Is Linux a viable option as mobile OS? I've got a feeling that it is almost as a 'dumb' phone. You got your calculator and SMS app but that's about it.
Or would going to something like LineageOS be a better option?
GNU/Linux phones are full personal computers in your pocket. They can do everything a computer can do: terminal, desktop Firefox, games, convergence (external screen, keyboard, mouse) etc. See my other links about Librem 5 in this thread.
Windowed Android apps running on full screen are desktop apps.
As for install any OS, then I guess Apple platforms aren't computers.
[0] https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque...
> As for install any OS, then I guess Apple platforms aren't computers.
They are not general-purpose computers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24866279.
I am running windowed applications on a desktop, apparently Oxford dictionary needs an update to satisfy your world vision.
I guess all those 8 and 16 bit computers I worked with weren't general purpose either.
It's absolutely not what I mean by general purpose. Please read the reference.
I also only cared for Linux because Microsoft wasn't serious about POSIX support back in the day and it was a solution for my problem to avoid commuting for an hour to access a DG/UX system.
If it's a technical limitation, it's a totally different thing.
I'm sorry that you do not care about the freedom of users. Users who do not know about all these things suffer from unlimited power of developers [0] and cannot do anything to escape various walled gardens and traps of proprietary systems [1].
[0] https://www.gnu.org/important
[1] https://stallman.org/apple.html. Even if the wording there is not perfect, what is listed there is facts.
Do you want to do something proper? Start by not using any software with MIT, BSD or any kid of similar licenses then.
Do the walk that follows the talk.
As someone in the US, I would have to say no, for one reason:
None of the mobile Linux distros yet support group texts (reliably, anyway). If someone sends you a group text, you won't see it. (The only distro that seems to have partial support for it is Ubuntu Touch, and there it seems incomplete; sometimes I would receive group messages and sometimes not. I missed a few important ones this way.)
This is probably only relevant to those in the US as I understand MMS is not as prevalent elsewhere.
I've heard this a few times in connection with the Pinephone, but we certainly do use MMS in Europe.
I seem to recall, assuming my memory is at all reliable, that when the iPhone first launched, Europeans were complaining about the lack of MMS and Americans were saying it wasn't a problem because everyone should just use e-mail.
200 SMS messages (MMS counts here too), unlimited data. Now look at today's: https://www.att.com/plans/wireless/
Even the cheapest plan has unlimited SMS and effectively unlimited MMS as a result. Whether it's used more because it's included or whether it's included because it's used more (probably a bit of both)... I don't think 2007 is a useful reference point for what people expect from their phones today.
Do you have a reference supporting the idea that MMS is mostly relevant to the US and not the rest of the world? It doesn't match up with my experience, but maybe my family and friends are atypical.
Well, thankfully it's not the case. The heart is a ARM processor with plenty of code already ported to run on it, and the surrounding hardware isn't that different from many single board computers that already run complete Linux distributions. As an example, Firefox, GIMP and Libreoffice -the real ones, not dumbed down versions- already do run on the Pinephone.
https://liliputing.com/2019/11/pinephone-smartphone-can-run-...
Keep in mind that the video is one year old, meaning old phone model with less RAM, very young OS and likely no code optimization for apps to run on a phone rather on a desktop PC.
Actually I wouldn't be surprised at all if one year from now we would have more software available for the Pinephone compared to Android. Sometimes it's just a matter of recompiling (huge argument in favor of Open Source). As another example, if Lazarus (lazarus-ide.org) would run on it (it already does on the Raspberry PI and many other ARM boards), one could develop native GUI apps directly on the phone. Probably not comfortable, still possible.
The only problem in my opinion would arise from the unavailability of phone specific apps, particularly closed ones or those depending on proprietary servers whose owners wouldn't give a damn about recompiling their client and are particularly anal retentive wrt allowing 3rd party apps accessing the services, for example Whatsapp. In that case one would have to attempt to emulate a different platform in which run the original proprietary app, which very likely would make things too slow to be useable.