Comment by Tepix
9 days ago
Oh, Linux on mobile. My cynic take:
- only works with very few phone models
- battery doesn’t last long
- bad UI with tiny elements.
- not managing a smooth refresh rate
- no apps
That‘s the pattern we‘ve seen over and over again. The only approach that has worked better is to base things on AOSP.
Very unhelpful comment. Some people don't want to run on anything AOSP. Being able to manage the device with standard linux tooling is a major plus for some people.
What's wrong with AOSP though? It's also a Linux kernel. And someone has done the hard work of creating a decent UI and solved the other real issues.
AOSP doesn't run on a single phone on earth, not even the android emulator. Android also has it's own problems.
Sure, just like Linux doesn't run on a single phone on earth, unless you make some adjustments. I don't see a problem with that.
For the devices we're talking here like the OnePlus 6, the adjustments are very minor since this device has Linux mainline support.
In AOSP, not even the call app is usable nowadays. AOSP doesn't have any functional UI anymore.
So depends what's your definition of a phone stack, if it includes a call app, an agenda or a keyboard, AOSP doesn't fit it.
But custom roms based on it do, like lineageos and grapheneos.
Yes and no, they are using the system but I don't think a single AOSP app is kept anymore
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I feel like taking the approach of ramming the entire current desktop userspace into a phone is a misguided one. I can fully see now why Android reinvented the wheel across the board.
If I were to do a Linux Phone platform, I'd be targeting feature phone levels of functionality to begin with, with a focus on battery life and actually working telephony. I'd be aggressively throwing Wayland/GTK and all that nonsense in the bin just to get something basic working well. Draw straight to the framebuffer if you have to. This doesn't help with the app problem, but it sets a tide mark for quality & performance, and it can be iterated on.
With not-quite current hardware as supported by Pocketblue, performance is not that much of an issue, despite the OnePlus 6 being introduced in 2018. GNOME Shell mobile is quite smooth on it.
That said, if you want to start without the entire Linux desktop stack, you can, and there's even a project that already does something like that IIUC: https://sr.ht/~mil/framebufferphone/