Anyone use one of those Linux phones like pine phone or librem.
I was looking at a few months ago but settled on a deggooled phone. Are there user friendly distros for them?
After having had a Nokia N900 they are a big disappointment. Especially from a performance standpoint. I have no idea why that is. Especially if I compare them to something like an old Raspberry Pi which can still give you a good desktop experience.
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That’s my point. Compared to today’s hardware that thing was just a small calculator. And still it managed to deliver snappy performance.
I really miss it.
I still use my N900, basically just for ssh over wifi these days. It is so so so much better than typing on a virtual keyboard, especially in a terminal where I have keyboard shortcuts set up for home/end/pgup/pgdn/tab/etc. The original Nokia battery from 2009 is still live and kicking! The keyboard and slide form factor were great. Even the resistive touch screen, when used with the stylus, is very accurate.
Purism is a fucking scam company. Look intoFairPhonre or just do what most of us do: get a Pixel and reinstall without gapps
I don’t think so. They providing GNU/Linux phone and invest money into mobile development for Linux. I would not recommend buying their Librem (better buy PinePhone Pro instead if you want GNU/Linux), but they definitely not a scam company.
I paid $2,000 for a laptop. It broke the same week it arrived. I returned it. They said they’d give me my money back.
That was about a year ago. I’m still waiting for my refund. They keep say it’s coming soon and won’t give me an ETA.
That’s not a scam?
Wow, that’s sad to hear. You should have started with this :)
Well I got the murena one so that is a degoolged phone
Hows the experience with the phone? What have you noticed can be used and cant as far as app usage? (Ie games, social apps, etc)
Well this one uses replacements for all the google back end stuff and a app lounge that gives a privacy rating and promotes foss apps. Since I don’t Facebook, Instagram, twitter, and I only used reddit the website, I don;t know how well those app run it. All the app I do use run fine. It does come with a Gb of cloud storage and a private email run by the developers.
That sounds pretty good, not sure if you used it for navigation, but if you did how is that on the phone? Does it run hot or average temp?
It works, the apps are ok. MAgic earth is considered the best one for open streets maps but is had old design. Like you have to manually download each map chunk, like the whole of Texas and Oklahoma if you travel in both states. Also it is not that complete when its own addressing so you need to search in a browser for addresses. And the maps don’t auto update and it won’t download over cellular by default.
Ive tried magic earth while traveling. Though the ui is nice compared to osmand, i agree that there are extra steps. Sometimes i had to input the address of the place i found to an address to coordinate converter to plug that into Magic earth. I get the auto update maybe to save resources while using the app or prevent the app from rebooting/refreshing map after update.
Thanks for the info.
Ah yes, Librem, 100$ aliexpress phone specs for flagship prices lol
I have a librem 5, i use it to make/receive calls and it seems to work fine, though for anything else it is too anemic. Also eats through the battery like crazy, even shut down, it slowly drains.
The only usable distro is sailfishos, but it is not fully free software. It even has android app support.
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PostmarketOS on oneplus6 is nice. 👍
For the uninitiated, what is that? I am using lineageos on oneplus 6t at the mo
Linux operating system that is compatible with a few of android phones.
https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/OnePlus_6T_(oneplus-fajita)
Very cool! Is the battery life any good? Tempted to try it
Battery life has been excellent on the oneplus6. As others have said, there are some major issues, such as GPS and the camera not working at all. Calls were giving me issues a few months ago, but nowadays with “edge” (the latest release) they’re quite reliable.
With all the bugs and problems, I could use PostmarketOS every day with minimal issues, I used it exclusively for just over a week and it was fine. I think in ~2-3 years I’ll be using Linux on mobile as my main device.
Battery life is pretty decent, but I haven’t had a 100% success rate with some of the basics like calls and texts. I’ve enjoyed using it as a kind of mini-tablet though, with no SIM (will keep trying again periodically).
Ah ok, I will keep an eye on it! Really exciting project
Unfortunately it’s not fully usable on the OnePlus 6/6T yet. I would love to daily drive my 6T but it only has working audio for the first call before you have to power cycle it. VoLTE doesn’t work so you have to use 2G mode if you want to receive calls.
+1 for this. PostmarketOS is definitely best privacy minded linux portable on smartphone.
I started daily driving a PinePhone with Mobian over two years ago, upgraded to a PinePhonePro when they first came out, and then I finally got my Librem5 about a month ago. They have come a long way. The core functions you’d expect from a phone work; calls, texts (SMS and MMS), camera (pictures and video), email, web browsing, all that works perfectly fine on my Librem5. However, I understand they are not for everyone. While there are things like twitter and mastodon clients for Linux you are not going to get a banking app for a Linux phone (for example). I just use the browser for those kinds of things though.
How was your experience with Mobian? I had my install break like 3 different times with barely any usage / installing packages.
I’ve had a great experience with Mobian. It’s been a while since I distro-hopped for mobile OS’s but Mobian seems to be the most stable for me.
The things keeping me from fully migrating to Linux on mobile are apps like Uber/lyft. They don’t have a web ui version, but I actually use them often. Also google maps navigation doesnt have any realistic alternative in my experience.
Uber and lyft do have web versions you can use to use the service, however app notification services and more detail stuff on the driver are not available like it is on the app versions.
For lyft: https://ride.lyft.com/
For uber: https://www.uber.com/us/en/ride/
As far as maps, i used this when i had ubuntu phone, it was pure maps running offline with osm scout server. I had to go on a browser to get the coordinates of where i wanted to go and input that on the puremaps. Its an extra step but once i saved the default locations it made it easier use.
Oh wow I did not know they had web versions! That is awesome! I might get a linux phone now and give this a shot.
Not having apps like Uber/Lyft is a problem for a lot of people. I’ve ran into issues like going to events (concerts/sporting events) where they expect you to download their app to even get in the door, which is more of a societal problem then a technical one for me. I know some apps can be emulated on Linux phones but I havent played with it much so I’m not sure how well they work.
I’ve used gnome maps with very degrees of success. Its obviously not on the level of google maps, but getting better.
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my librem 5 just sits in my drawer, not usable as a primary smartphone IMHO.
Have the PinePhone and PP Pro. Partial to SailfishOS on both. It has the most smartphone feel if you will. Like with most the camera is pretty much a no go but I rarely use them anyway.
Do you use the PinePhone as a daily driver, or just for tinkering?
Just for tinkering so far. I have a habit of tossing the devices aside for long periods of time when an OS breaks badly. 😁
Technically SailfishOS handles most of the requirements to make the device a daily-driver-in-training. All but one of my Android devices are VoIP now. Getting away from carrier-based stuff (and saving money). At the moment there isn’t really anything usable on the mobile linux side (SIP, calls via XMPP - I have
JMP.chatnumbers) that I am aware of. On SFOS that is. Though I can use movim via browser.Guess it is time I took the devices seriously and try to use them more regularly.
Sailfish is proprietary garbage
Okay. 🙄
Except it is proprietary. The UI, Android compatibility layer, etc are proprietary
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I’m using a Librem 5 for about two months now very happily, but I admit its not yet for everyone.
PostmarketOS installed on a Oneplus 6/6T using the UBPorts installer works pretty flawlessly for me. Some animations are not 100% silky smooth, but most are. Honestly a pretty good experience, it just needs a lot of polish around the corners
How is the camera performance?
Doesn’t work right now. I think you could get it to work with droidian though, but I didnt try
The big sticking point for me is the camera. It seems like they all have bad (or even non-functioning) cameras. I don’t own a camera. My phone is my camera. I can’t switch to a phone that can’t be my camera.
Well with all the models that use lineage os you could probably find a good camera
LineageOS is Android. I think it was implied the user meant GNU/Linux distros on phones like Mobian or PostmarketOS which run on things like the Pine Phone since if we were talking about using Android, we could just keep our current phones, so that’s what I was referring to when I said they had bad cameras
Ubuntu Touch on an Android phone might provide some middle ground. I have an old Nexus 6P with Ubuntu Touch on it, the camera is performing surprisingly well - better than some popular open source camera apps I have tried on Android. :)
I have been daily driving a PinePhone/Pro but I keep my old Galaxy Note 8 close by if I’m going anywhere I want a camera.
@CalcProgrammer1 @KindaABigDyl
How does the battery stack against galaxy? My biggest concern is getting Linux phone that will act like it has 3-4 year old battery that is clearly dying.The battery on the PinePhones is pretty terrible unfortunately. The processors just eat way too much power. There is a patch being worked on that reduces idle power draw on the PinePhone Pro, but it still won’t get you near a modern Android phone. The keyboard case is helpful in part because it adds 2x the internal battery capacity, but it’s still going to need charging more often than a Galaxy. At least the battery is removable. Maybe they can fix it with software, but I doubt it will ever get to the same power consumption levels of a modern Android just because the PinePhone and Pro are using such outdated (and not mobile-focused) chips. They had to choose the chips based around what had good Linux support, not based on what had good power consumption unfortunately.
The OnePlus 6T with postmarketOS is showing potential though, with much better battery life than the PinePhone. However, calling support still has some issues so I can’t recommend it as a daily driver even for the basic call and text use case. Hopefully soon, as the hardware is a lot better in both performance and power consumption/battery life.
Define user-friendly…
PostmarketOS or Mobian
They are not ready for regular use yet. Performance is poor and battery life is bad. It’s fun to play with my Pinephone and watch the software slowly improve, but there is no way I could use it as my primary phone.
The only real issue holding it back for me is the battery life. I update the danctnix distro regularly to check progress, but the battery life is not production ready.
You could buy the Pine keyboard to extend the battery life.
True, I have considered it but
- They don’t come cheap
- They make it less a phone and more a mini laptop by having to open it up to use
- Increases thickness
Sure, there are drawbacks, but I think it worth it. It not only fixes the battery life, but also provides hardware typing which is important because we don’t have swipe-typing.
I wish they made a slider keyboard…
Check out !linuxphones@lemmy.ml
Use /c/linuxphones@lemmy.ml if youre on a different lemmy instance
Which is what I did 😜
i will thanks
Did the same as you. On CalyxOS on a Pixel 5 ATM. Figured I’d circle back & try my PinePhone again at some point.
i do love my choice so far. my also came with email an cloud storage so i have taken steps to deggoole more of my life
