The project, developed in partnership with veteran free software developer Rob Savoye, aims to create a fully free and open mobile platform, from the firmware to the operating system.
I salute the early adopters who will suffer all the inconveniences of startups so the wider public can enjoy a non-corporate phone in the future. o7
I’m looking forward to get one of these just to play around with it, and maybe making some custom stuff for it.
I’m looking forward to actually seeing how my fucking works and what it’s doing.
As soon as my current phone is paid off I am going to get this. No more fucking Spyware up the ass.
I hope they can pull this off because we really need this.
I guess I’ll see phones with this in my local stores at… 10 years? Too generous, maybe 15.
Oooh, I wonder if they’re going to pursue a free phone based on Risc-V. It’s a longshot but if they pull that off, it’d be like feeding two birds with one scone.
I really hope this is super based
Why would anyone think that FSF is capable of releasing a unique and good device? It’s gonna be a bog-standard Android device with some software modified/removed.
Might be ok for some people still though. Also I’ll be happy to be wrong about my cynicism.
It’s gonna be a bog-standard Android device with some software modified/removed.
Really? That would be heavily antithetical to everything they do. I expect it would be a Linux distro (like PostmarketOS) with some blobs removed etc.
Just because it’s a libre phone, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a linux phone. Or at least any more so than Android is a linux phone because it uses a heavily modified (almost unrecognizable) linux kernel.
There’s nothing in the article that says they’re just going to use a mainline linux kernel and throw a touch optimized version of some existing desktop on it (ubuntu touch, etc…)
Heck, they could be meaning that they’re planning on making their own heavily modified kernel for their very own OS so as to skip all of the trouble that trying to make mainline linux into a handheld device has been so far. (similar to I believe how SailfishOS is doing it)
Why couldn’t they just use usual Linux for that? Why a modified kernel? Is Linux as is not suitable for a phone?
Can’t they just, idk, make a distro? Maybe from scratch? Pop!_OS is working on COSMIC. Can’t they have their Linux-based OS, perhaps with its own things as needed, such as a phone-optimised DE? Or whatever the phone equivalent of a DESKTOP environment would be. A Mobile Environment, perhaps
If my laptop had touch screen with no other method of input built in, and were way smaller, could it not run Linux? Or is that different altogether?
Linux mobile phones are the fusion power of the FOSS world, always right around the corner.
All the pieces are there, but none of them work together smoothly enough to be functional for anybody except the most hardcore FOSS enthusiasts.
When Proton started, it was kind of a joke, killed the Steam Machine idea in large part because the game compatibility was so limited. A decade later, we have a multi billion dollar handheld PC market lead by the Steam Deck, a Linux handheld that can play tens of thousands of Windows games without issue, in some cases with better performance than their native platform.
So it’s certainly possible for things to completely change, but we need a big player or consortium of players to unite with a shared goal of getting a Linux Phone to the state where it’s genuinely able to replace a traditional Android or Apple phone.
I’m very cautiously optimistic, I think it would come together much faster than Proton did for Linux gaming, but again, there needs to be a really heavy push into a singular device to start off. Like how the Steam Deck was, it allowed devs to have a singular platform to target for compatibility. Then, as the platform matures, competitors & innovators can enter the market and expand options, like how now there are multiple distros with builds for handhelds, like Bazzite, Nobara, and CachyOS.
At this point I would not be surprised if steam built on top of the deck idea and the support it already provides for fairly responsive and configurable inputs, touch screen included, to launch a steam phone or something.
I mean deck isn’t all that far from having such a device. For the actual phone network stack they would likely just partner up with someone already in the space.
They’ve already had to tackle powering a lightweight portable device with a touch screen and adapting the UX for a small screen and non-kbd input. They’ve already established they can source parts and mass produce a competively priced device.
But realistically I can’t see it being that much better than the recent Linux phone offerings.
My hopes and my expectations could not be more at odds with each other, and the only thing I know for sure is that one of them will be smashed.
As they would say: keep your hopes up and your expectation low to the ground
I want a Linux phone so bad that I refuse to think about what it would be like because i’d be upset afterwards.
I have an original PinePhone. The phone itself is horribly outdated and slow, but the software itself (Phosh+Gnome) is suprisingly okay. Given a good enough phone (as in hardware) I can see myself actually using it and not being annoyed more than I was with early Androids.
Unfortunately what I understand is that FSFE doesn’t intend to do hardware, only software platform, so I wonder whether they’ll come up with anything interesting.
I won’t hold my breath, but it’s sorely needed, so, we can hope.
That’s funny. I can’t hold my width.
Sometimes I can’t hold my
heigdthdepth.You are all out of line
Some people can hold their length, but only in private.
Just ask your mom
You can hold my girth
As long as y’all maintain your altitude.
And avoid getting raptured. Otherwise we’ll hear no end of your Arch installs.
Please god, help me find my keys! Tell St. Anthony I need my keys!
Also could you make this Foss phone be real and reasonably priced below the cost of a gaming PC?
You may choose 1
Found them! Where’s my Linux phone?
I can’t find any links to the project itself, only to announcements about the project. Anybody have anything more concrete? How far along is this project?
I’ll use my de-Googled and update-blocked S23 until it’s physically unable to boot up, and hopefully by then I’ll find something that can run this OS, assuming it’s ready
