core issues but I'd be skeptical as the whole OS was pretty well designed if your intention was to introduce XSS vulnerabilities.

heuller 10y ago

We need hardware that doesn't need to get upgraded every two years. AOSP doesn't cut it since Google inevitably stops building isos for their hardware and the community can't support a million devices. The whole market is sorely in need of generic drivers. The fact that I can pick up a PC from the nineties and install an up to date Linux proves that we're not there yet in the mobile world. Is there a way currently to install baremetal Linux on a phone without emulating it? A small Linux, usb microphone and VoIP would get me 90% there.

jacquesm 10y ago
> the community can't support a million devices If anything the open source community is a lot better in supporting large numbers of devices than closed source has ever been. Witness the incredible hardware support in your average linux kernel. The only reason they're a bit behind the times is because hardware manufacturers are loath to open up their specifications to open source implementers. > The fact that I can pick up a PC from the nineties and install an up to date Linux See, that's exactly the reason why this works.
- AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
  As someone who still has an HP Touchpad, the unfortunate pattern of AOSP / Cyanogenmod / LineageOS support is the following: 1) One volunteer spearheads the development effort towards keeping phone/tablet/device X supported. 2) Various other people draw on the 90% base work already done by Lead #1, add their own wrappers, tweaks, etc, such that the community on the whole appears to be vibrant and bustling around development for device X. 3) Lead #1 eventually stops supporting the project because he gets a newer device. 4) None of the developer's behind Lead #1's forks have sufficient technical knowledge to continue the base development without him, and all of their forks stop updating as well. 5) Community on the whole for Device X fizzles out. I've seen it happen multiple times on XDA-developers forums. That dozens/hundreds/thousands of people are using an AOSP-based ROM on a device does not mean that the community necessarily has the technical knowledge to continue it without someone to steward the project. The volunteer leads do an incredible job, but at the end of the day, they usually only last as long as the device is the lead's daily driver--after that, they usually stop.

tixocloud 10y ago

How easy would it be to mod the loading screen and basic UI/UX on Android?

elchudi2 10y ago

This one could be an option https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/ https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/

TheAceOfHearts 10y ago

I placed a preorder for a Pyra [0]. I'm hoping it works well enough to allow me to replace my locked down Pixel. [0] https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/ https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/

andrey_utkin 10y ago
In mobile FOSS computing, Pyra is The Handheld PC, and GTA04 is The Smartphone. Both being developed partially by same people. Both working with generic recent ARM Debian Linux and recent kernels. Kernels have some non-mainlined parts due to scarcity of engineering resources, but all features are forward-ported on each release and even RC of mainline Linux. My personal expectations from Pyra are very high.
- bigbugbag 10y ago
  I still have my openpandora from the first preorder batch, it delivered almost all expectations I had for it and sometimes even went beyond battery life got pushed further than 10+hours and had a memory upgrade. I have no doubt the pyra will deliver.

webaholic 10y ago

Maru OS. It installs a debian system along-side Android, not sure if it's alternative enough though. http://maruos.com/ http://maruos.com/

sparkling 10y ago

LinageOS + OpenGapps for a minimal Google Play Services installation (the "nano" flavour). Just make sure to buy a device that has a large userbase and good LinageOS community support [1]. I am using a $170 Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 with LineageOS and could not be happier with it. [1] check out https://stats.lineageos.org/ https://stats.lineageos.org/ for popular devices and also check the devices subforum on the XDA forums

redsummer 10y ago

The ZeroPhone is based on the raspberry pi. https://hackaday.io/project/19035-zerophone-a-raspberry-pi-smartphone/log/51839-project-description-and-frequently-asked-questions https://hackaday.io/project/19035-zerophone-a-raspberry-pi-s... Reddit AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/5nwmfx/im_making_a_pipowered_opensource_mobile_phone/ https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/5nwmfx/im_mak... $50. Calling, SMS. Alarm clock, calendar, calculator, phonebook, file browser, web browser and music player. I expect these will be very simple given the screen.

Apocryphon 10y ago

Plasma Mobile: https://plasma-mobile.org https://plasma-mobile.org https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Mobile https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Mobile

jimmies 10y ago

You are at the point of 2002-2004 of Desktop OS - if you want to use a mobile OSS OS, you're just have to deal with lots of inconveniences. It depends on what are you looking for and what you find tolerable. I have been annoyed with the current paradigms of modern mobile OSes where I'm constantly bombarded with notifications and things that I need to keep up with. So for me, an usable OSS can have lots of drawback that I'm willing to sacrifice - I don't need any of the notifications or apps. If you don't care about the aesthetic, your best bet is Lineage. It is Android without Google and you can still get lots of stuff done. Personally, I came back to a cheap WebOS phone with a cheap plan and after I installed WebOS 2, it has been really usable. LuneOS is supposed to be the continuation of WebOS, but it's just not that usable yet - I see no way to sync with my Google account (which syncs fine with the 10 year old WebOS instance via Exchange). So I would keep an eye on the LuneOS development. For such a niche and small dev team, they have been continuing making improvements. Totally impressed by that.

SamWhited 10y ago

I've been using OmniROM (https://omnirom.org/); https://omnirom.org/); it was a fork of Cyanogenmod when they went commercial initially. Not sure what the difference is between it and LineageoOS or why the lineage people didn't just start developing for omnirom; maybe they still have political differences or something. Regardless, it seems to work well.

chrisdevereux 10y ago

Thought experiment: Say that I have a raspberry pi or similar. What hardware do I need to plug a sim card in and connect to a mobile network? Can I order it from a commodity supplier?

rocky1138 10y ago
The Pyra is attempting to do this. https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/ https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/
MrMember 10y ago
It's not too difficult to do yourself. http://www.davidhunt.ie/piphone-a-raspberry-pi-based-smartphone/ http://www.davidhunt.ie/piphone-a-raspberry-pi-based-smartph...
patrickg_zill 10y ago
Both Adafruit and SparkFun have GSM add on boards. To that, add a microsim card activated with the provider of your choice.

darrmit 10y ago

Am I the only one who has decided that I'm more comfortable with iOS and an AppleID than I am with something like LineageOS and still having to have a Google account - even though I prefer Android? I'm operating under the assumption that Apple is more privacy friendly than Google under pretty much any circumstance. I've done the Cyanogen + F-Droid thing and it's just miserably inconvenient, and none of the "proprietary" alternative app stores have any sort of catalog to write home about.

manmal 10y ago
Yes, same here. I'd use iMessage over WhatsApp or Duo (or whatever Google's chat du jour is called) any time. They do have glitches (like the recently exposed iCloud bug where private browsing histories were stored indefinitely), but I don't attribute them to monetizability.
- ahassan 10y ago
  Why WhatsApp? Messages are E2E encrypted so it's fairly safe to use. Are you worried about metadata collection?
  - manmal 10y ago
    I am worried about backdoors, keys being stored somewhere else, ...
BeetleB 10y ago
>I'm operating under the assumption that Apple is more privacy friendly than Google under pretty much any circumstance. I'm curious as to why...?
- jacobwg 10y ago
  Because Google is primarily (not solely) an advertising / information company, so there's a financial incentive to sacrifice privacy. Apple is primarily (not solely) a hardware / product company, so the financial incentives are different. There's also a stronger history of Apple fighting for user privacy against government requests, etc.

kevinSuttle 10y ago

Am I the only one who misses Web OS and now Ubuntu Phone?

dade_ 10y ago
Great point. I didn't know that Web OS was released as Open Source by HP, or that LG bought it... http://www.openwebosproject.org/ http://www.openwebosproject.org/

alinspired 10y ago

LineageOS with your choice of google apps. Easy to do with opengapps config file or "aroma" gapps: https://github.com/opengapps/opengapps/wiki/Advanced-Features-and-Options#include-or-exclude-gapps https://github.com/opengapps/opengapps/wiki/Advanced-Feature...

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