we got lucky PCs were an open platform and OS swappable, thats not the case with android/ios. They dont want to open up hardware for other uses.

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ShadowMajestic@reddit

We, the internet, went to war with Microsoft over their control in the PC market.

It still amazes me how little effort we are putting in to the current situation where both Google and Apple hold more power in the consumer market than Microsoft ever did.

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gogybo@reddit

Erm, what? PC is an open platform because Microsoft wanted it that way. Their entire business model was about selling Windows to hardware manufacturers, unlike Apple who controlled the OS and the hardware.

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yeah. pretty crazy to me.

maybe that back in the days people that were using computers and growing up with computers were a lot more educated about stakes and willing to fight for choices.

now - with tablet babies, they dont even know shit about shit. Majority of users are conditioned since early days to accept this sheep-like existance without choices.

well and tbh google slowly upped the steam in the evil it does, and only now in the last year truly showing their real face where there can no longer be denial.

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ShadowMajestic@reddit

I think it's a bit more complicated.

The same group of people that went to war with Microsoft, worshiped Google. And I saw Google as the same kind of evil, which is how I lost my fanboyism for any company. I only fanboy for Debian now.

Google didn't slowly up their evil game, they were evil pretty much from the start. They even used this to their advantage, as it's how Chrome became a dominant browser. Just by letting all those Google evangelists install Chrome on every computer they could find and web-developers not testing anything else or using Chrome-only HTML features.

And those people don't want to go to war with their idol, for the past 20 years or so... we, the internet, let Google get away with so incredibly many shit.

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art_luke@reddit

And even so Linux mostly survives because of enterprise usecases.

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cranberrie_sauce@reddit

Im more than happy to pay a monthly sub for a working opensource linux desktop and apps (if needed).

Ok-Salary3550@reddit

I miss Windows Phone so much. I really wish it had got more third party app support, by 2014 I had finally given up and just gone Android because there were so many glaring feature omissions.

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Grobbekee@reddit

I've used one for a while.

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RoomyRoots@reddit

Don't even remind me of it. They killed Nokia for the shittiest experience possible.

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Kruug@reddit

Windows 8 Mobile and 10 Mobile were far and away better than Android and iOS.

RoomyRoots@reddit

The N900 will forever be an icon as it was the last great Nokia phone before Microsoft

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Lawnmover_Man@reddit

The Nokia N950 was essentially ready, but Stephen Elop, a former and later again Microsoft employee, stopped anything and everything regarding open source that happened within Nokia. Symbian, Maemo/Meego, Qt. Nokia essentially was the main contributor to Qt at that time, employing most of the originial Trolltech people.

Microsoft is to blame that we don't have more of that which would likely have come after the N900 and N950. They sadly succeeded with the plan to kill Linux devices at Nokia.

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Odd-Possession-4276@reddit

You're misremembering. N950 was always intended as a dev kit with limited availability.

Canceled MeeGo Harmattan qwerty device was (internally) called Lauta, with N9-like polycarbonate chassis instead of aluminium.

Stephen Elop, a former and later again Microsoft employee, stopped anything and everything regarding open source that happened within Nokia

Project Meltemi happened during Elop.

Nokia history is full of nuances and has been thoroughly documented (e.g, Jolla wouldn't have been possible if layoffs at Nokia were handled differently). "Our team lost, therefore it was a conspiracy and foul play" is just tribalism.

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Lawnmover_Man@reddit

You're misremembering.

You're correct about that one. The final product was the N9. It was released, but even at time of release, it was already announced that Nokia would be doing what I laid out above.

Project Meltemi happened during Elop.

Yes. The N9 was released "during Elop". What's your point with that?

"Our team lost, therefore it was a conspiracy and foul play" is just tribalism.

Got any more obvious troll bait? If you are indeed not trolling, and what you actually want to say is somewhere in there, I'm sure you can rephrase it so that there's room for an actual discussion.

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polongus@reddit

facts don't have room for discussion.

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Lawnmover_Man@reddit

u/polongus

facts don't have room for discussion.

Classic internet moment.

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Odd-Possession-4276@reddit

The N9 was released "during Elop"

That's not what Meltemi was (or wasn't, but the existence of the R&D project is important). Look it up.

What's your point with that?

Nokia priorities change wasn't a direct MeeGo → Windows Phone beeline.

I'm sure you can rephrase it so that there's room for an actual discussion

"Read the books", "Don't use reductionist, yet incorrect explanations of complex systems". That's universal, not directly Nokia-related.

Microsoft is not to blame that main Nokia shareholders were US pension funds and from the "Board of directors protects shareholders' interests" point of view, the whole mess wasn't that unexplainably destructive.

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Lawnmover_Man@reddit

That's not what Meltemi was

I know. I just made another example that doesn't change what I said.

Nokia priorities change wasn't a direct MeeGo → Windows Phone beeline.

Well, we certainly all have different definitions of a beeline change. If your definition isn't met by what Elop did, then so it is.

For the rest of your reply... I absolutely do not follow. What is it what you're trying to say? Who said anything about this being unexplainable?

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Odd-Possession-4276@reddit

I just made another example that doesn't change what I said

It does? The whole Meltemi lifecycle had happened while Elop was the CEO. They tried multiple options before the Burning Platform moment. "stopped anything and everything regarding open source that happened within Nokia" phrasing is just not true.

1) For a caricature Trojan horse, Stephen Elop was just too involved.

2) Board of directors (who hired Elop in the first place) had more than enough power to share the blame (or praise, depending on what case we're looking at).

3) Your initial take ignores the McKinsey involvement, which was impornant as well.

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Lawnmover_Man@reddit

"stopped anything and everything regarding open source that happened within Nokia" phrasing is just not true.

It is. You're free to show sources that they did continue with open source products.

But don't do yourself a dishonor by posting some random FOSS library that is still somehow contributed to a bit by Nokia. Please don't.

For a caricature Trojan horse, Stephen Elop was just too involved.

Please stop saying vague things like this.

Board of directors (who hired Elop in the first place) had more than enough power to share the blame

I fully agree! Of course they do. Not joking at all.

Your initial take ignores the McKinsey involvement, which was impornant as well.

I never heard that name. What did he do that matters in this context?

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Odd-Possession-4276@reddit

I never heard that name

McKinsey & Company, the management consulting behemoth. Elop hired a team of about 50 external contractors to define the longterm strategy. That's tens of millions of dollars per year.

Person of interest re: possible conflict of interest and questionable business ethics is Endre Holen.

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Lawnmover_Man@reddit

Well, I'm done. You very obviously are not able to communicate your ideas and facts in form of a coherent reply. The only being in your head is yourself. Everyone else can not know what you think of when you say these things. You have to actually explain your view to others, otherwise we can not understand you.

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beryugyo619@reddit

Bare metal Linux like Maemo and Qtopia were faster back then and still is. They just weren't as polished. Android was a resource hog and still is.

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Odd-Possession-4276@reddit

with almost 80 apps available

[Citation needed]. Ovi store? Official repos? Community-maintained repos? What counts as an app?

It still struggled with music

Bullshit.

poor cameras (even for the time)

Bullshit. Camera was great, both hardware and software. Maemo team had highly competent domain experts.

it never made sense to buy

Depends on the brand and quality of the SSD. You shouldn't notice any slowing on Android these days unless you have a very cheap phone. I have mid-range Android phones from 5+ years ago that are still pretty snappy. Even brands like Poco (Xiaomi) use good flash storage and they're relatively cheap brands.

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No-Low-3947@reddit

quality of the SSD

So you mean more and more reads over time? How else would it make a difference?

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omniuni@reddit

Yep. Older Samsung flash storage especially had slowing issues.

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No-Low-3947@reddit

Ah, you mean the storage itself started to slow down? If so, then yeah, sounds like a HW issue more than anything. Thanks for the insight, I'll check it some more when I have time.

Do you have an opinion about nowadays Java? I had only some Java fan's opinion, I'll happily use Golang and just don't see how Java could be as good as it.

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omniuni@reddit

Go is still faster, but modern Java is surprisingly pleasant to work with, and the write-once-run-anywhere is still a pretty great feature.

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-defron-@reddit

This is not a dig against Java (it's usually a totally fine language) but pretty much all languages these days are write-once-run-anywhere. Go in particular can cross-compile to basically any platform from any other platform.

Pretty much every modern language these days can either cross-compile, compile to an IL, JIT, or target LLVM for wide platform, architecture, and OS support on par with Java.

Java played a huge role in solving the problem, but now unless you're specifically using platform-specific APIs (which you can do even in Java) or optimizations, your code is likely to compile and run on a good many systems. Even swift code can run on Windows and Linux

Really swift as a language isn't any slower or faster than any other AOT'd language given equal proficiency in optimization on a given platform.

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omniuni@reddit

I don't think you quite understand the point of Java. You can run the same binary anywhere with the JVM. If I make a Java app, I can send the same jar file to someone on Linux, Mac, or Windows, and it will run identically.

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-defron-@reddit

I don't think you quite understand the point of Java.

I understand the point of java, like I said, I give it credit for helping kick-off a focus on being platform-agnostic, but the world has moved on and now most modern programs are platform-agnostic or can be made platform-agnostic with a few minor tweaks.

You can run the same binary anywhere with the JVM.

You didn't say that though, you said "write once, run anywhere" which is true for a plethora of languages.

I will take it on good faith that you are not moving the goalpost and presuppose you meant "Compile once, run anywhere". In which case that true for any language that compiles to an intermediate language. This includes C# (the most obvious one) but also languages like Python (CPython compiles to python bytecode that is then executed at runtime), PHP (When using HHVM), Ruby, and any language targeting LLVM's IR.

Most ironically ironically: this is also exactly how Swift works, which compiles to LLVM's IR and then can be AOT'd to a specific machine code (just like what ART can do for Android's JVM implementation)

And finally lets not forget the most recent one: Literally pretty much every language under the sun thanks to wasm.

If I make a Java app, I can send the same jar file to someone on Linux, Mac, or Windows, and it will run identically.

This is an oversimplification. There's the obvious pedantic answer which is that there's more than one JVM implementation and they don't run or behave identically, but more importantly it's glossing over the point I made originally which is that this idea of "write once, run anywhere" is true if and only if you don't use platform-specific APIs.

On the java side, the obvious example is using android runtime APIs and graphics stack, which desktop versions of JVMs don't implement. But there's also the JNI/JNA interops which allow integration with platform-specific code. .NET has the Windows compatibility pack which would make something only run on windows.

The most you can say is that Java allows you to easily write platform-agnostic code... but that's true of a bunch of languages (which was my point).

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omniuni@reddit

I'm going with Java terms because I'm talking about Java. And while technically you can compile most things kind of to Web Assembly, it's more of an emulator than a VM. Java/JVM languages, and .NET languages are of the same type.

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-defron-@reddit

Stop moving the goalpost 🤣

Wasm has many implementations, all implementations of it take the wasm bytecode (which all wasm compiles compile into) and JIT it into machinecode of the specific platform being ran on... that's literally the definition of a programming VM, no different than JVM, CLR or LLVM IR

And again, even ignoring that, there's LLVM IR.

write-once-run-everywhere applies to pretty much all languages these days. It's not a dis against java. Java has actually cool features like virtual threads so rather than focusing on outdated historical reasons to use java (write-once-run-anywhere), focus on the cool new reasons that make java worth learning today.

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omniuni@reddit

I'm not moving the goalposts. .NET and Java have held the same specific definition for a long time now. The language compiles to a binary format that executes on a dedicated VM on any supported OS.

I know there's lots of "technically" ways you can do things, but Java has been pretty clear about what it is and how it works basically since the beginning.

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-defron-@reddit

You are moving the goalpost because what you described is literally how all wasm compilers and LLVM work too. That's my point: this is not a unique feature anymore so not worth bringing up as a reason java is better than something else (especially comparing it t o swift which also gets compiled to an intermediate langauge -- for LLVM)

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omniuni@reddit

I'm not going to post a Wikipedia article clarifying what I obviously mean.

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-defron-@reddit

I'll do you one better by linking to the official documentation: https://www.w3.org/TR/wasm-core-2/#scope%E2%91%A0

which clearly states that it's a virtual instruction set.. so it's a virtual cpu... one might even say... a virtual machine

And that's been my point this entire time and one you still seem to struggle acknowledging: Pretty much all languages are write-once-run-anywhere.

Golang achieves this by cross-compiling, or you can target wasm directly with it too (which is true for all the other langauges down below)

rust achieves this by using LLVM and can even output LLVM IR code that can be used by any machine with LLVM just like java

swift is literally exactly the same

Pretty much every language either utilizing the llvm toolchain or targetting it in some manner (like C++) is like that

Then you have php with hhvm that behaves the same as the JVM from a functionality perspective

CPython does that automatically at runtime, but you can ship just the bytecode and it'll be perfectly fine

Ruby has the YARV which behaves much the same as the CPython process (though admittedly I don't like ruby so I'm not familiar if there's a way to ship specifically their bytecode to be ran by another computer via YARV)

C# and all the other .NET languages are the same with CLR

and that's my point: it's not a unique feature these days. That's why I responded to you because it's not unique. Go and swift are just as good as Java for being platform-agnostic, and so is pretty much every other language.

I am hoping in the future you'll not mention write-once-run-anywhere and instead give people the actual nice things that Java does that make it special and worth learning still, as it does have nice things going for it. I dislike apple, but I dislike evangelism even more. Swift is actually a brilliant language from a technical perspective every bit as fast as any other LLVM-compiled language and fuly cross-platform.

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omniuni@reddit

You can go for whatever technical definition you want. I don't really care. The JVM and .NET VM haven't changed the way they work or their goals in literally decades. That's what I'm talking about, whatever phrasing for it makes you happy, use that.

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-defron-@reddit

you've literally not mentioned up to now about "decades" of predictable functionality. This is what I mean when I say changing the goalposts.

I'd point out that neither .NET CLR have had "decades" of non-breaking changes (.NET broke everything when it released core, Java and JVM also had a pretty big breakage between pre and post java 9 as well as the move from Sun JDK to OpenJDK having a bunch of smaller things. Both have had about a decade of stability right now

These are not unique problems to JVM or CLR either, as LLVM and wasm also have only had like 5-ish years of stability

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Maybe the side loading fiasco will at least bring that back

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dst1980@reddit

Signing =/= sideloading. What Google is doing is effectively equivalent to Firefox refusing to allow connecting to websites with self-signed certificates or only HTTP connections.

Prior-Noise-1492@reddit

A good Ubuntu phone could have been crazy awesome...

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BluudLust@reddit

RISC V phones when?

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Darkhog@reddit (OP)

Is a FOSS SoC necessary? I mean, x86 is proprietary, made by only two companies, and Linux has no issues running on that.

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RoomyRoots@reddit

I am old enough to remember the issues that ACPI, UEFI and SecureBoot were, but you can easily compare with Nvidia issues, which used to be MUCH worse.

The two x86 companies are also some of the major contributors to the kernel with Intel being either the 1st or 2nd. But, for example, we still have some issues with some wifi board, many still depend on BLOBs for example.

As far as I can tell, the RPi is still plagued with blobs that are necessary for its GPU to work. I moved long time ago to to other boards (mostly NanoPi and OrangePi) and never had problems.

As for x86 blobs, I already liberated a good number of old Chromeboxes that I found for cheap at thrift stores or online auctions with the Coreboot/UEFI firmware at https://docs.mrchromebox.tech/

It allows to entirely get rid of ChromeOS and install whichever OS one prefers, including Windows if the hardware supports it. Chromeboxes are well built full fledged Mini PCs; they can't load anything else except ChromeOS out of the box because Google demands them to be locked to do that, but once unlocked they become really interesting platforms.

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RoomyRoots@reddit

I want to do that but I can't find a cheap one nearby and their keyboard disgusts me. A shame the eeePC-likes were replaced by Chromebooks.

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luciferin@reddit

Is a FOSS SoC necessary

The hardware needs mainline kernel support and security patches, whether is FOSS or not. The radios are really the biggest problem. You can run Linux on a Pixel 3a XL, but support for the hardware is limited at best. No one has bothered to/been able to port it to the rest of the Pixel line. Companies like Samsung are actively hostile to other distros, never mind open source for their hardware.

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beryugyo619@reddit

In the ARM world or any non-x86 world, you buy XYZSOC1234A and flash it with Kernel for XYZSOC1235A and it explode in your face and drive one of endangered species into extinction and it's all your fault.

Or you get and flash Kernel for XYZSOC1234A on XYZSOC1234A but not for the one soldered onto the board from MegaChinaOEM instead of FlyByNightCo and it caused a distant star to go supernova, that's on you as well.

NOTHING outside x86 is standardized. That means there is zero binary compatibility across machines below Android userland. You have to hardcode everything and recompile. There is no such thing as Arm SystemReady.

That's the problem.

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KittensInc@reddit

You have to consider the market it is serving.

If you're making a Linux smartphone, you know from the start that it is going to be terrible. You are not one of the big smartphone brands, so you don't have access to the latest parts - which means you won't be competitive on performance. You aren't making an iOS or Android device, so you won't sell a lot of them - which means due to economies of scale it'll be way more expensive than other phones. It's not compatible with either major ecosystem - which means you'll lack basically every app people expect for day-to-day use.

You are selling an objectively bad product. Its only redeeming feature is that it runs Linux. And who's willing to give up a lot in order to run Linux? FOSS enthusiasts who care more about purity than practicality.

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Darkhog@reddit (OP)

All it needs to do in the app department is to run already existing Linux app. Think about it. Blender. On a phone. Gimp. On a phone. LibreOffice. On a phone. Kdenlive. On a phone. Kolf. On a phone.

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PDXPuma@reddit

Blender on a phone? So I can.. what? Spend a battery cycle rendering a frame from a game? Or work on a very tiny screen?

I don't want my phone to have tons of apps it can run at the cost of battery life. Portable linux already has horrible battery life, I don't want to make my phone suck too.

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Ok-Salary3550@reddit

That all sounds horrible.

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Historical_Bread3423@reddit

Can they be used reliably for illegal activities?

I don't know how this appeared in my feed. I didn't know linux phones were even a thing anymore.

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Max-P@reddit

It's hard to say without one on the market. But I would: regular Linux would also mean I can use Waydroid to bring a lot of apps from Android, but could also start de-Androiding my life. I might even make Linux mobile apps to fill the gaps.

The only reason I don't have one is because they all have last decade hardware, and PostmarketOS only supports relatively ancient devices too.

I've never liked Android, it's always just been the least bad option because at least I could run custom ROMs.

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deadlygaming11@reddit

I agree. If we want to get a proper linux phone, then we need to allow baby steps. The only reason Linux works so well today is because hundreds of thousands of baby steps that added tonnes of functionality and software support. Go back 10 years ago and Linux didnt have anywhere near as much support and following as today.

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Proprietary blobs make development harder. It's not just an "open source purism" thing.

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jean_dudey@reddit

It is also because these CPUs are off the shelf ones you can find in most electronics distributors or directly from the manufacturer, other SoCs like Qualcomm ones requires you to talk to them directly and they’ll decide if they want to sell to you or not.

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Witty-Development851@reddit

Cheap not mean bad

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NanoSputnik@reddit

You can't run "full GNU/Linux" even at your PC. There is encrypted proprietary fw inside both intel and amd CPUs you can't disable. It is separate OS that have full control over your system, in some cases even when shutdown.

And with phones it is much much worse. Without tons of proprietary blobs all SoCs are just pieces of junk. So for the practical reasons something like lineage os is much better alternative.

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z3r0n3gr0@reddit

............i know what you mean but i guess Android phones are Linux .

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DungeonAndHousewives@reddit

thanks, this is true!

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triotune@reddit

Lack of hardware and software support. I own a Pinephone and used to own a Pixel 3a running UBports. At this point in time, I can't use a Linux phone in my day to day life, especially at work or on the road.

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deadlygaming11@reddit

There are a few reasons:

Phones are extremely important for day to day life and linux tends to sort of work for day to day life. People want stability for things that are important and phones are just too important.

When coding or typing on a phone, you need your keyboard to appear or else you're stuffed. Have you ever had a bug where your keyboard doesnt appear and you cant do something? Imagine that but the ramifications are the phone not working. You dont have physical input hardware on a phone except the touchscreen so its hard to work with it.

The userbase for a linux phone is almost non-existent so groups dont invest the time in making compatible distros. Distros live and die by how many maintainer and developers they have so if they dont have much happening then it will die.

Android isnt amazing, but its good enough for basically everything. It has all the needed app support and has been relatively relaxed for can be done for a while.

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throwaway89124193@reddit

it's just hard to port android phones to them to be fair.. if it were easy to switch it would be an awesome option for old phones.
More people, more support.

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throwaway89124193@reddit

It's not even the problem of the devices trees not being open source, if that were the case, there would be ports for latest google pixels. But there isn't

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shanehiltonward@reddit

Now you can stop complaining and test Linux on your own phone. Let us know how you like it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UNR3ijO7XY

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Darkhog@reddit (OP)

"However these are not traditional Linux Desktop apps"

It's useless on a touch device

Ever heard of that thing called "a stylus"?

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yasth@reddit

I have heard of a stylus but I don't think it really solves the issue. Even if it makes it vaguely possible to use (which for technical reasons it likely won't) the whole UX is just a bear to actually use on mobile on a 6" display.

Soft_Cable3378@reddit

Yo! Android is Linux! Why does the community need a distro not tailored to mobile? Android is what you get when you do that. Linux is great on mobile.

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glpm@reddit

Android may be based in Linux, but it's not Linux.

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Soft_Cable3378@reddit

It 100% is. Linux is a kernel, nothing more. Android runs that kernel. It isn’t “based on Linux”, it IS Linux. It runs the kernel, whose name is Linux.

You can say it’s not GNU/Linux, but to say it’s not Linux is false. You could even fork it if you wanted to and add in the bits that people need to consider it “Linux”, and you’d be all set. Linux is the standard on mobile, as it is on servers.

Just give up and accept the win.

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PureTryOut@reddit

Come on, you get what they mean. Obviously they mean "GNU/Linux" (although I'd argue that postmarketOS isn't "GNU" and is still a "traditional distro" unlike Android) and not Android. Yes the kernel is the same but the ecosystem is entirely different between the two to the point it's basically an entirely different OS.

People, including me, want a system that's familiar to them and not made by a giant American advertising company like Google.

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Soft_Cable3378@reddit

That likely won’t happen, unfortunately.

Big business is and has always been the driver behind Linux’s success (RedHat on server, Android on mobile and Ubuntu on desktop). If you want some other Linux distro to succeed, there has to be money behind it to do so, and a clear vision for it, not just a modified version of a desktop UI on a mobile device like Ubuntu has attempted. That will never succeed.

Regardless, Android is the Linux success we’ve been looking for. I see no reason that the GNU userland tools have to exist in a Linux distro beyond sentiment. Sentiment doesn’t make a thing into something people will want to use. Features, stability, performance and industry support does (security too, but the average user doesn’t notice that, until something happens). The open-source community doesn’t do those things well enough by themselves to make any purely community-supported distro a success.

As I said before, Android is as close as we’ll get in mobile. Mobile is hard for many reasons, and Android does it very well.

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PureTryOut@reddit

I see no reason that the GNU userland tools have to exist in a Linux distro beyond sentiment.

That's just like, your opinion man.

You are happy with Android and that's fine, in fact I'm glad for you. But it's a fact that not everybody is, including myself, and there is no reason people can't try to make alternatives. You don't have to use it, just stick to what you prefer.

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Soft_Cable3378@reddit

I thought that modular components were inefficient in terms of weight, space and energy compared to integrating everything.

Even if it is the case, how is it cheaper? Is there a market for modular hardware components for phones? I thought that chipsets are now the norm now, so who is manufacturing these hardware components?

(Unless by integration you mean something else)

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Art461@reddit

The components aren't specifically for mobiles, they're generic and small just because that's where the tech is up to now. I think it applies to the various components that the aforementioned phone is intended to have, as per their website. So they're cheaper because lots of places use the same stuff.

Energy may not be the biggest deal these days, batteries are very decent now. Size and weight maybe, but it's a compromise I'm happy to make.

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Dont_tase_me_bruh694@reddit

How will this be different than the librem 5?

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Evantaur@reddit

Well it has better specs for starters (that screen alone is on the "hell no" category)

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jalapenonotonastick@reddit

For some reason that domain has been marked as crowdfunding scam by Hagezi

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That's weird... liberux.net is blocked by multiple filters in my NextDNS profile.

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trowgundam@reddit

If they can get Android apps to run reasonable, I'd be very interested. Especially Google going nuclear and locking shit down. I'm ready to jump ship, but there are just somethings I can't give up, and I also just don't really like Apple devices.

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ksandom@reddit

I didn't know about this one. It's a shame I missed their crowd-funding campaign, but I've just given them my email address for the "Stat updated" button, which is very rare that I do.

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itstdames@reddit

I just signed up to be notified. It definitely fits my requirements for the 3.5mm, OLED & Storage expansion. I just hope everything else is up to par.

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ptoki@reddit

A lot of folks here provided some explanations but the real reason is a bit simpler.

The foundation of the problem is power management and lack of clear rules what can happen to the device so the apps are aware of "unusual" conditions.

This is a beefy topic but let me simplify it a bit.

No device today will provide you with enough energy for the cpu and memory alone to last a whole day. Even if the device will throttle down or put to sleep parts of it.

Therefore to work for whole day it must be able to go to sleep for significant amounts of time AND be able to respond to the modem/radio part of the phone in near second delay.

So all apps running on the os must be aware that any time the app may be stopped AND all of its network connections severed AND it needs to recover from that.

This is not that hard but vanilla linux is not made to deal with this in a good way.

The fact that there are multiple cpus and cellular radios/modems which often arent documented in an open source way does not make things easier.

So the power management has big impact on things (windows manager, desktop manager, other apps) and the lack of documentation does not help with development of stable platform.

And The development is also an issue:

I have a pinephone. Its hardware was somewhat decent and could do things I mentioned. But the god damn camera took 2 years to be handled by an app in a semi useful way. The power management was not that good either.

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Saxasaurus@reddit

This is the answer. The performance/power/battery constraints on a phone are more like an embedded environment than a desktop. Not to mention user interaction (no mouse/keyboard).

The admirable thing about Linux is the kernel and its compatibility story.

The GNU user-space that constantly breaks and forces every app to account for a million permutations is awful and it’s holding linux back.

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Darkhog@reddit (OP)

Then show me a phone with goid specs and full GNU/Linux. You obviously can't, because it doesn't exist.

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mickeysbestbud@reddit

Just use GrapheneOS. Android itself is open source, what more do you need?

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Darkhog@reddit (OP)

No, I want full GNU/Linux with all native Linux apps like Gimp, LibreOffice, etc.

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DangerousAd7433@reddit

Because the community is overrun by brainless turds who are literally against doing something sane like a proper Lineage OS port or similar which are designed for the hardware and mobile devices... and yes, you can make android not reliant on Google and the other overlords since the code is open source.

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debacle_enjoyer@reddit

Because a small business can’t just buy 10,000 Snapdragon chips. You need to have the cash to order millions of them at a time to ever hope for production with them. And then even if you do, it doesn’t just work with Linux, it’s proprietary and you’ll be getting an old driver patched vendor kernel, and you’ll be happy. And the same goes for decent modern radio antennas. Then once you get those orders placed, NDA’s signed with your suppliers, you’ve got to deal with the regulatory boards like the FCC and CE, and the equivalents of every country you want to sell in. Congrats, with having spent your first hundred million with nothing to show yet, now you you’ve got to start working with the carriers to implement and features you want beyond basic voice and data.

Candid_Report955@reddit

I don't think that license fee applies to owners of the Jolla community phone released last year, but Xperia and the other device mentioned

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ksandom@reddit

The Sailfish X License is a one-off payment that covers the supported Sony phones.

The audacity of some trying to find a sustainable way to make money in FOSS

Poor freeloaders like RoomyRoots who only care about themselves.

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Maykey@reddit

Reading pinephone specifications I sometimes feel that attaching a SIM card hat to a raspberry pi, then adding display, battery, keyboard and putting it all in 3d printed case will create a bigger thicker better ~~brick~~ "phone".

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TheBoxTroll@reddit

Look up "spirit smartphone" on YouTube, the dude is doing exactly that.

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Kahless_2K@reddit

Android phones are Linux phones.

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Kevin_Kofler@reddit

The main issue is that the dedicated smartphone SoCs are all hostile to Free Software, because they were designed to enforce Google's idea of "security", requiring a signed bootloader, signed firmware, etc., usually all signed by the phone manufacturer (so you cannot even get the firmware directly from the actual manufacturer of the component it is for). Also, even the most popular smartphone SoCs (e.g., those SoC models from Qualcomm that are used in a lot of phones) usually only get mainline Linux kernel support several months after release, if at all.

So what all the smartphones designed for GNU/Linux use is general-purpose SoCs from those few vendors that have proper mainline Linux kernel support (Allwinner, Rockchip, NXP), which are not as performant and energy-efficient as the ones optimized for smartphones.

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Jimlee1471@reddit

It's just like what happens with laptops. Are they capable of producing Linux laptops? Not only yes, but Hell yes. In fact, there are several Linux laptop manufacturers I can name right from the top of my head (I'll bet you can, too).

HOWEVER, the one thing all those Linux laptop brands seem to have in common is that their products tend to be on the expensive side. You can indeed have a Linux laptop with beefy specs and cutting-edge consumer-grade tech but YOU. WILL. PAY. It's probably because more mainstream configurations (using Windows or MacOS) have enough of a market providing enough customers to offset the costs of bringing a product to market. If enough people were actually buying Linux laptops then they wouldn't be anywhere near as pricey as they are now.

Phones have exactly the same issue. There's so many people using Android or iOS that the customer base makes producing at that scale a whole lot less expensive. If someone could somehow convince the general ~~sheep~~ people that, say, Pinephone was a real contender then not only would it cost less for what you're getting, there might also be a bit more cash to put towards R&D to come out with an even more advanced model in the near future.

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Blu-Blue-Blues@reddit

TL;DR: Because, software and hardware limitations are insane on mobile.

I am not going to give too much detail, but android's java support is pretty much dead and it uses kotlin now (porting the apps can be problematic) and even developing and maintaining an app natively for Android is insanely difficult. Everything changes in a few months. So, we are and will be lacking apps. Apple is out of the picture. You can't even use swift without a Mac. It is a closed ecosystem. Every app you use on IOS/Android is either designed to track, collect your data or drown you with ads or it is that banking app or something that isn't on Linux. So, you can't pull the devs neither. Because, they are making a lot of money from those sources. Cameras, CPUs, antennas, alu, even button placements... are all proprietary. We don't have an open source phone maker or a megafactory. So, you can't just install an os on any phone. Therefore, almost no Linux phone users. There are cool projects out there, but they need money and people and sources, something like Valve and Linux gaming. Something like, Huawei investing millions of dollars.

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Rolcol@reddit

Swift is "open source" and you can run it on Linux and Windows. It doesn't get nearly as much effort as Apple platforms, but they're... trying... something...

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Blu-Blue-Blues@reddit

This is exactly what I mean. It is hard to describe perfectly, but if you tried it, you know the pain lol

It goes like, "This should work. There is no bug here. Why isn't it working? ...aaaaah I see".

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Hytht@reddit

you don't know what you are talking about, kotlin and compose actually make it easier to port apps to other platforms. kotlin not depending on jvm makes it easier, kotlin can be compiled to JS and run on a browser or to native binary and run without a JVM (kotlin native). jetpack compose with compose multiplatform can use the same UI for Android, desktop, web and iOS. previously java and XML were tied to Android's UI framework. and also there's Kotlin multiplatform.

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V2UgYXJlIG5vdCBJ@reddit

I like Kotlin, but I wonder what it’s like with IDEs other than Jetbrains.

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xKINGYx@reddit

Android developer here - Kotlin compiles to Java bytecode. That’s to say it’s still effectively the same code running on the JVM and Android is and will always be very tightly coupled to Java.

Android is a derivative of Linux but is quite far split from the mainline kernel at this point. The AOSP is essentially ‘pure Android’ and then most OEMs further change the OS to suit their proprietary UIs and hardware, including only packaging necessary drivers etc…

I agree though that the issue likely stems from supply chain constraints. There’s very little funding for R&D in Linux phones so the manufacturers have to use tried and tested SoCs and other components available to them in small batches, often stifling innovation and in a sense raw power.

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baekeland22@reddit

Linux was late to the party when it came to phones.

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pppjurac@reddit

And it is user software that counts at the end . Linux phones are essentially useless as daily driver : can't pay with NFC, can't go to web banking, can't run Strava, Garmin Connect, GPX viewers, Locus maps, offline tools, nada.

It is dead end.

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My backup phone is a pixel 3a that has Ubuntu on it. It's actually pretty snappy for everything and works decently with the apps that will run on it.

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Nearby_Astronomer310@reddit

with the apps that will run on it

Isn't that the main problem? Most essential apps if not all won't run.

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telcodan@reddit

Unfortunately, this is case. You have a very limited app store on it now that Amazon is shuttering theirs.

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Professional_Top8485@reddit

MeeGo was great.

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move_machine@reddit

Maemo, MeeGo and the original iteration of webOS were superb and spoiled me.

It's been like decades at this point and I still think "if this was Maemo/webOS, I'd be able to do X".

The Android task switching card metaphor is a direct copy of what webOS debuted with. We had to wait fucking years just to get sane task switching in Android, and even longer for iOS to copy it, too.

There are dozens of little things like those that have been bothering me for going on two decades now.

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Lawnmover_Man@reddit

It's been like decades at this point and I still think "if this was Maemo/webOS, I'd be able to do X".

It's the same for me. So many well executed ideas.

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move_machine@reddit

Tragically so. Where is my unified search, contacts and messages? How has that brilliantly simple and useful concept not been implemented for decades?

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Professional_Top8485@reddit

Yes. The ui concept was ahead of it's time. N9 was really slick too keep on palm.

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teddybrr@reddit

It is still alive in SailfishOS

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Linux phones aren't bad because of Linux but because manufacturers work against its adoption by keeping chipsets drivers, documentation closed and bootloaders locked.

The industry would royally hate a free/open OS on phones, unless it's them taking parts of it and wrapping it into proprietary code because it makes the work cheaper for them. If they didn't do that, the interest would skyrocket among developers too, and the few devs of today who fight between the communications wall of manufacturers and their own frustration would become several thousands, eventually leading mobile Linux to grow and displace most proprietary solutions in short time.

Because there's no point. Custom Android ROMs are superior in every way. Just use LineageOS, CalyxOS or even better GrapheneOS. If you ever buy a phone to replace proprietary Android just buy a Google Pixel and install GrapheneOS. It is more private and secure than a Linux phone ever could be.

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ParaboloidalCrest@reddit

Agreed. But that scene might be changing rapidly with the recent Androind/Pixel changes.

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MrWanderLive@reddit

This is literally just how android and iPhones were back in the day. But that's a good thing! That means we can take what we know now and make sure the same mistakes aren't made. The more people that switch to Linux phones, the more people there will be who will get annoyed and say "I can develop something to fix this".

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ElephantWithBlueEyes@reddit

Check on Astro slide 5G. It has Debian. It's old, but still.

Why are the Linux phones so bad?

I'd also add "opensource anarchy". This is where corpos and closed source things win - peopla are motivated into making things work.

On Linux you have 10 tools for X task and none of them work 100%... sad Linux reality

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DadLoCo@reddit

I’d be happy if my Pinephone battery would last the day. It’s ridiculous

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Lase189@reddit

What's the point of Linux on phones. I need it for software development purposes so I use it but what's wrong with Android? I use GrapheneOS that's completely open source and works really well.

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Sailfish OS works on the Sony xperia 10 series.

Ubuntu touch on the Fairphone 3(+), 4 and 5, Xiami Redmi Note 9 Pro Max.

PostmarketOS on the fairphone 4 and Oneplus 6

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PlantDry4321@reddit

The Volla Phone Quintus is decent, specs similar to or better than iPhone 16e (other than SoC maybe)

SoCs have to be bad because of compatibility

These brands are small and don't get support from Google, Android, etc, small audience as well, so it's harder for them to get materials need

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1n20jwb/mobile_linux_the_future_and_needs_of_it_and_how/

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StrictFinance2177@reddit

Trackers make money. A flagship phone has flagship hardware because it's the only way users are distracted by the freedoms they give up.

blihp001@reddit

Limited driver support for the SoC and common peripherals. Almost none of the 'popular' SoC's used in Android phones have full open source support, or even proprietary driver support, without NDAs and license fees. If you can live without GPU, NPU, modem, wifi, bluetooth etc. support, a Linux phone is fairly easy...

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