Apple and Google will gladly erase the works of developers to chase profits.
Please let me know viable options.
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
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Linux Phones
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The Discussion on Linux-based Phones.
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There are no realistic linux options for your phone. These memes are pipe dreams by people that haven't actually looked at how utterly incapable linux currently is at powering a smart phone for normal daily use and how these apps that they're complaining about android and apple are removing won't run on the linux phone in the first place.
Sounds like switching will mean we will lose everything we're already losing. Might as well go ahead and quit cold turkey.
That is correct, currently, moving to a linux phone will lose you more than what you're losing with Google and Apple changes.
Apps are just part of the problem. Running a full linux OS on a phone with all the normal mobile phone capabilities is also an exercise in frustration. Taking Ubuntu Touch as an example, the OS has been around since 2011, was released in 2014 and it's list of approved phones is still minuscule. If you're a person on VZW, that list grows even smaller as VoLTE is problematic enough to be considered impossible to get working reliably.
I truly hope that the linux phone landscape shapes up but in it's current form, it's actually losing ground as it's development is slower than the hardware development and at it's current rate, will never be a viable option.
At this point I'd rather keep my freedom and lose the convenience. If it means losing apps and horsepower, fine by me. I'm already half resigned to going back to a dumbphone. I'm also looking at options to assemble my own phone with off the shelf parts if that's what it takes.
When you abandon freedom to achieve security, you lose both and deserve neither. - Thomas Jefferson
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Yeah... I'm rapidly approaching the point of just learning to live without a smartphone altogether as it becomes more and more frustrating to find one that has what I want.
There's options, yes. Ubuntu Touch is getting better.
AFAIK, the main bottleneck (aside from hardware support) is a working open source IMS stack. IMS is the IP Multimedia Subsystem that is responsible for things like VoLTE/VoWIFI, SMS/MMS, etc. The last time I looked at Ubuntu Touch, it only supported baseband (not sure if that's the right term?) calls and SMS/MMS. Basically those only work in "3G" mode and won't work if your carrier requires VoLTE.
Lack of an open source IMS is also problematic for some other Android distros as well (and why flashing a newer GSI ROM to an older handset won't necessarily give you VoLTE).
And don't even get me started on the complete fustercluck that is RCS 😠
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That's funny I've had several Android apps run fine under Linux mobile OSes.
I'm not going to say they're ready for general public daily use but there's no reason they one day couldn't be? There's a foundation there. With a good enthusiast community we could get it to the point that it's at least useable for power users and grow from there.
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It's been years, and I still miss windowsphone so much. I knew we were fucked when they axed it and iPhone and android were already starting to stall out with a duopoly.
At one point, we had blackberry, some form of meego, Windowsphone, android and iOS, as well as niche things like jolla and sailfish.
Eh? Microsoft and Windowsphone basically killed the only real alternative to Android and iOS when they did their hostile takeover of Nokia, and Windowsphone itself was an atrocity that luckily died rather quickly.
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i don't think they are ready though.
It's sort of a paradox. Low adoption leads to less resources, bug reports, developer interest, etc. and that in turn leads to low adoption.
What works for me is daily driving my linux phone, and having a used regular smartphone sitting in a drawer, turned off, until I absolutely need to run an app that is not compatible with Waydroid.
Desktop Linux has the same problem, developer starts and app then burns out and drops it.
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So is there any mobile OS out there you could confidently recommend as a daily driver?
Nope. Go back to dumb phones and carry laptop for stuff you'd need smartphone for.
Does not work for everything.
In my country we use an app to identify ourselves online but also in a shop, e.g. when picking up packages. It is called BankID.
Many of these purposes would not work on a laptop and if they do it would require you to use their proprietary dongle, or whatever that is called, to input a certain code. So you got another extra device to carry around.
These guys won't give a fuck about making a linux compatible app for this.
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My plan going forward is to either make or buy a basic small cyberdeck type system. Using my phone as basically little more than a glorified cellular modem. Or for isolated calls or SMS.
Looking at investing in and setting up some mesh halow infrastructure at home and a couple other places to reduce the need for the cellular modem part a bit more.
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I find it amusing that I don't "sideload" at all on my linux phone, rather, basically everything I want is already in the repos.
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First of all we need a way to install linux on android phones. They're literally souped-up Raspberry-Pis with battery backups.
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