These Are the Best Alternatives to Google’s Android Operating System (Wired)
Interesting article from a generalist magazine. According to it: - Best Preinstalled Phone: Fairphone 6 With /e/OS - Best for Pixel Phones: GrapheneOS - Best for Non-Pixel Phones: /e/OS - For the DIY Tinkerer: LineageOS
Do you have a link to information for this?
I tried using Graphene in September when they said they got it working but the best I got was a day before I had to jump through hoops to get it connected again.
If they fixed it this month I’d love to jump in and try again.
grapheneos.org/releases#2026021200
Top of the change log
To toggle the switch go to settings, apps, Google Play services sandboxed, play services special permissions and toggle the only available switch for icc
You do have to specifically turn it on
grapheneos.org/releases#2026021200
Top of the change log
To toggle the switch go to settings, apps, Google Play services sandboxed, play services special permissions and toggle the only available switch for icc
Hopefully Graphene is the only one that I’d trust unless you’re not going to add any Google play services at all with Lineage, and I’m including micro G on that too.
Sailfish OS is beautiful and really nice, decent app support, but kind of a pain in the USA, postmarketos shows strong promise, but doesn’t have VOLTE support yet which makes it a dealbreaker for me personally. I know a lot of folks love UBports, it never really was something I enjoyed. I’m really hoping to use Sailfish in the USA someday
Do you have a link? I have a small army of OnePlus 6Ts literally just for playing with Linux OS on them. I’d love to try this workaround, if you don’t have the link readily available no sweat I’ll look about
P.s. new to my knowledge fedora is running on the 6T albeit very slowly compared to postmarket and mobian
There’s info here:
gitlab.com/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/issues/1878
As well as: wiki.postmarketos.org/…/OnePlus_6_(oneplus-enchil…
And possibly: reddit.com/…/unlock_volte_in_australia_oneplus_5_…
Sailfish OS is beautiful and really nice, decent app support
Have you actually used sailfishos? It isn’t much better than using an Ubuntu touch device:
If you had a different experience, I’d love to know how you achieved it.
For some time now, I am looking with interest at Fairphone and /e/OS/. However, I am somewhat perplexed about the Murena workspace/Cloud. Based on your experience, is it possible to use /e/OS/ without joining Murena? Perhaps associated with a self-hosted cloud workspace?
Kinda. Battery life will be worse though. Tablet has a larger battery as there is more space, dumbphone has longer battery life because it uses so little power. It will be far more powerful than the tablet and with fdroid I can install pretty much everything I need. Family like to message on whatsapp though, which is the only thing keeping me from immediately sticking PostmarketOS on it which I have used before on a Pinephone.
Do wish that larger powerbanks were more common. ~74Wh (20,000mAh at 3.7v) seem to be one of the cheapest per capacity available and I suspect it is because of mass production. Larger are usually more like camping batteries and cost more, I suspect because they don’t sell as many of them. Cheapest per Wh for larger capacities is probably best achieved by just sticking multiple together.
@linule @lgsp
It beggars belief that an operating system that originated in Europe isn't firmly advocated and propulsed as the default for governement, education, and administration throughout Europe by the EU, along with Linux based technologies like Android.
Instead the EU and European governements act like a GAFAM junkies.
I gue$$ there are $imple rea$on$...
I alternate between mobian and postmarketOS every coupla months, to be up to date on the state of it. I have a fast device, lotsa RAM, lotsa fast storage, switch regularly between various UIs (phosh, plasma mobile, etc)
“up to speed” is such a huge, immense, and moving target that I can’t fathom the funds and dev efforts needed to get there. e.g. the plasma team has their hands full with bringing desktop plasma up to speed - 6.6 was a gargantuan effort; when you throw the mobile UI in the mix, it makes the goal exponentially farther away.
when you consider that Linux-on-Phones (just had a mental flash of Russ Hanneman saying “Radio-on-Internet”) isn’t one thing, there’s a bunch of dev efforts, some on bare-metal, some halium based and the various UIs (gnome, phosh, plasma mobile, sxmo, etc) that all pull in different directions, solving the same thing independently, wasting time and dev efforts.
so this thing becoming an alternative to an OS that was worked on for close to two decades by the richest people on the planet - that simply isn’t on the horizon. this thing becoming an android alternative is pretty far, far away.
now, if you think of this as your linux laptop with a touch interface, you’re closer to what this thing is and can do.
It doesn’t feel so far fetched to me. People are always complaining about the same 3 technical things: VolTE, call quality and security model. Surely that’s doable? And app support, but that’s the usual networks effects problem that’s also manageable.
As to the different Linux variants, the idea probably would be to develop a canonical model with interoperability standards somehow.
Android uses the Linux kernel, maybe some parts can be migrated or used for guidance, at least. Probably not necessary.
I‘d not be intimidated by the years and money that has been poured into iOS and Android. The years are incidental, this is just the time that the companies have existed and correlates weakly with the time you‘d need to develop from scratch nowadays. They have thrown away a lot of code and years of work in the process and are likely also carrying a lot of legacy code which they‘d happily rewrite if they could start over. AI is also accelerating development. There’s also something cultural there, US tends to fund lavishly, maybe we figure out how to develop more efficiently and perhaps decentralizedly, prioritizing standards and interoperability over monopolies.
I’m telling you how things are, you’re listing things you wished to be true. and that list will get accomplished by deus-ex-machinas, what’s the big deal… install it on a loose device you got and try using it for a day or two.
you don’t see what the big deal is? you’re in a UX that was tweaked and polished for decades, and you do it almost subconsciously, whilst walking, dodging pedestrians, doing other shit, etc. this thing is in its infancy and pretty far from usable by even tech people for everyday shit, let alone normies.
the apps aren’t handling the vertical UI gracefully or at all. like, plasma’s settings UI doesn’t collapse the categories so you can’t interact with it. Gnome’s toggle switches only recently started reacting to touch. OSKs are now at least somewhat usable but still nothing compared to android keyboards. none of the navigation gestures you got muscle memory for work here. that’s just the system’s UI, before you even attempt to run apps that don’t know that 300% zoomed-in, vertical UI is a thing.
the stuff you mention are so far off on the things-to-fix list, might as well not be on it.
this is a glorious platform and I love using it; but people expecting this to be a replacement for android is bordering on delusion, no such thing exists nor is it really in the works.
„UX that was tweaked and polished for decades“, cool, now we know the optimal UX and can develop the first version with it. No need to spend 2 decades again investigating, tweaking, refining, optimizing for hardware that doesn’t exist anymore, and adapting to marketing cycles to get here.
The „is“ situation is not simply extrapolatable, because now you‘ve an increased interest in technological independence. These projects have been limited to a fringe community of tech enthusiasts and funders, which explains their state.
And the issues on a technical level shouldn’t be too major either, Linux is a well proven platform, that works perfectly well on desktop, and embedded devices, and the mobile projects already exist and kind of work. With enough funding and incentive, you could probably fix all the major problems in a year or so.
The EU is looking for tech independence
Issues of whether or not the EU is actually looking for tech independence aside… I find it remarkable that open source software offers so much potential for breaking free from US-dominated tech giants like Microsoft and Google, for relative pennies, and no one seems to want to pursue it. I imagine a country like France or China could develop versions of Linux (for desktop, mobile, and other applications like spreadsheets or web browsers) that blow away what we currently have for a cost that would a rounding error of a rounding error in their current state budgets. Not sure why this hasn’t already happened, tbh.
why is there no initiative to get Linux mobile up to speed?
There is. It just lacks a corporate sponsor, so it is going slowly.
It is also slowed because there is very little fully open source phone hardware, today - and of what there is, very little of it is pocket sized.
What I don’t understand is why, if Pixels can be unlocked and locked back up again - which is part of why Graphene only works on Pixels - why don’t more alternative OSs target Pixels? Ubuntu Touch, for example, only supports the 3a. I have a 9 so I can run Graphene, but I’d love to be able to put some flavour of Linux on it.
if Pixels can be unlocked and locked back up again - which is part of why Graphene only works on Pixels - why don’t more alternative OSs target Pixels?
I don’t know, but my guess is it is just a resource challenge. Since Ubuntu isn’t leveraging Android at the lowest level, they probably have to write hardware drivers for every supported phone.
I am extremely happy with my Fairphone 6 with e/os!
I installed myself with the web installer, and it was super easy.
@Obamakitten @neo2478
You appear to have expert knowledge on the subject. Would you be so kind as to expand on this and educate us mere mortals?
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