We need Linux OSes and phones to catch up to really break free from this duopoly. Only when there is enough traction, essential infrastructure like banks will start supporting Oses like that. It's a chicken and egg kind of problem.

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svilen_dobrev 12 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

what happened to Sailfish? the successor of meego et-al

It is finnish, anyone knows how are they going?

i used that for 2 years, it's linux+kde bottom to top, a terminal + shell is a builtin, though only supporting 5+ years old Sony phones got tiresome.

Still.. it seems the only one that's usable enough apart of the duopoly. May have to switch to it again.

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gf000 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Android is a Linux OS and is eons ahead anything that would sit on top of "GNU/Linux" userspace.

Why start from scratch?

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pelzatessa an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I think that the main problem is that android has a lot of weird modifications that are not consistent with the rest of linux distros. The user data is suddenly in /data instead of /home, theres no package manager, no systemd (for better or worse), and there's hella lotta security gotchas, for example call recording is impossible without root as far as I know. I'm not saying that Android is not hackable, but it's a different type of hackability than desktop linux, you have to learn it all over again and in my opinion it's much harder to master than desktop linux.

I've been on ubports for 3 years and while it also has some weird caveats like read only rootfs, no working package manager (due to read-only fs. however ubports has pretty cool support for lxc containers where you can use apt). Due to chronic lack of time I haven't been able to sit down on my phone to play with it a bit (for example id like to install waydroid), but it seems a lot easier than android. For example, while there isn't an app for call recording, some guy worked around it by writing a systemd user service as a workaround[1]. This is exactly the type of thing I'm thinking about when talking "linux phone".

For me as a linux user, the difference if ubports was a human, I'd think that perhaps they were sick, whereas if android was a human, i'd shoot them in the face :)

[1] https://forums.ubports.com/post/75157

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galangalalgol 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah, just need to decide where to start the fork. The larger problem is radio firmware. FCC regs were the initial excuse, for wifi and Bluetooth too, but we need to open up the source for all of these and allocate money for enforcement if we are truly worried people are going to start adding wifi channels etc. Open firmware phone radios would let you do things like truly turning off the radio when wifi was present, no gps ping even.

	▲	palata 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The good news being that the work made by Linux on Mobile projects regarding the radio firmware benefits AOSP projects, and inversely, right?

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palata 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

While I respect the Linux on Mobile work, I believe that AOSP is a lot better, with a much better security model.

Remember that GrapheneOS is not Android: it's an AOSP-based OS.

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Hackbraten 42 minutes ago | parent [-]

You’re not wrong. The thing that bothers me is that AOSP is being developed behind close doors and controlled by a single company which wields way too much power and control over our daily lives, and which has a track record of abusing that power.

	▲	palata 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Agreed. Though my hope is that AOSP could be forked. Without the contributions from Google, it would surely move slower, but... well it may work. I actually had hopes that Huawei would start that with HarmonyOS.