Comment by Aachen
2 days ago
Ten? So like Android and Linux flavors? I'm not sure I even know of ten: e/OS, Calyx, Lineage, Ubuntu Touch, eh is there like Mobian or something still alive... how do they get to ten?? Do they also all fully work? Camera and calling (and not only on 2G) for example?
I'd be interested in the list, the website you've linked is super sparse (the full menu is like shop, some feel-good pages about device deposit and impact, blog, and contact us - no knowledge base, documentation, or somewhere where you'd expect to find OS info or even downloads)
their marketing is really low-key and they must improve it because they have enticing products. OS offers page: https://www.shift.eco/shiftos/
Okay that's six: the ones I forgot are iodéOS and Postmarket (possibly the most popular Linux mobile, idk how I forgot about them), plus Shift's own custom OS which I'll count as two because there's a googleful and a googleless variant which is a relatively significant change, plus LineageOS and e/OS which I had mentioned. That's a lot of choice indeed! Thanks for the link
SailfishOS is another popular mobile Linux distro you should be aware of - it's been around for a long, long time - in fact its heritage can be traced all the way back to Nokia's Maemo OS (circa 2005), which became famous in the community with the Nokia 900.
And then in 2010, Maemo merged with Intel's Moblin to become MeeGo (featured on the Nokia N9). The MeegGo engineers who were let go (due to Nokia x Microsoft) then created Mer, and eventually started a new company called Jolla, who created SailfishOS based on Mer.
It's been 13 years already since SailfishOS was out, and if you include the Maemo heritage, it makes it the oldest surviving mobile Linux distribution.