Has anybody attempted to daily drive linux on their smartphone? like sailfish os, postmarket, librem, etc. I’ve been getting more interested in them as my pixel 4a is starting to look real old

How was it it? Were you able to run banking apps? battery life? experience with using CJK keyboards?

As far as I can tell, RCS messages are not supported anywhere, in addition to NFC payments (no surprise there). 5G seems also iffy

  • tiwdll@lemmy.ml
    2·
    8 hours ago

    Sadly linux on phones is currently in its infancy. I mean, there is a reason why people use other custom ROMs and not linux. I ended up just switching to lineage os, at least it works

  • snroh@lemm.ee
    13·
    2 days ago

    nowhere close to being daily driver material. and I don’t mean the esoteric stuff you mention (NFC, 5G, etc.) I mean just normal, everyday stuff, like you turn it on and it works. source: I own the fastest device supported by pmOS and no UI (gnome, phosh, plasma, etc) works even remotely acceptable.

    this is a fun project to tinker with and marvel at some choices made but if you’re thinking you can switch, that’s simply not an item on the menu.

    them guys are working on super-complex stuff with no funds to speak of and expecting anything resembling an OS that’s developed for close to two decades by the richest corporations in the world isn’t realistic.

  • Eat_Your_Paisley@lemm.ee
    15·
    2 days ago

    I think were still pretty far away from a true Linux phone it seems we’re in the Linux desktop circa 2002. Unless you’re willing to deal with alpha software its still best to flash a ROM.

  • FriendBesto@lemmy.ml
    4·
    16 hours ago

    Was in the market for a new phone and was thinking of getting the latest Pine phone, and upon research, I found that like others have stated, it is more of a piece of kit to tinker with and not a daily driver. The OS is still being baked and at the current rate it might take a few years before it is as responsive and as useful as Android is day in, and day out. There is just no contest. Which was a bit disappointing as I actually though the OS was far more developed.

    I do hope that progress is made, but, if you need a phone that works well, then stick with Android for now. Hardware on latest Pine is better than on the first phone but still Mid, at best, and it is not cheap for the hardware you get.

  • phr@discuss.tchncs.de
    15·
    2 days ago

    i started to use ubuntu touch on a pixel5 in 2020. did this for almost two years until the phone broke down. it also was my first smartphone. so it opened up new possibilities.

    i switched to a google free android after this. honestly i miss ubuntu touch from time to time especialy for its keyboard. i never used banking apps or the like, but even now there is one app i need some workarounds. so yeah. i guess the linux phone is viable for me. i just didn’t want to go for second hand hardware this time. and at the time the phone i went for wasn’t yet supported by ut.

    haven’t had a look into the linux phone for a while. but will definetly, the next time i need to switch phones

    • Patch@feddit.uk
      5·
      2 days ago

      Ubuntu Touch is such a nice user experience. If it had an Android-tier app ecosystem it’d be a very nice daily driver.

      • phr@discuss.tchncs.de
        6·
        2 days ago

        back then it didn’t have signal-client i could get to work. that is of course a hard no if you work in the us military …

    • Sinfaen@beehaw.orgOP
      1·
      2 days ago

      Sounds like it’s possible, but maybe with a backup phone. Unfortunately I do have some apps that I need to be able to run which only support iOS and android

  • TheMightyCat@lemm.ee
    9·
    2 days ago

    I’ve used a pinephone pro with arch and postmarket.

    It works, but you really have to love linux to use it as a daily driver.

    My banking app (bunq) worked using way droid.

  • muhyb@programming.dev
    10·
    2 days ago

    A lot of banking apps don’t even run on a custom Android ROM and it gets worse. Haven’t tried CJK keyboards on PostmarketOS so wondering that as well.

      • Captain Beyond@linkage.ds8.zone
        3·
        2 days ago

        I just think it’s worth to keep in mind that the most widely used smartphone OS already is a Linux… especially since people who want so called “real Linux phones” end up wanting to run Android crapware on them anyway.

        If you want a Linux phone that can run Android apps, they are very plentiful. You can even run so-called Linux applications including entire desktop environments. Android is very much not a “fake Linux.”

        (That is not to say I have no interest in non-Android Linuxes, I just don’t think it’s worth switching just so you can claim to run “real Linux”)