I take the opportunity to let people know that there are alternatives to Google/Apple duopoly on mobile. Link: https://www.ubuntu-touch.io/

Sure, GrapheneOS is often suggested but Ubuntu Touch is a really interesting alternative, their own store and ecosystem.

The community is amazing and welcoming. If there are Android apps which you can't do without, they can be emulated and used anyway. Imagine switching to Linux and then using Wine for the apps you really still need.

Yes, it's not perfect but Linux isn't either. If you think you're sufficiently tech savvy and want to make a change, give Ubuntu Touch a try. Find a cheap second hand supported device and play around, make some fun apps. (devices currently supported: https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/ )

To me it's like being back when there was only Windows and Macs as viable home computer OS, and people were getting their feet wet with Linux and all its flavours. Now, it's the same but for mobile.

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uyzstvqs 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Ubuntu Touch has amazing UX, IMO. Sadly it's been non-viable for practically forever, and is non-viable today unless you want to use a 7-year-old out-of-production device. It's practically abandonware with a few hobby maintainers at this point, as much as it had potential compared to other alternatives.

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Al-Khwarizmi 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I suppose emulating Android apps on a non-Android system will have the same problem as trying to run them in an Android without Google Services or in a rooted phone, i.e., banking (and similar) apps detecting it and refusing to run?

Were it not for that, I would never have stopped using Huawei, IMO the best phone brand by a mile. But I'm too busy a person to depend on hacks and having to regularly find new workarounds to access my banks.

	▲	gspr 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think you're right about certain apps refusing to run in an emulated environment. I'm beginning to think we need to consider such apps, and the hardware they run on, as the outsiders. Keep a cheap "normal" Android phone for those apps, and those apps alone. Then keep a "real" second device for everything else. Up to you which one gets the SIM card and provides connectivity for the other (and ordinary phone services). I'd rather go back to old-fashioned hardware dongles from banks – but hey, lacking that, maybe I'll just think of the first of those two devices as a clunky, overly expensive one of those.

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leminimal 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Ubuntu Touch so far has the best hardware compatibility for things like camera and battery life. But it also insists on doing a lot of its own thing like using Mir instead of X and click packages. Running programs inside Libertine often crashes for me and is cumbersome. It makes developing for it harder. clickable needs Docker installed just so you can build and run your own apps on the device! Instead of letting you launch things quickly from terminal.

It make some things that should be easy on Linux harder. I.e., there's no Firefox + mobile tweaks like other linux mobile OSes, in part because it wants you to use Morphic.

But other linux mobile OSes dropped support for Halium/libhybris and even the very few that still have it don't seem to match Ubuntu Touch's level of hardware support.

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skerit 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> like using Mir instead of X

X11 is dead. It's over. At least Mir is now a Wayland client.

	▲	tommica 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		XLibre exists - it keeps x11 alive

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thrance 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Thank you for the much needed hopeful note. Maybe I'll try doing exactly that, sounds like a fun hobby. My biggest worry about Linux on mobile is that banking apps will stubbornly refuse to offer support to these platforms, basically forever.