If they wouldn’t have then X years later there would have been first beta release and zero apps on it except for a calculator app, a notes app, a calendar app, and maybe a mail app developed by the core developer team. The post would have definitely reached the top of hn, so that’d be a plus.
If prior "Linux phone" projects have taught me, it's that "based on desktop Linux" is a great way to have a ton of apps that install just fine, but can't meaningfully be used.
Not even just "requires a mouse/keyboard", but a lot of things of the form "assumes a reasonable screen size", ...
Android already is mobile: making it better makes sense. Linux already runs fine on it: termux and things like NOMone desktop combined with allowing virtual memory and keep apps running like some brands (Blackview, Oukitel) allow, you are there a lot of the way. Then Android desktop support (again, many brands have something already but it is now in Android mainline it seems). I use an oukitel rt7 as my main daily driver: it is rooted. It has some quirks and of course is very far from open, but things works, -ish. I would spend far more time on contributing if we had an open choice(or at least working) here that supports the 5g. On other phones/tablets, it is the fingerprint sensors, 3d face camera, but also different 'niche' auxillaries that would get far more attention if you at least can start with something that is (mostly open) and works. If we have coverage for a bunch of devices with everything working, it will be more attractive to work on other/newer ones.
With Linux, you will need, as I have seen on my pine phone, way too much focus on just basic apps which still are not good compared to their android equivalent: spending time there is not spending time on hardware support...
It makes a lot of sense to me. There's a huge amount of work that's already been put into the Android ecosystem that can be used in a free software phone.
Trying to build a non-Android Linux phone that is competitive is just not practical at this point. It would require an enormous amount of funding.
It's the right decision: Android is mostly open source and works well. Not to mention that in real life, right now, people need access to certain apps as a firm requirement.
Have you seen the attempts of past "Linux phones"? Usability, performance and usually battery life were horrible and progress was also slow.
There have been comments about the race to support recent phones. I hope that Fairphone will looked at as a target device. It would be a good cultural fit and they don't have a yearly device cycle which should also help.
I think it gives them the ability to compare device support of "LineageOS with vendor kernel" and "LineageOS with unblobbed near-upstream kernel" as a measure of progress. If you get the latter working as well as the former, bringing up PostmarketOS on the same kernel is a much smaller problem.
yes, but it's probably the quickest path to market with a reasonably certain customer satisfaction.
Doesn't stop you on working from there once that milestone is reached.. I would certainly welcome more alternatives in light of the recently announced changes from do-no-evilG
It's an incredible waste and an amazing example of how useless the FSF is today. Instead of supporting real Linux phones they're focusing on trying to degunk Android even more.
Funny, I would have used those exact words had they chosen anything BUT Android as their base.
All the other "freedom" Linux phones are failures (yes I'm sure fsflover will now chime in to but akshually). I know because I bought them all. They all have one thing in common: the software sucks.
And I don't even need apps. Just basic phone functionality (several Linux phones still can't do MMS), a web browser, and no crashes. Unfortunately no Linux phone has been able to give the to me yet. Whereas Android has been delivering for over a decade.
I think that supporting Android as a free platform is a sensible choice. Android has benefited from more than a decade of development by Google, Samsung, and others and provides a polished experience and thousands of apps people actually want to use (and many excellent FOSS options too). AOSP is already "free software" and starting from scratch with Linux would make very little sense at this point. The FSF is right to focus on what matters here, which is hardware on which to run free Android.
