Don’t say, hey android has Linux in it, yeah no, idc, I want to know how far we are from buying a Linux phone at a price point of 200 USD.

A Linux phone is one which is built completely on Linux, uses Linux apps and most important has a terminal.

I don’t want a Linux Phone for privacy, although that’s a great reason, but I want it for the freedom it provides me. Hell, I don’t care if Android itself comes with a terminal and has similar features to Linux, I just want a Terminal which can install apps, where I can write commands and it will execute it. Complete Control on my phone and how it behaves is what I want.

I want to tell it when to sleep, when not to sleep, when to boot, when to edit a file and how, when to take a screenshot and what to do with it and where to save it, etc, etc. I hope you get the idea.

  • wolo
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    1 year ago

    My big killer feature for Linux phones is running Wayland/X11 apps mostly unmodified, if AOSP added support for that I wouldn’t be too disappointed about sticking with it. I’ve tried to make android apps before, but doing things the Android Way™ basically requires you to use java and their bespoke UI primitives, and it always makes me wish I could just use the tools I’m already used to.

    Being able to have intricate control over my phone is nice, but I’d rather do it with a KDE-like settings maze than a terminal because of how tiny the screen is, and if I’m doing something serious that would require a terminal I would rather do it at my desk.

    I definitely think the Android ecosystem has some serious problems, but I already run a custom ROM without Google Play Services installed so I’m fairly well-insulated from that. I do plan on installing a mobile Linux system on my old phone to experiment, but I doubt it will become my system of choice.