brie_cheesePhone + linux distro with working VoLTE?
https://piefed.ca/c/linux/p/586075/phone-linux-distro-with-working-volte
Motorola have announced a partnership with Graphene OS, a Canadian company. If the models Moto ships are semi affordable I would jump at that.
Graphene is not a GNU/Linux distro, it’s an Android fork.
Perhaps not, but there is no GNU/Linux distro that is “ready for primetime” as a mobile OS right now. I WISH there was, but UBPorts, PostmarketOS, etc all either have significant features disparity or are straight up still marketed as “developer experimental”.
GrapheneOS is a solid choice for now to provide an alternative, whether a permanent replacement or a stepping stone.
tomenzggNever even heard of that device before. Can you get Signal messenger on it?
So there’s Flare which works (GTK implementation) but it’s far from feature parity; but it definitely works pretty nicely, for what it is.
The device also has really good Android emulation; certain Google Play services still don’t quite work, even though it comes with MicroG preinstalled (e.g. the Integrity API so, unfortunately, all my banking app.s crash themselves), but I can’t imagine Signal uses any that’d cause it not to run.
I have it (the Android version) installed and it opens just fine but I haven’t had the chance to try transferring the account (and all messages) over, yet. So I’d expect it’d fully work but that’s all I can tell you, yet.
I can come back and let you know how it goes and how well it works – once I get there –, if you’d like.
Jolla has sailfish OS as the official ROM and it has for quite a few years now (for all their past phones). It’s not marketed as a dev experimental.
A lot of people who are eager to install Linux on their phones this early are out off by the proprietary parts of SailfishOS. I personally want a Linux phone in large part due to distrust of proprietary software for a device with such capacity to invade my privacy.
Proprietary blobs are also present throughout regular linux distributions. And I hear and participate with the moans they generate but users understand that sometimes modems, wireless chips or GPUs (main culprits) have us stuck at the onset of using Linux at all. Debian had to reverse it’s procedure from a default free only to default mix and user has to specify if he doesn’t want proprietary firmware installed. Even graphene OS has to make do with proprietary firmware.
PostmarketOS, while certainly not production ready, does have mobile data working for some devices: wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices
There’s also the upcoming Mecha Comet which has been able to make calls and use mobile data in testing but is yet to be released so we’ll have to wait and see how usable it is.