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Small Phones are Dead and We Killed Them
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this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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Android
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As a small phone lover, here's the thing: we don't consume as many phones or as many services as (general) big phone people.
It's not only about the size of the community. It's that our phones are tools generally at our service and not the reverse.
Hopefully Linux phones are not so far away from usable in the next couple years.
I said the same thing in like 2013. :(
It seemed more likely back then than it does today. Ubuntu and Firefox were both developing mobile OSes around that time.
What's the closest thing to a viable option nowadays?
I think a Pixel running Graphene is the closest viable option. Out of the pool of bespoke built to run GNU/Linux phones, it might just be the PinePhone Pro. It's the one suffering the least from critical existence failure.
Try calyx for a stable, truly Google-free pixel experience.
Plus it looked like Web Apps were gonna become huge.
I know the words "web app" send some on Lemmy into a frenzied rage, but they'd be amazing from a platform agnostic perspective.
Imagine if the biggest barrier to entry for new smartphone OSes (app support) was gone. It'd be huge.
But seeing it as a threat to their business models (don't get that 30% cut if it's not through the App/Play stores), Apple and Google have had pretty shitty support for them.
If a Linux phone was out today and had good hardware and software, it'd still fail just like Windows Phone and BlackBerry OS did. WebApps would give it a strong chance though.
Agreed. I'd like to add that web apps are much better today than they were 10 years ago. We have notification support, touch support, etc. A well-made progressive web app is basically the same as a native app now — or it would be with halfway-decent OS support, anyway.
The fact is, a ton of common apps are just web wrappers anyway, even on desktop. Like Discord, Slack, and Steam. Even Outlook is moving in that direction.
It is indeed quite dire. My hope lies in that the recent attempts have been more upstream first oriented where lots of distros run on phones. They do not work well yet but that approach might just get us there eventually.
Another thing that gives me hope is that phones do not change much any more. Much easier to catch up to a stagnated market.
RIP Ubuntu Edge
They got so close to the Kickstart goal
Linux phones aren't gonna help, the issue is the hardware
Unfortunately it does not look like as if linux phones would be developing anywhere
Isn't Android Linux?
Linux is often used to refer to a family of operating systems including Ubuntu, Debian, fedora, red hat, ect., which all use the Linux kernel.
However, GNU/Linux may be a better name for this family of operating systems, since they all use GNU components and (to varying extents) embrace the philosophy of the free software foundation.
Android uses the Linux kernel, but not GNU components, and do not embrace the philosophy of the Free software foundation.
Stalman, the man who founded GNU and the free software foundation published his thoughts on this:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/android-and-users-freedom.en.html
Yeah, but it's not like a typical Linux installation on a PC would be. You can't just install a Flatpak application or anything like that. It doesn't use many of the GNU core utilities that most other Linux distros use, and doesn't use a mainline kernel.
People that ask for Linux phones know Android is Linux.
It's just a lot more concise to say than "I want a phone with an open bootloader and hardware fully compatible with a mainline Linux kernel. I want to have a phone that can run a Phosh/Gnome Mobile/Plasma Mobile UI and on the backend work in a similar way to how desktop Linux would."
I mean, Android...
Mom: "We have Linux at home"
Linux at home: Google™ Linux
Isn't android a Linux fork or am I misremembering?
Linux is a kernel. In that sense Android is Linux.
However when people say Linux they usually mean the full OS with the GNU utilities and all the other things that make up a Linux distro.
In that sense, Android is not Linux as pretty much everything other than the kernel is built specifically for android.
And even the kernel itself is a fork of an ancient version with shitloads of changes to it, plus a bunch of proprietary blobs.
It is. My guess is they're referring to one of the other Linux OS initiatives. I have no idea what's currently being made though, as historically if it hasn't been Android or iOS it tends to fail.
I just use foldable phones now. The outer screen width of a Galaxy Fold is the same as an Xperia Z3 Compact and when I use the phone two handed I get the benefit of having a big-ass screen. You just get used to the weight after a while.