The project, developed in partnership with veteran free software developer Rob Savoye, aims to create a fully free and open mobile platform, from the firmware to the operating system.
Tell me more about the phone! This has taken so long and I am ready to migrate to an open phone even if it’s only for texting at this point.
Screw this OS monopoly by Apple and Alphabet.
Open to simple solutions here. I have a Pixel 4a 5g and iPhone 15 Pro* atm.
your pixel probably runs graphene, degoogle it.
you could probably run linux on it today too.
What’s keeping me from doing this is that i won’t be able to run my banking apps anymore then. And I can’t be arsed to carry two phones
linux phones will never run banking apps either.
I mean, carrying two phones would defeat most of the purpose anyway if one isn’t degoogled in the first place, they’re still getting all that tracking and they’ll be able to associate it with all the online activity of your degoogled phone that’s conveniently always in the same location.
This is the original article
https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-turns-forty-with-a-new-president-and-a-new-campaign
I’ve got a Google Pixel 3a with postmarketOS installed on it right now for testing, and it really is a two-pronged issue with both hardware and software. Because it’s an older phone the battery drains within a few hours, nowhere close to all-day use. Because most of the software is designed for the desktop certain things are just impossible to use (the big pain point for me is Anki, but on the other hand it’s impressive how many GTK apps conform very nicely to the screen). The keyboard still feels pretty rough.
Hopefully the FSF dipping their hat into the ring will help existing projects like this in a rising-tide-raises-all-ships sort of way. Would be a shame for them to put effort into a software stack that goes nowhere (GNU Hurd), and pour $$$ into a hardware project that doesn’t make it to market or doesn’t do its job better than a cracked smartphone from 5+ years ago.
I think it is possible to switch to it now and have things mostly work out for you, but it will make your life harder. I remember switching to Ubuntu around 2010 and it’s almost to that level of experience. You’ll be giving up a lot, apps you “need” won’t work, but it’s at the point where it is a complete usable experience. For those that are willing to suffer for FOSS, I mean.
The only way to sucdeed here is to legally force all phones to have unlocked bootloader.
This isn’t even the worst problem. O think the biggest one is proprietary blob drivers, that kills the possibility of keep your phone updated and a general solution that works for most phones instead of an ad-hoc hack for each one.
I disagree - all of those are solvable if the core platform is free
Damn. Software has existed 40 years now?
Not only that: it was big enough to get mad at 40 years ago already.
What a nice thing to do
I won’t hold my breath, but it’s sorely needed, so, we can hope.
As long as y’all maintain your altitude.
And avoid getting raptured. Otherwise we’ll hear no end of your Arch installs.
I salute the early adopters who will suffer all the inconveniences of startups so the wider public can enjoy a non-corporate phone in the future. o7
Unless they can get this working with Android Auto or Carplay I don;t see it going anywhere.
Fuck cars
Nah, fuck that.
I’d rather see Linux on the head unit, too.
Nah many people don’t live in their cars. I have 2 cars and never use Android Auto even when I could. I’m usually busy with driving instead of fooling with phone bullshit when I’m in the car anyway.
I’m looking forward to get one of these just to play around with it, and maybe making some custom stuff for it.
I’m looking forward to actually seeing how my fucking works and what it’s doing.
how my fucking works and what it’s doing.
I think only you can answer that one, friend
As soon as my current phone is paid off I am going to get this. No more fucking Spyware up the ass.
I want a Linux phone so bad that I refuse to think about what it would be like because i’d be upset afterwards.
I hope they can pull this off because we really need this.
Heard of Hurd, I don’t think they can.
Maybe Hurd never went anywhere but they are responsible for as much of what constitutes “Linux” as the Linux kernel is. Linux never would have amounted to much without GCC, the GNU tools, and the GPL.
Linux mobile phones are the fusion power of the FOSS world, always “right around the corner.”
All the pieces are there, but none of them work together smoothly enough to be functional for anybody except the most hardcore FOSS enthusiasts.
When Proton started, it was kind of a joke, killed the Steam Machine idea in large part because the game compatibility was so limited. A decade later, we have a multi billion dollar handheld PC market lead by the Steam Deck, a Linux handheld that can play tens of thousands of Windows games without issue, in some cases with better performance than their native platform.
So it’s certainly possible for things to completely change, but we need a big player or consortium of players to unite with a shared goal of getting a Linux Phone to the state where it’s genuinely able to replace a traditional Android or Apple phone.
I’m very cautiously optimistic, I think it would come together much faster than Proton did for Linux gaming, but again, there needs to be a really heavy push into a singular device to start off. Like how the Steam Deck was, it allowed devs to have a singular platform to target for compatibility. Then, as the platform matures, competitors & innovators can enter the market and expand options, like how now there are multiple distros with builds for handhelds, like Bazzite, Nobara, and CachyOS.
Bazzite sounds like it would be a good start for the OS, though, and that exists now.
At this point I would not be surprised if steam built on top of the deck idea and the support it already provides for fairly responsive and configurable inputs, touch screen included, to launch a steam phone or something.
I mean deck isn’t all that far from having such a device. For the actual phone network stack they would likely just partner up with someone already in the space.
They’ve already had to tackle powering a lightweight portable device with a touch screen and adapting the UX for a small screen and non-kbd input. They’ve already established they can source parts and mass produce a competively priced device.
But realistically I can’t see it being that much better than the recent Linux phone offerings.
None of what you described is an issue with Linux phones.
We need open firmware for broadbands.
Yeah well, this is of course just a singular anecdote, but my experience with any touch-based de on Linux hasn’t been great.
No Linux phone I have ever seen has had a particularly competitive pricing. Or specs.
But perhaps there has been some major advancements I’m not aware of in the past week.
In any case, your latter point is true.
So which ones have you tried?
gimme gimme
I really hope this is super based
I’d rather see a stable OS and ecosystem for good, Free apps that we can flash onto existing devices. I’m quite happy with my Fairphone (repairable! modular! ethical!) and we know that building and marketing a device is painfully expensive.
Let’s make Debian or Arch just work on most phones instead of trying to compete in a saturated market.
There isn’t much concrete information, but my guess is that OS/ecosystem is exactly what this project is, and that they are not talking about physical hardware. Specially considering that they are putting the emphasis on free software (not hardware) and they are involving a software developer. Making a phone’s hardware free would be an entirely different beast.
In the afternoon, FSF executive director Zoë Kooyman announced an exciting new project: Librephone.
Librephone is a new initiative by the FSF to bring full computing freedom to mobile computing environments. The LibrePhone Project is a partnership with Rob Savoye, a developer who has worked on free software (including the GNU toolchain) since the 1980s. “Since mobile phone computing is now so ubiquitous, we’re very excited about LibrePhone and think it has the potential to bring software freedom to many more users all over the world.”
