this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2026
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Linux Phones

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The Discussion on Linux-based Phones.


Benefits:

  • Hardware freedom.
  • Perfect operating-system competition.
  • Full utilization of specs.
  • Phone lifespan raises to 10+ years.
  • Less e-waste.

Linux Mobile Distros:

  • Ubuntu Touch
  • Sailfish
  • FuriOS
  • Postmarket OS
  • Mobian
  • Pure OS
  • Plasma Mobile
  • LuneOS
  • openSUSE Mobile
  • Nemomobile
  • Droidian
  • Mobile NixOS
  • ExpidusOS
  • Maemo Leste
  • Manjaro Arm
  • Tizen
  • WebOS

Linux Mobile Hardware:

  • Fairphone 5
  • Volla Phone
  • PinePhone
  • FLX1
  • Librem 5

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Pay the $25 ransom little devs or else!

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[–] socsa@piefed.social 23 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

The dumb part is that this won't even solve the problem. It will be trivially easy to get dev certificates through a shell company. Anyone who is making money off scamware will have no trouble standing up LLCs faster than Google can ban them.

[–] zergtoshi@lemmy.world 13 points 2 hours ago

You still think it's about security while it always has been about control.

[–] godsammitdam@lemmy.zip 18 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (2 children)

Sounds like a boon for other projects like Graphene, Postmarket, Lineage, Ubuntu Touch, etc

Make sure to donate and I hope the devs switch gears and leave Google behind.

It's why there's already talk that recaptcha only works with approved phones to lock out alternatives.

[–] _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, this shit has me moving to Graphene soon.

[–] kubica@fedia.io 2 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

As far a I know you need a Google Pixel for graphene. So you would still be helping google.

[–] _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

I already have one but even if I didn't buying used FTW!

Also, Motorola is reportedly releasing a Graphene friendly phone (not that they're all that great either).

Assuming they buy it new. If you buy it used, no helping Google.

[–] IAmYouButYouDontKnowYet@reddthat.com 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

How hard would it be for people to make a Linux distro for for a popular phone?

[–] bus_factor@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Phones don't have standardized hardware interfaces, so they're a lot more painful to develop for. You don't just create a graphics driver, you have to do it for every display.

That being said, there are linux distros for phones, but they are far from the maturity of Android.

[–] Sunshine@lemmy.ca -2 points 1 hour ago

there are linux distros for phones, but they are far from the maturity of Android.

Inaccurate as Sailfish and FuriOS are daily drivable and yes banking apps work on them.

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 39 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

For those who have the means, please consider donating to PostmarketOS, which has been slowly but surely pushing forward pure linux support for phones, and is the best longterm solution we have to completely circumvent Google and reclaim our hardware permenantly.

[–] sns@lemmy.dbzer0.com 28 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

F-Droid is way more trustworthy than google pay.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 7 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Or Google Play, for that matter!

(I don't really care because I find the idea of hooking your credit cards to a third party to pay with your phone creepy to begin with, but are there any non-Google-Pay alternatives for GrapheneOS or Linux phones?)

[–] godsammitdam@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I think it was a play on words

...or pay for that matter.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago

I understand wordp(l)ay, I swear! πŸ˜…

Unfortunately, theirs had a namespace collision with a separate actual product, so I decided to riff on that instead.

[–] Sanctus@anarchist.nexus 54 points 6 hours ago (2 children)
[–] renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net 12 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

I really want Linux phones to catch on, but even watching demos, while they are making progress, it seems like they are still very far behind.

A phone for me (and many others) is more a lifestyle utility than a tech gadget, so reliability and compatibility is paramount. Things need to just work the first time every time for me to trust relying on it for important things.

I still follow the development of some projects and contribute when I can, but it doesn’t look like it’ll be a realistic option (for my use case at least) any time soon.

[–] madthumbs@lemmy.world -4 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Banking on smart phones is safer than banking on Windows, and far safer than banking on Linux. -That's probably never going to change, and because of 'privacy concerns', it will be as bad on the phone or worse than desktop Linux.

Open apps like Open Street Map absolutely suck. I've tried helping them out, but they made it so complicated to contribute to naming locations.

There are some FOSS apps for phone I'm fond of, but I wouldn't consider using a slap-stick repo like F-Droid especially for such volatile software that gets abandoned and forked regularly.

With all that said, there are some people claiming daily driving lately and it seems like they fixed issues of the past, but some issues aren't likely to get fixed. -Ever. (due to fundamental issues with copy left GPL and the cult around it)

If only the clamoring happened around BSD instead.

Can you elaborate on how banking is β€œsafer” on smart phones than Windows and Linux?

[–] 666dollarfootlong@lemmy.world 19 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

Speaking of, the first waves of the new Jolla phone (with sailfish os) are apparently coming out now. I haven"t seen any posts about it on Lemmy yet, just an unboxing vid on YouTube

[–] Sanctus@anarchist.nexus 10 points 6 hours ago

Literally the only one I like but I live in Hell and they don't seem to do too well with the carriers over here. Some of them are crazy, lwanting like nearly 2k, ain't happenin' chief.

[–] DeLancre@piefed.social 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I don't like jolla after that one time when they sold their brand and product to russian company affiliated with current corrupt government that you know, killing people in Ukraine.

[–] 666dollarfootlong@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I really don't mean to start any more in-fighting on "this side", but is it really worth it to wait for something "better" to appear? I admit I don't know much about that russia thing, but this latest Jolla phone is selling out all the pre-orders, there is lots of momentum going on, it seems that we might finally have a viable option that isn't american big tech. So is it worth it to let this thing go, while letting the cancer cells grow even bigger?

[–] DeLancre@piefed.social 2 points 1 hour ago

If you want to swap cancer to aids - you do you.

[–] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Sailfish has been around since 2013. Hopefully the hardware is good 🀞

[–] IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

1st version hardware was decent enough and I had really high hopes for the company. And then they went and messed up royally with the tablet-kickstarter. I hope they really can push to the market this time, but I'm not the first to buy their device again.

[–] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Darn even the fin is critical of them.

[–] IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 2 points 11 minutes ago

I don't know how many, if any at all, are still on board from the original company but I really had high hopes for them. I used N810, N900 and N9 from Nokia. That OS (maemo/meego) then eventually matured to Sailfish some time after Nokia was already either down or going that way. I really liked the first Jolla phone, it had something in it which none of the android slabs I've then had doesn't. They had at least some kind of market share, promising applications coming up and, at least in my opinion, at that time, very real chance to challenge Android/iOS on the market.

And then they blew it all with a massively oversized kickstarter for their size. I haven't followed too closely what actually happened, or could that been avoided, but that blunder meant that I haven't really followed Sailfish or Jolla since. I really hope they succeed, the market needs desperately at least one more player to challenge walled gardens we currently have, but previous experience says that I'm not going to throw my own hard earned money on them until they show they can actually stay on track.

[–] Babalugats@feddit.uk 5 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

first results on a quick search for phones that allow bootloader unlocking.

Hopefully, all of the devs, (or at the very least, most of the them) move over to help speed up and improve the alternative OS's

It would be a beautiful kick in the face to Google if there a relatively quick mass migration from Android to any or all of those.

https://www.howtogeek.com/buy-these-brands-if-you-truly-want-to-own-your-phone/

[–] BigBananaDealer@lemmy.world -4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

what the hell is the 30th month?

[–] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

The date is day/month/year standard

[–] BigBananaDealer@lemmy.world -3 points 2 hours ago (1 children)
[–] GianBarGian@feddit.it 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Because not everybody is American. Also because it makes way more sense

[–] BigBananaDealer@lemmy.world 1 points 8 minutes ago

it doesnt make sense at all really

[–] IAmYouButYouDontKnowYet@reddthat.com 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

At the least support lineageos.

[–] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 9 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Google has been reducing the amount of AOSP updates released each year.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 10 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

And moving necessary libraries into Google Play Services instead of having them in AOSP at all.

Because Google absolutely hates everything good and decent now.

[–] Serinus@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

Don't you just hit that option to allow APKs that takes 24 hours to go through?

[–] DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

True but this option is completely provisioned by Google server side. At any point they could say

"Due to recently passed legislation, we can no longer offer advanced flow as this method now bypasses established federal laws regarding Age Verification. Identity verification will be required moving forward for unsigned apps."

[–] VibeSurgeon@piefed.social 0 points 1 hour ago

I mean, if we're talking theoreticals, they could turn off the ability to install any apps outside of the Play Store if they decided to. They could even turn off the ability to install any apps at all, from any source.

There's no reason to believe that any of those things are going to happen, though, nor is there any reason to believe that the theoretical you posed is going to happen.

[–] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 9 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

I can't wait to be interested in an app, and have to wait an entire 24 hours to install it on my own computer

At least until google removes that option as well