This is awesome stuff. Fully mainstream Linux with a normal userland running on a modern handset with all features will unlock a tremendous amount of change once it's there.
Things like running a distributed database for a community on top of the devices they own, hopefully also running true mesh networking.
The part about getting authorized to test the emergency calling capabilities is cool! I should've expected that would be a thing but I didn't ever consider it.
Apologies for self-linking here, but it's not just cool things, in my opinion it could transform humanitarian aid work. I wrote a use-case/short-story about it here:
Calling our friends, maybe? No idea; I've tried desktop Linux on phones years prior and besides maybe being a potential portable cyber security rig it was only a cool oddity.
Does ubuntu touch or postmarket os work reliably on the fairphone 6 now, or is this still just components working? Is it possible to use it as a daily driver?
What is that bit about Bedrijfsaansprakelijkheidsverzekering at the end? I've never heard of business liability insurance before. Does Germany not have an equivalent of an LLC?
That‘s Dutch, and the same sentence mentions Netherlands. Equivalent of LLC exists everywhere, but business insurance still makes sense if you want to stay in business after paying damages.
I bought a OnePlus 6 for 50 euros from eBay and I can do a ton of things with it already. Plasma is great in mobile, and what did not work I got working pretty fast together with Kimi and DeepSeek.
For example here's patches to get NFC YubiKey working in Secrets app:
The problem isn't this developer being lazy or 15 years late, it's that this hardware wasn't built for Linux and only blessed groups (with a lot of money) get access to binary blobs. The FSF has a project to reverse engineer these blobs but it takes time. Same problem Linux used to have with laptops.
If you're looking for a daily driver the most reliable I've seen is the furi phone. Those guys are passionate and have put in a pathological amount of time to getting calls working world wide. They can only pull it off by supporting one phone that they sell.
> If you're looking for a daily driver the most reliable I've seen is the furi phone.
The Jolla C2 (SailfishOS) and Volla Phone Quintus (Ubuntu Touch) are also pretty good daily drivers, only issue is they they're only available in the EU.
Also worth keeping an eye out for the upcoming Comodore Callback (SailfishOS), which is being shipped worldwide.
Android 1.0 was able to ship to the public with binary blobs. This problem of shipping a device and getting and using binary blobs has long been solved.
I agree with your sentiment ; very likely the Fairphone people are restricted by NDAs from the SoC vendor who are the ultimate cause for lack of proper mainline Linux support.
The SoC vendors get Android working, get the drivers going, help do ports or modifications for major customers and hide it all behind NDAs, blobs, sometimes a bunch of hacks and all of it is closed source work.
The postmarketOS guys to their credit are trying to do "proper" mainline work which is admirable but probably frustrating, non-trivial and requires a lot of reverse engineering.
Is there a general consensus why "AI" isn't helping out a lot for a free software phone?
- AI code generation is way over-hyped and is only 1% capable of the feats that the advocates claim.
- AI is too expensive to use, and even if it is 100 times less expensive than a human for the same task, there is still too much cost involved.
- AI are secretly nerfed for free-software projects.
- No one has bothered to try AI on free-software phone projects yet.
- Other?
By "Linux phone", what are your expectations exactly? Because if you talk "only" about the userspace, I have been daily driving Ubuntu Touch since 2019 on a Fairphone 2 and then a Pixel 3a and it is working like a charm. But it is using halium so you still have an Android kernel. So if you also talk about the kernel then yeah Postmarket OS is the closest to this and quite good on Fairphone already, I think some people could daily drive it if they feel adventurous. Then if you talk about 100% free software then indeed, nothing with a working modem is available as far as I know. And if you talk about open hardware then we are clearly not here even if I dream about it...
You're not being negative enough when it comes to non-Android linux phones, and even when it comes to Android, there's just ONE serious project - GrapheneOS which has people working full-time and which will be officially supported on future Motorola flagships.
Unfortunately even that one is missing modern replacements of outdated unsupported AOSP sample apps (like Phone and Contacts, others can be replaced without extra privileges).
My advice would be to not take the frustrating and useless road of a non-profit structure for some things that you do for pleasure.
The for-profit will be simpler and give you more liberties, and if, in the end, you have the good mindset that you want your creations to be shared freely, you can do it anyway. It is a state of mind.
PostmarketOS can't partner with any OEM/ODM and volunteers have to use hacks to unofficially implement basic Android 1.0 functionality years after a device was released? That's sad to see. This is just lame, drivers should be implemented by those who work on them..
We had Librem 5 which had real OS support that didn't have to rely on third-party volunteers, I wish they released something more modern..
Is there any precedent to believe that such a thing is in fact possible?
> and volunteers have to use hacks
I have terrible news for you about how the official firmware works.
> to unofficially implement basic Android 1.0 functionality years after a device was released?
Conversely, in other places it's far better than Android 1.0. But yes, if you can only start developing against the device after it's released, then your software will be released after the hardware ships plus development time.
> That's sad to see. This is just lame, drivers should be implemented by those who work on them..
My general understanding of the Android ecosystem is that they do write drivers, and you don't want those drivers. I like to imagine that somewhere that out there somebody must be making phones with high quality software, but I've never heard of them.
Murena could, Jolla could, GrapheneOS could do that too (possibly Nexphone also did but we'll find out; only GrapheneOS will give us flagship experience though). Of course these (except Jolla?) are still based on the Android model, but this itself doesn't preclude creating a non-user-hostile OS (of course Google would never certify it), proprietary black-box OEM code only assumes some Android elements, not the end user experience..
> I have terrible news for you about how the official firmware works.
I've seen some e-waste ODM (Tinno) code and their freestyle philosophy on modifying the kernel code.. however they at least have to fix this so that basic functionality works as there's QA and serious bugs will affect certification and they'd not get paid. But here if you report a bug to PostmarketOS (but well, even LineageOS), nothing will happen unless you fix it (and if you submit a patch, it will sit there forever, welcome to FOSS).
> My general understanding of the Android ecosystem is that they do write drivers, and you don't want those drivers
What's wrong with pixel drivers for instance? I'm of course not talking about those written by e-waste ODMs like Tinno who can't even release GPL kernel sources properly.
This is awesome stuff. Fully mainstream Linux with a normal userland running on a modern handset with all features will unlock a tremendous amount of change once it's there.
Things like running a distributed database for a community on top of the devices they own, hopefully also running true mesh networking.
The part about getting authorized to test the emergency calling capabilities is cool! I should've expected that would be a thing but I didn't ever consider it.
Found the pixel modem engineer.
Ouch.
Awesome! There are so many cool things we could be doing with our phones if they weren't locked to a single OS
Genuinely curious, like what cool things?
like running K8s on your old phones?
Apologies for self-linking here, but it's not just cool things, in my opinion it could transform humanitarian aid work. I wrote a use-case/short-story about it here:
https://ianso.blogspot.com/2025/11/what-we-dont-have.html
Calling our friends, maybe? No idea; I've tried desktop Linux on phones years prior and besides maybe being a potential portable cyber security rig it was only a cool oddity.
Does ubuntu touch or postmarket os work reliably on the fairphone 6 now, or is this still just components working? Is it possible to use it as a daily driver?
https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Fairphone_(Gen._6)_(fairp...
This aged well
What is that bit about Bedrijfsaansprakelijkheidsverzekering at the end? I've never heard of business liability insurance before. Does Germany not have an equivalent of an LLC?
He didn't create an LLC he's a 'stichting' which is basically a non profit with a specific goal to achieve.
He doesn't want to create an LLC because he doesn't want anyone to question his motives.
Also this is the Netherlands not Germany :)
That‘s Dutch, and the same sentence mentions Netherlands. Equivalent of LLC exists everywhere, but business insurance still makes sense if you want to stay in business after paying damages.
I see AF algo has some trouble with defocussing a perfectly sharp scene for no reason. :)
Does this HW have access to PDAF pixel data?
Awesome
wow amazing
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I bought a OnePlus 6 for 50 euros from eBay and I can do a ton of things with it already. Plasma is great in mobile, and what did not work I got working pretty fast together with Kimi and DeepSeek.
For example here's patches to get NFC YubiKey working in Secrets app:
https://github.com/pimeys/oneplus6-yubikey-nfc
It is a work in progress but pretty easy to pick things up and fix in this age of agents...
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7 replies →
The problem isn't this developer being lazy or 15 years late, it's that this hardware wasn't built for Linux and only blessed groups (with a lot of money) get access to binary blobs. The FSF has a project to reverse engineer these blobs but it takes time. Same problem Linux used to have with laptops.
If you're looking for a daily driver the most reliable I've seen is the furi phone. Those guys are passionate and have put in a pathological amount of time to getting calls working world wide. They can only pull it off by supporting one phone that they sell.
> If you're looking for a daily driver the most reliable I've seen is the furi phone.
The Jolla C2 (SailfishOS) and Volla Phone Quintus (Ubuntu Touch) are also pretty good daily drivers, only issue is they they're only available in the EU.
Also worth keeping an eye out for the upcoming Comodore Callback (SailfishOS), which is being shipped worldwide.
Android 1.0 was able to ship to the public with binary blobs. This problem of shipping a device and getting and using binary blobs has long been solved.
I agree with your sentiment ; very likely the Fairphone people are restricted by NDAs from the SoC vendor who are the ultimate cause for lack of proper mainline Linux support.
The SoC vendors get Android working, get the drivers going, help do ports or modifications for major customers and hide it all behind NDAs, blobs, sometimes a bunch of hacks and all of it is closed source work.
The postmarketOS guys to their credit are trying to do "proper" mainline work which is admirable but probably frustrating, non-trivial and requires a lot of reverse engineering.
Is there a general consensus why "AI" isn't helping out a lot for a free software phone?
By "Linux phone", what are your expectations exactly? Because if you talk "only" about the userspace, I have been daily driving Ubuntu Touch since 2019 on a Fairphone 2 and then a Pixel 3a and it is working like a charm. But it is using halium so you still have an Android kernel. So if you also talk about the kernel then yeah Postmarket OS is the closest to this and quite good on Fairphone already, I think some people could daily drive it if they feel adventurous. Then if you talk about 100% free software then indeed, nothing with a working modem is available as far as I know. And if you talk about open hardware then we are clearly not here even if I dream about it...
> And if you talk about open hardware then we are clearly not here even if I dream about it...
https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/hw/l5-schematic
The repo name is "schematic", but it also contains ECAD (and a link to MCAD) designs and BOM published on a free license.
I've been daily driving GNU/Linux phones for 18 years now and I keep seeing people dreaming about things we already have!
> Then if you talk about 100% free software then indeed, nothing with a working modem is available as far as I know
Librem 5 runs an FSF-endorsed operating system, i.e., it's 100% free software in the OS.
You're not being negative enough when it comes to non-Android linux phones, and even when it comes to Android, there's just ONE serious project - GrapheneOS which has people working full-time and which will be officially supported on future Motorola flagships.
Unfortunately even that one is missing modern replacements of outdated unsupported AOSP sample apps (like Phone and Contacts, others can be replaced without extra privileges).
Doesn't LineageOS have modern versions of those things?
I'm not sure it has to have money involved to be serious, and in fact the last time Lineage had money involved it didn't end very well.
2 replies →
AOSP is quickly becoming a dead end as Google tightens its grip on Android.
calyx os seems serious?
Great job.
My advice would be to not take the frustrating and useless road of a non-profit structure for some things that you do for pleasure.
The for-profit will be simpler and give you more liberties, and if, in the end, you have the good mindset that you want your creations to be shared freely, you can do it anyway. It is a state of mind.
Terrible advice
Why? Nonprofits involve a specific governance structure that may not be optimal, especially for small operations.
2 replies →
PostmarketOS can't partner with any OEM/ODM and volunteers have to use hacks to unofficially implement basic Android 1.0 functionality years after a device was released? That's sad to see. This is just lame, drivers should be implemented by those who work on them..
We had Librem 5 which had real OS support that didn't have to rely on third-party volunteers, I wish they released something more modern..
> PostmarketOS can't partner with any OEM/ODM
Is there any precedent to believe that such a thing is in fact possible?
> and volunteers have to use hacks
I have terrible news for you about how the official firmware works.
> to unofficially implement basic Android 1.0 functionality years after a device was released?
Conversely, in other places it's far better than Android 1.0. But yes, if you can only start developing against the device after it's released, then your software will be released after the hardware ships plus development time.
> That's sad to see. This is just lame, drivers should be implemented by those who work on them..
My general understanding of the Android ecosystem is that they do write drivers, and you don't want those drivers. I like to imagine that somewhere that out there somebody must be making phones with high quality software, but I've never heard of them.
Murena could, Jolla could, GrapheneOS could do that too (possibly Nexphone also did but we'll find out; only GrapheneOS will give us flagship experience though). Of course these (except Jolla?) are still based on the Android model, but this itself doesn't preclude creating a non-user-hostile OS (of course Google would never certify it), proprietary black-box OEM code only assumes some Android elements, not the end user experience..
> I have terrible news for you about how the official firmware works.
I've seen some e-waste ODM (Tinno) code and their freestyle philosophy on modifying the kernel code.. however they at least have to fix this so that basic functionality works as there's QA and serious bugs will affect certification and they'd not get paid. But here if you report a bug to PostmarketOS (but well, even LineageOS), nothing will happen unless you fix it (and if you submit a patch, it will sit there forever, welcome to FOSS).
> My general understanding of the Android ecosystem is that they do write drivers, and you don't want those drivers
What's wrong with pixel drivers for instance? I'm of course not talking about those written by e-waste ODMs like Tinno who can't even release GPL kernel sources properly.
1 reply →
> PostmarketOS can't partner with any OEM/ODM
Where did you get this idea from?