- cross-posted to:
- opensource@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- opensource@programming.dev
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.
You must log in or # to comment.
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.
how my fucking works and what it’s doing.
I think only you can answer that one, friend
As soon as my current phone is paid off I am going to get this. No more fucking Spyware up the ass.
The project just launched and is a software-first project. We won’t see a Libre Phone available for a while yet.
And if Hurd is any indication I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Unless they can get this working with Android Auto or Carplay I don;t see it going anywhere.
Nah, fuck that.
I’d rather see Linux on the head unit, too.
I’d still want an Android Auto and Apple Carplay equivalent.
I want my 2030 car to still be able to get the latest and greatest hardware and software in 2040 via me upgrading my phone.
Fuck cars
Tell me more about the phone! This has taken so long and I am ready to migrate to an open phone even if it’s only for texting at this point.
Screw this OS monopoly by Apple and Alphabet.
Open to simple solutions here. I have a Pixel 4a 5g and iPhone 15 Pro* atm.
your pixel probably runs graphene, degoogle it.
you could probably run linux on it today too.
What’s keeping me from doing this is that i won’t be able to run my banking apps anymore then. And I can’t be arsed to carry two phones
linux phones will never run banking apps either.
Perhaps there’s this magic app called a “web-browser” I could introduce you to…
banking doesn’t work on just web browsers anymore on most of the world’s banks. i WISH.
Huh, they still work for all my banks here in the US. Not sure how you’re supposed to access your bank account on your PC otherwise. Some banks you’ll have to use the “use Desktop version of the site” option in a mobile browser to get it to work, but it will still work.
access your bank account on your PC otherwise
we’re not. not without a phone.
Well it might not even be a phone, maybe it’s only a software project that needs to partner with manufacturers that would include it in their phones. The article doesn’t really mention much.
Either way, I’m starting to get excited.
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
And my axe!
As long as y’all maintain your altitude.
And avoid getting raptured. Otherwise we’ll hear no end of your Arch installs.
I hope they can pull this off because we really need this.
Heard of Hurd, I don’t think they can.
Maybe Hurd never went anywhere but they are responsible for as much of what constitutes “Linux” as the Linux kernel is. Linux never would have amounted to much without GCC, the GNU tools, and the GPL.
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.
Running PostmarketOS on hardware such as the Oneplus 6T (which is 8 years old now) shows that you could truly have dog shit cheap hardware for this. As long as you have decent driver support for it.
I’m just over here, mad that I have a Oneplus 7 pro lying around and there’s no port for that. For none of the 3 distros I could find that support the 6T. So I’m suspecting there’s some reason why it’s just not feasible.
It’s an epic phone and it could be so good with a lighter weight OS than Android.
I’m making this comment with a OnePlus 6T I got 8 years ago when it was new and it has never needed repairs, so I wouldn’t exactly call it dogshit. Even the battery still lasts a couple days of heavy use before needing a charge, though that may have more to do with my efforts in reducing software overhead over the years. (Also making sure almost everything I ever view on it has an AMOLED dark background)
For all of those following, I emailed Rob and he confirmed that the focus of the project to start is reverse engineering binary blobs on existing android devices, but he is currently only at the discovery phase of picking which phones to start with. He is first checking LineageOS compatible phones using his toolset here: https://codeberg.org/rsavoye/librephone/src/branch/main/doc/index.md
This is the original article
https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-turns-forty-with-a-new-president-and-a-new-campaign
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.
None of what you described is an issue with Linux phones.
We need open firmware for broadbands.
Yeah well, this is of course just a singular anecdote, but my experience with any touch-based de on Linux hasn’t been great.
No Linux phone I have ever seen has had a particularly competitive pricing. Or specs.
But perhaps there has been some major advancements I’m not aware of in the past week.
In any case, your latter point is true.
I would love if Valve shipped and contributed to Plasma Mobile and Plasma Bigscreen alongside the existing Plasma Desktop. Or even if more Steam Deck users installed it so that it would get more interest.
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.
Proton’s existence did not overlap the existence of the Steam Machine program, like at all. Proton’s initial release was on the 21st of August 2018. Steam Machines were first released in 2015 and had been delisted from Steam entirely by April 2018.
Wine existed back then, sure, but Steam Machines didn’t benefit from DXVK, VKD3D, or any of the myriad per-game and gaming-oriented tweaks that Valve and Codeweavers have made to Wine in the version bundled with Proton. For most people, the prospect of using Wine on a Steam Machine was a huge pain at best. Valve’s official position at the time was that they were helping pay for Linux ports of games.
Fair point, I thought Proton went back farther than that.
I think my overall point is right still though, Linux gaming (native or otherwise) has become not just viable, but in some cases objectively superior to gaming on Windows in terms of raw performance. Pretty amazing, and in even less time than I originally thought lol.
Yeah. It’s improved by leaps and bounds since DXVK and VKD3D came into existence. Wine was already incredibly robust and powerful with like 20 years of development on it, so Proton combining Wine with those other 2 projects for better DirectX support and then also managing Wine prefixes and tweaks automatically brought us from “if you’re persistent and tweak a lot of settings a good chunk of games work” to “most games just work”, and now even “if a game doesn’t work on Linux now it’s because the devs are blocking it actively”
And of course, Valve’s active financial support and direct contributions to all of the projects involved has improved the reliability and performance of all of the tech involved by leaps and bounds.
Bazzite sounds like it would be a good start for the OS, though, and that exists now.
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.
Hopefully this will recruit projects that already have significant headstart, such as Pine64. Otherwise, it would merely be performative.
gimme gimme
I really hope this is super based
I’m celebrating!
As a linux phone guy this is good news. Any more pushing towards a more solid linux phone environment is a big plus.
I’m not holding my breath either hence “Hurd” project be amazing if this will be faster than 20 years. I’m hopeful at least.
Removed by mod
Why do you troll like Trump tweets?
Because Our Lord and Savior will spare me in the upcoming months.
I’ve got a Google Pixel 3a with postmarketOS installed on it right now for testing, and it really is a two-pronged issue with both hardware and software. Because it’s an older phone the battery drains within a few hours, nowhere close to all-day use. Because most of the software is designed for the desktop certain things are just impossible to use (the big pain point for me is Anki, but on the other hand it’s impressive how many GTK apps conform very nicely to the screen). The keyboard still feels pretty rough.
Hopefully the FSF dipping their hat into the ring will help existing projects like this in a rising-tide-raises-all-ships sort of way. Would be a shame for them to put effort into a software stack that goes nowhere (GNU Hurd), and pour $$$ into a hardware project that doesn’t make it to market or doesn’t do its job better than a cracked smartphone from 5+ years ago.
I think it is possible to switch to it now and have things mostly work out for you, but it will make your life harder. I remember switching to Ubuntu around 2010 and it’s almost to that level of experience. You’ll be giving up a lot, apps you “need” won’t work, but it’s at the point where it is a complete usable experience. For those that are willing to suffer for FOSS, I mean.
