I swear they unveiled the libre phone 10 years ago.
The only way to sucdeed here is to legally force all phones to have unlocked bootloader.
This isn't even the worst problem. O think the biggest one is proprietary blob drivers, that kills the possibility of keep your phone updated and a general solution that works for most phones instead of an ad-hoc hack for each one.
I disagree - all of those are solvable if the core platform is free
Tell me more about the phone! This has taken so long and I am ready to migrate to an open phone even if it's only for texting at this point.
Screw this OS monopoly by Apple and Alphabet.
Open to simple solutions here. I have a Pixel 4a 5g and iPhone 12 atm.
I’d love to try it, but I imagine it will take 20 years for something like this to come even close to usable as a daily driver.
your pixel probably runs graphene, degoogle it.
you could probably run linux on it today too.
GrapheneOS for Pixel 4a 5G is deprecated.
What's keeping me from doing this is that i won't be able to run my banking apps anymore then. And I can't be arsed to carry two phones
I mean, carrying two phones would defeat most of the purpose anyway if one isn't degoogled in the first place, they're still getting all that tracking and they'll be able to associate it with all the online activity of your degoogled phone that's conveniently always in the same location.
Graphene is actually better than most custom ROMs in that it can contain Play Services and a few other apps, effectively acting as 2 phones in one. Where I'm from, banking apps don't need strong Play Integrity, just Play Services.
Install waydroid or something or use the browser. The more you put off switching the worse it's going to get for everyone. You can also just keep another phone in your car on airplane mode and connect it to your hotspot when you need to check your account. There are ways I guess.
Well it might not even be a phone, maybe it's only a software project that needs to partner with manufacturers that would include it in their phones. The article doesn't really mention much.
Either way, I'm starting to get excited.
This is the original article
https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-turns-forty-with-a-new-president-and-a-new-campaign
I salute the early adopters who will suffer all the inconveniences of startups so the wider public can enjoy a non-corporate phone in the future. o7
I'm looking forward to get one of these just to play around with it, and maybe making some custom stuff for it.
I've got a Google Pixel 3a with postmarketOS installed on it right now for testing, and it really is a two-pronged issue with both hardware and software. Because it's an older phone the battery drains within a few hours, nowhere close to all-day use. Because most of the software is designed for the desktop certain things are just impossible to use (the big pain point for me is Anki, but on the other hand it's impressive how many GTK apps conform very nicely to the screen). The keyboard still feels pretty rough.
Hopefully the FSF dipping their hat into the ring will help existing projects like this in a rising-tide-raises-all-ships sort of way. Would be a shame for them to put effort into a software stack that goes nowhere (GNU Hurd), and pour $$$ into a hardware project that doesn't make it to market or doesn't do its job better than a cracked smartphone from 5+ years ago.
I think it is possible to switch to it now and have things mostly work out for you, but it will make your life harder. I remember switching to Ubuntu around 2010 and it's almost to that level of experience. You'll be giving up a lot, apps you "need" won't work, but it's at the point where it is a complete usable experience. For those that are willing to suffer for FOSS, I mean.
I hope they can pull this off because we really need this.
Heard of Hurd, I don't think they can.
Maybe Hurd never went anywhere but they are responsible for as much of what constitutes "Linux" as the Linux kernel is. Linux never would have amounted to much without GCC, the GNU tools, and the GPL.
Hopefully this will recruit projects that already have significant headstart, such as Pine64. Otherwise, it would merely be performative.
I want a Linux phone so bad that I refuse to think about what it would be like because i'd be upset afterwards. 
I have an original PinePhone. The phone itself is horribly outdated and slow, but the software itself (Phosh+Gnome) is suprisingly okay. Given a good enough phone (as in hardware) I can see myself actually using it and not being annoyed more than I was with early Androids.
Unfortunately what I understand is that FSFE doesn't intend to do hardware, only software platform, so I wonder whether they'll come up with anything interesting.
Running PostmarketOS on hardware such as the Oneplus 6T (which is 8 years old now) shows that you could truly have dog shit cheap hardware for this. As long as you have decent driver support for it.
I'm just over here, mad that I have a Oneplus 7 pro lying around and there's no port for that. For none of the 3 distros I could find that support the 6T. So I'm suspecting there's some reason why it's just not feasible.
It's an epic phone and it could be so good with a lighter weight OS than Android.
I'm making this comment with a OnePlus 6T I got 8 years ago when it was new and it has never needed repairs, so I wouldn't exactly call it dogshit. Even the battery still lasts a couple days of heavy use before needing a charge, though that may have more to do with my efforts in reducing software overhead over the years. (Also making sure almost everything I ever view on it has an AMOLED dark background)
No I love the one plus 6t, but I’m more pointing out that the hardware requirements are extremely low at this point. Didn’t mean to offend
Oooh, I wonder if they're going to pursue a free phone based on Risc-V. It's a longshot but if they pull that off, it'd be like feeding two birds with one scone.
Linux mobile phones are the fusion power of the FOSS world, always "right around the corner."
All the pieces are there, but none of them work together smoothly enough to be functional for anybody except the most hardcore FOSS enthusiasts.
When Proton started, it was kind of a joke, killed the Steam Machine idea in large part because the game compatibility was so limited. A decade later, we have a multi billion dollar handheld PC market lead by the Steam Deck, a Linux handheld that can play tens of thousands of Windows games without issue, in some cases with better performance than their native platform.
So it's certainly possible for things to completely change, but we need a big player or consortium of players to unite with a shared goal of getting a Linux Phone to the state where it's genuinely able to replace a traditional Android or Apple phone.
I'm very cautiously optimistic, I think it would come together much faster than Proton did for Linux gaming, but again, there needs to be a really heavy push into a singular device to start off. Like how the Steam Deck was, it allowed devs to have a singular platform to target for compatibility. Then, as the platform matures, competitors & innovators can enter the market and expand options, like how now there are multiple distros with builds for handhelds, like Bazzite, Nobara, and CachyOS.
When Proton started, it was kind of a joke, killed the Steam Machine idea in large part because the game compatibility was so limited. A decade later, we have a multi billion dollar handheld PC market lead by the Steam Deck, a Linux handheld that can play tens of thousands of Windows games without issue, in some cases with better performance than their native platform.
Proton's existence did not overlap the existence of the Steam Machine program, like at all. Proton's initial release was on the 21st of August 2018. Steam Machines were first released in 2015 and had been delisted from Steam entirely by April 2018.
Wine existed back then, sure, but Steam Machines didn't benefit from DXVK, VKD3D, or any of the myriad per-game and gaming-oriented tweaks that Valve and Codeweavers have made to Wine in the version bundled with Proton. For most people, the prospect of using Wine on a Steam Machine was a huge pain at best. Valve's official position at the time was that they were helping pay for Linux ports of games.
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