this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2026
73 points (97.4% liked)

Linux Phones

8547 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.

Related communities:

See also:

Related chats:

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] DetachablePianist@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

nice! the phone won't arrive for a few weeks anyway, so I'll try the latest available at the time. working audio is kind of important to me for a daily driver, but as a long-time debian fan mobian is my first choice for the core phone os - and as soon as possible. i might have to settle for something like ubuntu touch in the short term as a transitional distro, but debian/mobian is what I'm planning to eventually run (with kde's plasma-mobile interface)

[–] erebion@news.erebion.eu 2 points 1 week ago

The weekly images sometimes do not boot (but if it works on the first try, you can just use that to save time), if it does not boot try the last stable one, then update all the way to the latest testing version.

You can build the image yourself with mobian-recipes and then also enable full disk encryption for yourself. It creates an image

i might have to settle for something like ubuntu touch in the short term as a transitional distro, but debian/mobian is what I’m planning to eventually run (with kde’s plasma-mobile interface)

Might be easier to wait until audio is ready and to spare yourself one migration. :)

In case you're not aware yet, the Mobian IRC is incredibly helpful.