4 ms·

Sounds like a GNU/Linux phone would fit your use case better.

Aachen 2y ago
I've considered it but, sadly, the reasons to not do that are increasing rather than decreasing. Off the top of my head: Can't use a public transport here without the app. They recently put a little animation on the ticket screen so that you now need to record a video instead of a screenshot as backup for when the app logs you out again; it also only runs on big tech and is only legally obtainable via the big tech stores (no apk download, for example). Germany is really big on privacy and free software but Deutsche Bahn is... very privatised, let's say Which phone would function as the base installation of Signal, and does Signal Desktop work properly on 5" extreme-DPI screen? Can I make and receive calls on those devices without being in data/WiFi range? I don't have full coverage at home on either of those and would drop if SIP clients are the solution for that I also like having a decent camera in the same device. Tried Fairphone before and that was be very borderline (resold it for size reasons in the end); the FOSS software simply isn't there Exceedingly few games are made for GNU/Linux on screens as tiny as these. Would need to run Android emulation to play virtually any mobile game, including the ones I currently enjoy I don't think desktop OpenStreetMap software exists with even half the features as I use in OsmAnd, and for editing JOSM sounds not very nice to use on mobile as compared to, say, StreetComplete (different purposes; I use JOSM on desktop but not on a 5" touchscreen) --- The only solution I've found that balances usability, stability, and the freedom to run what you want is the vendor's stock Android (e.g. for the camera app and lockscreen shortcuts) with Magisk and Linux Deploy. From there, you can merge desktop tools like restic for backups with mobile apps running smoothly. The market doesn't seem geared towards people like us, though
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  FWIW... > Can't use a public transport here without the app. Does it run under waydroid? > Can I make and receive calls on those devices without being in data/WiFi range? I'm pretty sure that is supposed to work
  - Aachen 2y ago
    I learned of Waydroid yesterday in the NewPipe thread, haven't had a chance to look into it yet! It sounds cool but so far emulators have always been unusably slow. Since it's not being presented as some major breakthrough, I don't expect it to be better than Google's official emulator. Still planning to take a look, though And good to know they're supposed to work with regular gsm networks! Didn't find much on a quick search, so I wasn't sure. I assume it requires specific hardware and software, like a Purism rather than flashing a distribution onto the phone model you like?
    - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
      Waydroid isn't a VM, it runs parts of the Android software stack directly on the real kernel on bare metal. So perf should be good. As to cell connectivity / telephony: Honestly I'm not super familiar, I just see it mentioned sometimes; I'd suggest asking in the postmarketos matrix chat. I suspect it works in a somewhat general sense but might need some work per device to get drivers working or something like that.
yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
All other things held fixed, it would. Unfortunately, other things are not held fixed; proper unixy[0] Linux phones today are either 1. devices designed for that case, which are underpowered hardware and/or really expensive, or 2. devices not designed for that case (generally devices that shipped with Android) which have fairly awful hardware support. [0] If you have a better way to describe both GNU/Linux and Alpine derivatives, I'm all ears, but postmarketos is arguably the biggest player in this space and it's not GNU/Linux so I'm a bit stuck.
- fsflover 2y ago
  > underpowered hardware https://puri.sm/posts/the-danger-of-focusing-on-specs/ https://puri.sm/posts/the-danger-of-focusing-on-specs/
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    I dunno... the first time I read that, I interpreted it as "yes our hardware is weak but please ignore that", and reading it again it still rather feels like that. Yes, GNU/Linux has better/lighter software that can get more life out of weaker hardware, but... well, I wouldn't run firefox on 3GB of RAM on my Linux laptop if I could help it; I see no reason to suddenly treat it as reasonable just because the form factor is different.
    - fsflover 2y ago
      You're not wrong. But this reply was submitted with my Librem 5 and Firefox. It's performance is far from top Android phones, but it pretty usable, especially with NoScript.

I've considered it but, sadly, the reasons to not do that are increasing rather than decreasing. Off the top of my head: Can't use a public transport here without the app. They recently put a little animation on the ticket screen so that you now need to record a video instead of a screenshot as backup for when the app logs you out again; it also only runs on big tech and is only legally obtainable via the big tech stores (no apk download, for example). Germany is really big on privacy and free software but Deutsche Bahn is... very privatised, let's say Which phone would function as the base installation of Signal, and does Signal Desktop work properly on 5" extreme-DPI screen? Can I make and receive calls on those devices without being in data/WiFi range? I don't have full coverage at home on either of those and would drop if SIP clients are the solution for that I also like having a decent camera in the same device. Tried Fairphone before and that was be very borderline (resold it for size reasons in the end); the FOSS software simply isn't there Exceedingly few games are made for GNU/Linux on screens as tiny as these. Would need to run Android emulation to play virtually any mobile game, including the ones I currently enjoy I don't think desktop OpenStreetMap software exists with even half the features as I use in OsmAnd, and for editing JOSM sounds not very nice to use on mobile as compared to, say, StreetComplete (different purposes; I use JOSM on desktop but not on a 5" touchscreen) --- The only solution I've found that balances usability, stability, and the freedom to run what you want is the vendor's stock Android (e.g. for the camera app and lockscreen shortcuts) with Magisk and Linux Deploy. From there, you can merge desktop tools like restic for backups with mobile apps running smoothly. The market doesn't seem geared towards people like us, though

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
FWIW... > Can't use a public transport here without the app. Does it run under waydroid? > Can I make and receive calls on those devices without being in data/WiFi range? I'm pretty sure that is supposed to work
- Aachen 2y ago
  I learned of Waydroid yesterday in the NewPipe thread, haven't had a chance to look into it yet! It sounds cool but so far emulators have always been unusably slow. Since it's not being presented as some major breakthrough, I don't expect it to be better than Google's official emulator. Still planning to take a look, though And good to know they're supposed to work with regular gsm networks! Didn't find much on a quick search, so I wasn't sure. I assume it requires specific hardware and software, like a Purism rather than flashing a distribution onto the phone model you like?
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    Waydroid isn't a VM, it runs parts of the Android software stack directly on the real kernel on bare metal. So perf should be good. As to cell connectivity / telephony: Honestly I'm not super familiar, I just see it mentioned sometimes; I'd suggest asking in the postmarketos matrix chat. I suspect it works in a somewhat general sense but might need some work per device to get drivers working or something like that.

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago

All other things held fixed, it would. Unfortunately, other things are not held fixed; proper unixy[0] Linux phones today are either 1. devices designed for that case, which are underpowered hardware and/or really expensive, or 2. devices not designed for that case (generally devices that shipped with Android) which have fairly awful hardware support. [0] If you have a better way to describe both GNU/Linux and Alpine derivatives, I'm all ears, but postmarketos is arguably the biggest player in this space and it's not GNU/Linux so I'm a bit stuck.

fsflover 2y ago
> underpowered hardware https://puri.sm/posts/the-danger-of-focusing-on-specs/ https://puri.sm/posts/the-danger-of-focusing-on-specs/
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  I dunno... the first time I read that, I interpreted it as "yes our hardware is weak but please ignore that", and reading it again it still rather feels like that. Yes, GNU/Linux has better/lighter software that can get more life out of weaker hardware, but... well, I wouldn't run firefox on 3GB of RAM on my Linux laptop if I could help it; I see no reason to suddenly treat it as reasonable just because the form factor is different.
  - fsflover 2y ago
    You're not wrong. But this reply was submitted with my Librem 5 and Firefox. It's performance is far from top Android phones, but it pretty usable, especially with NoScript.