Hacker News Reader

Comment by OJFord | Hacker News Reader

I want a Linux phone.

I like open source too, but I'm not serious about it, I want to be able to fix things or file an issue on GitHub or whatever if necessary, but I don't have the energy to worry about proprietary blobs.

Having control of my phone and its configuration like I do my Linux desktop is what I want, but I'm slightly resigned to perhaps not getting it because of app support (I tried Anbox on my desktop, it was buggy and slow, with a fraction of the RAM I dread to imagine) - so I've been thinking about and occasionally working on a Terraform provider for Android instead. So far I'm using it to install all apps, no Play Store at all; I'd like to have it handle settings too.

So yes, it is Linux more than OSS that appeals to me here, because it's control more than openness that interests me in it. (I suppose some wouldn't see a distinction, and that's partly why it is more important to others.)

View on HN

I think you have it completely backwards. You want a phone that runs a FOSS operating system. It doesn’t matter to you that it is Linux or a BSD or some other open source kernel.

Android is a Linux phone but it’s decidedly not open.

Nah I want a NixOS phone

https://mobile.nixos.org/

No, it's not particularly important to me that the OS is FOSS (it's a bonus I appreciate, but what I dislike about my work Mac is that it's hard to configure and changes between versions and bundles crapware, etc., not that it's not FOSS).

Another Unix would be ok as long as it's not hidden away under a forced UI, with some things unconfigurable, required, etc.

But ultimately I want to share dotfiles between my desktop and phone (sure I might have to accept some amount of conditional guards..) - and that pretty much means Linux and ideally Arch. But only because that's what I happen to use on non-phones.

Would you be happy with a FreeBSD phone?

Only if I can install a program without needing a developer account with the manufacturer.

No! On the other hand, a TempleOS phone would make my day, and the CIA's.

A lot happier than with a linux phone. Would love to have an illumos phone too, but won't get my hopes up for that happening any time soon...

Is somebody working on one?

I have no idea. I was asking because I wanted to understand better the position of the person to whom I replied. They said they wanted Linux specifically, and not just open source.

I didn't understand why it's so important for it to be Linux, as opposed to any other operating system that's as hackable/customizable. So I wanted to know if I had missed something.

> I didn't understand why it's so important for it to be Linux, as opposed to any other operating system that's as hackable/customizable.

I should apologize for my response then. I'd thought you were alluding to iOS, and thought that it was strange to bring that up when discussing configurable OS's.

I don't think it being Linux is too important for people. If somebody made a working FreeBSD for a phone and there was official support for that device, then people wouldn't be all "Well, it's not Linux". I don't think I've seen any interest from BSD maintainers to bring any form of it to phones though.

As it is now, the PinePhone is officially supported by Manjaro and that makes it the most obvious option. Also, all attempts thus far to bring open source to mobile has been some form of Linux, so it's natural that when people think "open source phone", it's probably going to be using Linux. PinePhone itself already has 18-ish different distros, including ports of Debian and Ubuntu, so it's certainly well on its way.

If I get a PinePhone then I will try to run NetBSD on it, the SoC is supported by all BSD variants.

Let me know how that goes.

Yes, I would like a FreeBSD-powered phone that can run Android or iOS consumer apps totally sealed inside virtual machines.

One VM per app would need a lot of RAM. Maybe one VM for Linux/Android, and one for iOS, would be a decent compromise. We'd still 'waste' some RAM, but isolation between different Android apps could be handled by cgroups/namespaces.

He said Android or iOS. It seems like massive overkill to have a phone that can run both. Even running Android apps well is a pretty tall order, running iOS apps natively on your own open source phone seems like a pipedream. It took even Google a long time and a lot of investment to get Android apps to work reasonably well on ChromeOS.

If you're talking FreeBSD you would use jails instead which eliminate a lot of the doubled up resources. It's a lot more like docker containers.

True. The question is whether the Linux emulation can be good enough to satisfy Android. There are lots of funny quirks ...

I wish something like CloudAPI/Capsicum would take off to be more secure, while also being an open platform, instead of Linux ubiquity rendering standards irrelevant.

Technically iOS is the closest thing to a *BSD-powered phone, because of the Darwin lineage.

BUt in practical terms it's the most locked platform in existence, so stretching definitions hardly matter here.

A BeOS phone would be pretty sweet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com