Mastodawn

which Linux Phone Distro should I use?

which Linux Phone Distro should I use? - Lemmy.World

I am looking forward to changing out my Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. But I am very confused of what to choose, of the many options. Here is some criteria you guys could maybe help me choose the perfect fit from: 1: has to be able to use some android apps still, because of government- & banking applications. 2: the car runs it’s own android system, but android auto would be nice to still have. 3: It would be awesome to be able to use the linux phone as a pc as well. I loved the videos I have seen from ubuntu touch, where you just connect to a screen through usb c and you have a desktop environment. That is just awesome! 4: I am kind of pro EU. So if the OS is developed in europe and the phone that supports it from the factory is also EU based, it’s a huge plus in my book. Not a deal breaker though. My trusy on USA has just dissapeared sadly. Hope someone will be able to help me out here! Thank you.

Show thread

hendrik Mar 14

GrapheneOS is a common choice for Android phones. (It’s Android, though. Not a Linux phone distro!)

Supported devices: https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices

Banking app compatibility: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos/

That’d still leave you within the Android ecosystem. And it’s fairly easy to install, maintain and operate. Though, the phones currently come from Google. And it’s still Android, so ultimately comes from Google.

If you want to avoid Google and Apple entirely, I don’t think there are many options except a proper Linux phone. There are some few older(?) smartphones supported by projects like PostmarketOS. But do your homework first. It’s an entirely different experience, there’s often stuff missing or cumbersome to configure or not available at all. And the camera might suck. It’s great he have Linux on phones. But I from my own experience, there are severe downsides for regular every-day life, including banking apps, android auto, push notifications, battery life, etc…

Edit: By the way, the Android compatibility layer for Linux is called Waydroid. Maybe you can look up if your banking apps etc work with Waydroid in the first place. I don’t think we have any comprehensive list, so that probably needs to be googled for the individual apps, or tested on a Linux computer.

GrapheneOS Frequently Asked Questions

Answers to frequently asked questions about GrapheneOS.

GrapheneOS

Show thread

just some guy Mar 14

I might be mistaken but I think op wants to replace the android on their Samsung, which would rule out graphene

Show thread

hendrik

The way I read it is - they want to replace their phone and buy a new one. In case someone wants to replace the software on a Samsung phone, I don’t think there’s good options. Samsung phones rarely get good Custom ROMS or anything like that. I think what people do is root them, install Magisk and remove some crapware. But that’s basically it. Or you’d experiment with some unsupported repack or early effort at LineageOS with SELinux turned off or something like that.