Linux Phones

Finally got around to getting a cheap SIM to play around with secondary devices. I threw it into my Ubuntu Touch OnePlus Nord N10 for fun and was absolutely shocked to see that VoLTE worked and calls worked perfect! Last I looked VoLTE was still in heavy development and far off. This is awesome, and the biggest hurdle to daily driving UT in the USA as we can only call on VoLTE.

Now RCS support would be awesome but I'm not sure if that's doable.

Do we have any Kiwix client that works on Linux phones?

Unofficial client for the TooGoodToGo API

Thought this might be interesting in case anyone is looking for a way to build an app that helps reduce food waste while at the same time providing cheap food. :)

I don't know anything about building GUI applications and will go back to mainlining... o/

Fluux Messenger: A fast, modern, cross-platform XMPP client for communities and organizations. - processone/fluux-messenger

Screenshos from the repo:

No aarch64 builds yet, but I have opened an issue. Might have a look at building this, as I cannot wait to try this on my phone (Pixel 3a/Mobian).

The kickstarter for the Mecha Comet just launched the other day and I am seriously considering backing it as I love the idea of the device as a whole.

Originally when I heard about the project a couple of years back I thought it would be good to have to try and replace my phone for the most part but still have a phone handset setup solely to run as a hotspot for the Comet to run through. Now with the launch of the kickstarter I see that there is actually a physical sim card slot and an LTE modem available so maybe it could be used outright as a phone without needing a second device to use as a modem!

Is anyone familiar with this device beyond the info detailed in the kickstarter? I'd be interested to hear further details if anyone has any, maybe someone here has had hands on experience with some of the units that were shown at CES (I think it was there)

Do you guys think it would be viable to use as your only handset?

I guess I'm mostly looking for more knowledgeable peoples opinions on it but also make people aware of it if they hadn't heard of it to hopefully get some more people interested as on the face of it it seems like a really interesting project!

With 39C3 coming up... What even schedule software do we have?

I know there's a KDE one, but as I'm on Phosh, there's probably something that'd fit a bit better.

I've read a bit about systemd-sysupdate and it seemed like something we might want to have for our mobile devices.

Then I was wondering whether any distribution already uses it on mobile devices.

cross-posted from: https://feditown.com/post/2231493

Noticed most of Gajim is now usable on a phone. Just a couple menus are difficult to use and chats don't open a separate view, so that the chat list and the chat itself compete for space.

Seems to be mostly small changes now that'd make it a really good mobile client.

For now I can already use it to have a way to run Ad-hoc Commands, which is still lacking in Dino.

What are you Ubuntu Touch users doing for music? Its one of my big hurdles to switching since I discovered Musicolet on Android.

I'm in the market for a new phone, and I'd like it to be Linux. As I've been building a table of options, I thought I'd share it. It's a wide table; sorry about that.

Updates

• The F(x)tec Pro1 X is available
• ShiftPhone 8.1 added (pre-order)

It's very "me" oriented: it's biased toward US markets ('cause that's where I am); it summarizes several features such as the CPU, display, and camera (all of which get spec'd out ad nauseum in marketing) which I'm too lazy to standardize; and it's biased toward device availability. Since there isn't a huge selection of options, the minute details hold less relevance.

I welcome updates, clarifications, and corrections; I expect to keep this table up to date until at least such time as I acquire a Linux phone -- even if I am forced into using a de-Googled Android in the meantime. Given Google's shenanigans of late, I am going to factor "Linux-ability" of the de-Googled phones, in the hopes that after Google screws over the forks, we'll still have the option of installing some future more compatible mobile Linux distribution.

I've also considered making a public Cryptopad spreadsheet, but I kind of hate working with SPAs.

Minutia

• There are many more potential specs for Display, but not all vendors include all specs: nits, refresh rate, touch sample rates, colors, contrast, and protective glass. This can all be useful information, but not all vendors provide all specs, and it would blow up the table. Therefore, I include the most common information: diagonal size, technology (if provided), and dimensions.

• CPU specifics are restricted to the basics. Most specs list # of performance vs efficiency cores, multiple speed specs, and just a ton of information that wouldn't fit easily into a table; and not all vendors provide the same amount of data in anything like a standard format. So, I include the family and the fastest clock speed, because I'm not sure that even with all the other variables you could calculate an expected standby run time by knowing the slower clock speeds.

• Cameras are in megapixels, and are back/front resolutions. I do not care about video capture frame rates, modes or anything else about the camera. I have a real camera for photography.

• Mem is RAM/storage, and whether the phone takes SD cards

• Battery is in mAh, and an r suffix means replacable

• USBC is the supported version of USB-C on the device; (v) means I confirmed it supports 3.0's video-over-USB; 2.0 never does, but sometimes 3.0 doesn't, either.

• Lnx in this context doesn't mean "you can boot it," but "you can make calls" -- IE, what most people would consider daily driving. A smart phone is considered functional if

  • Calls can be placed and received
  • The screen works
  • The WiFi works
  • The speakers work
  • The USB connection works (you can charge the phone)

  In particular, VoLTE is becoming mandatory on many networks in the US, and several EU phones apparently don't support it on US networks (if at all?). Wireless charging appears to require chip support which nobody has implemented Linux drivers for. None of these phones have wireless charging, and if they did, the impression I got was that it wouldn't work under Linux anyway. Regardless, while some people might have that as a minimum requirement, I do not consider it in the "daily driver" category.

  Murena phones come with /e/OS; some are available with Ubuntu Touch.

• US is whether or not it works on US networks, AFAICT

• Avail is whether you can get your hands on one right now. Several of these are pre-order.

• I did not convert Price to dollars, despite this being a US-centric table, because exchange rates are highly variable. A couple of phones I may not flesh out; the Pine64 has embarassing hardware, and I'm fairly certain by now the the Jolla doesn't work in the US; since my goal is to get a phone for me, I'm not spending time filling in data for a phone which can't work.

Therefore, while I'm not including all de- Googled phones, I'm including some -- especially if Linux support seems to be coming along. I'm also considering only contemporary technology, because even if the battery is replaceable, I'd really not buy myself into having to upgrade soon. Murena, in particular, sells several Pixels (5, 7, 8) with /e/OS.

Phone notes

• FairPhone 5
  The one phone Murena skipped importing into the US was the FairPhone 5, despite a promising post in 2023 claiming it was coming. It's the one most interesting, and would probably be at the top of my list. The 6 doesn't bring a lot to the table and is both larger and more expensive.

• The Jolla Phone
  Jolla no longer makes this phone, and the specs are quite old.

  Jolla phones ran Sailfish, which is neither Android nor Linux, but which apparently was pretty nice. I have no knowledge of whether it was what privacy wonks would consider "secure", but it isn't open source and you can not trust anything that isn't open source.

• Volla phones
  None of the Volla phones have ever been imported into the US, and I've seen commentary that they both work on US networks, and don't. Volla phones are quite nice, specs-wise, and it's a shame we can't get them in the states.

  The Ubuntu Touch website lists the Quintus and 22 as fully functional.

• F(x)tec PRO¹ X
  Another phone with a physical keyboard. Wireless is (annecdotally, in the comments) unreliable.

• Murena Teracube 2s
  The bootloader on the Teracube is locked, which precludes installing Linux.

• Xiaomi Poco X3
  Something of a dark horse, and a phone dating back to 2020, the Xiaomi shows as having every feature functioning under Ubuntu Touch. Unfortunately, the phone does not support VoLTE under Ubuntu Touch, which hinders its use in the US. The phone hardware itself does.

  Nobody has this phone in stock, though, so "Availability" is negative, although I suppose it could be found on eBay or something. The non-replacable battery makes buying it used a sketchy proposition.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/20111466

When I switched to a True Linux* phone five years ago most projects didn't even have telephony working reliably.

I haven't been following development a lot these days, so for me it's time to ask the question again.

To qualify as a main daily driver, it should do the following reliably:

• be actively maintained
• be supported on easily obtainable** hardware
• handle standard phone calls and texting with a simple GUI
• including contacts
• support internet on mobile broadband up to 4G as well as wifi
• have a minimum set of apps or a current browser to handle basic things like email, calendar
• handle audio between calls/media etc.

And preferably it should also

• support 5G
• support VoLTE
• handle Bluetooth audio
• a working Camera app
• remote access via ssh or similar

Obviously some people will find other things more or less important, but I hope anyone gets the gist of what I'm asking for and concentrates on the larger picture more than details.

* meaning more than just the kernel - an OS that works like a standard Linux OS with familiar software, package management (preferably supporting 3rd party repos), command line access (preferably remote) etc.

** That's a little squishy. For me it includes buying used from online markets as well, and there'd be an upper price limit. But I'd also count a batch ordering system from some small manufacturer. YMMV

Conclusion

According to these comments, there are many good projects in the works, and they're obviously further along than 5 years ago. Some of them impressively so. Thanks for all the answers.

However, not one clearly states "this OS/device combo is my (or some youtuber's) main daily driver"*. I'm not saying there isn't one, but until someone comes out and says so, SailfishOS is still the best bet if you want something that works right now. I know that their commercialism and partly closed source isn't to everybody's taste, but you have to see the history here (Nokia). Also, I know that the company (developer owned afaik) is very open to open-sourcing the rest. One app has already made the switch. And lastly, they're a EU company which means they operate under pretty strict legislation, but could also get EU funding.

* I hear that Ubuntu Touch works for some

https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-community-phone

I know nothing about this company or the phone. But it says it runs linux.

how would I go about disabling the modem and nfc on my Oneplus 6T (SDM845) running Mobian? or postmarketOS, I go back and forth between them.

I mean power it off completely, the way "Airplane mode" works on Android, but still be able to use Wifi and BT.

rfkill doesn't list it, lsusb/lspci don't work over here. shutting down ModemManager service removes everything modem related but I want it powered down completely.

If it matters, I'm on Plasma Mobile currently, but I'll switch back to a Phosh image.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/35320913

The Movuan project was started by community member lxb and announced in a forum post as an alternative to mobile distributions using the systemd init system. Thanks to being forked from Mobian, the project makes use of modified Mobian debos to build it’s images.

Movuan offers an image based on Devuan 5.0 (Debian 12) with Phosh.

Devuan for users who are unaware is a fork of Debian which provides alterative init systems to Systemd such as:

• sysvinit (default)
• openrc
• runit
• sinit
• s6
• shepherd

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