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.
In my opinion postmarketOS is the most promising mobile Linux OS now. But the phones? Only OnePlus 6 is good. PinePhone is a project to look at as well but the hardware is not as good from the regular user's perspective
Pine64 has also had terrible communication for a while now and their site has had technical issues for a month. They have not filled me with confidence as of late.
postmarketOS is great though.
None. The sad, infuriating truth is that the makers and devs are a lot like this comments section: focusing on how good of a computer it is (or what apps it has).
You do a little digging and beneath all the hype there is a line buried in every review, so as not to raise suspicions, that says something like "now the call quality isn't perfect, but..." and what they mean is "it will sound like your friends are playing a full concert on a kazoo trying to talk to you."
Time and time again. Every linux-based, privacy-respecting, freedom-loving phone team out there seems to have conveniently neglected to make the phone good at being a phone.
Is that because of a shitty microphone and speaker in the phones? Couldn't just use some headphones to solve this?
The main problem is political not technical. The market had been allowed to become a duopoly and too many critical things now need an app on an Android or Apple phone. The worse I know is banks needing an app for authentication for their online banking. No separate security device anymore, those are ewaste apparently.
Public EV chargers where you can only control them from an app.
Riding book at theme parks. The cases are growing. Even the app is just wrapper of hidden web page!
Frankly I think regulation is required to get competition in the market. Not the only tech one either. Why is it so hard for law makers to see monopoly in tech?
To which project would you give your money to accellerate it?
I would reign in your hopes of accelerating a project using money, unless you have enough money to pay someone's salary for a significant period of time.
That said, I'd suggest postmarketOS or Mobian might be the most worthy of donations.
AOSP. Sad but true.
When first pinephone came out I really believed it's heading somewhere. It thought that it will be kind of like raspberry Pi (fun, cheap platform to play with) and that we'll quickly see copycats and it will slowly grow the way Linux on desktop did. AFAIK nothing like this happened. You still can't get a phone with decent Linux support which for me shows that we're stuck with android. I think most people that would help Linux phone happen are simply satisfied with LineageOS so there's no incentive to put as much effort into it as it requires.
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?
Yes, it's all true but the issue is you can already do a lot of those things with a lot of cheap hardware that is is simply easier to support than old phones. And when it comes to phones being phones Android is really good and has a lot of apps. I think the problem with Linux phones getting more popular is that the overlap between desktop/server and mobile is very small. I mean I use my phone only for phone things and a lot of things I do on my phone I can do only on my phone (e.g. charging an electric car is basically impossible without a Android/iPhone). Having a phone that can do some things desktop/server can do but can't do a lot of things a phone can do is pretty much pointless at this point.
When we'll get a proper Linux phone with full Android apps support and convergence it will be really awesome but I just don't think there's enough interest to get there at this point.
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.
I know and what I'm saying is that all those project are moving very slowly while projects like GraphneOS/LineageOS already offer open, privacy oriented phones with good hardware and lot's of apps. This is simply where more effort is going, where we're seeing more progress and our best chance at getting "Linux phones".
I know
Apparently not.
projects like GraphneOS/LineageOS ... our best chance at getting "Linux phones".
To repeat myself: an Android phone (for example, running GrapheneOS or LineageOS) isn't a "Linux phone".
The problem with mobile phones is that they have big differences between each others in terms of hardware, so it's really hard to come up with a "unified solution", thus making development really slow.
Right now, the two distributions which came further in development are PostmarketOS and UbuntuTouch, but they are still far from being a reliable daily driver.If the reason you'd like to chip in is not just Linux per se, but FOSS in general, there are plenty of fully free and open source Android roms that are a great deal in terms of usability, privacy and support, notably LineageOS, GrapheneOS, /e/OS and the one I chose for myself which is CalyxOS
Edit: when I talk about a phone being a "reliable daily driver", in my mind I think "a phone you can conduct a business with", so call and chat with clients, take pictures, exchange e-mails, have a working GPS and Bluetooth. And all of these features must be flawless and always available and sadly Linux phones aren't there yet.
Edit: I don't want to buy a phone. ... Sorry for the bad wording.
I'd suggest editing the post's title as well.
For me, the best is e/OS, which is based off of LineageOS, but with extra privacy features to de-google. Just get a compatible phone, and run that.
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.
Android is Linux-based, even if it's not a Gnu/Linux distribution. Besides, eOS is different enough from Android, since it barely works with existing Android apps (you'll need to use the microG lib to do so, which is optional). Its UI is iPhone-like too,so it's not comparable to other Android looks either. In other words, I'd say e/OS sits in a place that it's kinda its own. Not Gnu/Linux and not quite Android either.
And let's face it, no gnu/linux distro is mature enough to be a daily driver on a phone. Not a single one. I've tried them all. The best options are still Android-based: LineageOS if you don't care to be truly an Android, or e/OS if you want something that it's kind of its own beast (still based on LineageOS underneath). And that's why I suggested e/OS.
