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Comment by undecisive | Hacker News Reader

It seems a glaring omission not to mention the Astro Slide [1] which I seriously hope will be shipping in the next month, or even the F(x)tec range of phones[2]. The former has options for linux or dual boot with android, comes with a slide-out physical keyboard. Not top of the line processor, but not far off. Not the most stylish design (if that's even possible with a slide-out keyboard) but not far off. And definitely not a "luxury" pricetag.

It's good that these devices are starting to appear - it's a shame that many of them are either so niche that they can justify the markup, or likely to require a large amount of skill to perform and manage the linux install.

One day, we might meet in the middle.

[1]: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/astro-slide-5g-transforme... [2]: https://www.fxtec.com

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A keyboard does not a Linux phone make. All the Planet Computing phones are just Android phones with shitty Mediatek chipsets. Don't believe their marketing - their phones will never run mainline Linux, and maintenance of the proprietary kernel fork is abandoned the moment they release the next device.

They are pretty practical; boot Linux or Android and a keyboard make them, for me, practical on the road Linux devices and phones. I have the pinephone which is miles from practical still but I like that it is a Linux phone so have to support it. We need more and different hardware like both of these to get adoption. At least we are allowed, from the very inception, to actually put Linux on them and that is already quite a think for 'modern' phones.

Fortunately it seems their rabid community of fans are dedicated and clever enough to provide custom ROMs once the company ditches their older devices. Still not a great substitute for actual software support.

In today's market, I genuinely prefer a little Bluetooth keyboard with a dock for propping up a tablet or phone. If I need it, it's way better than the membrane garbage on these things, and if I don't need it, it isn't unnecessarily bulking up the phone in my pocket.

Was the last update for Cosmo not in April? [1]

And isn't the point of Open Source that if someone distributes tweaked binaries, you can always demand the source code - do they not do that?

But this was kinda my point - I'm aware and resigned to the fact that to run linux, I will need to do a bit of work myself. I would hope that the "premium price point" products of the original post would guarantee to do the heavy lifting for me.

And if I'm honest, I'm part of the target market that likes a reason to tinker every so often. But I appreciate the heads-up.

[1]: https://support.planetcom.co.uk/index.php/Linux_for_Cosmo

Those two don’t have mainline Linux, they use a custom out of tree 4.x kernel.

Thanks for the info. I tried a quick search to see if I could find video or screenahots of it running a Linux distro, but couldn't find any.

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