Linux Phones

I just ordered a FairPhone 5 for the purpose of test-driving any reasonable Linux solutions on it. My eventual preference will probably be Mobian or Postmarket OS with plasma-mobile, but those appear to require additional dev time before they're practical daily drivers, especially on the FP5. Ubuntu Touch appears to be a reasonably mature option, and they specifically single out the FairPhone 5 on their website as the best supported hardware right now. I believe this maturity may be largely due to utilizing closed source Android blobs to drive phone hardware which isn't ideal for us FOSS purists but at least has the advantage of accelerating their dev efforts.

I assume this won't become my main phone right away, but I'm curious whether this community believes Ubuntu Touch (or something else) on a FP5 could potentially be a reasonable daily driver by now. A similar post from about year ago answered No, though their question didn't specify which hardware.

Thoughts? Maybe an alternate distro I should at look at for the FP5 specifically?

This might be useful to some people that want to use a DHL Packstation, but use a Linux phone and don't want to run the proprietary app in Waydroid.

Waydroid has been packaged and is now available in Unstable: https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/waydroid

It should be available in Testing in a few days.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/46776421

Title. I made a space to try and encapsulate all the known Linux Mobile Projects. Ideally this could've been a list or directory of sorts, but since I didn't find one, I kinda just decided to make one. - it's inspired by postmarketOS' space.

You can find it at #mobile-linux-rooms:nope.chat -- Could've had a better name but frankly couldn't think of a better name at the time.

Includes

• PostmarketOS
• NixOS (whole)
• Mobian (Unofficial Space made for this)
• Droidian
• UBPorts
• Fedora PocketBlue
• OpenSUSE Mobile
• SailfishOS (Unofficial Space made for this)
• Pine64 (whole)
• KDE (whole)
• Phosh
• Gnome Mobile (room only)

I'm not too knowledgeable about cellular equipment, but I was wondering how much of the phone based data actually gets to the SIM card.

Would it be possible, by sniffing the connection to the card, to listen to the content of calls and mobile data? Or would it be possible to get tower information in a similar format to rayhunter?

I understand there is some encryption, would getting the keys for that enable some of the previous ideas?

I have several noob questions about Linux on mobile

1. Why can you brick android phone by installing custom ROM. But such thing can't happen on x86? Or how likely is that. From what I read it is because it doesn't have bios and you can overwrite phone hardware drivers how true is that with recent devices? And I assume it is impossible to recower from software bricking?
2. Is that true that on Halium kernel distribution you can't use universal packages (flatpak, nix, snap, appimage), only precompiled for its specyfic system only? Is there any bypass of that to use something like apk like on android? Or are there any disadvantages to use it apart from EOL security.
3. Is there any good list how to start with Linux on phone? List of devices (probably oneplus 6, pixel 3a, fairphone 4), distros (probably Ubuntu touch, mobian, postmarketOS). The smoothest experience, preferably with dual boot.
4. Is there some recomended tablets to test with Linux mobile? It seems preferred way for me considering calling, camera and other issues which are on Linux mobile. Is recomended devices from postmarketos tablet tab?
5. Why battery life is worse on Linux than on android, I watched some reviews and they complained about short battery life.
6. I watched someone run Linux distros by clicking on android quick settings tray and it opened Linux desktop, but it was not mobile. How it is called and is there a way to run it with plasma mobile?
7. Is porting for newer devices getting easier with time or is getting harder?
8. How is process of jailbreaking with locked bootloader done? Can it be automated?
9. Is there megatread or some wiki with some basic question like these?

Thanks for answers. Sorry for long text.

Just got the modem on the Xperia 10 III working.

Want a small Linux phone with 5G?

It's even water-proof and cheap!

Help getting the few remaining components working and this could exist soon. ;-)

Main thing I need help with is audio. I have no idea about this, but it'd allow me to try it as a daily driver, which would help to get more stuff working.

My own Mobian build works well already. The plan is to get the remaining kernel support, upstream patches and then add the remaining bits for Mobian.

• Mainlining Status: https://git.erebion.eu/forgejo/erebion/pdx213-temp
• pmOS wiki: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Sony_Xperia_10_III_(sony-pdx213)

youtu.be/U4e3znNi98Q?si=fLFsyE…

Hi all, the friendly neighborhood #sxmo stan here.

Apps listed per appearance:
#wpaperd - dissolve transition, super slow
#foot - people hate my theme for it... but I'm happy lol
#yazi
#pfetch-rs
#wf-recorder
#librewolf with firefox minima css & #tridactly addon for a qutebrowser experience
irccloud (prefer halloy but.... yeah)
wvkbd-mobintl with #suggapicker and #swipeGuess
#gomuks web (currently my favorite #matrix client) with beeper.com for lazy bridges
wofi - i have single, double, and triple down gestures for each different screen
a couple scripts i made but most i stole modified from the great codeberg.org/magdesign/sxmop6
mingle

and yes that was #morrowind via #openmw

#postmarketos @linuxphones @linuxphones @linmob

In this issue: Two XMPP Events, learn about Spaces in XMPP, a new XMPP MUC BanBot, Self-hosting UnifiedPush with Conversations as Distributor, a new member of the Slidge family, and a complete translation of JoinJabber to Portuguese (BR). …

Posting this here as we need open and decentralised communications systems and not just a phone running FOSS. :)

This is the first time something I've packaged has become part of the Debian repos.

Now lpac can be installed from Unstable and allows you to set up your eSIM on Debian phones.

It will be available in Debian Testing in two days: https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/lpac

Has anyone actually successfully installed PostmarketOS on an old device recently? I've had a long struggle through trying to prepare a Nexus 7 (2012) and the result seems to be a dead device before I even got to actually installing PostmarketOS.

The rough steps I followed are listed here:

• Create backups
• Get SBK
• Build and prepare U-Boot
  • Actually flashing U-Boot seems to be where things went wrong
    • Running ./run_bootloader.sh -s T30 -t ./bct/grouper.bct -b ../re-crypt/repart-block.bin or ./run_bootloader.sh -s T30 -t ./bct/grouper.bct -b ../generated-wheelie-blobs/AndroidRoot/blob.bin from fusee-tools hung on waiting for bootloader to initialize
    • Running ./run_bootloader.sh -s T30 -t ./bct/grouper.bct -b ../u-boot/u-boot-dtb-tegra.bin failed like this
    • skipping that step and running ./utils/nvflash_v1.13.87205 --resume --rawdevicewrite 0 1024 ../re-crypt/repart-block.bin hung on [resume mode]
    • Consulting a different version of the docs and running ./wheelie --blob ./generated-wheelie-blobs/AndroidRoot/blob.bin seemed to work so I ran ./nvflash --resume --rawdevicewrite 0 1024 ./re-crypt/repart-block.bin which also seemed to work
    • I then powered off as instructed and the device has been completely unresponsive since

I've tried connecting to a charger, disconnecting and reconnecting the battery, and every combination of holding down buttons but it appears to be completely dead. Any suggestions as to what I did wrong or anything I might be able to do now? Obviously it's not the end of the world to have lost a 13 year old tablet that was just gathering dust, but at the moment I'm not feeling positive about ever trying this again on another device!

Roughly how long will it take the fairphone 6 to reach the level of support the fairphone 4 is at now?

I’m debating getting one to tinker with

Can anybody confirm whether the camera works in Waydroid in Ubuntu Touch on the Fairphone 4?

The camera certainly doesn't work in Waydroid on my ARM laptop, and I've read that support hadn't been added for v4l2 yet. But I've seen a YouTube video that seems to suggest otherwise on Ubuntu Touch (that I can't find anymore of course...)

I really want to convert my FP4 to Linux, but not being able to activate my Android banking app in Waydroid with the QR code is a deal breaker for me.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/31929582

This blog post is already quite long, so it will omit changes merged for Plasma 6.5 (releasing in October, to be announced in a future post).

With the Plasma 6.2 release, we moved Plasma Dialer and Spacebar to the Plasma release cycle, allowing us to have consistent releases of the two apps. This completes our year long move to having all Plasma Mobile related projects released as part of wider KDE releases, streamlining the work for distributions and taking a load off us on having to maintain a separate release cycle!

In other news, a Fedora spin for Plasma Mobile was released! It will only be targeting devices that can currently boot Fedora (i.e. not ARM phones), but is very exciting nonetheless!

Ive been looking to change email providers from gmail to either tuta or mail.org but figure I should change phone OS too.

However I havent been able to find any info on what OS supports Samsung A54 5G devices. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Cheers

IndieGoGo campaign here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/liberux-nexx--3#/

She mentioned in her toot that she tries to keep the dependencies so that the app works well with waydroid.

Anyway it's a great app, I use it almost daily. Strongly suggested!

Link to source code page: https://github.com/CatimaLoyalty/Android

I have been using Lollypop on my phone for about 2 years now. I have tried a few other apps but nothing worked quite as well for me as Lollypop.

That said, I still have a lot of gripes with Lollypop. Rather than complain about it, though, I'd rather hear about something new.

The last time I went looking for a new app was in 2023. Is there anything new in 2025 worth checking out?

My wants:

• Large-ish local library (350gb) and I want it to load/scroll through fast. Lollypop is quite slow here.
• I really prefer the UI to list artists, open one, then list albums, open one, then list songs. Too many apps list all your albums, or all your individual songs, and I hate this.

Edit: I guess I need to specify, I am looking for Linux-native apps. A few of the suggestions so far have been Android, and I am not seeking to run anything in Waydroid for this.

Over the past few months, and especially since the last holiday season, many exciting things have happened in Mobian: new devices are (about to be) officially supported, many new and improved packages have made their way into both Debian and Mobian, and we’re getting ready for our next stable release!

My phone's power button doesn't work well.

Is there a way to turn on the screen backlight using a terminal command or some library (I'll be using ssh)?

I'm on pmOS 24.12 with Phosh, Wayland