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> Desktop GNU/Linux programs are either unusable or a terrible experience on a mobile device with a small screen and no mouse. Is this an assumption or coming

> Desktop GNU/Linux programs are either unusable or a terrible experience on a mobile device with a small screen and no mouse. Is this an assumption or coming from your experience? Because I'm typing this on a GNU/Linux phone in a desktop browser and use a bunch of desktop applications daily and haven't noticed. Of course if you run GIMP or something like that it won't fit unless you plug an external screen and a mouse in, but all the applications I use daily are perfectly usable. There's a lot of Kirigami and libadwaita programs these days that just work well on a phone, and if I need to launch my bank's application there's always Waydroid.

VortexLain 4mo ago
Could you please elaborate, which software is usable on mobile Linux except for Firefox? I've seen multiple people using mobile Linux, and they were using Firefox and webapps for everything, no exceptions.
- fsflover 4mo ago
  I can use most native GNU/Linux apps on my Librem 5 like gnome-calculator, gnome-calender, gnome-weather etc. I can run Android apps via Waydroid. F-Droid works fine, too. Its default app store (https://software.pureos.net/categories https://software.pureos.net/categories) provides things like music players, OTP app, and games. Flatpak works, too. See also: https://linuxphoneapps.org/ https://linuxphoneapps.org/
- seba_dos1 4mo ago
  Checking Flathub should give you some idea: https://flathub.org/en/apps/collection/mobile/1 https://flathub.org/en/apps/collection/mobile/1 There are more, not every application that works fine has metadata filled up (and not everything is on Flathub either). I do use some webapps, but with Epiphany rather than Firefox.
- megous 4mo ago
  To add to others. You can tell Kimi or whatever these days to write you a GTK4 mobile apps for a lot of pet use cases and it will. The result will also be a few C files and a meson build file, that will build on the phone itself with just gcc/binutils (I run arch linux, so no separate dev packages for deps like gtk, etc. that I need to install). You can install opencode or whatnot on the phone itself, and tell the phone to build you an app, and it will. If you need it changed, you can just ask for the changes on the phone itself and agent will update the app's code and re-build it on the phone itself. It will not need the 30+ GiB monstrosity of whatever Adroid needs to just build a hello world app and a separate computer. The app will also build and run on your desktop without any/many changes, if you need that. I got a fairly nice linphone GTK4 phone frontend app this way. So it's not just for toy apps. FOSS/Linux phones are well positioned for this self-building/self-updating prompt based software development, because you don't need separate computer and shitton of SDKs and a permission from the overseer to build/install the apps, and while phone UI is shit for manual programming, it's not at all shit for writing prompts.
gf000 4mo ago
Well, can you take a picture that looks better than what I made 20 years ago on a flip phone? I have a pinephone and try it out year after year.. Well, let's just say that there is so many areas of improvement to make "GNU/linux" run on a mobile device (that sorta includes laptops as well, even though I have done so for years) that we might as well start over from statch. For example one can't just let everything run whenever it wants, wasting battery life. Android's "more complicated" system and binder was criticized in this thread, but that's exactly what ties together the whole thing to be able to run on a device that fits in your hand, with centrally managed "let's pause this app now" etc
- megous 4mo ago
  OV5640 will not get better just by aging. You should adjust your expectations.
- seba_dos1 4mo ago
  I'm pretty sure these look significantly better than what 2006 flip phones were capable of, even after scaling down by Mastodon: https://social.librem.one/@dos/tagged/shotonlibrem5 https://social.librem.one/@dos/tagged/shotonlibrem5 Also, I'm perfectly capable of deciding whether I need an application to be running at a given moment myself, I don't need the OS to make dubious decisions for me.
1718627440 4mo ago
> Because I'm typing this on a GNU/Linux phone Which are you using, can you recommend it?

VortexLain 4mo ago

Could you please elaborate, which software is usable on mobile Linux except for Firefox? I've seen multiple people using mobile Linux, and they were using Firefox and webapps for everything, no exceptions.

fsflover 4mo ago
I can use most native GNU/Linux apps on my Librem 5 like gnome-calculator, gnome-calender, gnome-weather etc. I can run Android apps via Waydroid. F-Droid works fine, too. Its default app store (https://software.pureos.net/categories https://software.pureos.net/categories) provides things like music players, OTP app, and games. Flatpak works, too. See also: https://linuxphoneapps.org/ https://linuxphoneapps.org/
seba_dos1 4mo ago
Checking Flathub should give you some idea: https://flathub.org/en/apps/collection/mobile/1 https://flathub.org/en/apps/collection/mobile/1 There are more, not every application that works fine has metadata filled up (and not everything is on Flathub either). I do use some webapps, but with Epiphany rather than Firefox.
megous 4mo ago
To add to others. You can tell Kimi or whatever these days to write you a GTK4 mobile apps for a lot of pet use cases and it will. The result will also be a few C files and a meson build file, that will build on the phone itself with just gcc/binutils (I run arch linux, so no separate dev packages for deps like gtk, etc. that I need to install). You can install opencode or whatnot on the phone itself, and tell the phone to build you an app, and it will. If you need it changed, you can just ask for the changes on the phone itself and agent will update the app's code and re-build it on the phone itself. It will not need the 30+ GiB monstrosity of whatever Adroid needs to just build a hello world app and a separate computer. The app will also build and run on your desktop without any/many changes, if you need that. I got a fairly nice linphone GTK4 phone frontend app this way. So it's not just for toy apps. FOSS/Linux phones are well positioned for this self-building/self-updating prompt based software development, because you don't need separate computer and shitton of SDKs and a permission from the overseer to build/install the apps, and while phone UI is shit for manual programming, it's not at all shit for writing prompts.

gf000 4mo ago

Well, can you take a picture that looks better than what I made 20 years ago on a flip phone? I have a pinephone and try it out year after year.. Well, let's just say that there is so many areas of improvement to make "GNU/linux" run on a mobile device (that sorta includes laptops as well, even though I have done so for years) that we might as well start over from statch. For example one can't just let everything run whenever it wants, wasting battery life. Android's "more complicated" system and binder was criticized in this thread, but that's exactly what ties together the whole thing to be able to run on a device that fits in your hand, with centrally managed "let's pause this app now" etc

megous 4mo ago
OV5640 will not get better just by aging. You should adjust your expectations.
seba_dos1 4mo ago
I'm pretty sure these look significantly better than what 2006 flip phones were capable of, even after scaling down by Mastodon: https://social.librem.one/@dos/tagged/shotonlibrem5 https://social.librem.one/@dos/tagged/shotonlibrem5 Also, I'm perfectly capable of deciding whether I need an application to be running at a given moment myself, I don't need the OS to make dubious decisions for me.

1718627440 4mo ago

> Because I'm typing this on a GNU/Linux phone Which are you using, can you recommend it?