The most reliable Linux phone I've ever had was a Nexus 5 running #UbuntuTouch. After giving it a lot of thought, I can't help but think that #Halium is the best path forward for #LinuxMobile. Several projects have tried to make calling and audio routing as reliable on Linux phones without Halium as on Android or iOS, but it just isn't happening. (1)

@williamtries I don't think it's necessarily Halium, I believe it's something else: The fact that Ubuntu Touch is the OG of being immutable; and their release (testing) model which means you don't have random crap err new releases land on your phone all the time and even the few updates in a LTS distro get additional testing in the release candidate channel to avoid regressions (e.g., by fixing audio configs).

As I see it, making and receiving calls and feeling confident about the quality and stability of those calls is non-negotiable. I believe this remains one of the largest obstacles to the broader adoption of Linux phones. Projects like #postmarketOS, #Mobian, and #PureOS are simply amazing. Each have clear values and focus; whether to reduce waste or run only free and open source software. (2)

I worry, however, that hardware is developing too quickly. Upstreaming drivers is a short term solution and will never get Linux phones into the hands of millions. (3)

This is why I wish Halium played a larger role in the Linux Mobile world today. Ubuntu Touch and #Droidian have demonstrated how it can be done. Maybe the final answer isn't Ubuntu Touch or Droidian. They have both experienced their own set of challenges. Financial support for these sorts of ventures is always in short supply. (4)

All in, I would venture to guess that the wider adoption of Linux phones will arrive on the shoulders of Halium or some distant fork of Halium. Let us leverage the mobile hardware drivers that the multi-million dollar companies spent years developing, testing, and fine-tuning. Get Linux into the hands of millions. Build security features to protect against the drawbacks of older kernels. This is the way. (5)

@williamtries

I'll half agree in that I believe that #Hallium will deliver daily driveable Linux phones long before mainline Linux phones do because drivers take (a lot of) time.

That said, from the sounds of it, Hallium is hacky and unlikely to provide the most reliable long term solution.

Linux phones don't need to keep up with the latest hardware to become popular, just to provide a usable phone experience.

Eventually mainline will get there.

#MobileLinux

@williamtries

The way I see it is that the most functional ecosystem provides a number of steps from very pragmatic, minimally ideal through to near ideal. For example once upon a time proprietary drivers were 100% necessary for Linux accelerated graphics. Over time mainline caught up with all major players now having or planning to have FOSS drivers.

We needed proprietary drivers, *and* to keep pushing to get past them.

#Hallium seems similar.

@williamtries Ubuntu Touch and Sailfish OS are not comparable to other mobile Linux, they use Linux, sure, but its tooling and its apps are made for them, so you won't face the same problems that you face with desktop apps on halium, i really like Sailfish OS, but it's not the same thing

@williamtries IMHO #MobileLinux died with the #OpenMoko, #Maemo & #MeeGo and you'd be hard pressed to try to get anything but #Android adopted anymore...

@williamtries I do agree that halium eith droidian is the bes but I never experienced it. I had a pinephone and it does not work very well as it was said to be. I think ubuntu touch works very well except for the fact that I think its more closed down because of the fact only the open (not that open) store exists.

@kkarhan @williamtries well I think the main issue is that companies don't make their apps for mobile linux, and that they don't make drivers for linux for their phones.

so, to work around that, we have to either use the drivers and apps that already exist, or make our own (which takes a lot of time and effort)

@krafter @williamtries case in point: #OpenMoko existed before the #iPhone and #Android and failed not just commercially.

• "#Vanilla" #Linux has failed on #Smartphones and the best shot nowadays is to preinstall i.e. #Waydroid on #UbuntuLTS for any #amd64-based #Linux #Tablets on the market...

Cuz aside from #TechLiterates and #Tinkerers noone buys themselves a "Linux Phone"* like the @PINE64 #PinePhone...

• At this point non-Android Linux on Phones is at best a "rounding error"...

Not that I don't want to see a Linux phone - far from it - it's just not going to happen within the foreseeable fuzure, and thus we've to act situationally and realize that unlike #iOS we'll at least be able to salbage adapt and reuse Android in most cases...

@Blort @williamtries Infact, I'm using my FLX1 to type this on 5G while out and about. It's very close to being my new phone, something I can't say of any non-halium device right now due to a lack of drivers and lots of bugs. With that said, I would love to see the device slowly upstreamed over time until it can ultimately use mainline.

@BrianA @williamtries

What sort of bugs are you coming across? I'm considering getting one myself. My needs are pretty modest, but I do need calls to work. 😉

@Blort @williamtries And fully working by the next OS update in about a month.

@BrianA @williamtries

Those don't actually sound too bad to me. For quite a while I was using a combo of both a #GrapheneOS phone and a #PinePhonePro with #Phosh. Far worse bugs there, with calls not ringing, of the modem totally dropping out or call audio being barely decipherable. Haven't tried in about a year, although I'm still really determined to get back into #LinuxMobile even if I have to carry a second phone + battery pack to do it.

@williamtries I kinda disagree here. There are definitely big issues to figure out with kernel upstreaming (e.g. all the "downstream drivers" we carry in forks that nobody wants to rewrite), but every year Qualcomm's Android BSP gets closer and closer to upstream, compared to a decade ago pretty much everything "just works" on new SoCs, you just need to fight with the display, touch, and audio... Compared to 6 years ago this is huge.

I think the major things we're missing are stability (kernel regressions affect us, unlike on halium where the kernel is already 3 years old), and we don't do immutable (yet).

I won't pretend call audio isn't a huge glaring issue, unfortunately the audio stack for Qualcomm is not in fantastic shape, though progress is being made.

tl;dr: while halium projects try to deliver something usable NOW, postmarketOS and related projects are working on Linux mobile for the future.

@Blort @williamtries I honestly believe that once we make some progress on de-duplicating the kernel rebasing and version bumping efforts, set up automated testing, and start shipping immutable images the number of regressions we see will really start to drop. It's a losing game right now especially on postmarketOS edge since a random pipewire release could just break stuff and we'd only know about it because someone hits the bug and reports it...

@kkarhan Even though they were using some existing frameworks like Xorg and Qt, they still needed to make and maintain a bunch of mobile only apps. This approach is expensive and hard to evolve.

This is not the case of #GNOME today. They are not making yet another desktop environment specifically for mobile phones, but making existing desktop applications mobile friendly

@cas @williamtries

You're referring to Hallium, right? Or do you mean in mainline?