4 ms·

Lack of support is a big killer when it comes to Android. The OEM drops support after a few years, then it's pure luck whether some benevolent dev picks up main

Lack of support is a big killer when it comes to Android. The OEM drops support after a few years, then it's pure luck whether some benevolent dev picks up maintenance of a FOSS ROM like LineageOS. My phone was that lucky for a good few years, but now support for it has been dropped. I don't think I have the time or energy to work out how to bootstrap, port, and maintain an Android distro for my phone. Conversely, the rest of my systems run off mainline GNU/Linux, which I am able to set up and maintain. I'd be happy if I could get a phone with a similar experience.

phh 4y ago
Most modern (less than 5 years old) Android smartphones support Project Treble/GSI, which largely reduce the maintenance cost. But that Treble technology is actually being used by ubports which does Ubuntu Touch using Android drivers, and porting Ubuntu Touch on any modern Android smartphones is quite easy nowadays (assuming you have kernel source code available). It pretty much just requires rebuilding kernel source code with different parameters and that's it.