I have not used a linux phone yet. How is the OS actually? I feel like it’s gotta be rough. Are you mostly living out of a web browser? Many of my apps I use to conveniently access with the app method are just websites under the hood, but optimized for a phone obviously.
I guess I’m asking… how is it these days?
The world needs Linux phones badly but development is way, way behind what I assumed
Driver support needs to be done separately for each device, so it’s a moving target. Work on Fairphone 6, a pretty new device, seems to be progressing well.
As far as I can tell Ubuntu Touch, Sailfish and postmarketOS are all daily driver ready. In pmOS you typically have the choice between GNOME and KDE, both of which seem to have their fans, meaning there are at least four relatively mature mobile desktop environments.
The biggest problem as far as I can see is app support, which is not a problem of Linux phone development but of monopolistic and/or careless third parties. And even for that Android emulation seems to have gotten pretty good.
I’m not sure what you assumed and how it fails to align with reality, but Linux phones have had camera support a long time. It’s just that it needs to be added separately for each device, each time by unpaid hackers who bought the devices for their own money.
How is pmOS daily driver ready when the OP just got the camera working? I think the other dev JUST got audio and emergency calls working too, right?
Driver support needs to be done separately for each device, so it’s a moving target. Work on Fairphone 6, a pretty new device, seems to be progressing well.
Daily driver ready in general and daily driver ready on Fairphone 6 are two different things. New phones are released all the time and they all need their own set of drivers and hardware support. That’s separate from the operative system itself being ready or not.
Emergency calling worked already, it was just tested so that we now know that it works on the FP6.
Thank you!!
The only things not working yet in my image are:
Front camera NPU Fingerprint sensor
If these are not a dealbreaker for being daily driver ready then its daily driver ready.
Thank you for the clarification! I’d have to be pretty into tinkering with Linux, to use it right? Not that I personally mind, but I don’t think it’s something I should just recommend my 70yo dad who can barely use macos quite yet as his daily driver… Right?
I really wanna try the fairphone (and your image!) but I can’t justify the price. It’s not the phone’s problem, though, it’s more of a problem with my level of disposable income lol
The installation requires some linux knowledge yes, the usage after is pretty simple.
Issue is any person used to android is going to wonder “why is this app suddenly gone from the store”. Unless you use waydroid, but I’m not sure how seamless the experience is there. Or if they don’t use any apps that don’t have linux equivalents.
As far as I can tell Ubuntu Touch, Sailfish and postmarketOS are all daily driver ready.
They are “daily driver ready” in the “Desktop Linux in 2007” sense. You need to know a lot about Linux to daily drive it.
Sure, it’s not for everyone, and software support leaves a lot to be wanted.
It’s funny though - I’ve been using Linux since late 2007, and I have never been a technical user. Best I can do is copy paste things I don’t understand into the terminal if absolutely necessary. It always just worked for me. :)
ik this is probably gonna be frowned upon, but would it be possible to make these cameras available inside waydroid then run GCam inside it? maybe that’ll produce pretty good images
It’s a great question. When degoogling my android phone camera quality was one of the biggest initial hurdles, currently resolved because Fairphone offers their native camera app to /e/OS. FOSS camera apps for Android sadly do not have competitive picture quality at all.
As pictures are important to me I could absolutely see it being one of the main hurdles when making the change from /e/ to proper Linux on my phone. I should probably find a way to preemptively start donating to the GNOME camera app.
Hilarious that this is noteworthy
Given it has to be done in defiance of the manufacturer by reverse engineering the drivers… Yeah, it’s impressive.
Yes.
All other software that just appears out of thin air, feature complete and bug free.
/S
Name one, just one, other current phone with almost complete Linux support.
I’m not really holding my breath though.FLX1s
Oneplus 6, although that is aging
Vollaphone ships multiple phones with Ubuntu Touch, is currently being produced and sold.
The problem is app support more than core OS functionality however.
Yeah, that’s why Jolla provides an interesting middle ground.
It’s Linux, but not FOSS, yet increases usability by being able to run Android apps.
