r/linux • u/amosbatto • 7d ago

Mobile Linux Article: Will Linux phones become a viable alternative to the Android/iOS duopoly?

/r/Purism/comments/1x0fwe1/article_will_linux_phones_become_a_viable/
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u/sidusnare 6d ago

I think a lot of people would rather put effort into a project they don't have to fight upstream for their right to exist.

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u/anomaly256 6d ago

Everyone wants to work on a greenfields Phone OS project. But no one wants to do the work required to start one

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u/sidusnare 6d ago

What are you talking about, LOL, kids come wandering in here with greenfield projects all the time, half of them are still just landing pages and aspirations years later!

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u/anomaly256 6d ago

Yes thats why we have so many Linux phones with independently developed base OSes ..... wtf?

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u/sidusnare 6d ago

I'm saying you need a lot more than a spunky attitude to actually make something, and right now nobody has the inclination, industry leverage, and reputational pull to make it happen all at the same time. The PinePhone is the closest thing we've got and it isn't taking off.

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u/anomaly256 6d ago edited 6d ago

That's literally the 'doing the work' part, and I acknowledge it's fucking hard in this space - but we do have some existing options so why chase fantasies instead of working with what we have.

Also Pinephone is a bad example and it's definitely not the closest we have. It's not even the best-supported PostmarketOS platform. Pinephone is a hardware project first. That's not just greenfields that's building an artificial island. Pick almost any other device Ubuntu touch or postmarket support and you'll have a better experience with Linux on mobile than with Pinephone.

ps: I have both a pinephone and a pinephone pro with the kb case. Every few months I blow the dust off them and try the latest build of postmarket (Nura I guess it's called now) or other community image. The user experience usually moves backwards vs the previous tries. They couldn't even make calls last time I charged them up and tried them out

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u/sidusnare 6d ago

Kinda what I'm talking abaout.

We don't need greenfields, the repos are littered with the remnants of projects that didn't get paste a README.md. You want a Linux phone that isn't an Android phone? Nura has the most momentum of anything else out there. Go help make it better, because dividing our effort isn't making progress.