- cross-posted to:
- opensource@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- opensource@programming.dev
The project, developed in partnership with veteran free software developer Rob Savoye, aims to create a fully free and open mobile platform, from the firmware to the operating system.
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gimme gimme
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’m celebrating!
As a linux phone guy this is good news. Any more pushing towards a more solid linux phone environment is a big plus.
Removed by mod
Why do you troll like Trump tweets?
Because Our Lord and Savior will spare me in the upcoming months.
I’m not holding my breath either hence “Hurd” project be amazing if this will be faster than 20 years. I’m hopeful at least.
Damn. Software has existed 40 years now?
Not only that: it was big enough to get mad at 40 years ago already.
40 years ago was 1985.
The first version of Microsoft Windows was released at that time, as an GUI overlay of MS-DOS.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_WindowsMS-DOS was released in 1981 as a corporate locked down OS, that he was aggressively pushing to lock down the PC market.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOSAt the same time HP, IBM, and other early computing megacorps were pushing their own locked down OS’s that were partially built off the free software work of the universities.
One example is HP-UX, which was released in 1984 and was a proprietary implementation of Unix System V, which itself was a commercial product from AT&T. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_V
Things were extremely expensive and locked down back then, and we were just getting to the point where computers were becoming common in people’s homes. Most decently funded schools had dedicated computer labs at this point.
They in cahoots with androids killin aosp?
They in cahoots More like they’re mobilizing to counteract Android’s killing of AOSP.
This is 1000% what I was trying to imply, but the downvotes reflect many didn’t get it ig😆
sometimes ya need that /s
It’s wise to question motives but in this case I get the feeling they’re the good guys.
I forgot the /j
This is the original article
https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-turns-forty-with-a-new-president-and-a-new-campaign
Let’s hope this lights a fire under Google’s ass too, so everyone can have free and open phones.
Hopefully this will recruit projects that already have significant headstart, such as Pine64. Otherwise, it would merely be performative.
What a nice thing to do
For all of those following, I emailed Rob and he confirmed that the focus of the project to start is reverse engineering binary blobs on existing android devices, but he is currently only at the discovery phase of picking which phones to start with. He is first checking LineageOS compatible phones using his toolset here: https://codeberg.org/rsavoye/librephone/src/branch/main/doc/index.md
I swear they unveiled the libre phone 10 years ago.
I have a Purism Librem 5 phone which is fully FOSS Linux phone.
The name keeps throwing me off lol
I mean when I was looking up there have been people that have been using the term libre phone for somewhere around a decade or so. Hell I found an old Reddit post from 8 years ago that talked about asking if it’d be possible to make a pure libre phone. And then of course it came across the Lebrim 5 that you mentioned there so I’m sure they originally used that term as well.
Incidentally what do you think of the phone do you have just the standard one or do you have that premium one?
F-droid maybe we’ll find a new good home then?
F-droid for Waydroid enabled Linux phones?
- small userbase
- high resource usage
- still dependant on Google
F-droid for AOSP Android
- still dependant on Google
Honestly, I prefer flatpaks with all the drawbacks, give me 100% freedom while providing Android like comfort… Like the new xdg permissions portal.
If the price is no good maps or banking apps, I’ll gladly pay it. I just wish the graphene team worked on linux instead.
Waydroid isn’t an “emulator” or a fully independent thing like Wine. It runs a full Android system in a container. It’s no more or less dependent on Google than AOSP itself is.
Good point, added to the list.
Honestly as long as they can fucking get something moderately priced that supports VOLTE and a decent camera I’ll buy it
This is absolutely hilarious, a fully libre phone? What processor are they going to use thats 100% libre? Then what OS will it use? Android-libre? What a joke
I’d personally start by actually reading the announcement before complaining about it’s content but you do you I guess
from the firmware to the operating system
Very cool
