Anyone using a Linux Smarphone?
Is anyone here using a (non-Android) linux Smartphone? Curious what type of phones y'all are using and what your experience has been.
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Is anyone here using a (non-Android) linux Smartphone? Curious what type of phones y'all are using and what your experience has been.
Yes, running OnePlus 6 with Mobile NixOS (actually mostly just NixOS with a couple modules from mobile NixOS). I will try to make the config public when I get it into a less rough state. It's... useable as a daily phone, but you have to be really into it to do it.
It's not like desktop Linux where if you're a tech enthusiast you can ignore a few rough edges and just use it like you would a more mainstream OS.
I had to flash a specific old version of OxygenOS, using almost undocumented tools, which could easily brick the phone if something went wrong, just for GPS to work. I have to recompile my kernel every time it updates. I had to write my own scripts for the hardware slider thing to work (which has a nice benefit of letting me use it for whatever I want; I want to make it switch between NORMAL and INSERT in my editor just as a laugh).
I can't even get wire guard to work and he's writing his own scripts for a Linux phone. How do I get this knowledge?
Honestly, it's mostly just trying shit out, breaking your install and fixing it, and having fun. In the grand scheme of things doing all that stuff is not that difficult, mostly tedious; my day job involves more complex and often interesting problems. It's just gluing together things which other people wrote, looking at what breaks, and either fixing it properly or just hacking it together with perl.
Finally, I can confide to you that I've spent half a day getting wireguard working on that very phone a couple months ago, only to find out it was because I didn't poke the right holes in the firewall :)
When I.lernt coding backnin the 2000s we had the term "Horas de aplanar el culo" (hours of flattening ass) shit takes time, patience, perseverance and the humility of always remember that some possibly asian kid did it in a fraction of the time with a fraction of the body hair you have. But that doesn't invalidate what you did.
It's accelerating now. I hang out on App subs and people say shit like 'it took me a whole month to develop this app', some even do it in 'days'.
I've just released and it took me three years. I'm sure their apps are Ai slop, but that's what I'm competing with.
I got a oneplus 6 to install nixos, but I'm currently using LineageOS as I kind of got stuck on the nixos install, and I needed a phone. I previously had nixos on a pinephone and it was cool but too slow to use seriously.
I have a second oneplus 6 with a wonky usb port, am going to try to fix that and maybe give nixos another go. Sounds like its even more hassly than I thought!
I also have a OnePlus 6 with Mobile NixOS. I haven't been able to get audio or camera to function, so it's just a toy on m desk at the moment. Other than that and a few UI quirks, it's serviceable.
Audio works for me (with pulseaudio). The camera doesn't work for me either.
I just fat-fingered myself into a need for a new phone. I'd really like to get away from Android, but I've yet to hear anyone say any smartphone running Linux is ready for daily driving.
😢
Huh, I've never noticed you write a message without the need to replace a "th" before.
Sometimes, sentences come togeþer wiþ so many in a row I feel self-conscious. More rarely, I produce one, or none.
You become hyper-aware of how heavily English relies on "th" when you walk þis paþ.
Did you ever read that book that was written without using the letter "e"? Now there's something on which English - the word itself even - depends.
la disparition?
I think you're making a joke I'm too oblivious to get, but in case I was wrong:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_(novel)
(Not to be confused with a similarly titled book that definitely uses the letter 'e')
Oh, it wasn't a joke, I'm just french and though you were referring to the french novel la disparition that is also written with no e's
A book without it? I couldn't show the world a short post not including it! Why though? This is so hard for our brains. 💀
for fun I would say, although I must add that making a short post without including a awfully common part of our common language is a task that can be brought about without too much labor.
I know, I was trying to josh 😭 you almost did it though! Doing this also allow to find about words you don't know!
On þe oþer end, I believe þere's also a book where every word except articles starts wiþ "s".
That sounds like an alliterative challenge.
I have been waiting for 10 years or more. And it still isn't. It will never be unfortunately.
I do think it will move way faster the shitter android gets.
Facts. At first there was such an enthusiastic Android crowd who was having so much fun with it. (Not to mention contributing TONS of free labor and promotion.)
And now Google is just saying "NO! NOT YOURS! WE'RE GREEN APPLE NOW!"
I hope those actual genius nerds who love user-centric tech accelerate an alternative just out of sheer spite at this point.
Really, its a function of how many of us give these companies money to buy their hardware
So, yeah, the shittier android gets, the more of us jump ship. The more of us jump ship, the better the ecosystem becomes.
Eh they said that about desktop Linux not that long ago
I wanted PinePhone to work decently so I could daily drive it but when I got it it was already far behind from my old phone hardware-wise. PostmarketOS had run roughly. It was kinda usable but I couldn't manage to use Signal on it (it was a desktop app that time). GPS wasn't working either. 2 most important things for me. Battery life was also abysmal.
This was years ago though, PostmarketOS is probably much much better now. I sold that PinePhone so I don't know its current state. I wouldn't expect more from what I tried.
If I'm gonna get a Linux phone now, I want to see a good Android app emulation. At least until we get real alternatives. I still need a couple apps from Aurora Store. F-Droid apps have a better chance to be ported to Linux from Google Play ones anyway.
Same boat here. I still futz with my PinePhone but mostly as a portable music/video player.
Eagerly awaiting the rebirth of CalyxOS
Really sad about the Pinephone, because you know what Pine did SO WELL? The PineTime. That device is still incredible and has lasted me a long time.
It shows time, and it shows messages, even a decent heartrate monitor! Built like a tank, too. I wish more of their products could be this awesome.
I daily drive a Librem 5. First thing to note is do not expect a well polished experience. Battery life is bad, only about 4 hours of light use, and 8 or so hours if left in suspend. It can do VoLTE, send SMS, use web apps and any apps coded with libadwaita or kirigami. Other desktop apps can be forced to scale on the display, but it won't be perfect.
I use Signal desktop as my main means of communication on the Librem 5. I have a spare normie phone for setup, but Waydroid is an option. I do use Waydroid for a few apps that have no web browser equivalent.
Idk, all I can say is, you have to really want it to live with it. I don't do gaming or heavy social media use or anything removed that, so it is just fine for me. But it's definitely not for everyone.
Is that battery life in airplane mode or not? Curious how long you get in airplane mode.
You could probably stretch it to 10-12 hours if you turn all the hardware kill switches to off, which activates "lockdown mode." It turns off every sensor on the device.
I'm using Sailfish OS on a Jolla C2 phone. The OS is great, very good native software and it also runs Android apps.
How's your experience been with the GPS? I have been using sailfish on a Sony phone and loved it but getting a GPS lock just took forever for me.
Works well enough for me, it's comparable to my Android phones. But I'm not a heavy GPS user.
Have you done anything to get that? I have not been able to get decent GPS unless I planned 20 mins in advance
Oh yeah, I also daily drive a Sony with Sailfish (Xperia XA2) and the GPS is very unreliable to get a lock. It's very rare that it works sadly. Other than that the phone works very well.
Yeah that kinda became a dealbreaker for me. I really wish that was better cause it's the only thing I feel holding it back as an android alternative. Its got the apps (thru android emulation), the control and freedom to brick it as you want. Just needs the GPS sorted and its great! (Yes things could be better but I can forgive those issues)
Wikipedia states the UI layer is propriertary, is that true?
Jolla is in the process of open sourcing components. See this forum post from today .
Some components are proprietary. See https://docs.sailfishos.org/Develop/Open_Source/ .
I have a Xiaomi Mi A2 that I ran ubuntu touch on. The camera didn't work, and it was based on ubuntu 16.04. They've dropped support for it now. It was not ready to be a daily driver.
I should be getting a poco x3 nfc in the mail tomorrow. It should have excellent support on both postmarketos and ubuntu touch. I don't expect it to be a daily driver, but I can't get the idea out of my head. I don't like where iOS and Android are headed.
oneplus 6T and poco F1 on mobian and postmarketOS. SDM845 devices with 8 GB RAM and fast storage, about the peak of performance you can have nowadays for about $50 apiece. I'd encourage anyone to get a cheap device, fun to play around with and prepare for the day when it becomes viable. ubuntu touch is also possible, but since it's halium (like android + linux VM) it wants me to downgrade to Android 9 which is virtually impossible for me; the former two run full linux kernels and don't have that limitation - spotty hardware support, though.
performance is acceptable, the power to do almost anything you want, access whatever and whenever you want. I run it without broadband, just wifi. the cameras are unusable. since I keep the modem off, GPS doesn't work either. so it's a linux laptop with touch, basically. the apps are a shitshow, rarely will you find one that supports touch and adapts to the vertical zoomed-in screen.
but it's getting better, shit's way better now than it was only a year ago and eventually it'll get there.
as long as you're aware it's not an android alternative, you'll have a good time.
Sony Xperia III with Sailfish OS flashed on it. Running Android emulation for a few apps like local public transport, K9 Mail. No Google.
Nice thing its easily programmable in Python / Guile / Rust. Plus has a FLOSS Linux app store.
I also have a Gemini PDA with a physical keyboard, which runs Sailfish as well. It's nice to use vim on it.
Is sailfish OS a better experience than postmarketOS in general?
I have not compared them. It works fine.
A bit late to the party here, but today I flashed Ubuntu Touch onto a Xiaomi Poco X3, and it's... well, it's rough.
All the base functionality seems to be there, calls should work (not sure because I didn't test them extensively), sms works, location/gps works, nfc is supported, camera is.. passable, battery life is certainly, and noticeably worse but that's a given - when on standby, the battery goes down roughly 8% every 5 hours, so approx. 27% per day on standby.
While I'm really glad to see how much Linux phone development sped up, they are still nowhere near daily driver status - even the phones built with Linux support in mind are not faring well from what I've seen. Even then, I'm keeping this Poco X3 because Android's days seem to be numbered.
I daily drive Ubuntu Touch on a Fairphone 5. It's not without quirks, but I like the experience. Many practical and nice native apps, Android app support through Waydroid, banking and things that would require Google Play verification I solve through the browser. Fairly good battery life, VoLTE is solved for the FP5 and some other models (which has been an issue with many Linux phones) and the community is very active solving issues and helping each other day and night.
Warning: the devs of waydroid said it should never be trusted for sensitive use, due to security issues
If you are, you’re usually limited to progressive web apps. Not a bad thing, just something to be aware of. That’s the reason I had to give up when I tried. Not having a decent navigation software was really hard.
For me it was battery life. The thing wouldn't sleep properly.
Sleeps good enough for the music stream to be choppy, but not good enough to last a day.
I just got myself a fairphone gen 6. I want to put postmarket OS on it, but had a kind of rough start. Haven't gotten it working yet :(
Ive got a 4. Its pretty fantastic on /e/ so far.
eOS works great for me on my fairphone 5, I suspect the model 6 is similar. Just be VERY careful about the anti-rollback protection, read the install instructions carefully and follow them exactly. And don't use the easy installer, it can brick your phone.
https://doc.e.foundation/devices/FP6/install
For everyone else, here are the supported devices:
https://doc.e.foundation/devices
eOS is based on aosp though.
Postmarket OS isn't? Oh whoa, I just checked for myself, I had no idea, thought it was aosp too!
Cool, thanks for the correction.
Yeah. Seen this story before. Google will shit all over AOSP, and it will slowly start hurting more and more. Thought I'd give a full blown Linux mobile distro a go this time around. Maybe even get to contribute some
Great idea. I'm going to consider the same.
I wish... and I did try. You can see my post history but basically PinePhone and PinePhone Pro sitting neatly on the shelf.
They work. Sure, but between battery life or rather power management, lack of camera on the Pro, lack of MIPS on the base model to use Android apps via Waydroid, I had a lot of fun tinkering, but for me these are not daily drives.
For now I'm stuck with deGoogle Android thanks to /e/OS pre-installed by Murena on a CMF Nothing 1. It's neat thanks to F-Droid, Termux, KDE Connect, GadgetBridge, etc but overall I'd much rather be on Linux proper. If there is a path please do share.
I wish Ununtu Touch switched name, since its neither Ubuntu nor Canonical any longer.
Hang in you mean Ubuntu touch right? There's no such thing as Ubuntu touch?
I intend to get a Fairphone 5 or 6 and test-drive Ubuntu Touch on it, hoping to daily drive it... but it's all theoretical at this point. If I can't get a real Linux distro to do everything I want reliably, Lineage OS is my fallback plan. I believe in the Fairphone mission, so that'll be my next hardware purchase either way
I went from Sailfish, to Ubuntu phone, back to Sailfish,
then bought a Pinephone due to the war,
not knowing if the Finnish company would survive
before going back to Sailfish.
Pinephone, despite it being the most linux of phones, used up too much battery power.
Ubuntu phones were already miles better.
What sucks is in the USA you need VOLTE for the phone to work, and I’ve not found a phone that clearly supports it
Looks like BM818 in Librem5 supports VoLTE, but might have issues with some networks.
PinePhone's (and one of Mudita's phone's) EG25 modem technically supports VoLTE, but was very flaky for me (in a mid-low signal area)
FuriLabs (FLX1) seems to have VoLTE working.
Ubuntu Touch explicitly states that it does not support VoLTE.
Ubuntu Touch doesn't officially support it yet, but it is working reliably for several phones now.
FuriLabs was looking promising, but the new version of the phone is a downgrade in a lot of categories, and the old phone is not available anymore. Disappointing at the moment, hopefully more hardware options in future from them.
Wtf is this?
Voice over LTE, meaning in the USA we don’t have 3g anymore so the phone has to support voice over LTE
Or just use WiFi?
I am also looking for a linux smart phone at the moment. I have not found many that don't seem to be sold out, or aren't quite there yet.
If I find anything promising I will edit.
I have a pinephone for wifi and my SIM is in a CatB40 that only does calls/sms.
Surprised no mention here yet of a Pixel 3a? Both Ubuntu Touch and PostmarketOS seem to run best on it, so I've had it on my eBay search notifications for a while hoping to be able to toy with one. I really don't expect it to be daily driver material though.
What about swappa? I just replaced my 3a with a 7a. I would consider donating it to the cause but had thought about doing something with it.
I wouldn't do Ubuntu Touch on the P3a if you're in an area where VoLTE is required. It seems this model is too old to get the treatment it needs.
Ah shit, I'm in the Chicagoland area. I wonder if this affects me. That's good to know.
It will affect most of the world in a few years. Lurk around in the forum, and you'll find some posts about which phones and carriers work well in the US. (I assume that's where Chicagoland is?) VoLTE is enabled on an experimental basis for several phones running UT now.
This, but Pixel 4a. Nearly identical phones, except one has more RAM.
I just bought like five of them. Best Pixel on the market, imho.
Looking forward to oniro OS
I used a Nokia N800 and later an N9. Both were painfully slow though otherwise pretty cool. Neither is usable now, due to the 3G mobile networks having been phased out in the US.
Worldwide. The whole world is on the process of killing 3g.
WiFi works fine, tho
Yeah there just isn't much attraction to using those old phones over wifi though. The N800 is basically a tiny Debian box and maybe I could think of a cool use for that, but tmux, raspberry pi, meshtastic gizmos, etc all compete too. Neither phone is able to usefully run a web browser. I used to be on talk.maemo.org which is where users of those phones hung out, but that site shut down some years ago.
I just ordered a pinephone, haven't received it yet. The pinephone is the best native option in the U.S right now but you can get some unlocked smartphones with better hardware and install Linux it's just a bit of a headache.
The general consensus is that it's pretty low power, being one of the only chipsets that has publicly available design docs for it. It's a mid tier 2015 era chipset. It a bit slow but works as a phone. You can probably emulate android apps in it.
hows the camera?
I haven't received it yet but apparently not good. It's a $200 phone. I mostly want it because it runs Linux natively, has a regular unlocked bootloader that isn't designed to be frustrating like android phones, and can send display over USB-C so it's like a regular computer. You can run anything like emulating windows apps, you could install steam on it technically by putting it in an emulation container, but the chipset is very old at this point, and so you aren't going to be emulating anything remotely modern on it. It is just a PC in your pocket though. You have a package manager, you can install many different Linux distros on it. You can get a LoRa radio mesh case for it, a physical keyboard/battery case, which I will probably get eventually. I think it's worth the 200 dollars. I really want to get away from android. It's hard because everything from Arm CPUs to the modems are completely proprietary. The only reason this device exists is because the design docs got leaked.
It does have phone, sms, and your standard phone stuff. You can get several different desktop environments like plasma mobile or gnome mobile and several others. It has 3 GBs of ram, and the OS usually takes up around 500 MB. It has dip switches to disable the hardware like the camera, cell modem, wifi, bt, etc. It would be a great device for taking to defcon.
can it take any sim?
I think it supports most of the common bands.
Can you use Signal on a Linux phone? I know there's a desktop Linux client, but it relies on being activated from an Android or iPhone app to function, in my experience.
https://www.ubuntu-touch.io/apps/ can run Android apps with Waydroid. I don't know if Signal works with this, but Android apps run with good performance using Waydroid (I just read about it, never used it myself).
I don't have experience with mobile Linux (still on Android), but you can emulate Android apps through Waydroid and that would (probably) work. Granted, Idk if notifications would work, but that's an option if mobile Linux can handle Waydroid. There's also Molly, which is a signal client that doesn't rely on Google Play Services for notifications.
Better not to use Signal. It's intentionally made less secure by requiring a phone number.
Wire is better. Native Linux app. No phone number needed.
Signal is important to some of my contacts and its E2E encryption is excellent. The only thing the phone number gives away to the outside is "has this person used Signal in the past?". Since it is not illegal to use Signal in my country, I'm not worried.