this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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I really wish another viable mobile OS would come out. I don’t want android and apple iOS is wearing thin on me.
Have you tried Ubuntu Touch?
Perhaps next year will be the year of the Linux Phone. Alas, the same problems that plague the Linux desktop plague the phone. Lack of software.
It’s also very difficult to move out of the Apple ecosystem once everything just works the way you think it should. 
I'm quite interested in the developments on waydroid that would allow the use of Android apps on a Linux phone.
Now that’s an interesting concept.
Linux desktop is far more mature and there isn't even a year for the Linux desktop yet. Linux mobile will probably never take off within our lifetime lmao.
Agreed. I don’t have a home computer. All of my online experience is done through my iPhone. I can’t be messing around with phones I constantly need to tweak or troubleshoot. I’ve done it to myself, but I’m okay with where I’m at rn.
Oh yes please stick with Apple. I don't think I have ever heard of a better use case scenario.
I can’t tell if you’re being facetious or not.
Seems like an honest recommendation to me. You fit the apple use case pretty well, so if it works for you, great. I'd argue a stock pixel using stock android would be comparable in terms of not needing to mess with stuff since its a very curated experience, since google then controls the hardware and software, like apple.
The trade off is you're giving google (or apple) 100% access and control to everything you do on your phone.
With a fairphone or any other android with (e, grapheneOS, calyxOS, lineage, etc) you WILL need to change some settings, maybe play around with it a bit to get it working how you want, but you are the one in control. Its really not that difficult to develop the small amount of technological knowledge needed given the amount of help available online and I'd say its a necessary life skill these days just like learning to use a computer became a necessary life skill.
I tried it on a spare old phone and found it pretty unusable tbh. Very limited application choices and I hated the UI / app management work flow.
Also I hated that by default the terminal (and superuser privileges) are VERY locked down.
It's possible I just didn't know what I was doing tho ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah, I’ve put Ubuntu Touch on a Pixel 3a and had a pretty similar experience unfortunately. I see potential, but it’s just not usable yet (for me at least).
Dang, I haven't ever tried it. I was hoping for more configurability.
It would end up getting ignored or quickly devolve into the same shit as the others. 😞
Fuck, if Microsoft couldn't do it, then there's not much hope for anyone else.
There was so much competition in the early days of smartphones, its sad we ended up, the whole of humanity with two choices. Meego a collab between Intel and Nokia was really unique and a good model for social media and communications. Windows Phone was good purely to have another major competitor, but the interface was way ahead of Android and iOS for providing a better mobile experience.
RIM Blackberry, Nokia, Palm, all had a red hot go. Amazon tried recently and failed, they look like they'll give it another shot with their new OS.
Yeah its just sad
I miss WebOS as a mobile OS and I can't bear to see what LG has done do it.
Wait… was this ever good? I hate it so much on my TV.
I found it to be a very elegant OS, paired with a very elegant form factor in the Palm Pre. This was over 10 years ago, before Android had cemented its place, but WebOS was a bit ahead of its time, or at least out of sync with the time it was introduced. But it was a slick, intuitive OS that influenced the UX we take for granted today. I believe it was the first to have card-based task management. That satisfying "flick" to close an app was first seen on the Palm Pre.
If the palm pre had better build quality and wasnt tied down to sprint in the US I sometimes wonder how things would have played out. It was a better OS than android(especially since it was competing with the g1).
Yeah, I remember some noise around that, which is probably why they made the Pixi with a lot fewer moving parts after that. For what it's worth, my Pre stood up great and was still in good shape when I upgraded away from it.
Why not Android?
degoogling intensifies
Graphene OS might interest you.
I’m not going to criticize the project, because it’s good. But, to me, using anything that gives Google an edge in controlling the direction of technology is bad. So, no Chromium products and no Android.
I despise Google, and I agree with chromium, but when the only other alternative is using the proprietary walled garden that is iOS, I'll take degoogled Android everyday.
What can android do that you actually do that iOS cannot?
For starters, you can degoogle Android, you can't deapple iOS.
You can replace the manufacturer android with a clean, free software and secure Android ROM, like GrapheneOS. iOS is a black box, fully proprietary and controlled by Apple.
You can install apps from third parties on Android, like F-Droid. On iOS every app must be approved by Apple.
You can't use an iPhone without an Apple account, you can use Android without a Google account.
Android has multiple profiles support, which comes handy for completely isolating apps from the rest of your phone.
There's much, much more. That's just what came to my mind right now.
How can I download apps (not side load) from a store (play store for example) without having a Google account?
You need a Google account just for the Play Store, given that it's a Google product.
You can download apps from other stores just fine: install F-Droid for example, or Amazon which has their own app repository too, and you'll be able to download and install apps from there. (I don't recommend using Amazon, it's just an example)
For apps on the Play Store, you can use Aurora Store which proxies the Google Store and does not require a Google account.
And you can prove that the binaries I receive are the binaries from the developer?
F-Droid has reproducible builds, so definitely yes. You can even check the exact code used to build every app on F-Droid.
The rest of stores, it depends. Every store has their own policy and the only one I recommend is using F-Droid or downloading directly from the devs' website or Github repo. There's an app to automate this process for updates too, so it's actually a quite good method.
“deapple iOS”
Why would I want to make a secure device less secure tho
stop consuming Apple marketing.
I like phone and do not use google. Not much needs to be marketed to me lawl
Personally, I like using the terminal on my phone, and the only terminal I found for iOS is extremely slow because its emulating linux.
You mean locally or for ssh?
I use it locally.
What sort of things do you want to do locally on your phone that you need the command line for?
Simple terminal applications like
pingorcurloryt-dlp. I also like usingpython -m http.serverto access my files over the local internet.w3msometimes works when my mobile data is very slow and can't load web pages. I also do usessha lot. I don't need it if I have ansshapp but it is nice to have, and I switched to android for it.For a regular user… basically nothing.
I quit google products and services a decade ago, so I was “relegated” to iOS, which… does basically the same exact fucking thing but better in every way. It’s spendy though. I also like their privacy stance, which is “we cost a lot but we’re not selling all of your data to advertisers”
I have not found a single thing I can’t do on iOS that I COULD on Android.
People spout WaLLeD GaRdEn and what I read is “privacy” and I’m in
They’ll complain about unauthorized developers…. Which I wouldn’t want anyway.
If you do that too much you'll go blind.
Try Murena on fairphone!
Murena uses /e/OS, which is still Android though.
It’s less about the hardware and more about the software. I would love to use a fairphone