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.

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[–] Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 17 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

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)

[–] Pika@rekabu.ru 1 points 1 hour ago

Does anyone claim so? And does it matter much outside of (potentially) app support?

[–] lemmyknow@lemmy.today 5 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

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?

[–] primal_buddhist@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago

Too many bits of a smartphone are proprietary hardware without open drivers.