Linux Phones

I have the original one pre ordered, orange cover and all. It was my first smartphone. Used it for years. Then things started to become slower (more apps using more resources / being heavier) and my needs changed (wanted better camera, more space, 5g, need to use android apps that required a higher api version) and bought my second smartphone which was an android.

So the phone really is linux, had systemd / journalctl if I'm remembering right, file system was btrfs which I had to do some maintenance by hand by ssh into it, it was using wayland. Basically 2 things were closed source: their UI and the thing that allowed to run android apps emulated.

I absolutely loved it and the ux was very nice. It took me a lot of time to get used to modern UX of android after it and it was painful to adjust.

I just did a year in update:

https://geekyschmidt.com/post/sailfishos-sept25/

I've been reading about it for about a year and talked (via the fediverse) with people who have it.

Before I even consider the hardware, a few key points about the OS (Sailfish):

• They do what they claim to do
• More insecure than Graphene OS
• Can also run Android apps (I can't remember how well/easy)
• OS updates are paywalled (subscription)

This last point sucks real hard.

They are basically what is left of Nokia's efforts with the N900 and N9 back in the day. But they chose a semi-closed source business model which severely limited community uptake and then seemingly got overwhelmed with maintaining their software-stack so now a lot of it is very outdated; which is why they are now slowly open-sourcing it, but it is probably too little and too late.

Edit: and their mix up with some Russian business (not sure about the current status of it) also doesn't help instill confidence.