I want to donate to a linux phone. I believe in linux and I want a linux phone. Maybe we can use one in very few years as a normal daily driver. It’s getting closer and closer every month.
I want to donate that we get there sooner. But which project? I’m following postmarket but I’m not sure if they are the most promising. What’s your stance on this? To which project would you give your money to accellerate it?
Edit: I don’t want to buy a phone. I want to support the phone os devs. Sorry for the bad wording.
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AOSP is dying as Google is killing off all the apps in favor of proprietary Google ones.
Lineage os is slowly becoming its own thing as they are maintaining basically all of the system apps at this point.
I like the security measures that Google takes for Android.
I don’t like how Google fucks everyone over in everything else
Yeah, I love having to use a custom ROM to get security updates and subsequently root my phone to be able to pass safetynet so I can use banking apps on my phone. Else I have to do as designed: Buy a new phone every 2-3 years :))))))
Not Google’s fault alone, but the way Android and ARM both have proprietary components combine into a delightful piece of hot crap that stifles users freedom and innovation.
For some reason everyone is assuming the worst out of my comment.
For reference, I was talking about the change in the system certificate store in Android 14, to which even root cannot directly write to now. This seems like a massive bug to people but this is actually an unintended byproduct instead of intentionally fucking everyone over.
I don’t think people realise the amount of work Google puts into Android. I hate their policies as much as the next person, but I can never fail to respect their efforts towards Android. You think A/B would be reality if we left it to Samsung? It would become another locked garden like Apple.
Unless the day comes that we absolutely cannot run custom ROMs (and this is a problem specifically in America because of carriers, not Google or any other OEM), I will never fail to acknowledge the great benefits that Google has brought to Android.
Your problems stem from capitalism and not from Google’s code
Security measures which are hard to verify without source code. More like “security claims”
AFAIK the only proprietary parts of AOSP are Google’s services and GMS. And any smaller related bits.
Or are you saying that Lineage OS is just guessing in the wild with every release?
AOSP is OSS though?
No one actually runs AOSP on their phone. It is effectively a black box. AOSP exists to exploit volunteer labour and comply with licensing requirements
With LineageOS, you pretty much are running AOSP on your phone.
Except most phones cannot run it
You’re technically correct, because Lineage often has to bundle their own apps with AOSP along with a few tweaks.
However, the way you’re putting it is as if Google literally removes the backbone of Android in AOSP and serves you a shell. That is simply not the case. You don’t want to run Google’s proprietary software? You don’t get Google’s services.
That’s all there is to it. Running Lineage is perfectly fine on many devices with Google. The statement that Lineage doesn’t work on many devices is only true in America, in which case, blame your carriers.
Try to compile just the Android SDK yourself. No one even knows if this is possible (if all the source code needed is there).
“Security measures”
I 100% agree.
Love it or hate it, Android is extremly fast, polished, stable and easy to use, not to mention it has gigantic library apps that are built to work perfectly with a touchscreen.
I honestly don’t really get what there is to gain by using “Desktop Linux”. I mean sure some proper Programs offer way more features than Apps but using them on a 6.5" Touchscreen sounds like pain.
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Sounds a lot like the Android 4.X and 2.X days. Its unfortunate that Google over time has locked down Android more and more. I mean having the option to do wild stuff is better than not having it.
The only real usecase I could see is with a proper Desktop Mode like DEX on High end Samsung phones or Motorola’s ready for. Where you can plug your phone into a Monitor and attach a physical keyboard and mouse. In that case, yeah it would be neat to break out of the Android jail.
I don’t think anyone actually want’s desktop linux, just a free & completely open source phone OS, the only hope for which is a linux derivative.
It doesn’t need to be competitive with a flagship phone experience. I think device capabilities have plateaued somewhat… I’ve been playing around with a 4 year old phone the last few weeks and it’s supremely adequate for everything I need to do.
There are a myriad of potential uses for older devices.
Actually regarding the app department (caveat is that I have an iPhone looking to switch to android), there has been a huge wave of developers making apps for mobile Linux or making their apps compatible. So much so that someone like me (I download everything that’s shiny) has more than had his app needs met and exceeded by what has been released.
Actually my main reason for wanting mobile Linux to succeed is because these apps look and work so good. Especially the gnome ones, the app ecosystem alone makes mobile Linux desirable.
Honestly, even more so when you consider how mobile linux could potentially get Apple levels of cross-device integration (without the baggage), and the ability to have the same UI on your phone and computer. I want to use gnome and libadwaita apps everywhere lol.
@aluminium @ExLisper i mean technically, apple is unix based and android is too, the unix-based OSes have clearly overtaken all the other proprietary systems that popped up in the last 30 years, so there’s that
The benefits are there, some of ideas out of my head:
Better networking for administrator, access to /etc/hosts file, not being tied to a single VPN slot.
Using old mobile phone as a simple server, having access to firewall tools and normal remote control.
Installing simplier graphical interface for eldery people.
Lifetime updates for many system components that are not device specific.
Simple backups and cloning with standard tools like rsync or borgbackup instead of Google Drive. Also backing up whole system.
Everyone can add a feature, you can make a difference, no need to mess with Google’s Android developing pipeline.
Making native apps for mobile and desktop at the same time, no need for bloated web-like abstraction layers.
Apps made in Python, C, Rust… No need to fit into Android SDK. And no forcing Android SDK and Android Studio!
Customizations of the interface look via CSS files (Phosh have it to some sort).
Someone give more ideas?
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The problem with Android is it is very invasive and in my opinion untrustworthy. How many of these Android OS’s from various vendors are not kept up to date, with unpatched vulnerabilities because they dump support to force upgrade their customers to the next model, when your phone should still be functionally viable. How many apps in the Android ecosystem are just info vacuums? It’s a very predatory ecosystem and i would prefer a libre solution to these scumbag predatory corporations. It blows my mind how people are so numb to the abuses of these companies, they won’t even consider alternatives. Iphones aren’t a viable alternative either unless you’re into joining abusive cults. I have both a Pinephone and a Librem 5, and they work fine if you don’t mind horrible battery life, i just wish we had more alternatives and I’ll put my money towards that endeavor.
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This is a problem with the current industry, smartphones are conceptually no different than any other computer. It’s Qualcomm not publishing proper documentation and tools, propietary bootloaders, drivers being baked as Android packages, no specification how main processor can talk to a modem…
Oof, now I am sad on the account of what could have been.
An Android phone isn’t what’s referred to when people say “Linux phone”. What they’re referring to is a phone running GNU/Linux, typically running one of the GNU/Linux phone shells/desktop environments.
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Apparently not.
To repeat myself: an Android phone (for example, running GrapheneOS or LineageOS) isn’t a “Linux phone”.
Not necessarily, F-droid combined with Lineage os or other free software ROM gives you the same freedoms are the Linux desktop does.
You can’t even compile any of those FOSS apps without running propietary build of Android SDK. No one managed to build current versions of Android SDK from the source code yet.
Android is like one big blob and changing anything in it require giant effort. Meanwhile making new feature for a Linux phone with common Linux tech stack is super easy and any mid-tier developer can change something in Phosh for example.
I don’t believe that is the case
Which one? Android SDK source is under Apache licence, but binaries are under EULA. There were some efforts to properly package it under free licencje, but currently no one do it.
As for Android being giant blob, maybe not the best word but it really is barely available to change. If I want to add a new feature to the UI, I need to build whole ROM again and deal with Google’s developing platforms. While on Linux you can get the code for a component from some GitHub/Codeberg and modify/reinstall just that component.
What you’ve said here doesn’t contradict what I said. A phone running Lineage OS is explicitly not what people are referring to with the phrase “Linux phone”.
That’s just capitulation.
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