I want to donate to a linux phone. I believe in linux and I want a linux phone. Maybe we can use one in very few years as a normal daily driver. It’s getting closer and closer every month.
I want to donate that we get there sooner. But which project? I’m following postmarket but I’m not sure if they are the most promising. What’s your stance on this? To which project would you give your money to accellerate it?
Edit: I don’t want to buy a phone. I want to support the phone os devs. Sorry for the bad wording.
For the vast majority of people these days, a phone/tablet is their computer, and a laptop/desktop cannot fulfill the same use cases. So if someone makes the very reasonable request for a phone recommendation, telling them to just use a laptop/desktop doesn’t make any sense. It would be like someone asking for a recommendation for a moped, and responding “don’t bother, just get a Ford F150”.
No, it’s not like that at all.
The op didn’t ask for a phone recommendation and I didn’t recommend instead that they use a laptop or desktop.
The op said they want to donate to a Linux phone because one day they believe they’ll be able to use a Linux phone. They want to pick the right one to give money to so it’ll have the best effect towards that end.
I said they shouldn’t do that because they can already use a Linux phone and there are tons of other Linux based projects where the money will go much farther.
We ought to be looking at this from a completely different perspective though: op is trying to maximize the value their donation has, and that’s a bummer. They should just donate to the one they like and not worry about effectiveness.
Apologies if I misunderstood your meaning when you said “android is already Linux on a phone and it’s bad”. If android is sufficient for your mobile Linux needs, that’s fine, I use it too. But it doesn’t fit the bill for everyone, and that’s the point of OP wanting to support an actual FOSS mobile effort. The alternatives you list don’t get them closer to what they’re looking for.
You’re right. I didn’t tell the op how to get what they’re looking for.
I told the op that they’re looking for the wrong thing, which is more helpful advice than dissecting the difference between pine and postmarket.
For all the people using phones as their computer I doubt there would be many who want to use linux. It’s a bit like someone asking for recommendations for a moped and you tell them to build it themselves.
I’m all for wanting linux on phones and supporting that but I have never ever known someone to be interested in linux and only use a phone/tablet. I can’t imagine working a CLI with a phone keyboard.
The point of Linux on phones isn’t to have a phone that requires you to constantly fix it with CLI tools. The point is to have a free and open software platform for a device that is increasingly necessary for daily life.
As a side effect, developing Linux for phones would probably help us eliminate the need to reach for the terminal on desktop Linux as well. I believe snaps (which laid the groundwork for flatpaks) were originally developed for Linux on “smart” devices. The whole ecosystem improves when we try to bring Linux into a new domain.
P.S. I use termux (a terminal for android complete with its own tiny Linux environment) from time to time when I need to access my server over SSH. It’s a bit clumsy, but super handy!
It’s not clear to me why you believe Linux on mobile implies typing into a CLI interface using a phone keyboard. We choose to use the CLI when it makes the most sense as an input method for the platform, not because it’s required by Linux.
As the post above pointed out, android is already Linux, so that’s already an option. But OP’s goal would be to have a FOSS phone given that phones are increasingly the computing device of choice for people, and there are very few feature complete FOSS options in that space right now.
I’m not saying it is CLI, I’m saying that I don’t want CLI on my phone. Android for instance is based on linux and isn’t a CLI for the most part.
Again, why I say it’s like asking someone to build it themselves when people who only use phones and not desktops/laptops don’t typically want to build it themselves.
Cool then don’t use a CLI on your phone, I don’t know anyone who would.
Android is Linux, you don’t need to build it yourself. That’s not a precursor to using Linux on mobile any more than using a CLI is.
Android is kinda linux, I think most people would find it weird to call it a linux distro. OP also isn’t looking for an android phone when they say a linux phone. For a linux phone there is a lot of build-it-yourself and people generally don’t want to flash their device to install it, especially people who only use a phone as their computer.
Android isn’t kinda Linux, it is actually Linux. It includes other proprietary stuff too, but Google regularly contributes their changes upstream. Like it or not, android is a prime example of what is possible on mobile using Linux.
Yes, I agree that OP isn’t looking for Android and wants to support an alternate option. But here’s where I think our disconnect is: the goal wouldn’t be for the alternate option to be a difficult to use, niche, build-it-yourself headache. That’s never anyone’s goal for anything. The goal is to make something roughly as good as, or better than Android, except FOSS.
It’s just that it takes funding and vision to make something as feature rich as android, and both are hard to come by.
No, it’s kinda linux.
It’s based off of linux but not literally linux and why if you call it a linux distro you’ll be questioned. Just like English is based on French but if you start telling people you speak French because of it you’ll have confusion.
It’s common for Linux distros to make changes specific to their distro. Adding and removing modules, adding custom changes, and offering those changes back to mainline. This is how Linux works and what makes it so great.
It’s not as though Google hard forked Linux 15 years ago and have just done their own thing ever since, they’re regularly merging Linux LTS. Here’s a diagram from Google of what that looks like.
MacOSX is a hard fork from Mach, which fits your French analogy more accurately. Android is more like a Boston accent; it’s a dialect but never very far from it’s origin.