cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/20111466
When I switched to a True Linux* phone five years ago most projects didn’t even have telephony working reliably.
I haven’t been following development a lot these days, so for me it’s time to ask the question again.
To qualify as a main daily driver, it should do the following reliably:
- be actively maintained
- be supported on easily obtainable** hardware
- handle standard phone calls and texting with a simple GUI
- including contacts
- support internet on mobile broadband up to 4G as well as wifi
- have a minimum set of apps or a current browser to handle basic things like email, calendar
- handle audio between calls/media etc.
And preferably it should also
- support 5G
- support VoLTE
- handle Bluetooth audio
- a working Camera app
- remote access via ssh or similar
Obviously some people will find other things more or less important, but I hope anyone gets the gist of what I’m asking for and concentrates on the larger picture more than details.
* meaning more than just the kernel - an OS that works like a standard Linux OS with familiar software, package management (preferably supporting 3rd party repos), command line access (preferably remote) etc.
** That’s a little squishy. For me it includes buying used from online markets as well, and there’d be an upper price limit. But I’d also count a batch ordering system from some small manufacturer. YMMV
Conclusion
According to these comments, there are many good projects in the works, and they’re obviously further along than 5 years ago. Some of them impressively so. Thanks for all the answers.
However, not one clearly states “this OS/device combo is my (or some youtuber’s) main daily driver”*. I’m not saying there isn’t one, but until someone comes out and says so, SailfishOS is still the best bet if you want something that works right now. I know that their commercialism and partly closed source isn’t to everybody’s taste, but you have to see the history here (Nokia). Also, I know that the company (developer owned afaik) is very open to open-sourcing the rest. One app has already made the switch. And lastly, they’re a EU company which means they operate under pretty strict legislation, but could also get EU funding.
* I hear that Ubuntu Touch works for some
Look into Ubuntu Touch on one of the newer supported phones. It uses Halium though, so I’m not sure it fits your definition of True Linux.
It checks all of your bullet points, but make sure the model you are considering actually has VoLTE enabled for the port.
I’ve ported Mobian to the Pixel 3a and use it as a daily driver.
two annoyances:
- I’ve not yet figured out calls via Bluetooth, but other audio works fine, including XMPP calls via Dino [if anyone knows how to get calls working via Bluetooth, drop a comment and I’ll see if I can get it working]
- camera is buggy and does not work well yet (there are people working on that)
Here’s what I had posted on it around a year ago: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/22388672
Very nice. Thank you for your service 🫡
I hope your effort gets integrated into some “ready to install” Linux phone distro/project.
BTW, in the Debian Wiki it says
voice calls are known to be not 100% reliable
Can you elaborate?
Could you please link to where you found that? Maybe that’s outdated info? Without the context I’m not sure what exactly is unreliable.
Phone calls work, but only if the phone is not suspended. Some people are working on letting the phone wake up when called. Haven’t followed the progress for a while. If you disable suspend, is works well, at least for me. Not sure whether others have noticed issues in different situations.
OK. What effect does disabling suspend have on usability?
Not much, the battery will just deplete quicker. Otherwise you only notice that phone calls make the phone ring. If it is suspended, it won’t ring. (for now)
OK, thanks
Not much, the battery will just deplete quicker
An important factor for mobile devices.
Anyhow, there’s an entry for installing Debian (or Mobian) on the Pixel 3a, you might want to update it.
Oh and I’m currently working on mainlining the Xperia 10 III with the intention of porting Mobian. I got display, GPU, flashlight working, but am stuck at figuring out whether that phone has a bug that breaks it if I enable UFS support, like some Xperias has in the past. If anyone knows a way of veriying whether it is safe to turn on flash, that’d help a lot. I could then enable UFS, Wifi, Modem, GPS, and probably Bluetooth… all at once.
Just don’t want to find out whether it’ll break the hard way.
I’ll keep this up to date with my current progress: https://git.erebion.eu/forgejo/erebion/pdx213-temp
The Xperia X10 III is the most recommended phone to use with SailfishOS, you might get some inspiration from or use their work.
What’s UFS and flash?
UFS == flash in this case, it’s where the phone stores OS, bootloader, user data and so on.
Also, SailfishOS uses an Android kernel with libhybris, I want to use a mainline kernel to ensure I’ll get updates for a long time.
I bought a Xiaomi Redmi Note 9s just to put postmarketos on it, I’ve heard that the Oneplus 6T runs well too.
I think postmarketos is kinda good now, so I want to try it as my daily driver (with waydroid and the waydroid script (it handles some things like GAPPS, root if you want it, device certification, etc) too).
I would recomend it, but you need to check the feature matrix, to see if something is working. On the Redmi Note 9s and the Oneplus 6T, almost everything is in the feature matrix.
Here’s a video of the Oneplus 6T running postmarketos with gnome, the channel has other DEs too and battery comparisons too.
Edit: I’m now waiting for xiaomis shitty wait 2 weeks to unlock the bootloader, it should be yesterday, but out of nowhere, it’s 4 days from now…
Thanks. I looked at the feature Matrix for the 1+ 6T, and it says:
- Audio: partial
- Calls: partial
I watched the video, too. It’s not a daily driver review by any measure, and the above is fully reflected in it.
I also noticed that the Network icon stays at 3G the whole time and I haven’t seen him actually loading any web pages (I did skip through though).I also see no mention of VoLTE and as the other commenter suggested, without it it’s getting pretty hard to use as a phone with more and more providers.
Don’t get me wrong, PostmarketOS looks really good. I’m not sure I’m happy with a Gnome shell though, and I wonder how deeply it integrates into the core system, i.e. how easy it would be to use something else instead.
What bothers me with this project is that they do not concentrate enough on getting a few devices 100% working. All physical PMOS devices are not in Main, i.e. “relatively well maintained” by a few users. The list is impressive, but I wonder how well all these specialised efforts integrate into the main project, and how well each individual device is maintained.
First, I’d recommend going with the 6 (no T), which has a headphone jack, which can be helpful - and on these devices is your only option for wired headphones, as USB-C dongles don’t work yet.
Audio is unreliable, yes, not just for phone calls, also for things like podcast playback in my experience - at some point during use, my wired headphones just don’t show up anymore. A reboot fixes this, I still want to look at ‘milder fixes’ (unloading of kernel drivers, service restarts), but in months of daily driving I have not got around to this yet.
How can I daily a device with these audio issues? Well, I have always hated unscheduled calls, and force people to deal with it now. Also, if things don’t work: Reboot, call back, works.
If I remember well, the guy on the video played audio (speakers and bluetooth) and called through the phone, so IDK what partial means, maybe some specific breakage, or the wiki is not updated.
He opened youtube, the desktop website loads (I think the best website for a smartphone would be the mobile youtube, but the desktop one loaded and played videos).
There’s a lot of DEs for postmarketos, there’s KDE mobile, phosh, some WMs too, etc.
About getting only a few devices 100%, I disagree. If there was only some phones with postmarketos, I couldn’t get one, like the Oneplus 6T, there isn’t one selling online in Brazil right now, I would have to import it, so the other best I could find was the Redmi Note 9s, this gives options, even if it’s not the best I could contribute if I find something wrong, because why not? It’s a enthuasiast operating system, so I guess more development can happen if more devices (easily bought ones) are at least compatible.
If I remember well, the guy on the video (…) called through the phone, so IDK what partial means
I paid attention at that part; he specifically said that the call appears to go through but he doesn’t hear anything, whethe he calls himself or receives a call.
Yeah, so it’s bad :/
Unfortunately nothing seems to concretely support VOLTE right now
Select Halium devices do (e.g., FuriLabs FLX1, Jolla C2, Xiaomi Poco X3 NFC with Ubuntu Touch), but the issue is that it (AFAIU) also depends on whether the carrier agrees which IMHO gives these companies more power than they should be legally allowed to.
On mainline, there’s 81voltd now (said to work on Pixel 3a, OnePlus 6(T} etc): https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/modem/81voltd
Yeah, I think volte might be hard to implement, and might be device specific. Volte on the Oneplus 6 is experimental, so in the future it might come to other devices.
AFAIK volte on any of them is quite hard as there is no single standard for IMS. Some org actually funded a unified attempt recently so we’ll see how that goes.
Yeah, what sucks is without it you can only make voip calls in the USA
Your best bet is (sadly) something Halium based. Those Furi phones or something with Ubuntu Touch.
on that note, for a practical device, we desperately need some better universal options for setting up dual boot.
I disagree. Why would that be essential?
What would the other OS be?Android, so you’ve got a backup when you’re unexpectedly in a situation where Linux can’t handle some niche situation off the golden path?
I’m pretty sure Android would fight for its dominance over all internal storage tooth & nail, but otoh it’s still somehow possible to dual boot Windows/Linux, so.
My phone OS can run Android apps, so I’d go for that first.
you would probably want something like lineage, graphene, or whatever else isn’t googlified aosp.
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@A_norny_mousse That link doesn’t load in any of my browsers (chromium, vivaldi, waterfox).
Can you give a summary of what it says?
There’s no link in my post.
Are you saying you cannot read the post body?
This device is aimed at enthusiasts and developers, it is not a consumer-ready smartphone. Core features do not work.
Exactly the opposite of what I specified in my OP.
Somebody else mentioned this combo, and the conclusion is unfortunately pretty much the same.
Don’t get me wrong, PostmarketOS looks really good. I’m not sure I’m happy with a Gnome shell though, and I wonder how deeply it integrates into the core system, i.e. how easy it would be to use something else instead.
You have many choices of GUI if you don’t like Gnome. https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Category:Interface
I doubt a straight swich between GUIs is possible; OK, the wiki has a tutorial stub for each, but is the abstraction layer over the hardware good enough that things like call, audio, ringtone etc. just plug in?
That said I’m once again impressed by the PMOS wiki (and, by extension, the project itself). It’s clear and informative and they are very honest about what works and what does not work. I still think they’re dreaming too big, and if they get there it will be long after others have succeeded with fewer devices and more specialised system images. But then again, FOSS efforts are never really wasted even if the project they originated from does not succeed.
I’m using sxmo, and plasma is also an option.
