Don’t say, hey android has Linux in it, yeah no, idc, I want to know how far we are from buying a Linux phone at a price point of 200 USD.
A Linux phone is one which is built completely on Linux, uses Linux apps and most important has a terminal.
I don’t want a Linux Phone for privacy, although that’s a great reason, but I want it for the freedom it provides me. Hell, I don’t care if Android itself comes with a terminal and has similar features to Linux, I just want a Terminal which can install apps, where I can write commands and it will execute it. Complete Control on my phone and how it behaves is what I want.
I want to tell it when to sleep, when not to sleep, when to boot, when to edit a file and how, when to take a screenshot and what to do with it and where to save it, etc, etc. I hope you get the idea.
Before the rise of Android and ios I’d have said it was possible, but the goal posts have shifted pretty far. Unless something backed by a corporate entity or government rises Up, it’s a no. A chromeos type thing for smartphone is not going to happen for mass market, because there is already Android.
Discounting Android, the last mile of what a smartphone is capable of can not be accomplished in Foss manner, without end to end verified OS images and some kind of secure enclave for banking and “security” features, carriers and banks are not going to get on board any more. Convenience features like DRM video streaming, casting also probably are not achievable either
True, with the goalposts. Nowadays we are happy if we can root/custom ROM and are still able to access our banking apps.
I went back to a pixel, as I couldn’t get my oneplus with lineageOS to do Android pay, after custom roms on all my phones since the HTC Dream, I have been running stock for the last 18 months, kind of miss it
There is a way to get it working, but it’s a pain and a half in the rear and you never know when they will kill the workaround.
I think you’re totally right! It’s kinda hard to use banking apps with a custom ROM already… Unless some big corporation makes a move into something different we’re gonna be stucked in the iOS and Android chains …In that case I wish Microsoft would have been successful with their mobile OS so other companies had the guts to launch their own and compete in a more fragmented market
I can stream DRM content just fine on my Linux PC though what would be different about a phone?
At 720p you can, not 1080p or 2160p - Linux meets minimal widevine
Oh really? Damn that’s crazy never realised
Could’ve sworn I’ve watched stuff at 1080 though I usually hate watching anything lower res than that
We do banking with general purpose computers. How do you figure banking will be a sticking point?
Things like androidpay/apple pay type functions require a chain of security checks, on Android it’s levels of safety net. some banking apps require similar
Ive been on Graphene OS for a few months now and can confirm that banking apps work, but Google Wallet does not. One of my banking apps required me to toggle off hardened malloc in favor of Android’s standard malloc though, which definitely had me raising an eyebrow.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about banks it’s that they were still using ie 8 when nobody else was.
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You’d have to be able to run Android apps.
Idk FOSS developers are a lot more motivated than microsoft.
But they also have much less money to get the word out. And much less ability to pay people to develop apps for their platform.
I was thinking I would just run android apps.
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What to you think about proprietary apps for accessing a bank account?
I kinda need these. Otherwise I’d have to carry two phones and I don’t want to do that.
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That’s your choice. But you can make the same argument about using the Internet in general. Or any device that runs any proprietary, non-user-modifyable code.
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I wonder how Ubuntu Touch is doing, apparently Ubuntu has given up on it’s linux smartphones bet and the project is not officially maintained by Ubuntu now? idk.
I didn’t see anyone mention SailfishOS.
I bought a Jolla Mobile with SailfishOS when they came out and I LOVED it. It’s a fast smooth beautiful user interface, has Android app support, and truly is Linux. Like, it comes with a Terminal, full root access is easy to unlock, uses BtrFS, Wayland, the Linux standard hierarchy… It was wonderful.
The Jolla Mobile is pretty old now, but I think there are still phones you can get it on.
I have a feeling those budget phones around that price are sold at a loss and gain the money from selling user data. So I doubt it’d get down to that price
Outside of ads or razor thin margins, data profiling. They can recoup the costs from selling more expensive and premium smartphones. A new entrant in the market catering to a niche is unlikely to do so.
“Android” phones can sometimes have “close to mainline” Linux distributions flashed onto them. You can get some of those, used, for less than 100$.
A custom Android rom would provide you with a decent chunk of the freedom you want in a mobile device.
A phone specifically built for Linux, with as much as possible FLOSS firmware, will cost a lot more. The cheapest is probably the PinePhone.
But how much software is ARM compatible though? Since Android is also free and open source (Google apps are closed and has closed aspects), I don’t see Linux phone ever being cheaper than they would otherwise be running Android. A 200-400$ Android phone today is basically a year or two old or just garbage.
Honestly, I disagree about cheap android phones being shite. I have a redmi note 10 pro and it genuinly is a very impressive phone especially for the money. I bought it new when it came out and it wasn’t expensive at all.
PinePhone is $150. The more appealing option long term will be getting Linux running well on old Android phones though, as they are available used for $100 or less and have better specs. Often better specs than even the $400 PinePhone Pro, which is the most powerful designed-for-Linux phone I know of.
I’m typing this on a OnePlus 6T running postmarketOS. I paid somewhere around $125 for this phone, with box and accessories and in very good condition. It has an 8 core processor, 6GB RAM, Vulkan-capable Adreno 630 GPU, better WiFi/Bluetooth than either PinePhone, much better battery life, and a very nice OLED screen.
It’s not all perfect yet though. It doesn’t support VoLTE yet in Linux, so you have to force 2G mode to be able to receive calls and texts. Call audio is sometimes missing. No camera support. No USB host mode support. Sensors are WIP, but I’m testing the merge request for them and rotation works.
I ran a PinePhone and then a Pro for a year each. I think I prefer the OnePlus 6T experience. If they get the modem issue figured out it will be an amazing option.
Probably not what you meant, but you can buy a Nexus 5x on eBay for $200 and flash Ubuntu’s mobile is to it.
Pinephone is barely usable as is They need to ve functional first
My big killer feature for Linux phones is running Wayland/X11 apps mostly unmodified, if AOSP added support for that I wouldn’t be too disappointed about sticking with it. I’ve tried to make android apps before, but doing things the Android Way™ basically requires you to use java and their bespoke UI primitives, and it always makes me wish I could just use the tools I’m already used to.
Being able to have intricate control over my phone is nice, but I’d rather do it with a KDE-like settings maze than a terminal because of how tiny the screen is, and if I’m doing something serious that would require a terminal I would rather do it at my desk.
I definitely think the Android ecosystem has some serious problems, but I already run a custom ROM without Google Play Services installed so I’m fairly well-insulated from that. I do plan on installing a mobile Linux system on my old phone to experiment, but I doubt it will become my system of choice.
I think that I would be a close to ideal candidate for a Linux phone, because I use my phone for so few things.
That being said, the few things I do use it for are absolutely essential for me, as in I must have them to function throughout the day, and I am not interested in having multiple devices I need to carry to do them. Those are as follows:
- A quality OSM map/nav app.
- A Discord app.
- A Matrix client and an XMPP app.
- A fast browser.
- A quality media player.
Most those have something on a Linux phone, but they are either slow, buggy, of missing features, at least as far as I know.
There are other issues too though, so far Linux phones seem to be slow and buggy from the reviews I’ve seen.
But the ecosystem is a bigger issue. One of the nice things about being on an unlocked android phone running GraphenOS or Lineage is that you not only have access to most of the official Android app ecosystem, but also to the thousands of apps in the unofficial fdroid ecosystem and naked APK ecosystem.
So you get overall so much more than just Android, which is already a lot.
Switching to a Linux phone severely limits you on that ecosystem, because many desktop Linux apps won’t run at all on a Linux phone OS.
Another user here pointed out the similarity to Microsoft’s Windows phones that they tried to enter the market with years ago.
I had two of them, and honestly, I absolutely loved them. The hardware was sleek and powerful, everything that made Windows 8 suck on desktop was actually awesome on mobile. The only issue was, MS didn’t deliver on the app ecosystem. There were a few dozen popular apps that were ported over from Android, and many of those were buggy or had limited features. That killed the phones hardcore. Who wants to use a phone that looks nice and runs fast, but only has a few apps that you need?
Would you buy a super powerful and sexy gaming computer that could only play 10-20% of your game library?
Personally, I would prefer to see the teams that are developing Linux phone OSes stop working on those projects and switch over to fully custom and FOSS Android versions. Similar to what we have now with different companies’ Android versions. But instead of the main differences being icon themes and bloatware, make them more varied like distros.
KDE Android, Ubuntu Android, Arch Droid, etc.
Have them focus on making their Android distros fast and feature-full. People could then have android powered tablets and car consoles that are compatible with Linux and other unofficial versions of Android.
I would love to have a KDE Android phone that is 100% integrated with a custom KDE Android car console. It would be a FOSS version of Android Auto. Imagine being able to remotely transfer files from my Linux PC to my car, both running KDE connect. Syncing them together to update my OSM custom maps. I could install Finamp on my car’s console and stream my Jellyfin music to it while navigating using Magic Earth or OSMand on a nice big screen.
I can keep dreaming…
Linux phone plus android app support would do it
That’s true, something like Proton for Steam but instead of Windows apps, it allows installing and using Android apps on Linux.
I still think a pure Android base would be easier to impliment and engineer, but I’m not experienced enough with software or low level Dev work to know of that’s true or not.
My phone runs Android, on which I run Linux in chroot, on which I run FEX, on which I run Wine x64.
That means I can run Android apps, Linux-ARM apps, Linux-x86/x64 apps and Windows x86/x64 apps.
Also I got Magic Dosbox running DOS and Win95.
And a bunch of emulators, namely C64, GB/C/A, DS, 3DS and Switch.
Yes, I might have a problem ;)
I love your problem.
Weirdly, it’s more fun for me to get a new system running than actually using it.
The only one of these systems that I really use a lot (apart from obviously native Android) is the Linux-ARM command line. Which is made much easier by the keyboard attachment I built myself (https://github.com/Dakkaron/Fairberry).
This looks really cool. Perfect amount of nerdyness
Thanks!
I don’t want a Linux phone tho. Give me LineageOS and let me be happy.
Unless people pay for the hardware and software development to happen, Linux phones will never be as feature complete as Android or iPhones, so people will not buy as many, so the prices will not go down.
Also, I gotta disagree reeeeaaal hard with the sentiment in the comments here that Android is Linux since you can slap a terminal on it. Excuse me, but where’s the GNU?
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/android-and-users-freedom.html
https://f-droid.org/packages/tech.ula/
I’ve had great fun using userland to put gnu into my android, ran windows, tried to use a phone as a portable dockable computer… it’s so close, but not quite ready for a daily driver
I will give you that, even as an Android disliker, this is pretty cool. Not for me maybe but its cool how portable these environments can be.
Excuse me, but where’s the GNU?
Note: Linux phones are notoriously insecure (source)
yeah, now I am not buying it lol. I wanted a daily driver not a phone for some habit :(
For most linux users I’d say less security is a necessary evil. Security hardening is a tradeoff and I’d guess most people dont want their systems to be as locked down as ios or android. Or even modern MacOS, there are quite a lot of modifications that will require you to turn of System Integrity Protection, which blocks modifications of system files in normal use.
Note: Linux phones are notoriously insecure (source) but please correct me if you know better
A few points
Operating systems like Android and ChromeOS have full system mandatory access control, every process from the init process is strictly confined.
Android uses SELinux for mandatory access control as per their own docs
As part of the Android security model, Android uses Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) to enforce mandatory access control (MAC) over all processes, even processes running with root/superuser privileges (Linux capabilities)
As for ChromeOS, it’s built upon Linux and that blurred line between Chrome and Linux is being completely removed –> hello Linux And ChromeOS aka LACROS
To make matters worse, some system daemons are not designed with permission control in mind at all. For example, PulseAudio does not have any concept of audio in or out permission.
PulseAudio is due to be replaced by PipeWire which
was designed with a powerful security model that makes interacting with audio and video devices from containerized applications easy.
https://github.com/mikeroyal/PipeWire-Guide
There’s also Wayland, which is being written to replace X11. It has better security
Wayland isolates the input and output of every window, achieving confidentiality, integrity and availability for both.
While it’s true that many apps aren’t designed with security in mind, flatpak and snap packages have their portals API. The author did mention that they are underutilized, but that’s slowly changing.
Additionally, immutable distros (nixOS, Fedora silverblue) do exist, which make it quite hard for unauthorised applications to modify root partitions since they are mounted as read-only. Mobile NixOS is still in its infancy, but it’s being worked on.
In conclusion, security on linux isn’t hopeless, there are solutions being worked on, and improvements in linux phones will benefit all desktop users, unlike distros like Android and ChromeOS that build custom solutions that aren’t contributed back to the community.
