14 ms·

We need a real GNU/Linux (not Android) smartphone ecosystem

199 points by neelc 2y ago

ekianjo 2y ago
There is sailfish OS. And it runs quite a few Android apps too.
- transpute 2y ago
  Any recommendations for modern-ish devices which run Sailfish? Can the "free trial" be used indefinitely if you don't need Android app support?
  - doctor_radium 2y ago
    [dead]
  - fph 2y ago
    Yes, the free version can be used indefinitely. The latest device you can use with full support is Sony Xperia 10 III, released in 2021. There have been no further releases; the project never really took off and unfortunately it seems that the OS is slowly dying. The Finnish company behind it, Jolla, had a joint project with Russia (Aurora OS), which I believe provided a good chunk of the funds via Rostelecom. With the war everything changed, and in 2021 they had to cut ties entirely with Russia for many reasons: embargos, and many people rightfully not wanting anything to do with "a Russian OS" on their phone. The company had to be "restructured" in 2023.
daviddever23box 2y ago
Is this a parody post?
- snapplebobapple 2y ago
  No, its something i strongly agree with. The phone ecosystem is a locked in disaster. If phone hardware was required to support some standard like x86 computers do we could turn all this apple amd android crap ibto something that actually respects privacy
  - Demiurge 2y ago
    Every vendor that is not Apple already supports Android. Even the ones that don’t want to have the GSuit built in, and some of them care about privacy, while some don’t. A smartphone is comprised of more than one cpu, and there are proprietary chipsets with closed firmware all the way to battery. This is a much different world than x86 PC with pre EFI BIOS, when you could flash everything (except cpu?) What do you expect to be able to achieve with just the word “Linux” added to the mix? Can you build new 5G drivers for Linux as well? Smartphone market is moving pretty fast, the hardware is nearly disposable, and the consumer doesn’t even know what an OS is. GNU/Linux smartphone, that is competitive? Good luck with that.
    - snapplebobapple 2y ago
      The firmware side of things is a different can of worms that also affects X86. That's not he ask I was making (although it is a good second phase). I just want phones to be more like X86 in that I can install whatever I want to them and have a more standardized interface than the current wild west situation so that it's easy to bring on new devices. It would be nice if the hardware vendors were not actively blocking installing my own operating system as well (in addition to the technical non standard issue). Why do you think I care about competitive or commercial viability? I just want the behemoth pushing apple and android crap to be forced to make their devices easier to boot an alternative and leave the rest to us to figure out and see what interesting things can be done.
      - Demiurge 2y ago
        If you don’t care about competitive smartphones, why do you care about smartphones or phones at all?
        snapplebobapple 2y ago
        It's not about making a competitive linux smartphone, it's about making the hardware ecosystem more conducive to software competition by making it easy for people to run their own software on their own hardware.
- Brian_K_White 2y ago
  Is this a parody question?
gmuslera 2y ago
Nokia had a chance for greatness around 2010 with Maemo and Meego. And either by stupidity or malice they ruined that. It was the right moment to have a chance, the smartphone game was still starting up, Nokia was still very influential in that arena, and the 2 devices it made (the N900 and N9) were great in their own way, for what was around that time. But between their own internal sectors still betting on Symbian, not being open enough and the mole that Microsoft introduced with Elop that opportunity was lost. From there on there was Sailfish (that never managed to get enough adoption), Ubuntu Touch and Firefox OS among others, but no big vendors backing. And the opportunity moment was already passed, as the de facto platforms for mobile development were iOS and Android, not even Microsoft was successful pushing their own platform there. All the killer apps are already released for those platforms, trying something new won't give the essentials to communicate with others and participate in society as of today.
- Tknl 2y ago
  N900 was my first smartphone and still miss the feeling of having a proper Linux box in my pocket. Unfortunately didn't buy the n9 as it was clear it was dead in the water by the time it came out. Based on my contacts at Nokia it was simply underfunding, believing that symbian would remain dominant in developing countries and seeing the meamo/meego line as a distracting and expensive side project as well as internal competition which people sought to sabotage internally. Some ex-Nokia people blogged quite extensively on it.
  - AndrewOMartin 2y ago
    Holy f---ing s--t! Did you just reboot your web server through an SSH pipe with your cellphone?!?
- MrMember 2y ago
  The N900 was phenomenal for its time. One of the best smartphones ever made. If you just wanted to use it as a smartphone you could but if you wanted to dig deeper it was such a versatile and capable device.
- rjzzleep 2y ago
weikju 2y ago
It’s happening (albeit slowly?) Librem 5 PinePhone and its Pro variant FuriLabs FLX1 Mobian UBPorts PostMarket OS And all the other distributions. Still what’s really lacking is some kind of critical mass that can’t be ignored. Many many services even in real life are locked behind an iOS/play store wall (even sometimes with no alternative outside needing a smartphone). We’re not completely locked in yet so there’s still time…
- linmob 2y ago
  This. I try to collect all that happens weekly in the space at https://linmob.net https://linmob.net
  - senorsmile 2y ago
    Thank you for doing this. Added RSS feed.
alwayslikethis 2y ago
As much as I like the concept, I'm not sure Linux phone is a good idea. Desktop Linux is not particularly prone to spyware scanning the filesystem and uploading it mainly because they mainly use free software from package repositories that are vetted by maintainers. If Linux phones are used like Android or iOS phones are used today (downloading random binaries, often to interact with real world things you can't opt out of, with distribution controlled by a corporation not too worried about your privacy), it would be a privacy nightmare.
- idle_zealot 2y ago
  In my mind part of the "Linux Phone" package is moving primarily to a package repo software distribution solution. You can slap an App Store-esque frontend on it, but the software you're installing is (by default) from a curated list of supported open source packages, not random binaries from untrustworthy parties. Of course, this mentality is losing support even on desktop Linux with the move to Snaps/Flatpacks/AppImages/etc, which is a real shame.
  - kaba0 2y ago
    The gnu/linux userspace has absolutely no security whatsoever. It’s a real shame how trivial it is to have even an npm install potentially do literally anything. Android has an actual, sane, rethought security model that has a good track record in protecting millions of non-tech-savvy people.
    - zozbot234 2y ago
      If you run your npm install in a properly set up container (and at some point in the future, Flatpak will set this up for you), it isn't going to do much. Yes, I'm well aware that containers should still be tought of as "not a real security boundary" given the amount of remaining attack surface, but even then the Android approach is not very different.
    - idle_zealot 2y ago
      Android has a security model that protects the OS from applications and applications from users. A sane security model would put the user in control.
mozball 2y ago
Google et al pour billions annually into making android a first-class and dominant mobile OS. I think the FOSS community should leverage that and focus on liberating Android instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.
- alwayslikethis 2y ago
  Google is clamping on that freedom by providing ways to detect when you run unauthorized/liberated software (i.e. root or custom ROM)
  - mozball 2y ago
    Your banking app is not going to work on Linux either. If Android is fundamentally broken then fork it. My point is, it seem smarter/easier to take Android and make it more linux-like than to take Linux and make it more Android-like. All the work is already done and paid for. Sailing with the wind vs sailing against the wind. edit : Unless the goal is also to benefit the linux desktop ecosystem (the whole convergence meme)
    - metadat 2y ago
      > Your banking app is not going to work on Linux either Why is that? I can use my bank through Linux via a web browser without issue. Logging in more frequently is a hassle but not a bad trade IMO.
      - mozball 2y ago
        The native app won't work though. The problem alluded to by grandparent comment and in linked-article.
      - PhilipRoman 2y ago
        Presumably this is about apps which are required for authentication, even in the browser version.
      - walthamstow 2y ago
haolez 2y ago
In the opposite direction, would Android make a decent Linux desktop if it got a little more polish for this use case? What about it's code quality? Is it a mess or is it on par with GNOME + Wayland + whatever?
- silisili 2y ago
  That's basically a Chromebook, which can run both Android apps and Linux apps.
- g-b-r 2y ago
  Yeah, let's make desktops unusable toys as well
  - kaba0 2y ago
    In what way is it “an unusable toy”?
    - g-b-r 2y ago
      How can you see it any differently? You need an "app" for everything, they can hardly interact with each other, they can get killed at any time, and without rooting (which is subverting how the system is meant to be used) all sorts of things are crippled (from filesystem access, to using a firewall, to freaking setting a different volume for every app). And the limitations increase with every Android release
      - kaba0 2y ago
        They have a proper, standard, high-level way of interacting with each other, literally the whole OS is built around than. Read up on android services, intents, etc. It is eons better than dbus-ing and writing to random files all over my home dir is that linux desktops do. Killing stuff from time to time is literally an advantage for a system - look at the battery life of a linux desktop or a pinephone. You have to make apps ready for a possible suspension, otherwise they just keep on draining the battery. Besides, services can be called from an active activity, or binded by one and then they will not be killed under normal circumstances. I don’t want a random app to read my browser caches/ssh keys, etc, but if you like any random repo you download having access to your personal files, you do you.
Dwedit 2y ago
Kernel land is almost entirely Linux. Just without open-source drivers for some freakish reason. Userland is as different from desktop Linux as you can possibly get.
- kaba0 2y ago
  > Just without open-source drivers for some freakish reason Because manufacturers buy random parts from other suppliers, who may or may not own the source code, and they often legally simply can’t share forward that code.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Nope, it is a custom Linux kernel with goodies that aren't available upstream like first level support for clang, several Rust modules (no need to argue with anti-Rust kernel folks), all security features turned on, and a micro-kernel like driver subsystem, supporting Java, C++ and Rust.
greyw 2y ago
We need real FOSS Android. I wish people would start building from there.
- NewJazz 2y ago
  There's a lot of building going on. Waydroid builds their own highly specialized Android derivative. As does Replicant, Calyx, Graphene, /e/foundation, Lineage, microg, and probably lots more in the Foss space alone.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  What do you want that LineageOS (plus F-Droid) doesn't do?
  - criticalfault 2y ago
    Banking apps come to mind.
    - Eavolution 2y ago
      This is the only reason my phone's not running Lineage. I need those apps mainly for 2fa (some banks don't give me any alternative) or for one or two with no web app. It feels like a total artificial duopoly, you only get to use your essential service on android or ios.
    - floydnoel 2y ago
      what would a banking app do that a bank website can't, exactly?
      - qingcharles 2y ago
        IIRC some finance apps either don't have web sites that can perform financial transaction, or are lacking a number of features of the mobile app. Cash App and Venmo used to be some of the worst offenders, but have improved in recent times.
      - 2y ago
pieresqi 2y ago
[dead]
binary132 2y ago
Something I think people in tech sometimes don’t realize is that the complexity of modern software generally requires a lot of money to be thrown at it to get meaningful amounts of stuff done, and that money is getting thrown at open source by the giants, who may have whole teams dedicated to advancing it. That means they’re the ones directing the R&D and advancing the state of the art, so your little indie/hobby/crowdfunded/grassroots thing isn’t going to be able to keep up, probably. Call me cynical, but that’s just what I seem to see right now.
- Gigachad 2y ago
  I've given up on ever expecting an open source phone. Apple likely spends more money developing just the keyboard than these OSS companies have to spend on the entire phone, software and hardware. There is just no way they can release something that's even usable, let alone competitive. Did have an unexpected win in the form of the Steam Deck though. Never thought I'd have a powerful hand held, desktop linux gaming machine at an affordable price. Back in the day I was following the Dragonbox Pyra project and really liked the idea, but couldn't justify spending so much on a device that couldn't really do anything.
  - binary132 2y ago
    Yeah, but Steam Deck is a perfect example of corporate funded semi-open-source winning. It could literally never have happened without spending millions of dollars on FTEs, not to mention getting the hardware side right. That’s EXACTLY what I’m talking about! Nobody who doesn’t have a giant stack of cash is going to come disrupt le heckin’ market with a great UNIX phone.
    - seba_dos1 2y ago
      The closest we got there in the phone market was Purism's Librem 5. That project funded tons of development, both upstream in various projects all over the stack and in original work like Phosh that later went on to live its own life - and of course all the vertical integration that went into PureOS. It significantly pushed the ecosystem forward and produced a working device that let me finally migrate away from N900 and that I'm still happily using as my daily driver. OTOH, it went way over the crowdfunded budget, caught enormous delays (including, but not limited to, COVID supply chain collapse) and almost killed the company... Contrast that to the PinePhones, which were done cheaply in a "throw some hardware at the community and let them figure things out" fashion. This approach had both upsides and downsides, but ultimately I think it showed us that this community is still way too small to be able to sustain a project of such complexity on its own. There's still a lot to be done in this space and without Purism's investments things move much slower than they did a few years ago (though fortunately they still do move). (disclosure: I'm one of the developers who were paid for that work)
Almondsetat 2y ago
No we really don't. What we actually need is to do all over again what has been done for the last 30 years on computers: developing and reverse engineering open source versions of the various drivers for mobile devices' hardware. Without them you will be forced to pray for ABI compatibility at every update and you will never get to know your actual hardware
krick 2y ago
We already had not one, but multiple. They lost to android. I imagine there were multiple reasons, really, but one of them seems pretty basic: simple SDKs. Even when there was no Android apps, making one was easier, than making... whatever. Now, when there are thousands (maybe millions? I have no idea) Android apps, I don't really see anything else catching on. To be fair, now there is this react-native approach, but still, all these permission frameworks, drivers, really necessary apps nobody will port and everybody needs...
NewJazz 2y ago
We don't need a non-android ecosystem. The compatibility is nice. The security features are nice. What we need is more devices that allow unlocking the bootloader and rewriting the keys.
- bpye 2y ago
  Sadly that isn’t really enough today - since many applications will refuse to function if SafetyNet fails because you have some non-standard image running.
  - NewJazz 2y ago
    That's not a problem and not getting fixed by diverging farther than android. To date none of my apps have required that, including my banking app. Even so, loss of some financial apps is a small price compared to loss of social and dating apps, public transit and health apps, and more. iNaturalist publishes an open source android app to complement their very functional website, and honestly I would give up all of GNU for that one app.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
      If you only care about Android app compatibility but not safety net, try waydroid?
      - NewJazz 2y ago
        Waydroid was really slow last time I tried it, and most apps I tried did not work well or at all.
        seba_dos1 2y ago
        I don't perceive Waydroid as slow on my Librem 5 at all, and apps tend to work well within it (playing some ad-riddled games from Play Store on a GNU/Linux phone, out of curiosity to see whether they'll work, was an interesting experience) - with the exception of remote attestation and peripheral access, which, of course, greatly limits the possible use cases. The former isn't really something that could be fixed, but for the latter I've just had NLnet's funding accepted for a project that's about better integration of Waydroid with the host OS, so hopefully I'll be able to make some progress in this area in the coming months. My personal goal is to be able to download a local public transport app and be able to buy a ticket, which includes scanning an in-vehicle QR code, without much fuss.
alexey-salmin 2y ago
As much as we laugh at IBM and Intel nowadays and praise the success of ARM, the x86-based IBM PC ecosystem with standardized BIOS that maintains compatibility for decades is such a blessing, a huge breakthrough that we don't even notice anymore because we're so used to it. Before that the OS development was tightly coupled to hardware development. Booting an existing OS on a new device even with the same CPU required prior patching, configuration and re-implementation of the floppy drive driver. And it wasn't seen as odd because that's the way it was. I don't think the problem is a lack of OS enthusiasts, we probably have more of them than at the time Linux was born. The problem is they're fighting an uphill battle against a swarm of slightly different CPUs and device trees and uncooperative vendors that do anything they can to lock the device.
- transpute 2y ago
  > uphill battle against a swarm of slightly different CPUs and device trees Economic incentives for "differentiation", e.g. device tree with upstream Linux and uboot support for feature A, but non-upstream uboot blob enables feature A+B.
  - mikrotikker 2y ago
    The Samsung s5 had a noticeable difference in camera quality between stock and AOSP.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  A lucky accident that IBM failed to prevent, they didn't want to have such a market, Compaq made it possible, with a clever way to prevent it legally.
- dartos 2y ago
  It’s even hard to find the uboot patches for clockworkpi hardware, and they open source almost everything.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  The devices ship with a kernel that can use them. Is there anything we can do to make it easier to extract whatever device tree or other information from the compiled kernel it ships with, so it can be used with any other Linux kernel?
transpute 2y ago
Google AVF/pKVM will allow unmodified Linux VMs on Pixel 7+. GrapheneOS has shipped early plumbing support, not yet exposed to users.
- NewJazz 2y ago
  All hail Big G in our Temple of Tensor. Amen.
  - transpute 2y ago
    In comparison, Apple shipped a hypervisor 2 years ago, then removed it because users were running VMs. 2024 M4 iPads have silicon support for nested virtualization, but Apple prevents users from running VMs. At least Google has upstreamed pKVM to the Linux kernel. Since Pixel Tablet can run GrapheneOS, there's a path to running unmodified Linux VMs as open-source pKVM support matures. It's sad that customers have to settle, but non-zero Google table scraps > zero Apple VM slices.
- ranguna 2y ago
  That's exactly what I was going to mention. I'm waiting for android 15 to be released and for people to test hardware acceleration support. If the overheating problems are fixed, I'll get myself a pixel 9 XL (for the bigger battery) and use it as my laptop daily driver replacement. If performance is any good (fingers crossed for something close to the latest raspberry pi) then it's the perfect machine: usb C displayport, it fits in your pocket, can run proper Linux, fallback to Android for steam Link until valve releases an ARM version of steam. It'll be perfect. For actual laptop form factor usage, I'll connect the xreal glasses to get a big display and I'll use the pixel as a keyboard and trackpad, or an external keyboard and the pixel as a trackpad. Can't wait for people to test android 15.
  - NewJazz 2y ago
    They reenabled display port output on the Pixel line?
gorgoiler 2y ago
As an analogy: I use Sway but it doesn’t stop me from running GTK apps. I could use Gnome as my desktop software — a giant GTK app for running other GTK apps — but I don’t have to. Job scheduling, URL handling, settings daemons… we have standard tools for doing this as well on a Linux system. Somehow they remain only very loosely bound together and different bits can be omitted or swapped for alternatives. With Android / AOSP, are the components bound tightly together? I suppose the acid test would be: can I run Google maps APK on my Linux desktop as an app showing in a native window, or do I have to run an entire android emulator which has to take over a portion of my screen (and provide separate versions of all its own system services) to run one app? If a WINE-for-Android like thing exists, then I’d be very happy to run a standard Linux system on my phone and have it boot into an Android launcher that could run Android apps, but also be able to do anything else I wanted to do with a bare Linux system. Steamdeck from Valve does exactly this and it’s very good. The stock behaviour is to boot into their launcher (SteamOS) but if you sang you can toggle to a KDE desktop, get a shell in a terminal emulator, and hack away on what is just a regular PC.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  I think you're looking for waydroid? AFAIK it does in fact have most of an android system bundled into it and it doesn't do rootless windows (Android apps are rendered into a single window that contains an entire Android UI), but it absolutely works. Funny enough, I use it on my laptop because Anki has dependency problems on my system but the F-Droid version is fine.
  - Arnavion 2y ago
    >it doesn't do rootless windows (Android apps are rendered into a single window that contains an entire Android UI) If you launch individual Android programs via `waydroid app intent ...`, they render as separate windows in the parent compositor. The single window for the entire Android UI is what you get if you run `waydroid show-full-ui`.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
zer0zzz 2y ago
How do you build such a thing when it doesn’t exist on PCs in the first place? In order to build an ecosystem you need cross compatible applications as well as some kind of strongly supported and strongly emphasized programming interface.
bsder 2y ago
The problem with open mobile phones is neither the phone hardware or software. The main problem is the damn cellular network carriers. Until some government agency gets serious about forcing the cellular carriers to actually allow phones on their network without having to go through the anal violation that is "certification" for their network, the open mobile phone ecosystem will continue to suck.
- rangestransform 2y ago
  Why would the government ever force carriers to accept uncertified devices? So they can emit interference on cellular frequency bands? So they can violate SAR limits and burn people?
  - bsder 2y ago
    The devices would still be subject to FCC certification just like your WiFi chipsets are. Beyond that, the people developing chipsets generally have better tests for compliance than the carriers, themselves. You should be able to drop one of those chipsets in your phone, plug in a SIM, and get on with life. However, the carriers make you spend a couple of megabucks of bribes and then they will deign to allow your phone on their oh-so-fragile network. Effectively, the current cellular carriers are acting exactly like Bell System prior to the Hush-A-Phone lawsuit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush-A-Phone_Corp._v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush-A-Phone_Corp._v._United_S...
- kaba0 2y ago
  It was the governments that require that certification, and for good reasons. We can play this “wild west hacker” whatever, but rules are a necessity for a working society, one can’t just start driving on the other side of the road, and neither would we be ahead with random frequencies getting emitted everywhere.
yarg 2y ago
The unforgivable part for me was Google prohibiting Android forks in their vendor licensing agreements for their add-on software. It was a deeply cynical way of doing an end-run around the GPL, and I've held them in utter contempt ever since.
trickstra 2y ago
We already have it, but people aren't willing to use it. Using a real libre system will always be a little harder than using a nice and polished billionaire funded walled garden. For obvious reasons. People just aren't willing to sacrifice even a little bit of comfort for the freedom, so products like Librem or PinePhone get mostly just complaints, comparison with Apple, and current users are ridiculed as nerds or weirdos. We will never have freedom as long as this is the prevailing culture. It's up to us, the customers, the commenters.
quotemstr 2y ago
No, we need an alternative smartphone ecosystem like a hole in the head. Android won, and AOSP is free software. There is no reason to undertake the Herculean task of writing a new mobile userspace core. You might as well write a new kernel while you're at it. What would be the point? What are you going to do better than AOSP? A 5% more efficient binder? At Google HQ, there is a veritable mountain of skulls of Android competitor projects. Please notice the skulls before doing something that will almost certainly add your project to the pile.
kkfx 2y ago
We need mandatory FLOSS and mandatory open-hardware with the obligation for all commercial products to be design and built openly from start to allow a community to form and switching marketing from mass advertisement to community flaws of interests. Essentially OEMs instead of being advertisement driven with brands like religions they should evolve toward being innovation-branded. That's would create a much better and knowledgeable world BUT it means having entrepreneurs in chief and managers and technicians aside ate the same level, "high output managers" do really dislike that.
- fensgrim 2y ago
  So far, we can't even get Samsung to have their FOSS kernel stuff published in a buildable and usable form - its basically impossible to build their recent kernels with their recent toolchains without finding out that some obscure config option was skipped or that some file didn't survived the pre-release purge or that it requires some obscure Linux distribution to run on. And if you get it to build, chances that it will boot are slim. (Good luck finding out if there's a working UART somewhere on chip pins and it's not hidden behind hypervisor and fuses)
  - kkfx 2y ago
    I know, but IF we mandate openness from the start with a public development process this could not exists or the company does not respect the law, if we do not, we will never get much usable things, "open source enterprise" and "open core" are nowadays common ways to profit from FLOSS being not FLOSS at all while formally respecting the license. The problem to arrive at the laws is how many know enough to understand why we should and we must have such law, because if for most it's not even clear what is something you own vs something you can use via a proprietary remote service... Physical ownership is a clear concept for most, digital ownership for most is a mystery... That's the damn issue.
fractallyte 2y ago
We already have it, and it's called Sailfish OS (https://sailfishos.org/ https://sailfishos.org/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfish_OS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfish_OS) The paid version even comes with Android App Support - the 'killer feature' that allows a Sailfish device to run full Android apps in a sandbox (https://jolla.com/appsupport https://jolla.com/appsupport). Some people will inevitably moan that it's proprietary, but that's just the UI layer; the rest is wide open, familiar Linux. I can SSH into my device without any fancy workarounds, and it works almost identically to a desktop machine. (Besides, how else is a company meant to survive in the super-competitive mobile device market? The OS is cheap. Android App Support is awesome. Pay up and be grateful!) The UX is simple and consistent, WAY superior to iOS and Android. Most importantly, it has an ecosystem: the Jolla app store, a comprehensive SDK, and an alternative open source app repository (https://openrepos.net/ https://openrepos.net/).
- transpute 2y ago
  > Pay up and be grateful!) Website says it's only sold in EU. How is that verified?
  - fph 2y ago
    It isn't. You can just use a VPN.
  - getwiththeprog 2y ago
    "We currently sell in European Union, UK, Norway and Switzerland. Please be welcome to use our software anywhere in the world, however due to our limited resources we can only support the noted regions." https://shop.jolla.com/ https://shop.jolla.com/
- rendaw 2y ago
  It looks like it doesn't support android safetynet hardware attestation so banking apps etc won't work.
weinzierl 2y ago
The mobile ecosystem is basically the world Stallman and his comrades-in-arms wanted to prevent. It did't come to reality on the PC, but sneaked in through the backdoor with the advent of mobile devices. I have little hope that this can be undone, but we need to be prepared to nip these tendencies in the bud for the next paradigm shift.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  It is coming, PC Clones only happened due to IBM not being able to legally prevent it taking off. It is no accident that the laptops as desktop replacement are just as vertically integrated, most people not using laptops have NUCs and game consoles, and custom built PC towers are seldom seen outside hardcore PC gamers.
- atoav 2y ago
  Working with all major systems I have to say I don't have the feeling that the commercial OS is getting any better. If anything they are getting worse. What is getting better are the likes of KDE. Where a good decade ago running Linux still was a pain where it didn't work, nowadays it mostly just works, the System UIs are more usable, more customizable and in many cases better than any of the commercial OS for a while now (and yes, that includes MacOS). Android is a pain in the rear, IOS similarily so.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    I just returned a NUC, because no matter what I tried, the UEFI bios and the collection of distributions I tried didn't come to terms.
- TZubiri 2y ago
  And that's one of the strongest criticisms of Stallman's Free Software. Instead of providing alternatives, they are just against them. Of course they tried to provide alternatives, but they are still stuck 30 years behind, they haven't gotten to phones yet. During Covid they had issues getting videoconferences to work.
pjmlp 2y ago
No we don't, because it would be UNIX command line and X11 on our phones, as proven by multiple attempts to GNU/Linux phones since OpenMoko. For all their flaws, iOS, Android, ChromeOS, and the gone Blackberry, Windows Phone, Symbian, actually rethought the whole programming stack, using modern programming languages, and UI/UX.
- fph 2y ago
  And security, don't forget that. Proper app isolation on Linux is still very tricky, with many competing approaches in Apparmor/Selinux/Snap/Flatpak/Docker, all complicated to set up and use. The consequence is that in practice a 2048 game has unlimited access to the files in my /home folder. On the other hand, Android has a very solid permission and isolation system. This is why I don't want GNU/Linux on my phone; I would rather have a proper FOSS Android.
  - zozbot234 2y ago
    The Android approach is among the most "complicated to set up and use" (since it's based on SELinux under the hood) but the OEM does that for you. There's no reason why Linux distros couldn't do the same thing using Flatpak and/or bubblewrap. (Plus AppArmor for extra hardening where sensible.)
    - kaba0 2y ago
      Just the lack of.. the whole ecosystem adopting the restricted model and there being a properly specified and documented model in the first place.
    - seba_dos1 2y ago
      Linux distros already do that thing. Distros like PureOS, SteamOS and Fedora Silverblue focus on Flatpak as app distribution model. The thing is, nobody restricts you from ignoring that model and doing stuff the old way if you feel like it, which is in contrast to Android.
TZubiri 2y ago
The title and the fact that it's posted on reddit gives a real "someone needs to do something, but it's not gonna be me." vibe.
jwrallie 2y ago
I’d like a portable device with good battery that would run free software, mostly for privacy reasons. Anything with a good battery could do, GNU/Linux would not be strictly necessary. Running TOR or a VPN over Wifi and a browser and fast enough to stream a YouTube video at 720p is all I need. I wonder what would be the closest hardware today that could do it. Smartphone or small tablet form factor would do just fine for me.
- zozbot234 2y ago
  Gaming handheld would give you that. There are also old Intel-Atom based tablet PC's that are quite cheap on the second-hand market, and work well with Linux. Smartphone/palmtop form factor would be harder though.
deleted 2y ago
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melodyogonna 2y ago
I'm fine with Android.
weberer 2y ago
We do have one. I guess not many people even here know about it since it doesn't have a multi-million ad campaign around it. I've been messing around with a few distros on my Pinephone. The base Pinephone is much too weak to be used as a daily driver, but maybe the Pro is better. There are distros like Ubuntu Touch and Arch Linux Mobile. There are specific phone DEs like Phosh and (KDE) Plasma Mobile. Hardware compatibility is low, but you can at least check them out in a VM on your desktop. The best part is that you can run any software that works on ARM desktop Linux, so "app" compatibility isn't even a worry. Whether the software is usable in that form factor and resolution is another factor though. https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php?title=PinePhone_Software_Releases https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php?title=PinePhone_Software_R...
- seba_dos1 2y ago
  > The base Pinephone is much too weak to be used as a daily driver, but maybe the Pro is better. Both Librem 5 and PinePhone Pro are much faster than the original PinePhone, although PinePhone Pro is still relatively immature when it comes to software support.
Kristofn029 2y ago
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GiEdoardo 2y ago
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GiEdoardo 2y ago
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expnkx 2y ago
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199 points by neelc 2y ago

ekianjo 2y ago

There is sailfish OS. And it runs quite a few Android apps too.

transpute 2y ago
Any recommendations for modern-ish devices which run Sailfish? Can the "free trial" be used indefinitely if you don't need Android app support?
- doctor_radium 2y ago
  [dead]
- fph 2y ago
  Yes, the free version can be used indefinitely. The latest device you can use with full support is Sony Xperia 10 III, released in 2021. There have been no further releases; the project never really took off and unfortunately it seems that the OS is slowly dying. The Finnish company behind it, Jolla, had a joint project with Russia (Aurora OS), which I believe provided a good chunk of the funds via Rostelecom. With the war everything changed, and in 2021 they had to cut ties entirely with Russia for many reasons: embargos, and many people rightfully not wanting anything to do with "a Russian OS" on their phone. The company had to be "restructured" in 2023.

daviddever23box 2y ago

Is this a parody post?

snapplebobapple 2y ago
No, its something i strongly agree with. The phone ecosystem is a locked in disaster. If phone hardware was required to support some standard like x86 computers do we could turn all this apple amd android crap ibto something that actually respects privacy
- Demiurge 2y ago
  Every vendor that is not Apple already supports Android. Even the ones that don’t want to have the GSuit built in, and some of them care about privacy, while some don’t. A smartphone is comprised of more than one cpu, and there are proprietary chipsets with closed firmware all the way to battery. This is a much different world than x86 PC with pre EFI BIOS, when you could flash everything (except cpu?) What do you expect to be able to achieve with just the word “Linux” added to the mix? Can you build new 5G drivers for Linux as well? Smartphone market is moving pretty fast, the hardware is nearly disposable, and the consumer doesn’t even know what an OS is. GNU/Linux smartphone, that is competitive? Good luck with that.
  - snapplebobapple 2y ago
    The firmware side of things is a different can of worms that also affects X86. That's not he ask I was making (although it is a good second phase). I just want phones to be more like X86 in that I can install whatever I want to them and have a more standardized interface than the current wild west situation so that it's easy to bring on new devices. It would be nice if the hardware vendors were not actively blocking installing my own operating system as well (in addition to the technical non standard issue). Why do you think I care about competitive or commercial viability? I just want the behemoth pushing apple and android crap to be forced to make their devices easier to boot an alternative and leave the rest to us to figure out and see what interesting things can be done.
    - Demiurge 2y ago
      If you don’t care about competitive smartphones, why do you care about smartphones or phones at all?
      - snapplebobapple 2y ago
        It's not about making a competitive linux smartphone, it's about making the hardware ecosystem more conducive to software competition by making it easy for people to run their own software on their own hardware.
Brian_K_White 2y ago
Is this a parody question?

gmuslera 2y ago

Nokia had a chance for greatness around 2010 with Maemo and Meego. And either by stupidity or malice they ruined that. It was the right moment to have a chance, the smartphone game was still starting up, Nokia was still very influential in that arena, and the 2 devices it made (the N900 and N9) were great in their own way, for what was around that time. But between their own internal sectors still betting on Symbian, not being open enough and the mole that Microsoft introduced with Elop that opportunity was lost. From there on there was Sailfish (that never managed to get enough adoption), Ubuntu Touch and Firefox OS among others, but no big vendors backing. And the opportunity moment was already passed, as the de facto platforms for mobile development were iOS and Android, not even Microsoft was successful pushing their own platform there. All the killer apps are already released for those platforms, trying something new won't give the essentials to communicate with others and participate in society as of today.

Tknl 2y ago
N900 was my first smartphone and still miss the feeling of having a proper Linux box in my pocket. Unfortunately didn't buy the n9 as it was clear it was dead in the water by the time it came out. Based on my contacts at Nokia it was simply underfunding, believing that symbian would remain dominant in developing countries and seeing the meamo/meego line as a distracting and expensive side project as well as internal competition which people sought to sabotage internally. Some ex-Nokia people blogged quite extensively on it.
- AndrewOMartin 2y ago
  Holy f---ing s--t! Did you just reboot your web server through an SSH pipe with your cellphone?!?
MrMember 2y ago
The N900 was phenomenal for its time. One of the best smartphones ever made. If you just wanted to use it as a smartphone you could but if you wanted to dig deeper it was such a versatile and capable device.
rjzzleep 2y ago

weikju 2y ago

It’s happening (albeit slowly?) Librem 5 PinePhone and its Pro variant FuriLabs FLX1 Mobian UBPorts PostMarket OS And all the other distributions. Still what’s really lacking is some kind of critical mass that can’t be ignored. Many many services even in real life are locked behind an iOS/play store wall (even sometimes with no alternative outside needing a smartphone). We’re not completely locked in yet so there’s still time…

linmob 2y ago
This. I try to collect all that happens weekly in the space at https://linmob.net https://linmob.net
- senorsmile 2y ago
  Thank you for doing this. Added RSS feed.

alwayslikethis 2y ago

As much as I like the concept, I'm not sure Linux phone is a good idea. Desktop Linux is not particularly prone to spyware scanning the filesystem and uploading it mainly because they mainly use free software from package repositories that are vetted by maintainers. If Linux phones are used like Android or iOS phones are used today (downloading random binaries, often to interact with real world things you can't opt out of, with distribution controlled by a corporation not too worried about your privacy), it would be a privacy nightmare.

idle_zealot 2y ago
In my mind part of the "Linux Phone" package is moving primarily to a package repo software distribution solution. You can slap an App Store-esque frontend on it, but the software you're installing is (by default) from a curated list of supported open source packages, not random binaries from untrustworthy parties. Of course, this mentality is losing support even on desktop Linux with the move to Snaps/Flatpacks/AppImages/etc, which is a real shame.
- kaba0 2y ago
  The gnu/linux userspace has absolutely no security whatsoever. It’s a real shame how trivial it is to have even an npm install potentially do literally anything. Android has an actual, sane, rethought security model that has a good track record in protecting millions of non-tech-savvy people.
  - zozbot234 2y ago
    If you run your npm install in a properly set up container (and at some point in the future, Flatpak will set this up for you), it isn't going to do much. Yes, I'm well aware that containers should still be tought of as "not a real security boundary" given the amount of remaining attack surface, but even then the Android approach is not very different.
  - idle_zealot 2y ago
    Android has a security model that protects the OS from applications and applications from users. A sane security model would put the user in control.

mozball 2y ago

Google et al pour billions annually into making android a first-class and dominant mobile OS. I think the FOSS community should leverage that and focus on liberating Android instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.

alwayslikethis 2y ago
Google is clamping on that freedom by providing ways to detect when you run unauthorized/liberated software (i.e. root or custom ROM)
- mozball 2y ago
  Your banking app is not going to work on Linux either. If Android is fundamentally broken then fork it. My point is, it seem smarter/easier to take Android and make it more linux-like than to take Linux and make it more Android-like. All the work is already done and paid for. Sailing with the wind vs sailing against the wind. edit : Unless the goal is also to benefit the linux desktop ecosystem (the whole convergence meme)
  - metadat 2y ago
    > Your banking app is not going to work on Linux either Why is that? I can use my bank through Linux via a web browser without issue. Logging in more frequently is a hassle but not a bad trade IMO.
    - mozball 2y ago
      The native app won't work though. The problem alluded to by grandparent comment and in linked-article.
    - PhilipRoman 2y ago
      Presumably this is about apps which are required for authentication, even in the browser version.
    - walthamstow 2y ago

haolez 2y ago

In the opposite direction, would Android make a decent Linux desktop if it got a little more polish for this use case? What about it's code quality? Is it a mess or is it on par with GNOME + Wayland + whatever?

silisili 2y ago
That's basically a Chromebook, which can run both Android apps and Linux apps.
g-b-r 2y ago
Yeah, let's make desktops unusable toys as well
- kaba0 2y ago
  In what way is it “an unusable toy”?
  - g-b-r 2y ago
    How can you see it any differently? You need an "app" for everything, they can hardly interact with each other, they can get killed at any time, and without rooting (which is subverting how the system is meant to be used) all sorts of things are crippled (from filesystem access, to using a firewall, to freaking setting a different volume for every app). And the limitations increase with every Android release
    - kaba0 2y ago
      They have a proper, standard, high-level way of interacting with each other, literally the whole OS is built around than. Read up on android services, intents, etc. It is eons better than dbus-ing and writing to random files all over my home dir is that linux desktops do. Killing stuff from time to time is literally an advantage for a system - look at the battery life of a linux desktop or a pinephone. You have to make apps ready for a possible suspension, otherwise they just keep on draining the battery. Besides, services can be called from an active activity, or binded by one and then they will not be killed under normal circumstances. I don’t want a random app to read my browser caches/ssh keys, etc, but if you like any random repo you download having access to your personal files, you do you.

Dwedit 2y ago

Kernel land is almost entirely Linux. Just without open-source drivers for some freakish reason. Userland is as different from desktop Linux as you can possibly get.

kaba0 2y ago
> Just without open-source drivers for some freakish reason Because manufacturers buy random parts from other suppliers, who may or may not own the source code, and they often legally simply can’t share forward that code.
pjmlp 2y ago
Nope, it is a custom Linux kernel with goodies that aren't available upstream like first level support for clang, several Rust modules (no need to argue with anti-Rust kernel folks), all security features turned on, and a micro-kernel like driver subsystem, supporting Java, C++ and Rust.

greyw 2y ago

We need real FOSS Android. I wish people would start building from there.

NewJazz 2y ago
There's a lot of building going on. Waydroid builds their own highly specialized Android derivative. As does Replicant, Calyx, Graphene, /e/foundation, Lineage, microg, and probably lots more in the Foss space alone.
yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
What do you want that LineageOS (plus F-Droid) doesn't do?
- criticalfault 2y ago
  Banking apps come to mind.
  - Eavolution 2y ago
    This is the only reason my phone's not running Lineage. I need those apps mainly for 2fa (some banks don't give me any alternative) or for one or two with no web app. It feels like a total artificial duopoly, you only get to use your essential service on android or ios.
  - floydnoel 2y ago
    what would a banking app do that a bank website can't, exactly?
    - qingcharles 2y ago
      IIRC some finance apps either don't have web sites that can perform financial transaction, or are lacking a number of features of the mobile app. Cash App and Venmo used to be some of the worst offenders, but have improved in recent times.
    - 2y ago

pieresqi 2y ago

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binary132 2y ago

Something I think people in tech sometimes don’t realize is that the complexity of modern software generally requires a lot of money to be thrown at it to get meaningful amounts of stuff done, and that money is getting thrown at open source by the giants, who may have whole teams dedicated to advancing it. That means they’re the ones directing the R&D and advancing the state of the art, so your little indie/hobby/crowdfunded/grassroots thing isn’t going to be able to keep up, probably. Call me cynical, but that’s just what I seem to see right now.

Gigachad 2y ago
I've given up on ever expecting an open source phone. Apple likely spends more money developing just the keyboard than these OSS companies have to spend on the entire phone, software and hardware. There is just no way they can release something that's even usable, let alone competitive. Did have an unexpected win in the form of the Steam Deck though. Never thought I'd have a powerful hand held, desktop linux gaming machine at an affordable price. Back in the day I was following the Dragonbox Pyra project and really liked the idea, but couldn't justify spending so much on a device that couldn't really do anything.
- binary132 2y ago
  Yeah, but Steam Deck is a perfect example of corporate funded semi-open-source winning. It could literally never have happened without spending millions of dollars on FTEs, not to mention getting the hardware side right. That’s EXACTLY what I’m talking about! Nobody who doesn’t have a giant stack of cash is going to come disrupt le heckin’ market with a great UNIX phone.
  - seba_dos1 2y ago
    The closest we got there in the phone market was Purism's Librem 5. That project funded tons of development, both upstream in various projects all over the stack and in original work like Phosh that later went on to live its own life - and of course all the vertical integration that went into PureOS. It significantly pushed the ecosystem forward and produced a working device that let me finally migrate away from N900 and that I'm still happily using as my daily driver. OTOH, it went way over the crowdfunded budget, caught enormous delays (including, but not limited to, COVID supply chain collapse) and almost killed the company... Contrast that to the PinePhones, which were done cheaply in a "throw some hardware at the community and let them figure things out" fashion. This approach had both upsides and downsides, but ultimately I think it showed us that this community is still way too small to be able to sustain a project of such complexity on its own. There's still a lot to be done in this space and without Purism's investments things move much slower than they did a few years ago (though fortunately they still do move). (disclosure: I'm one of the developers who were paid for that work)

Almondsetat 2y ago

No we really don't. What we actually need is to do all over again what has been done for the last 30 years on computers: developing and reverse engineering open source versions of the various drivers for mobile devices' hardware. Without them you will be forced to pray for ABI compatibility at every update and you will never get to know your actual hardware

krick 2y ago

We already had not one, but multiple. They lost to android. I imagine there were multiple reasons, really, but one of them seems pretty basic: simple SDKs. Even when there was no Android apps, making one was easier, than making... whatever. Now, when there are thousands (maybe millions? I have no idea) Android apps, I don't really see anything else catching on. To be fair, now there is this react-native approach, but still, all these permission frameworks, drivers, really necessary apps nobody will port and everybody needs...

NewJazz 2y ago

We don't need a non-android ecosystem. The compatibility is nice. The security features are nice. What we need is more devices that allow unlocking the bootloader and rewriting the keys.

bpye 2y ago
Sadly that isn’t really enough today - since many applications will refuse to function if SafetyNet fails because you have some non-standard image running.
- NewJazz 2y ago
  That's not a problem and not getting fixed by diverging farther than android. To date none of my apps have required that, including my banking app. Even so, loss of some financial apps is a small price compared to loss of social and dating apps, public transit and health apps, and more. iNaturalist publishes an open source android app to complement their very functional website, and honestly I would give up all of GNU for that one app.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    If you only care about Android app compatibility but not safety net, try waydroid?
    - NewJazz 2y ago
      Waydroid was really slow last time I tried it, and most apps I tried did not work well or at all.
      - seba_dos1 2y ago
        I don't perceive Waydroid as slow on my Librem 5 at all, and apps tend to work well within it (playing some ad-riddled games from Play Store on a GNU/Linux phone, out of curiosity to see whether they'll work, was an interesting experience) - with the exception of remote attestation and peripheral access, which, of course, greatly limits the possible use cases. The former isn't really something that could be fixed, but for the latter I've just had NLnet's funding accepted for a project that's about better integration of Waydroid with the host OS, so hopefully I'll be able to make some progress in this area in the coming months. My personal goal is to be able to download a local public transport app and be able to buy a ticket, which includes scanning an in-vehicle QR code, without much fuss.

alexey-salmin 2y ago

As much as we laugh at IBM and Intel nowadays and praise the success of ARM, the x86-based IBM PC ecosystem with standardized BIOS that maintains compatibility for decades is such a blessing, a huge breakthrough that we don't even notice anymore because we're so used to it. Before that the OS development was tightly coupled to hardware development. Booting an existing OS on a new device even with the same CPU required prior patching, configuration and re-implementation of the floppy drive driver. And it wasn't seen as odd because that's the way it was. I don't think the problem is a lack of OS enthusiasts, we probably have more of them than at the time Linux was born. The problem is they're fighting an uphill battle against a swarm of slightly different CPUs and device trees and uncooperative vendors that do anything they can to lock the device.

transpute 2y ago
> uphill battle against a swarm of slightly different CPUs and device trees Economic incentives for "differentiation", e.g. device tree with upstream Linux and uboot support for feature A, but non-upstream uboot blob enables feature A+B.
- mikrotikker 2y ago
  The Samsung s5 had a noticeable difference in camera quality between stock and AOSP.
pjmlp 2y ago
A lucky accident that IBM failed to prevent, they didn't want to have such a market, Compaq made it possible, with a clever way to prevent it legally.
dartos 2y ago
It’s even hard to find the uboot patches for clockworkpi hardware, and they open source almost everything.
AnthonyMouse 2y ago
The devices ship with a kernel that can use them. Is there anything we can do to make it easier to extract whatever device tree or other information from the compiled kernel it ships with, so it can be used with any other Linux kernel?

transpute 2y ago

Google AVF/pKVM will allow unmodified Linux VMs on Pixel 7+. GrapheneOS has shipped early plumbing support, not yet exposed to users.

NewJazz 2y ago
All hail Big G in our Temple of Tensor. Amen.
- transpute 2y ago
  In comparison, Apple shipped a hypervisor 2 years ago, then removed it because users were running VMs. 2024 M4 iPads have silicon support for nested virtualization, but Apple prevents users from running VMs. At least Google has upstreamed pKVM to the Linux kernel. Since Pixel Tablet can run GrapheneOS, there's a path to running unmodified Linux VMs as open-source pKVM support matures. It's sad that customers have to settle, but non-zero Google table scraps > zero Apple VM slices.
ranguna 2y ago
That's exactly what I was going to mention. I'm waiting for android 15 to be released and for people to test hardware acceleration support. If the overheating problems are fixed, I'll get myself a pixel 9 XL (for the bigger battery) and use it as my laptop daily driver replacement. If performance is any good (fingers crossed for something close to the latest raspberry pi) then it's the perfect machine: usb C displayport, it fits in your pocket, can run proper Linux, fallback to Android for steam Link until valve releases an ARM version of steam. It'll be perfect. For actual laptop form factor usage, I'll connect the xreal glasses to get a big display and I'll use the pixel as a keyboard and trackpad, or an external keyboard and the pixel as a trackpad. Can't wait for people to test android 15.
- NewJazz 2y ago
  They reenabled display port output on the Pixel line?

gorgoiler 2y ago

As an analogy: I use Sway but it doesn’t stop me from running GTK apps. I could use Gnome as my desktop software — a giant GTK app for running other GTK apps — but I don’t have to. Job scheduling, URL handling, settings daemons… we have standard tools for doing this as well on a Linux system. Somehow they remain only very loosely bound together and different bits can be omitted or swapped for alternatives. With Android / AOSP, are the components bound tightly together? I suppose the acid test would be: can I run Google maps APK on my Linux desktop as an app showing in a native window, or do I have to run an entire android emulator which has to take over a portion of my screen (and provide separate versions of all its own system services) to run one app? If a WINE-for-Android like thing exists, then I’d be very happy to run a standard Linux system on my phone and have it boot into an Android launcher that could run Android apps, but also be able to do anything else I wanted to do with a bare Linux system. Steamdeck from Valve does exactly this and it’s very good. The stock behaviour is to boot into their launcher (SteamOS) but if you sang you can toggle to a KDE desktop, get a shell in a terminal emulator, and hack away on what is just a regular PC.

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
I think you're looking for waydroid? AFAIK it does in fact have most of an android system bundled into it and it doesn't do rootless windows (Android apps are rendered into a single window that contains an entire Android UI), but it absolutely works. Funny enough, I use it on my laptop because Anki has dependency problems on my system but the F-Droid version is fine.
- Arnavion 2y ago
  >it doesn't do rootless windows (Android apps are rendered into a single window that contains an entire Android UI) If you launch individual Android programs via `waydroid app intent ...`, they render as separate windows in the parent compositor. The single window for the entire Android UI is what you get if you run `waydroid show-full-ui`.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago

zer0zzz 2y ago

How do you build such a thing when it doesn’t exist on PCs in the first place? In order to build an ecosystem you need cross compatible applications as well as some kind of strongly supported and strongly emphasized programming interface.

bsder 2y ago

The problem with open mobile phones is neither the phone hardware or software. The main problem is the damn cellular network carriers. Until some government agency gets serious about forcing the cellular carriers to actually allow phones on their network without having to go through the anal violation that is "certification" for their network, the open mobile phone ecosystem will continue to suck.

rangestransform 2y ago
Why would the government ever force carriers to accept uncertified devices? So they can emit interference on cellular frequency bands? So they can violate SAR limits and burn people?
- bsder 2y ago
  The devices would still be subject to FCC certification just like your WiFi chipsets are. Beyond that, the people developing chipsets generally have better tests for compliance than the carriers, themselves. You should be able to drop one of those chipsets in your phone, plug in a SIM, and get on with life. However, the carriers make you spend a couple of megabucks of bribes and then they will deign to allow your phone on their oh-so-fragile network. Effectively, the current cellular carriers are acting exactly like Bell System prior to the Hush-A-Phone lawsuit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush-A-Phone_Corp._v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush-A-Phone_Corp._v._United_S...
kaba0 2y ago
It was the governments that require that certification, and for good reasons. We can play this “wild west hacker” whatever, but rules are a necessity for a working society, one can’t just start driving on the other side of the road, and neither would we be ahead with random frequencies getting emitted everywhere.

yarg 2y ago

The unforgivable part for me was Google prohibiting Android forks in their vendor licensing agreements for their add-on software. It was a deeply cynical way of doing an end-run around the GPL, and I've held them in utter contempt ever since.

trickstra 2y ago

We already have it, but people aren't willing to use it. Using a real libre system will always be a little harder than using a nice and polished billionaire funded walled garden. For obvious reasons. People just aren't willing to sacrifice even a little bit of comfort for the freedom, so products like Librem or PinePhone get mostly just complaints, comparison with Apple, and current users are ridiculed as nerds or weirdos. We will never have freedom as long as this is the prevailing culture. It's up to us, the customers, the commenters.

quotemstr 2y ago

No, we need an alternative smartphone ecosystem like a hole in the head. Android won, and AOSP is free software. There is no reason to undertake the Herculean task of writing a new mobile userspace core. You might as well write a new kernel while you're at it. What would be the point? What are you going to do better than AOSP? A 5% more efficient binder? At Google HQ, there is a veritable mountain of skulls of Android competitor projects. Please notice the skulls before doing something that will almost certainly add your project to the pile.

kkfx 2y ago

We need mandatory FLOSS and mandatory open-hardware with the obligation for all commercial products to be design and built openly from start to allow a community to form and switching marketing from mass advertisement to community flaws of interests. Essentially OEMs instead of being advertisement driven with brands like religions they should evolve toward being innovation-branded. That's would create a much better and knowledgeable world BUT it means having entrepreneurs in chief and managers and technicians aside ate the same level, "high output managers" do really dislike that.

fensgrim 2y ago
So far, we can't even get Samsung to have their FOSS kernel stuff published in a buildable and usable form - its basically impossible to build their recent kernels with their recent toolchains without finding out that some obscure config option was skipped or that some file didn't survived the pre-release purge or that it requires some obscure Linux distribution to run on. And if you get it to build, chances that it will boot are slim. (Good luck finding out if there's a working UART somewhere on chip pins and it's not hidden behind hypervisor and fuses)
- kkfx 2y ago
  I know, but IF we mandate openness from the start with a public development process this could not exists or the company does not respect the law, if we do not, we will never get much usable things, "open source enterprise" and "open core" are nowadays common ways to profit from FLOSS being not FLOSS at all while formally respecting the license. The problem to arrive at the laws is how many know enough to understand why we should and we must have such law, because if for most it's not even clear what is something you own vs something you can use via a proprietary remote service... Physical ownership is a clear concept for most, digital ownership for most is a mystery... That's the damn issue.

fractallyte 2y ago

We already have it, and it's called Sailfish OS (https://sailfishos.org/ https://sailfishos.org/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfish_OS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfish_OS) The paid version even comes with Android App Support - the 'killer feature' that allows a Sailfish device to run full Android apps in a sandbox (https://jolla.com/appsupport https://jolla.com/appsupport). Some people will inevitably moan that it's proprietary, but that's just the UI layer; the rest is wide open, familiar Linux. I can SSH into my device without any fancy workarounds, and it works almost identically to a desktop machine. (Besides, how else is a company meant to survive in the super-competitive mobile device market? The OS is cheap. Android App Support is awesome. Pay up and be grateful!) The UX is simple and consistent, WAY superior to iOS and Android. Most importantly, it has an ecosystem: the Jolla app store, a comprehensive SDK, and an alternative open source app repository (https://openrepos.net/ https://openrepos.net/).

transpute 2y ago
> Pay up and be grateful!) Website says it's only sold in EU. How is that verified?
- fph 2y ago
  It isn't. You can just use a VPN.
- getwiththeprog 2y ago
  "We currently sell in European Union, UK, Norway and Switzerland. Please be welcome to use our software anywhere in the world, however due to our limited resources we can only support the noted regions." https://shop.jolla.com/ https://shop.jolla.com/
rendaw 2y ago
It looks like it doesn't support android safetynet hardware attestation so banking apps etc won't work.

weinzierl 2y ago

The mobile ecosystem is basically the world Stallman and his comrades-in-arms wanted to prevent. It did't come to reality on the PC, but sneaked in through the backdoor with the advent of mobile devices. I have little hope that this can be undone, but we need to be prepared to nip these tendencies in the bud for the next paradigm shift.

pjmlp 2y ago
It is coming, PC Clones only happened due to IBM not being able to legally prevent it taking off. It is no accident that the laptops as desktop replacement are just as vertically integrated, most people not using laptops have NUCs and game consoles, and custom built PC towers are seldom seen outside hardcore PC gamers.
atoav 2y ago
Working with all major systems I have to say I don't have the feeling that the commercial OS is getting any better. If anything they are getting worse. What is getting better are the likes of KDE. Where a good decade ago running Linux still was a pain where it didn't work, nowadays it mostly just works, the System UIs are more usable, more customizable and in many cases better than any of the commercial OS for a while now (and yes, that includes MacOS). Android is a pain in the rear, IOS similarily so.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  I just returned a NUC, because no matter what I tried, the UEFI bios and the collection of distributions I tried didn't come to terms.
TZubiri 2y ago
And that's one of the strongest criticisms of Stallman's Free Software. Instead of providing alternatives, they are just against them. Of course they tried to provide alternatives, but they are still stuck 30 years behind, they haven't gotten to phones yet. During Covid they had issues getting videoconferences to work.

pjmlp 2y ago

No we don't, because it would be UNIX command line and X11 on our phones, as proven by multiple attempts to GNU/Linux phones since OpenMoko. For all their flaws, iOS, Android, ChromeOS, and the gone Blackberry, Windows Phone, Symbian, actually rethought the whole programming stack, using modern programming languages, and UI/UX.

fph 2y ago
And security, don't forget that. Proper app isolation on Linux is still very tricky, with many competing approaches in Apparmor/Selinux/Snap/Flatpak/Docker, all complicated to set up and use. The consequence is that in practice a 2048 game has unlimited access to the files in my /home folder. On the other hand, Android has a very solid permission and isolation system. This is why I don't want GNU/Linux on my phone; I would rather have a proper FOSS Android.
- zozbot234 2y ago
  The Android approach is among the most "complicated to set up and use" (since it's based on SELinux under the hood) but the OEM does that for you. There's no reason why Linux distros couldn't do the same thing using Flatpak and/or bubblewrap. (Plus AppArmor for extra hardening where sensible.)
  - kaba0 2y ago
    Just the lack of.. the whole ecosystem adopting the restricted model and there being a properly specified and documented model in the first place.
  - seba_dos1 2y ago
    Linux distros already do that thing. Distros like PureOS, SteamOS and Fedora Silverblue focus on Flatpak as app distribution model. The thing is, nobody restricts you from ignoring that model and doing stuff the old way if you feel like it, which is in contrast to Android.

TZubiri 2y ago

The title and the fact that it's posted on reddit gives a real "someone needs to do something, but it's not gonna be me." vibe.

jwrallie 2y ago

I’d like a portable device with good battery that would run free software, mostly for privacy reasons. Anything with a good battery could do, GNU/Linux would not be strictly necessary. Running TOR or a VPN over Wifi and a browser and fast enough to stream a YouTube video at 720p is all I need. I wonder what would be the closest hardware today that could do it. Smartphone or small tablet form factor would do just fine for me.

zozbot234 2y ago
Gaming handheld would give you that. There are also old Intel-Atom based tablet PC's that are quite cheap on the second-hand market, and work well with Linux. Smartphone/palmtop form factor would be harder though.

deleted 2y ago

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melodyogonna 2y ago

I'm fine with Android.

weberer 2y ago

We do have one. I guess not many people even here know about it since it doesn't have a multi-million ad campaign around it. I've been messing around with a few distros on my Pinephone. The base Pinephone is much too weak to be used as a daily driver, but maybe the Pro is better. There are distros like Ubuntu Touch and Arch Linux Mobile. There are specific phone DEs like Phosh and (KDE) Plasma Mobile. Hardware compatibility is low, but you can at least check them out in a VM on your desktop. The best part is that you can run any software that works on ARM desktop Linux, so "app" compatibility isn't even a worry. Whether the software is usable in that form factor and resolution is another factor though. https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php?title=PinePhone_Software_Releases https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php?title=PinePhone_Software_R...

seba_dos1 2y ago
> The base Pinephone is much too weak to be used as a daily driver, but maybe the Pro is better. Both Librem 5 and PinePhone Pro are much faster than the original PinePhone, although PinePhone Pro is still relatively immature when it comes to software support.

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