I wish Valve would make a Steam Phone. They seem to know how to do Linux devices.
Valve laptop to revive the thinkpad glory days
Hell, I think even Raspberry Pi Foundation getting into the phone market would be a game changer too.
they don’t know to make a good android app, and you want them to make an entire cellphone💀💀
They made an entire Linux-powered portable game system that’s revolutionizing Linux gaming at the moment…an embedded engineer is not the same skillset as an app developer. Not even close.
They made a device with a proprietary operating system and proprietary software. If you really want that, why not just use Android?
Since when is Arch proprietary?
Steam OS is proprietary.
But Arch contains proprietary firmware, so technically it’s not fully free software either.
SteamOS is open source with some closed sources component. But most important think you seems not being able to understand is that Valve provide high support to Open source community, which means it wouldn’t be surprising if they decided to drop a open source phone.
SteamOS is open source with some closed sources component.
So it is not free software. It’s proprietary, unethical software that takes away your freedom. Just like Windows, Android, etc.
But most important think you seems not being able to understand is that Valve provide high support to Open source community, which means it wouldn’t be surprising if they decided to drop a open source phone.
By doing what? They only want to lock you in their proprietary platform. Most of heir software is proprietary, their games are proprietary and they restrict users with DRM. It’s a terrible company, which abuses their users. If Steam Deck contains proprietary software, why would their phone by anything different?
Linux phones will need to run established Android apps to get users, devs won’t move where there is no users, users won’t move there if there aren’t apps. It’s almost cyclical
Right now we’re working with people who are exceptions to this, users who want to experiment and devs who don’t care about money.
Waydroid runs decently on the pinephone. On a phone with better specs, it might be downright usable for proprietary apps.
Potentially a proton-style layer could really ease transition, like on the steamdeck
I appreciate the people who daily drive pinephones. They are paving the way for when they’ll be viable alternatives for the masses. (Or verifying that they won’t be, we’ll see.)
I was downvoted before for suggesting the Pinetab is not a viable Android or iPad replacement. That thing doesn’t even have a working wifi driver yet, you have to plug in a dongle just to connect to wifi. I’d love to have good smart devices running Linux one day, but we’re not there yet.
Meanwhile me absolutely running a dualboot Oneplus 6 with lineage and droidian that has had kupferos, mobian and postmarketos in the past… (yes, i distrohop my phone, so what?)
I’m quite optimistic about a usable Linux phone in the near future, maybe 5 years from now or so. When smartphones were a new thing, it was really hard for open source projects without a major company backing them to keep up with all the new developments. Hence all the projects that died out. But innovation on smartphones has basically come to a halt these days. Sure, your phone can get a little bit faster and have round displays now, but nobody cares anymore. Nothing of all that is essential. So, give it some time, we’ll get there.
I’m optimistic about the apps and desktop environments. We have made huge progress. But the problem is the hardware support. It seems that there are very few ARM SoCs, which work well with the mainline Linux kernel. So PinePhone uses a 2010 SoC and PinePhone Pro a 2016 SoC. And after all that time and despite community’s efforts to upstream everything, the mainline support is still not complete and we still use custom kernels.
https://blog.mobian.org/posts/2023/09/30/paperweight-dilemma/
I hope its stable enough when i stop using my current phone
Here is a recent blog post about someone’s experience with PinePhone Pro: https://zerwuerfnis.org/daily-driving-the-pinephone-pro
I have the original PinePhone and it seems to have less issues, but it’s also slower and has a crappy camera.
Looks like for me I will have to wait for WhatsApp to be cross-app, and the phone call audio quality will be an issue.
There seems to be some progress with the call audio issue, so it might get fixed soon. As for WhatsApp you can probably run that with Waydroid (but eventually you should switch to some free software messenger).
My bad I have not phrased my sentence properly, I am already using signal and with hopes that WhatsApp allows ppl to send messages to another WhatsApp number from my preferred app here signal then I can communicate with my friends and colleagues
Is Facebook planning to do that?
That’s what one of sources that I read has mentioned about it
That’s very interesting.
Daily drivin Manjaro (Plasma mobile) on my Pinephone Pro for over a year now. If you are not into the whole “taking pictures all the time” thing you can easiy use it as a daily driver. (This message was typed on it)
I respond to you just because yours is the last of the “I daily drive a PinePhone” comments, but this is meant for everyone with the same opinion.
Do you, in all honesty, feel comfortable enough with your device that you would confidently run a business solely through it?
I’m not an influencer, so my job isn’t “taking pictures all the time”, but still I wouldn’t rely on a Linux phone to run my business because I cannot risk:- to miss a phone call, a text or an email;
- to run out of battery if I’m outside my office all day long;
- to have a faulty GPS should I use a navigator to meet a client;
- that Bluetooth disconnects mid-call for the 5th time in a day while I’m driving;
- that I have to take a picture to collect information and the latest update borked the camera.
All of these things happen frequently on a Linux phone, and if you have a job where you can live through it good for you, I envy you TBH.
On the other hand, keep in mind that it’s not just the “Instagram people” that need a reliable device.That’s what separate work phones are for :/
I couldn’t run a business on any phone, frankly. That’s what computers are for.
Also the GPS worked fine for me.
Let me guess, Manjaro or another unstable distro is where things broke for you? Mobian did not break things on update, much like Debian on desktop. I know the person you replied to uses Manjaro, but if you want a stable experience you really shouldn’t.
And most people aren’t running a business, so there’s that.
I don’t deny that the user experience isn’t great, it is development/early adopter hardware, but it’s definitely usable as a daily driver.
It depends by what job you have: a plumber, for example, could probably run their business entirely with their phone.
But we’re missing the point, I’m not saying a smartphone can replace a PC, whether it be Linux, iOS or Android. I’m saying that If you need to do all the tasks that are required by a “modern day job” and you need to do them well, then I’m sorry (I really am) but Linux phones aren’t ready yet.And most people aren’t running a business, so there’s that.
Most people don’t have the skill to troubleshoot a Linux phone, why don’t we count them too in the statistics?
Then, I used “running a business” as just an example to indicate the “urgency of a functioning phone” for whatever reason: it might just be that you have a relative you have to take care of, or that you are a doctor/nurse that can be contacted on every moment, or that you’re an a job hunt and cannot miss the call… I can go on for hours on why in A.D. 2024 a person from whichever social context cannot afford to be off the gridMost people don’t have the skill to troubleshoot a Linux phone, why don’t we count them too in the statistics?
This community is called linuxmemes. You are talking to GNU/Linux users here. For everyone else it’s going to be hard, obviously. It takes time to learn to use a completely different operating system.
Who’s gonna tell him Android is based on Linux ?
Android is Linux, they literally use the Linux kernel. They replace most other stuff, but Linux it is.
They even work towards mainline kernel support, making updates easier for longer times.
Android is a good example, why “Linux” is not a good term for “Desktop Gnu+Linux”.
Nobody because everybody knows this. Android is still not what people mean when they say linux
Uhhh it definitely is. I literally have a Linux terminal running on my Android phone.
You’ve missed the point I’m afraid.
While people know that Android is based on Linux, a fact that isn’t in question, when people say a “Linux” phone, they’re not discounting that Android exists or that it runs Linux, they mean to infer that they’re discussing non-Android Linux phones. If they meant Android as a Linux phone, they would have said Android.
While android is in the set of “Linux”, not all things that are in the set of Linux are Android.
Since we have a specific word for GNU/Linux - Android devices, but almost all Linux based alternatives to Android for mobile devices is basically referred to simply as a “Linux phone”, it can be, and should be, assumed that the speaker is referring to Linux phones which are not Android.
It’s a nuance of language and technically not wrong to say that “Android is Linux” but that’s not what most of the readers understood to be the speakers intention.
That was the correction that the previous poster tried to portray.
Simply put, most Linux enthusiasts and community, doesn’t really consider android to be “one of them” since, though it’s Linux at its core/kernel, almost everything built on top of it from there is some bastardized/closed source software, or relies on something closed source. Most of the things people want to run on their phone (browsers, camera software, even the dialer), is almost entirely written, controlled and closed source by Google. While some of the “guts” of the OS might be open source/GNU versions, the interfaces are largely all closed source software that Google has published to run on top of Android specifically. This doesn’t fit with the philosophy of GNU/Linux, and therefore Android is largely not included when speaking about Linux, at least for Linux enthusiasts.
Linux people tend to forget, that people want something that just works, why I love Linux, I have a mac and later bought an Iphone, the UX difference of using and airpod pro with an Android phone and an Iphone is just miles apart, I can literally have it in my ears, click on a video on my mac and the sound transfers, then as I go out for a walk with my dog and start a podcast, the airpods switch back to my phone without any hassle.
Before that I would have to disconnect and reconnect bluetooth multiple times to switch between the android phone and the macbook.
Granted I maybe care a lot more about good UX than normal people, but good UX like that just makes me hard.
I switched from Windows to Linux because it just works
