Comment by xandrius
1 month ago
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.
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.
I was under the impression that Ubuntu Touch worked just fine with the Fairphone 5 which is very much not a "7-year-old out-of-production device". I'm currently writing this from a Fairphone 4 (with CalyxOS, not Ubuntu Touch though).
I have struggled with getting anything functional on a Fairphone running Ubuntu Touch. The problem is you can't really run any Linux app, it has to be written to support their specific display manager. Running regular Linux apps is possible but not properly documented and I haven't gotten it to work. Android apps through Waydroid sort of works, but is unstable and not suitable for daily use.
I really want Linux on mobile to be a thing, but I haven't found it yet. PinePhone is abandoned, Purism just isn't a finished product, Planet Computers doesn't even build a phone with Linux support anymore.
The only thing that's current and active I've seen is a Hong Kong startup https://furilabs.com/. I've got one on my desk to try, hoping it will be something usable as a daily driver.
I work at Furi Labs; and am writing this comment from my FLX1 daily driver. Let me know what you think when you give it a shot :)
there is also jolla, their new device is supposed to be shipping this year
It's never going to work. Any competitor that isn't Android won't have app support (e.g. you won't even be able to message people in 90% of the world where WhatsApp, Telegram, Line, etc. are the de facto communication method for almost the entire population).
So you need some way to run Android apps... which is totally possible, but at that point why not just use Android?
If you are willing to have 2 phones... it will/already is needed if you need rooted/unrooted Android phone.
Telegram desktop app works flawlessly on Mobian, PureOS, postmarketOS though. Whatsapp web version can be used, too.
> So you need some way to run Android apps... which is totally possible, but at that point why not just use Android?
Perhaps for reasons like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261
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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.
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.
This is the best solution. Actually, if you have money, in my experience, the best is to have an iPhone dedicated to that. Sometimes even on stock Android (Pixel 10 Pro) you get weird incompatibilities. E.g. trying to connect to a DJI drone, paying with Google Wallet, getting a train transit card in Japan… An iPhone supports all daily life use cases with predictability. So my solution right now is to have one iPhone where I keep things clean, and one Android where I do whatever I want. :)
(I do get the odd look when I take out my second phone to do something else in public and questions about it :))
At the moment I would recommend FuriLabs solution. https://furilabs.com/
It already has a built in Android VM that allows seamless FDroid and Aurora Store usage.
Since FuriOS is a based Debian distro, it should be reduced friction to use PostmarketOS or UbuntuTouch.
That looks surprisingly good (I see there's a 5G modem).
Does it make phone calls + send texts + manage battery reasonably?
Also, what does "non-rugged" design mean?
(I've had a few pieces of niche phone hardware before, and none of them had good answers to even one of those questions.)
> alternatives to Google/Apple duopoly on mobile. Link: https://www.ubuntu-touch.io/
This is far from the only alternative. There are also Mobian, PureOS, postmarketOS and more. Unlike Ubuntu Touch, they allow you to run ordinary Linux desktop apps. Also there is hardware not tied to an ancient Android kernel, designed to run desktop GNU/Linux: Pinephone and Librem 5. The latter is my daily driver.
> I take the opportunity to let people know that there are alternatives to Google/Apple duopoly on mobile.
In my country (which will AFAIK be one of the first ones to get the new app install restrictions), so far I haven't found any.
You're not allowed to import phones which are not certified by ANATEL, and AFAIK all currently sold certified phones are either Android (from several hardware brands), Apple, and feature phones.
> 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.
There's one VERY IMPORTANT distinction: back then, you could easily take a Windows or Mac computer and install Linux in it. For mobile, it's never been that easy; strong cryptographic signing of the operating system, combined with endless churn of the hardware design (there's no "PC compatible" equivalent for phones), and there being no way to keep the data partition intact when installing a custom ROM, make it much harder for people to "get their feet wet" with alternative operating systems.
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.
> like using Mir instead of X
X11 is dead. It's over. At least Mir is now a Wayland client.
Standalone Xorg is on life support, not dead.
XLibre exists - it keeps x11 alive
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.
Unfortunately, apps have always been the barrier to entry for competing options.
If your platform doesn't have apps, then your platform won't have users, which won't attract developers and BigCo's to write apps for your platform. Rinse and repeat.
This is how Windows Phone was wiped out, despite them spending *a lot* of money trying to attract companies and developers to write stuff for their OS.
Windows Phone was fantastic because it had no apps. Wish it managed to stake out and maintain a decent portion of the phone market. If 30% of the population could say "Oh sorry TicketMaster, I can't install your app, please just email me a pdf or text me a link to your tickets that I can just open in a web browser" the that would benefit everyone, even non-WP users.
I see an announcement from 2016 saying they're adding React Native support. Does it actually work? That'd allow low-effort ports onto their platform, and I'd much rather see them succeed than be stuck with the current duopoly.
(So, I'd probably put in the effort.)
I was looking into buying one of those: https://www.www3.planetcom.co.uk/
No experience, but if they lock out Android I probably will.
The issue with buying phones like that, is they are just insanely expensive. Without shipping/tax, that phone is CAD$1500, whereas I can buy a refurbished Samsung S22 for CAD$350 (all in), that has roughly the same specs, but for 1/5 the price. I understand small companies can't use economies of scale like Samsung/Apple, but it's still really bad, and the majority of consumers wouldn't even take a second glance at it from the price.
Notice that, per https://www.www3.planetcom.co.uk/devices-specification , the newest OS they ship is Android 11. I owned a Gemini and I liked the hardware, but they don't update software and I consider that a deal breaker.