I appreciate the people who daily drive pinephones. They are paving the way for when they’ll be viable alternatives for the masses. (Or verifying that they won’t be, we’ll see.)
Don’t forget all the developers working on the kernel, camera support, modem firmware, desktop environments like Phosh and others, distro devs like Mobian or postmarketOS and others, app devs who work on supporting mobile and many other developers and contributors. Even bloggers who report on updates.
it’s a fun toy, not super useful but probably fun to tinker with
I’ve done some ungodly stuff to my android phones (even non-rooted ones, I’m totally abusing them) and I can’t even imagine all the possibilities with a proper linux distro. Having a pocket pc with a full arm64 linux sounds awesomeI daily drive it, just like some other people here. It lets you run the same software that you use on desktop. Some apps don’t have a UI that works well on mobile (possible workaround: play around with scaling) and some old ones might not have touch support (you would have to use those with mouse or keyboard), but often there are mobile friendly alternatives, so it’s better to use those instead. It can’t replace a proper PC, even if you plug it into a monitor and it’s not a fast device, but it’s usable and you can do fun stuff with it. You can run CLI programs and servers, run Kali Linux (NetHunter Pro), distro hop, make hardware addons (there are some exposed pins on the back) or simply use it as phone. You just have to be an advanced GNU/Linux user, because sometimes workarounds are required.
And when you add the keyboard addon, you can look like a true hackerman:
also kudos to GrapheneOS social media people patiently explaining why both purism and pine64 are pretty mid at best when it comes to hardware security
What do you mean?
Out of pocket I would assume nonfree packages and hardware shenanigans: binary blobs, etc. …
The latter imo is only really a concern if you’re being targeted hydrate actors, and you got bigger problems then
Mobian Bookworm contains 2 non free firmware packages: https://packages.mobian.org
According to the FSF, GrapheneOS also contains non free firmware:
GrapheneOS is a version of Android which is described as “open source,” but it seems to include software that isn’t free software or even “open source”. For instance, it comes with firmware programs for installation and it appears that at least some of them are binaries without source code. It is said to be “de-Googled,” but includes a way to download and install the nonfree Google Play program.
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/111957964224325239
https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/111738765361100063
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/111676448278523353
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/111676423446810227
This only talks about the Fairphone. The only mention of PinePhone and Librem 5 is that according to the author providing schematics is not enough to call it “open hardware”.
No mention of PinePhone or Librem 5.
Same as above.
It’s a misconception that the Librem 5 and Pinephone are open source. Their hardware components including the CPU, GPU, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular, etc.
The word “open source” usually refer to software, but ok. Those companies provide schematics for the motherboard and Librem 5 also provides PCB designs. But they don’t provide those for the chips, so that is correct. I don’t think anyone says otherwise.
Their hardware/firmware/software is all much less private and secure
What? :D The person doesn’t even explain why. Then they talk about physical killswitches misunderstanding what they are really for (they are there so that you don’t have to fully trust the software/firmware to turn something off - especially the proprietary modem firmware) and claim that all of those devices are insecure somehow, because on GNU/Linux any program can access the microphone. But that’s exactly why we use free software, isn’t it?
I’m sorry, but this is ridiculous, so I won’t read the rest. I’m not a hardware expert, though, so maybe some of their other points were valid. I guess those phones’s hardware is probably as secure as any other computer’s. I don’t think anyone says otherwise, but the killswitches are always a good idea.
Pinephone doesn’t have features like IOMMU isolation or even verified boot. Also as a matter of fact, permission control, unless you’re using flatpak/bwrap/firejail is actually better on Android than Linux. Plus long before the first usable part of Linux written in Rust was released, large parts of low level AOSP code were already rewritten in it.
PinePhone’s modem is isolated through USB. I don’t know about other components, though.
Also as a matter of fact, permission control, unless you’re using flatpak/bwrap/firejail is actually better on Android than Linux. Plus long before the first usable part of Linux written in Rust was released, large parts of low level AOSP code were already rewritten in it.
I understand that, but none of that makes GNU/Linux insecure and that’s what the GrapheneOS developer has claimed. They said it was insecure. I can’t say if GrapheneOS is more secure than GNU/Linux, because I don’t know enough about it or how libre it is, so I’m not arguing with that. It’s possible that it is (I would have to check opinions of independent experts). My point was that those people can’t be taken seriously if they make such ridiculous claims. I don’t know if I can believe anything they say.
This person says that Android (a proprietary operating system) is more secure than GNU/Linux. Ridiculous. It’s nice that Android has all those security features, but it’s still proprietary, so can’t be trusted. Keep in mind that he didn’t just say GrapheneOS, which might be entirely free software, so unlike Android, it might have a chance to be secure.
PureOS also uses linux-libre. This will prevent the user from loading any proprietary firmware updates, which just so happens to be almost all of them.
I don’t think this is true at all. The firmware in Librem 5 is stored on some separate chips and I think users can flash new firmware to them. But even if he was correct, I’m not entirely convinced that you get a security benefit from being able to change from one proprietary firmware version to another, since both those versions can’t be trusted. I will need to read more about this at some point.
Then he says the same stupid thing about the killswitches and just like the GrapheneOS dev pretends that they have no benefit. I’m starting to wonder if they are the same person. Never mind, I can now see that he quotes him in his GNU/Linux article, so he is probably just repeating after that guy.
The microphone kill switch is useless since audio can still be gotten via the sensors (such as the gyroscope or accelerometer).
I doubt that. I’m pretty sure that in reality the audio levels you can get from those sensors is too low to be usable (unlike a microphone). Here is a fun fact that this person doesn’t know about. The microphone killswitch on one of the PinePhone versions doesn’t actually kill the microphone, it just disconnects the amplifier or something. So the microphone technically still works, but it’s not gonna pick anything up, even if you yell directly at it. I know this, because people have figured it out from looking at the schematics and tested it.
The unorthodox way in which the Librem 5 attempts to isolate the modem is via the Linux kernel USB stack, which is not a strong barrier, as shown in the Linux article.
I can’t find where he explains this, but I think the problem was that he just doesn’t know about USBGuard. The author’s two articles are full of errors or false information, they don’t understand that proprietary systems can’t be considered secure. I see no reason to trust their opinions on security.
AOSP is not proprietary. Also security is not achieved merely by the merit of being libre, see CVEs for sudo, glibc or Apache HTTP server or even the Linux kernel itself.
And when it comes to proprietary firmware updates, in case of x86 one such notable example is the microcode which is pretty important to keep updated for security.
AOSP is not proprietary.
I never said that it was.
Also security is not achieved merely by the merit of being libre, see CVEs for sudo, glibc or Apache HTTP server or even the Linux kernel itself.
Being libre is the basic requirement to even being considering something as secure, but it is not enough by itself. I agree.
And when it comes to proprietary firmware updates, in case of x86 one such notable example is the microcode which is pretty important to keep updated for security.
Generally that’s what people say, but is it really that simple? A new firmware version might fix some known vulnerability, but its developers might have also introduced a new one on purpose. So a known vulnerability might have been fixed, but you might have gotten a new one that isn’t yet known. So I don’t know if that’s really so much better. Also I assume that the only way to exploit those vulnerabilities is through malware? But if you only run free software, the risk of getting malware is very small.
I was downvoted before for suggesting the Pinetab is not a viable Android or iPad replacement. That thing doesn’t even have a working wifi driver yet, you have to plug in a dongle just to connect to wifi. I’d love to have good smart devices running Linux one day, but we’re not there yet.
I think you are talking about the recent Pinetab 2 and it seems that the situation has changed: https://www.reddit.com/r/PINE64official/comments/1akjlwu/tutorial_wifi_and_bluetooth_on_pinetab_2/?rdt=46684
The goal of GNU/Linux has never been convenience, but freedom.
Good to know that there is now a testing branch for a wifi driver. That wasn’t the case when I wrote the original comment I was talking about. Still, this took almost a year of selling a tablet with no working wifi. There is inconvenience and then there is a product just being in an unfinished, effectively unusable state. I don’t really see how having no wifi driver is “freedom”. The freedom to code my own driver? I guess, but that doesn’t make for an actually usable device.
Still many people bought the thing, because they wanted the freedom of GNU/Linux. They were willing to sacrifice something to get it. Sometimes that’s what you have to do. Pine64 makes the hardware and does not contribute to the software development. That sucks, but there is nothing we can do about it, since they don’t have a lot of competition.
The thing about convenience vs freedom is that, why can’t we get freedom if we choose convenience as well? I don’t feel like messing around with my phone to setup the basics, and the closest thing freedom-wise would be a de-googled rooted android phone. It would be nice to have an inbetween.
It’s just that freedom sometimes requires sacrifices. Switching to GNU/Linux is also not easy. It requires that a person learns to use a completely new operating system (schools usually only teach Windows). This is hard even for many technical people and it requires time. Windows users can also say that GNU/Linux is just not ready yet or that it’s too inconvenient (and some of them do). But if we don’t fight for freedom, we will never get it. Through hard work of many people over decades, we managed to get freedom on the desktop. Now it’s time for phones. After that becomes easier, there might be some other, new challenge. Maybe firmware or something else. But it will probably always be inconvenient in some way, because you will have to switch from something you already know to something else that is new, even if it has similar features. Just like Reddit users could switch to Lemmy, but they won’t. So they will not have freedom and Reddit continues to have power over them.
It would be nice to have an inbetween
I guess maybe Ubuntu Touch would be something in between. It uses Android kernel, so some Android phones support it.
I don’t know if PinePhone would work for you, but you can check my short review and my other comment for some information.
I wish Valve would make a Steam Phone. They seem to know how to do Linux devices.
Valve laptop to revive the thinkpad glory days
they don’t know to make a good android app, and you want them to make an entire cellphone💀💀
They made an entire Linux-powered portable game system that’s revolutionizing Linux gaming at the moment…an embedded engineer is not the same skillset as an app developer. Not even close.
They made a device with a proprietary operating system and proprietary software. If you really want that, why not just use Android?
Since when is Arch proprietary?
Steam OS is proprietary.
But Arch contains proprietary firmware, so technically it’s not fully free software either.
SteamOS is open source with some closed sources component. But most important think you seems not being able to understand is that Valve provide high support to Open source community, which means it wouldn’t be surprising if they decided to drop a open source phone.
SteamOS is open source with some closed sources component.
So it is not free software. It’s proprietary, unethical software that takes away your freedom. Just like Windows, Android, etc.
But most important think you seems not being able to understand is that Valve provide high support to Open source community, which means it wouldn’t be surprising if they decided to drop a open source phone.
By doing what? They only want to lock you in their proprietary platform. Most of heir software is proprietary, their games are proprietary and they restrict users with DRM. It’s a terrible company, which abuses their users. If Steam Deck contains proprietary software, why would their phone by anything different?
They can do the hardware and let someone else compile the os
Idk SteamOS seems pretty ok to me
Good point, now I’m wondering why the steam mobile app sucks
they prob put 0 effort into it because they see almost 0 ROI
Hell, I think even Raspberry Pi Foundation getting into the phone market would be a game changer too.
A lot of the libcamera work done on Raspberry Pi boards is going towards improving the camera support on linux phones like the PinePhone, which is great!
Aside from that, sadly a lot of people (including myself) are kind of fed up with Raspberry Pi, after they essentially abandoned their mission during Covid to please corporations, and are preparing to go public despite being a “charity”. Broadcom, their SoC supplier, also has left a sour taste in my mouth after their purchase and mass layoffs at VMWare.
If they created a phone it would likely end up being scalped to death, and maybe pretty pricey compared to a PinePhone
Aside from that, sadly a lot of people (including myself) are kind of fed up with Raspberry Pi, after they essentially abandoned their mission during Covid to please corporations
Just out of curiosity, could you state what you think their mission was?
(I’m just wondering if anybody even remembers their original original mission.)
AFAIK their original mission was along the lines of making computers accessible at a low price point, particularly targeting the education sector in parts of the world where computers weren’t very accessible or affordable. Comparable to the OLPC, but not on an individual basis
I could be wrong though
Remember when they donated one pi for every one sold?
That’s basically it. Here’s the thing: if they followed through on that to the letter, most of the people complaining wouldn’t have ever gotten one.
Raspberry PI can’t run a mainline Linux kernel.
If they did that, it would be sold out for years before you or I could get it.
I don’t think you could go fast enough to catch Valve as they ran screaming from that idea.
Daily drivin Manjaro (Plasma mobile) on my Pinephone Pro for over a year now. If you are not into the whole “taking pictures all the time” thing you can easiy use it as a daily driver. (This message was typed on it)
I respond to you just because yours is the last of the “I daily drive a PinePhone” comments, but this is meant for everyone with the same opinion.
Do you, in all honesty, feel comfortable enough with your device that you would confidently run a business solely through it?
I’m not an influencer, so my job isn’t “taking pictures all the time”, but still I wouldn’t rely on a Linux phone to run my business because I cannot risk:- to miss a phone call, a text or an email;
- to run out of battery if I’m outside my office all day long;
- to have a faulty GPS should I use a navigator to meet a client;
- that Bluetooth disconnects mid-call for the 5th time in a day while I’m driving;
- that I have to take a picture to collect information and the latest update borked the camera.
All of these things happen frequently on a Linux phone, and if you have a job where you can live through it good for you, I envy you TBH.
On the other hand, keep in mind that it’s not just the “Instagram people” that need a reliable device.Of course, everyone has different requirements on their phone, so the question if one would be comfortable running their buisness of a pine phone is quite divers.
Phone calls, texts and E-Mails
Text and E-Mails pretty much work as well as on every other phone. Phone calls work too, but the audio quality is below what one could expect from a modern iPhone.
Battery
While the battery runtime of one battery is definitely lower compared to competing devices, it is also replaceable. I usually spend my day in the office were the phone can be charged, so the battery life does not become an issue. When I am traveling I bring some extra batteries. The form factor is commonly available and batteries cost around 10 €, so I got 4 of them, which last me for ~36 hours until I have to charge them. I have so far never spend more time away from an outlet.
GPS
Works nowadays pretty reliable, accuracy of around 20 m is also good enough to find were I need to go
Bluetooth
Definitely not perfect but random disconnects happen rarely. On the other side I have an headphone jack, which always works reliably
Camera
Ok, this point goes to you, the camera is not usable. When taking pictures of documents I usually have to use my tablet.
So now to the overarching question:
Do you, in all honesty, feel comfortable enough with your device that you would confidently run a business solely through it? No, I would not feel comfortable to run a business through a phone, I need a real computer for my work. If I could only use a phone I would choose the pine phone, because at least it can run all software I require for my daily work. Connected to keyboard, mouse and a monitor it could be a slow, but acceptable work machine I can certainly imagine that there are jobs, which rely more heavily on a phone. But in these cases one should have separate work and private phones anyway
So what you’re saying to me is you can daily drive a Linux phone if you also daily drive a power bank, a bluetooth or wired headset and a camera?
I dont need the power bank, since I can simply swap bateries. But in principle yes
How dare they daily drive a beta Linux phone and share their experiences.
I couldn’t run a business on any phone, frankly. That’s what computers are for.
Also the GPS worked fine for me.
Let me guess, Manjaro or another unstable distro is where things broke for you? Mobian did not break things on update, much like Debian on desktop. I know the person you replied to uses Manjaro, but if you want a stable experience you really shouldn’t.
And most people aren’t running a business, so there’s that.
I don’t deny that the user experience isn’t great, it is development/early adopter hardware, but it’s definitely usable as a daily driver.
It depends by what job you have: a plumber, for example, could probably run their business entirely with their phone.
But we’re missing the point, I’m not saying a smartphone can replace a PC, whether it be Linux, iOS or Android. I’m saying that If you need to do all the tasks that are required by a “modern day job” and you need to do them well, then I’m sorry (I really am) but Linux phones aren’t ready yet.And most people aren’t running a business, so there’s that.
Most people don’t have the skill to troubleshoot a Linux phone, why don’t we count them too in the statistics?
Then, I used “running a business” as just an example to indicate the “urgency of a functioning phone” for whatever reason: it might just be that you have a relative you have to take care of, or that you are a doctor/nurse that can be contacted on every moment, or that you’re an a job hunt and cannot miss the call… I can go on for hours on why in A.D. 2024 a person from whichever social context cannot afford to be off the gridGod damn, the premise of running a business from a smartphone sounds depressing as hell to me. I feel sorry for anyone who tries that.
Most people don’t have the skill to troubleshoot a Linux phone, why don’t we count them too in the statistics?
This community is called linuxmemes. You are talking to GNU/Linux users here. For everyone else it’s going to be hard, obviously. It takes time to learn to use a completely different operating system.
Missing a phone call or text is unacceptable and id consider that a fail if it came to phones everything else you mentioned wouldnt be a fail just poor quality in my opinion
What do you use to browse Lemmy?
The voyager PWA. Works really great and feels pretty much like a native app
So you use Chromium on there? Or how do you use PWAs?
Plasma mobile comes with the anglefish browser as default (a mobile browser based on chromium) that has support for PWAs
Cool! Thats really interesting as not even damn Firefox has that
At least on Android, Firefox (Mobile) does support PWAs. I use it for accessing my Iceshrimp account on fedia.social.
True, forgot about that, of course it does.
deleted by creator
I’d call the based department, but I don’t have a rotary un-smartphone™
That’s cool af
Mobile Linux is awesome, support it. Maybe just don’t try to make money selling it as a finished product yet?
I don’t think anybody is saying that. It’s a product for GNU/Linux experts who either like to tinker or whose main goal is to have freedom even at the cost of convenience.
Linux phones will need to run established Android apps to get users, devs won’t move where there is no users, users won’t move there if there aren’t apps. It’s almost cyclical
Right now we’re working with people who are exceptions to this, users who want to experiment and devs who don’t care about money.
Waydroid runs decently on the pinephone. On a phone with better specs, it might be downright usable for proprietary apps.
Potentially a proton-style layer could really ease transition, like on the steamdeck
What if the app also want’s a locked bootloader, Play Integrity, and whatever else. Like a banking app or Google Pay?
Then you run far, far away from that app. Even on an Android phone I don’t trust garbage apps that require locked bootloader and no root. There are plenty of banks out there and paying with your phone is not a necessity.
Hey, do you still plan on working on your RGB mod for PinePhone’s keyboard? It looked really awesome, but it’s probably a huge amount of work.
I went through probably 20 different iterations of keycaps and got close to one I liked, but haven’t gotten back to finishing the project since I haven’t been using my PinePhone much. I think the main remaining thing is to make an Enter key model and a Tab key model. I want to get back to that project eventually but haven’t had time.
Agreed. Classic story that has been repeated several times over the years. Ecosystem is everything.
Microsoft’s Windows phones were fantastic. They had super nice hardware, high refresh rate screens, better cameras on their flagship models than iPhones at the time.
They were sleek, fast, the Windows tile UI actually worked great on a phone touchscreen. But it didn’t matter to most consumers because they didn’t have apps. MS had their own business apps…and that was about it. Didn’t matter that every other aspect of the phones were great, people couldn’t do what they wanted to on the Windows phones, so they didn’t buy them.
I would love to see something like Proton but for .apks instead of Windows executables. If it were as easy to install and run android apps on a mobile Linux OS as it is now to install and play Windows games on Linux, we would be in a great place to see a proper Linux phone.
GNU/Linux is not aimed at people who want the most features. It’s made for people who value freedom above everything else.
I would love to see something like Proton but for .apks instead of Windows executables. If it were as easy to install and run android apps on a mobile Linux OS as it is now to install and play Windows games on Linux, we would be in a great place to see a proper Linux phone.
You mean Waydroid? I’ve read that it works pretty well.
Depends, waydroid emulates a whole android system, whereas wine translates system calls.
You are right. But it seems to be just as easy to use.
The goal of GNU/Linux is not to make it possible to run proprietary apps (but if you really need to run Android apps you can use Waydroid). It’s to create a fully libre operating system that people can use.
The hell with android apps. In my last year with Droidian, I got better replacements for any single app I used on Android!
We need proton for Android apps
We have Waydroid which is close enough. It needs some quality of life improvements for better integration with the native Linux ecosystem but it runs Android apps just fine on Linux phones.
hot take: No.
Linux phones just need good linux software support. And then the linux user base will switch over, and everyone who isn’t simply won’t use it.
I actually genuinely do not want android developers on linux. I refuse to pay for a launcher. My entire workstation OS is developed by volunteers. Genuinely every single android app i have ever interacted with has pretty much exclusively disappointed me. It’s just a bad ecosystem.
In the same way that the linux community doesn’t need the developers of every application ever on it to thrive amongst itself, the linux phone doesnt need android developers to develop apps for it. It just needs better support for linux applications that already exist.
There are tonnes of great foss android apps.
I’m sure there’s a lot of good apps. I’ve used a few good ones, but it’s objectively worse than software on linux.
File browsers have almost universally just been awful. Horrid, and almost completely unusable. I’ve tried more than should exist really.
There are other questionable apps, which exist, do what they claim to do perfectly well, but have no utility for anything particularly useful. Even stuff like jerboa is just generally lacking in features. That is also an experience on linux so not really a huge complaint, but i really genuinely don’t see why people like android so much.
The only reason I will disagree: there’s already a major FOSS ecosystem on Android. There are tons of high quality free apps that aren’t FOSS
Linux isnt even that popular on desktop, my point is that people will not move if their pre established software use case is not avaliable. I won’t. I know many people who won’t.
And if there aren’t users, there won’t be people making quality software to cover wide variety of usecases and get support, if there isn’t quality software that covers a wide variety of use cases and get support there won’t be users. You need to start somewhere, it’s why the windows phone failed. No devs, so no users, and because no users, no devs.
I still don’t see your point. You’re assuming that android users will want to use a linux phone in the first place. They don’t and they wont. And that’s fine.
The only market that the linux phone has to cater to in order to develop successfully is the existing linux desktop market. The vast majority of those people are likely to want and use a linux phone. Which will actually improve the phone. And possibly even in the future bring in android developers and apps.
I don’t understand why you’re fixing on it growing, it’s just a hardware market, system76 already exists, pine already exists, linux users already exist. We exist as a bubble in a larger space and that’s ok. That’s the beauty of the unix/linux philosophy.
Realistically this is like releasing a 10,000 dollar workstation/server cpu and then having the general public complain about it being inaccessible, even though it literally wasn’t meant for them.
Really a shame that Nokia gave up. The N900 was a well working Linux phone. I miss it dearly.
Ms did it to nokia
My favorite phone by far. Absolutely loved combined messenger built into OS and that GUI is still unmatched by any OS as far as I’m concerned.
I have fond memories of using my N900. But I would not have described it as well working :) It worked, sure, but not particularly well.
It definitely worked better than a Pinephone. And even with its puny RAM it was better at multitasking than a modern Android phone.
Everyone saying Android is completely missing the point. I mean yeah, it runs the linux kernel, but i feel like most of yall wouldn’t call ChromeOS linux on the other hand.
The obvious connotations are privacy, choice, wayland/x11 support, a useful terminal, a rich foss ecosystem, and arch btw.
me rn:
I’ve been daily driving Ubuntu Touch on the Fairphone 4 for over a year. I love it, even if some features are lacking. Calling and text is stable, but unfortunately Volte support is still missing. Waydroid is also working great.
I’m not sure if Ubuntu Touch is GNU/Linux, since it uses the android kernel I think. But it’s not android either.
Who’s gonna tell him Android is based on Linux ?
Nobody because everybody knows this. Android is still not what people mean when they say linux
Insert “I’d like to interject for a moment” copypasta here
Yessir
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Uhhh it definitely is. I literally have a Linux terminal running on my Android phone.
You’ve missed the point I’m afraid.
While people know that Android is based on Linux, a fact that isn’t in question, when people say a “Linux” phone, they’re not discounting that Android exists or that it runs Linux, they mean to infer that they’re discussing non-Android Linux phones. If they meant Android as a Linux phone, they would have said Android.
While android is in the set of “Linux”, not all things that are in the set of Linux are Android.
Since we have a specific word for GNU/Linux - Android devices, but almost all Linux based alternatives to Android for mobile devices is basically referred to simply as a “Linux phone”, it can be, and should be, assumed that the speaker is referring to Linux phones which are not Android.
It’s a nuance of language and technically not wrong to say that “Android is Linux” but that’s not what most of the readers understood to be the speakers intention.
That was the correction that the previous poster tried to portray.
Simply put, most Linux enthusiasts and community, doesn’t really consider android to be “one of them” since, though it’s Linux at its core/kernel, almost everything built on top of it from there is some bastardized/closed source software, or relies on something closed source. Most of the things people want to run on their phone (browsers, camera software, even the dialer), is almost entirely written, controlled and closed source by Google. While some of the “guts” of the OS might be open source/GNU versions, the interfaces are largely all closed source software that Google has published to run on top of Android specifically. This doesn’t fit with the philosophy of GNU/Linux, and therefore Android is largely not included when speaking about Linux, at least for Linux enthusiasts.
No you’re using Termux with bash. Unless you’re actually interfacing with the kernel directly in which case ignore me and carry on.
Anyways this is a great example of why “Linux” as the name of the OS is stupid. GNU/Linux is better (for GNU-based, obviously, don’t go wheeling out the Alpine copypasta because I’m not talking about that).
Alpine Linux is actually a great example of why you are right. Because when people say Linux to describe the OS, they almost always mean GNU/Linux (Linux Mint, Arch Linux, etc). But then there is Alpine, which also calls itself Linux, but its developers actually mean something very different, because it’s not GNU/Linux. So that only makes things even more confusing. Android doesn’t even use the mainline Linux kernel, so calling it Linux is probably even worse than with Alpine.
If we always used the correct names, there wouldn’t be so much confusion.
And yet, android is still not what people mean when they say they’re running Linux.
Android is Linux, they literally use the Linux kernel. They replace most other stuff, but Linux it is.
They even work towards mainline kernel support, making updates easier for longer times.
Android is a good example, why “Linux” is not a good term for “Desktop Gnu+Linux”.
I think they use some very old and heavily modified version of the Linux kernel, so it’s not the same Linux kernel we use on desktop. Then each phone manufacturer adds custom patches on top to support their hardware. GNU/Linux phones also require a custom kernel, but the community is working on upstreaming those patches, so that they can run mainline kernel some day (PinePhone Pro and Librem 5 probably already can now, but some stuff might not work).
Yeah, using the name Linux for both the kernel and the operating system makes no sense and it’s super confusing. When people say Linux when talking about the operating system, they almost always mean GNU/Linux (like Linux Mint, Arch Linux, etc). But then there is Alpine Linux, which isn’t GNU/Linux and that makes things even more confusing. If I didn’t know what Alpine Linux or Arch Linux was (and had no knowledge of distro names), based on their name I would assume they are some kind of fork of the Linux kernel. Arch Linux should have really been called Arch GNU/Linux and Alpine Linux should have just been called Alpine OS.
They use the current LTS kernel that exists when the phone exists. If your phone has an outdated kernel (mine had one too, and I thought the same) it is simply really outdated.
Yeah the problem lies in the many Distros I think. The BSDs are all different bundles, not like Linux+Gnu+Systemd+pipewire+wayland+glibc and some minor differences. FreeBSD is actually different from OpenBSD for example. Then Android is also a single project, just like this “modern desktop linux bundle”.
Oh, I thought they used a way older one. If it’s current LTS, then it’s not old at all.
I’m quite optimistic about a usable Linux phone in the near future, maybe 5 years from now or so. When smartphones were a new thing, it was really hard for open source projects without a major company backing them to keep up with all the new developments. Hence all the projects that died out. But innovation on smartphones has basically come to a halt these days. Sure, your phone can get a little bit faster and have round displays now, but nobody cares anymore. Nothing of all that is essential. So, give it some time, we’ll get there.
I’m optimistic about the apps and desktop environments. We have made huge progress. But the problem is the hardware support. It seems that there are very few ARM SoCs, which work well with the mainline Linux kernel. So PinePhone uses a 2010 SoC and PinePhone Pro a 2016 SoC. And after all that time and despite community’s efforts to upstream everything, the mainline support is still not complete and we still use custom kernels.
https://blog.mobian.org/posts/2023/09/30/paperweight-dilemma/
Yes, but that’s exactly my point. The need for hardware support shrinks if the hardware doesn’t change every few months. A chip from a few years ago is still very fine. That was not the case in 2009.
Ah, good point.
