Linux Phones

5009 readers

1 users here now

Community about running GNU/Linux on phones. Projects like Ubuntu Touch, Plasma Mobile, PostmarketOS, Mobian etc. Either on former Android phones or hardware like the PinePhone.

See also:

Related chats:

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Daily driving Plasma Mobile (fam-ribbers.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I wrote a blog post about my experiences on daily driving Plasma Mobile

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm glad you are doing this. Pinephone and Librem 5 days are surely numbered, the hardware is just too outdated. My Librem 5 is also starting to fail, some times i can't even get it to power on without restarting several times. I will never use Android or iOS, they are just too exploitative and untrustworthy, so it's a relief everyone isn't completely abandoning the idea of a free libre phone.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Adding to that, I'm not sure if it's just me, but Android, even with root, feels so restrictive compared to a Linux distro. A good example is that I tried to remove a system file the other day (notification sounds, I hated them and wanted them gone for good) but even when I found what the file was, I couldn't delete it using conventional methods aka file managers. I even tried using Zarchiver with root privileges, and it failed. The same happened when I had to deal with recent Android versions making the Android/obb dir read-only. The only way I could access these is via Termux and that is just kinda disappointing for a system that claims to be supposedly open.

Now, I'm not expecting this to be possible on mobile Linux, but the expectations there are different.

Anyways, rant aside, what I'm really saying is I'm excited for Mobile Linux, specifically Plasma Mobile (as I already tried Phosh and it was pretty good, but I haven't got a device Plasma Mobile). I hope that I can daily drive it one day, just using Waydroid for some apps like WhatsApp, Banking Apps, and other essential proprietary apps.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I mean, not being able to delete some files because they're read-only and what not doesn't mean it's less open. You can't do that on an immutable distribution either but I definitely still consider them "open".

At postmarketOS we're planning to also offer an immutable option in the future. We'll always keep a mutable option around for people that want it but by default we'll ship the immutable variant to our users because we can guarantee stability and safe updates way more. Then you won't be able to just delete system files either.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Yeah, but actual Linux, even immutable, still feels more open. I don't like the default look and feel of the system? There's only so much I can do on Android, while on mobile Linux, I can even install SXMO, which is a mobile tiling window manager.