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> You can actually install Linux on these old phones, the technical restrictions are long since broken. But there is no funding to make something usable using this capability.

I gave postmarketos a shot for 6 months or so, and sadly I have to agree that it's not ready for daily driving, even by experienced users.

This fairphone 4 on the other hand with lineage 20 looks like it will keep me going for a few more years.

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There is an under appreciated world of difference between “booted Linux” and “I can use this as my only phone”. The community can manage the first one, they typically can’t do the second.

Postmarket OS is a cool project but I wouldn’t count on it ever being more than a neat way to tinker with obsolete devices.

To be clear, it could place calls and run a web browser on mobile data. The device was very much a phone.

It falls down (of course) at the larger list of secondary use cases many take for granted. For me it was mobile navigation, though it would also still hard crash noticeably often. I do expect the crashes at least to be fixed next time I look.

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