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Comment by beeflet

6 days ago

The limitation of linux phones is hardware. I have been watching the progress of postmarketOS on the fairphone 4, and looks promising.

6 comments

beeflet

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gf000  6 days ago

No, gnu/Linux is nowhere near usable as a daily driver mobile device for 99% of the population.

Besides having terrible battery life and security, it's just a hobby thing. Android has had millions of dev hours poured into it to be what it is.

  • magpi3  6 days ago

    In the 90s, you would have said the exact same thing about linux on the PC.

    Free software ultimately has time on its side. As long as a project has enough mindshare to keep its momentum, it really is unstoppable in the long run.

    • gf000  5 days ago

      Linux desktop on the PC also sucks.

      Where Linux shines is the absolute for-profit cloud/server world.

      Open source has places where it works really nice, bazaar is better at "wider" stuff (having an active community, etc), while cathedral is more deeper/better at vertical integration, etc.

fsflover  6 days ago

https://puri.sm/posts/the-danger-of-focusing-on-specs/

Sent from my Librem 5.

  • beeflet  6 days ago

    I don't care about specs, I care about functionality and price. The camera on the pinephone doesn't practically work because it is too slow and the quality sucks. You basicially cannot record videos whatsoever. I can't use the device for GPS navigation. I can run whatsapp within waydroid, but it isn't practical due to the battery life and startup limitations that imposes. The GPU on the pinephone sucks, is underpowered, doesn't support OpenGL ES 3 or vulkan, and the user interface is always slow as hell to navigate.

    So practically I cannot use it as a daily driver.

    Librem 5 does have enough GPU horsepower, a functioning camera, and good pmOS support. But $800 is a lot to ask to test out switching to linux with no guarantee that my workflow will work or I will have enough battery life. It looks like the librem 5 can't record videos or do GPS navigation yet.

    I am looking at the librem 5 specs again. The EG25-G is probably a better starting point for the modem now that it has been better documented and reverse engineered as a result of the pinephone project. It is interesting that the L5 has a generic smartcard reader though.