this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2024
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 7 months ago (47 children)

Tbh GrapheneOS.

Android is Linux.

And unlike desktop Linux it was able to spread secure and private standards

  • every app is sandboxed, not some opt-in like Flatpak
  • apps start with no permissions (or at least very little), everything is opt-in
  • it is like 99% unbreaking, immutable, it just always works while my desktop Linux broke all the time
  • there is a webview, which can be hardened. Not Electron, which is insecure and bloated
  • energy saving etc work like a charm. 1% battery loss over an entire night!
  • hardware security with trusted element is decades ahead of desktop Linux (Ubuntu is just now getting TPM encryption support)
  • it is a unified platform, with tons of apps, many of them essential (as the platform is so secure), like 2FA, Banking, public services etc. you can have a full FOSS phone though

I am sure excited for other operating systems but they are just toys. GrapheneOS does amazing work that is a 100% alternative today, for real phones with normal prices, good performance and outstanding security.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 7 months ago (1 children)

When i think of Android i don't think of it as part of the gnu/linux ecosystem, but a heavily modified linux kernel turned against the user.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

How is it turned against the user? Androids Linux is highly restricted in that it doesnt support a lot of things, but that makes it extremely stable, while this doesnt mean that apps are also "stable" like in Debian

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

They don't expect users to do development on android.

(Phones should be used like telephones lol.) I'm going to buy a landline phone

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

No a phone is an end device. But I dont think GPL or whatever says you need to be able to modify the code on that device.

Makes no sense.

Btw as I only said this in another comment, afaik android runs a tailored LTS linux kernel. It is not as bloated as regular linux as it contains device drivers and also doesnt need all the random drivers for whatever hardware to run on a specific phone.

So you can say android restricts freedom in exchange for security, but "linux kernel turned against the user" makes no sense. Their kernel is just fine.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Their kernel is just fine.

It is just fine, yeah. The things that restrict what the user can do is the interfaces.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

@scratchandgame @Pantherina i only have an issue when they dont upstream any of the functionality they add... buuuutttt... a lot of the progress linux has made in recent years has been upstreamed evil corporation(tm) code so... i dunno... mixed blessing

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