Is anyone here using a (non-Android) linux Smartphone? Curious what type of phones y’all are using and what your experience has been.
Yes, running OnePlus 6 with Mobile NixOS (actually mostly just NixOS with a couple modules from mobile NixOS). I will try to make the config public when I get it into a less rough state. It’s… useable as a daily phone, but you have to be really into it to do it.
It’s not like desktop Linux where if you’re a tech enthusiast you can ignore a few rough edges and just use it like you would a more mainstream OS.
I had to flash a specific old version of OxygenOS, using almost undocumented tools, which could easily brick the phone if something went wrong, just for GPS to work. I have to recompile my kernel every time it updates. I had to write my own scripts for the hardware slider thing to work (which has a nice benefit of letting me use it for whatever I want; I want to make it switch between NORMAL and INSERT in my editor just as a laugh).
I can’t even get wire guard to work and he’s writing his own scripts for a Linux phone. How do I get this knowledge?
Honestly, it’s mostly just trying shit out, breaking your install and fixing it, and having fun. In the grand scheme of things doing all that stuff is not that difficult, mostly tedious; my day job involves more complex and often interesting problems. It’s just gluing together things which other people wrote, looking at what breaks, and either fixing it properly or just hacking it together with perl.
Finally, I can confide to you that I’ve spent half a day getting wireguard working on that very phone a couple months ago, only to find out it was because I didn’t poke the right holes in the firewall :)
When I.lernt coding backnin the 2000s we had the term “Horas de aplanar el culo” (hours of flattening ass) shit takes time, patience, perseverance and the humility of always remember that some possibly asian kid did it in a fraction of the time with a fraction of the body hair you have. But that doesn’t invalidate what you did.
It’s accelerating now. I hang out on App subs and people say shit like ‘it took me a whole month to develop this app’, some even do it in ‘days’.
I’ve just released and it took me three years. I’m sure their apps are Ai slop, but that’s what I’m competing with.
I got a oneplus 6 to install nixos, but I’m currently using LineageOS as I kind of got stuck on the nixos install, and I needed a phone. I previously had nixos on a pinephone and it was cool but too slow to use seriously.
I have a second oneplus 6 with a wonky usb port, am going to try to fix that and maybe give nixos another go. Sounds like its even more hassly than I thought!
I also have a OnePlus 6 with Mobile NixOS. I haven’t been able to get audio or camera to function, so it’s just a toy on m desk at the moment. Other than that and a few UI quirks, it’s serviceable.
Audio works for me (with pulseaudio). The camera doesn’t work for me either.
I daily drive a Librem 5. First thing to note is do not expect a well polished experience. Battery life is bad, only about 4 hours of light use, and 8 or so hours if left in suspend. It can do VoLTE, send SMS, use web apps and any apps coded with libadwaita or kirigami. Other desktop apps can be forced to scale on the display, but it won’t be perfect.
I use Signal desktop as my main means of communication on the Librem 5. I have a spare normie phone for setup, but Waydroid is an option. I do use Waydroid for a few apps that have no web browser equivalent.
Idk, all I can say is, you have to really want it to live with it. I don’t do gaming or heavy social media use or anything removed that, so it is just fine for me. But it’s definitely not for everyone.
I’m using Sailfish OS on a Jolla C2 phone. The OS is great, very good native software and it also runs Android apps.
How’s your experience been with the GPS? I have been using sailfish on a Sony phone and loved it but getting a GPS lock just took forever for me.
Works well enough for me, it’s comparable to my Android phones. But I’m not a heavy GPS user.
Have you done anything to get that? I have not been able to get decent GPS unless I planned 20 mins in advance
Oh yeah, I also daily drive a Sony with Sailfish (Xperia XA2) and the GPS is very unreliable to get a lock. It’s very rare that it works sadly. Other than that the phone works very well.
Yeah that kinda became a dealbreaker for me. I really wish that was better cause it’s the only thing I feel holding it back as an android alternative. Its got the apps (thru android emulation), the control and freedom to brick it as you want. Just needs the GPS sorted and its great! (Yes things could be better but I can forgive those issues)
Wikipedia states the UI layer is propriertary, is that true?
Some components are proprietary. See https://docs.sailfishos.org/Develop/Open_Source/ .
Jolla is in the process of open sourcing components. See this forum post from today .
I just got myself a fairphone gen 6. I want to put postmarket OS on it, but had a kind of rough start. Haven’t gotten it working yet :(
If you are, you’re usually limited to progressive web apps. Not a bad thing, just something to be aware of. That’s the reason I had to give up when I tried. Not having a decent navigation software was really hard.
For me it was battery life. The thing wouldn’t sleep properly.
Sleeps good enough for the music stream to be choppy, but not good enough to last a day.
I have a Xiaomi Mi A2 that I ran ubuntu touch on. The camera didn’t work, and it was based on ubuntu 16.04. They’ve dropped support for it now. It was not ready to be a daily driver.
I should be getting a poco x3 nfc in the mail tomorrow. It should have excellent support on both postmarketos and ubuntu touch. I don’t expect it to be a daily driver, but I can’t get the idea out of my head. I don’t like where iOS and Android are headed.
I wish… and I did try. You can see my post history but basically PinePhone and PinePhone Pro sitting neatly on the shelf.
They work. Sure, but between battery life or rather power management, lack of camera on the Pro, lack of MIPS on the base model to use Android apps via Waydroid, I had a lot of fun tinkering, but for me these are not daily drives.
For now I’m stuck with deGoogle Android thanks to /e/OS pre-installed by Murena on a CMF Nothing 1. It’s neat thanks to F-Droid, Termux, KDE Connect, GadgetBridge, etc but overall I’d much rather be on Linux proper. If there is a path please do share.
I am also looking for a linux smart phone at the moment. I have not found many that don’t seem to be sold out, or aren’t quite there yet.
If I find anything promising I will edit.
I daily drive Ubuntu Touch on a Fairphone 5. It’s not without quirks, but I like the experience. Many practical and nice native apps, Android app support through Waydroid, banking and things that would require Google Play verification I solve through the browser. Fairly good battery life, VoLTE is solved for the FP5 and some other models (which has been an issue with many Linux phones) and the community is very active solving issues and helping each other day and night.
I intend to get a Fairphone 5 or 6 and test-drive Ubuntu Touch on it, hoping to daily drive it… but it’s all theoretical at this point. If I can’t get a real Linux distro to do everything I want reliably, Lineage OS is my fallback plan. I believe in the Fairphone mission, so that’ll be my next hardware purchase either way
I went from Sailfish, to Ubuntu phone, back to Sailfish,
then bought a Pinephone due to the war,
not knowing if the Finnish company would survive
before going back to Sailfish.Pinephone, despite it being the most linux of phones, used up too much battery power.
Ubuntu phones were already miles better.oneplus 6T and poco F1 on mobian and postmarketOS. SDM845 devices with 8 GB RAM and fast storage, about the peak of performance you can have nowadays for about $50 apiece. I’d encourage anyone to get a cheap device, fun to play around with and prepare for the day when it becomes viable. ubuntu touch is also possible, but since it’s halium (like android + linux VM) it wants me to downgrade to Android 9 which is virtually impossible for me; the former two run full linux kernels and don’t have that limitation - spotty hardware support, though.
performance is acceptable, the power to do almost anything you want, access whatever and whenever you want. I run it without broadband, just wifi. the cameras are unusable. since I keep the modem off, GPS doesn’t work either. so it’s a linux laptop with touch, basically. the apps are a shitshow, rarely will you find one that supports touch and adapts to the vertical zoomed-in screen.
but it’s getting better, shit’s way better now than it was only a year ago and eventually it’ll get there.
as long as you’re aware it’s not an android alternative, you’ll have a good time.
Can you use Signal on a Linux phone? I know there’s a desktop Linux client, but it relies on being activated from an Android or iPhone app to function, in my experience.
https://www.ubuntu-touch.io/apps/ can run Android apps with Waydroid. I don’t know if Signal works with this, but Android apps run with good performance using Waydroid (I just read about it, never used it myself).
I have a pinephone for wifi and my SIM is in a CatB40 that only does calls/sms.
Looking forward to oniro OS
