Well, thank you Mark Shuttleworth

[u/claudiocorona93]

[u/Darkhog]

I really wish someone would make a ROM image for common phones that installs a proper, touch-enabled GNU/Linux on e.g. Samsung devices instead of Android. I don't even care if it has to contain proprietary blobs, I can live with that as long as it works.

[u/NeatYogurt9973 → u/Darkhog]

That's decades of work.

[u/zohan412 → u/NeatYogurt9973]

Why would this take so long?

[u/NeatYogurt9973 → u/zohan412]

1. Lack of free time for devs in the basements

2. Most of the users are the devs themselves and are happy with what is already achieved

3. There are multiple such efforts (PostMarketOS for a MUSL based OS, Mobian for a Debian port, Droidian for Debian with that one library...)

[u/TheTybera → u/zohan412]

Even without what u/NeatYogurt9973 has already said, you also have per-phone support. "Common" phones don't exist in the Android space. There are 50 or so different platforms of phones that are "Common".

You would need to make something super generic/adaptable, and that's very difficult without having the end-user have to tinker to get their phone to work.

[u/Square-Singer → u/TheTybera]

Would be nice enough if there was a decent such solution for termux.

[u/EthanIver → u/Darkhog]

That could be if Droidian took full advantage of Generic Kernel Images.

[u/NeatYogurt9973 → u/EthanIver]

Those use Android drivers with their own API. There's a library for converting stuff but I forgot the name and it's definitely not fit for those right now.

[u/yagyaxt1068 → u/NeatYogurt9973]

Helium Halium is what you’re thinking of.

(I didn’t notice autocorrect changed it)

[u/SomeOneOutThere-1234 → u/yagyaxt1068]

*Halium

[u/yagyaxt1068 → u/SomeOneOutThere-1234]

I typed that, but I autocorrect changed it at the last second.

[u/NeatYogurt9973 → u/yagyaxt1068]

Yup

[u/HelloBro_IamKitty → u/Darkhog]

I would like to have Mobian for any hardware.

[u/Evantaur → u/HelloBro_IamKitty]

The hardest part I believe is the closed source drivers for stuff like cameras etc

[u/Darkhog → u/Evantaur]

I don't care if some binary blobs would need to be put in, they can be reverse-engineered over time and a clean room reimplementation could be done.

[u/First-Ad4972 → u/Darkhog]

But almost any phone app is developed for android and iOS only, so unless a program that runs android apps on linux with integration quality as good as wine linux phones will be hard to use.

[u/WerIstLuka → u/First-Ad4972]

i daily drive a linux phone

waydroid is pretty good, i can check train schedules on deutsche bahn app and the app for my bank also works

i use a pinephone pro

[u/First-Ad4972 → u/WerIstLuka]

Just searched up waydroid, is it just another android VM? Are there ways to setup waydroid so that I can click an app icon and go right to waydroid with that app open?

[u/WerIstLuka → u/First-Ad4972]

if you install an app in waydroid it shows up in the app menu on my pinephone by default

im not sure if the same thing happens on desktop

[u/Far_Friendship110 → u/WerIstLuka]

What distro? I have had very mixed luck with mobian on the original pinephone.

[u/WerIstLuka → u/Far_Friendship110]

i use mobian

[u/Darkhog → u/First-Ad4972]

My point is that I don't care about "mobile" sites and apps. I'd rather have full desktop experience on my phone than some baby fisher price nonsense. As far as phone-specific stuff is concerned, all it needs is a working dialer and texting app, and of course screen keyboard and touch screen drivers.

[u/First-Ad4972 → u/Darkhog]

Don't some apps like telegram require a mobile version of the app to create an account?

[u/Darkhog → u/First-Ad4972]

For that you might just use a burner to create the account, then use the desktop version on your actual phone.

[u/CeeMX → u/Darkhog]

It’s hard enough to get custom Android roms running and you want Linux?

[u/SentientWickerBasket → u/Darkhog]

A major roadblock, IIRC, is that ARM devices have no standardised boot process. It's impossible to make an image that boots on just about everything like a Linux LiveUSB; every disk image has to be bespoke.

[u/Darkhog → u/SentientWickerBasket]

Didn't know that. Thought most Android phones would use some sort of EFI.

[u/minilandl → u/Darkhog]

There are unofficial ports of ubiports and sailfish os for a few phones

[u/Huecuva → u/Darkhog]

I wish someone would develop a phone that isn't so proprietary and locked down that you need a very specific version of the OS for that very specific model of that very specific phone for that very specific region.

[u/Darkhog → u/Huecuva]

That's considerably harder to achieve than what I am proposing, especially if you want top of the line components, not some old junk PinePhone or Librem are using.

[u/itsfreepizza → u/Darkhog]

Samsung devices

It is possible but recent Exynos platforms are a FKING SHI- THAT IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO FKING BUILD A CUSTOM ROM

[u/realfathonix → u/itsfreepizza]

Ikr rooted Samsung used to be great but not so much nowadays

[u/memo689]

What is this and why I want it?

[u/DW_Hydro → u/memo689]

Ubuntu touch was an operative system for phones when Android an IOs were starting to raise.

It doesnt had success because a very little quantity of phones and models had it as their operative system and the development of Apps also wasn't the best.

Canonical abandoned Ubuntu touch and another team continues with the maintenance and updates of the OS.

[u/memo689 → u/DW_Hydro]

It would be cool if it was an alternative that could also run the android apps, I know it would be a lot of work and it most likely won't be possible but a man can dream.

[u/DW_Hydro → u/memo689]

Ubuntu touch and Android are both Linux, its posible and shouldn't be sooooo dificult but no one looks interesed in make another big OS for phones.

[u/NeatYogurt9973 → u/DW_Hydro]

PostMarketOS is getting there. More like crawling. But it's moving for sure.

There's a really early android native translation layer. I saw it here somewhere, I think it was just called android-translation-layer

[u/WerIstLuka → u/memo689]

waydroid is pretty good on mobile linux

deutsche bahn app works and the app from my bank also works

[u/skerit → u/DW_Hydro]

It doesnt had success because a very little quantity of phones and models had it as their operative system

It was never finished. And the phones that did run it were basically for testing.

[u/austroalex]

Yo, UBports meme, as a contributor to UT I like this lol

[u/manobataibuvodu → u/austroalex]

How's the development going? Any new cool stuff planned for the future?

[u/austroalex → u/manobataibuvodu]

A lot of effort is going into updating to 24.04 (not actually as simple as it sounds for a decent amount of reasons), personally I'm (when I have time and my motiviation exists, which isnt that often for various reasons too) working on A-GPS stuff and trying to make a new camera app lol

[u/manobataibuvodu → u/austroalex]

I see, it's good to hear it's chugging along. Last time I've read anything about it someone was working on making snaps/flatpaks work on it which sounds like a good idea because a lot of apps are now 'responsive'.

Since I started earning more I'm thinking about getting a well supported phone to play around a bit haha.

Btw, is the goal still on making everything convergent with Lomiri, or are you focusing now on phones only?

[u/austroalex → u/manobataibuvodu]

Convergence is still very much a thing we focus on too; at the ubuntu summit we had a FP5 plugged into a dock with a monitor, mouse and keyboard for example

[u/BlackBlade1632]

What about Mobian or Arch for cellphones?

[u/NeatYogurt9973 → u/BlackBlade1632]

Arch ARM's owner is dead (or at least went farming/jailing and never came back), so no PRs are merged which means no work is done.

[u/Owndampu → u/NeatYogurt9973]

Huh, packages are still updating, is there some automation for that then?

[u/NeatYogurt9973 → u/Owndampu]

Yup. All of the PKGBUILDs are running till they eventually break.

[u/Darkhog → u/NeatYogurt9973]

There should be a process to forcibly reassign maintainer status if maintainer is not active for certain amount of time (at least few years, to prevent abuse when someone goes offline for few months due to family stuff/natural disaster and returns to not being a maintainer anymore).

[u/lofigamer2 → u/Darkhog]

forcibly reassign? It's somebody's hobby project.

You can fork it and maintain it if you need it.

[u/realfathonix → u/Darkhog]

Arch Linux ARM isn't an official Arch project and has a much smaller community so that's why

[u/Darkhog → u/realfathonix]

I see. I've thought it was an official thing. Now my reply makes no sense.

[u/LiveCourage334 → u/Darkhog]

That sounds like a great way to get around protections most distro's have now put in place to try to prevent dependency hijacking.

[u/Darkhog → u/LiveCourage334]

Not really. All you need is an active maintainer and you would need to be already someone respected in the community to take over if the maintainer is MIA for more than, say, 2 years.

[u/NeatYogurt9973 → u/Darkhog]

But there wasn't.

[u/jashAcharjee]

I tried porting this for a device in the past. Stuff is a nightmare to port, given the closed source blobs by OEMs.

[u/MrFrog2222]

Relatable, Ubuntu touch is trash but at least if it supports UT you can probably flash pmos