The Search for a FLOSS Mobile OS

Tolkem

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A nice and informative reading https://blog.emacsen.net/blog/2021/08/23/floss-mobile-os-aug-2021/
An excerpt:
In 2020 my hopes came true when multiple nearly-ready mobile OSes became either available or usable for regular use, and now I am the owner of a LibreM phone and PinePhone, as well as having tried several Free Mobile OSes. To date I've tried UBPorts, postmarketOS, PureOS, Mobian, /e/, GrapheneOS and now CalyxOS. UBPorts, postmarketOS, PureOS and Mobian are each different but we can roughly classify them as "Linux-based " and GrapheneOS, /e/ and CalyxOS are all Android-based. These are only rough classifications since the term "Linux-based" can mean anything that runs the Linux kernel and Android technically uses the Linux kernel. Nonetheless I'll be using this classification system for reasons that will become clearer in the next section.
Like the author, I'd like very much to run a free mobile OS too, however, and how the article shows, this is still a hit-and-miss process; some will partially work, some others either will not, or are a pain to try to make them to.
 


I was always curious about that myself. Can you really have a phone that runs this type of OS and be a good daily driver.
 
I was always curious about that myself. Can you really have a phone that runs this type of OS and be a good daily driver.
This is what the author, according to his own experience, describes in the article:
My experience shows we're very close to having a Free/Open Source phone, but we need to make a few sacrifices along the way. We as geeks could certainly use such a system, especially if we care about privacy, but in its current state, I'm not sure I can recommend the current generation of mobile operating systems for non-geeks, even if they are looking for a de-Googled experience.
 
This is what the author, according to his own experience, describes in the article:

Yep, I kind of skipped some parts, but I did read that part its why I wrote the comment. Ultimately there seems to be a lot of options, but the fact that we rely on GMS, it makes this a bit of a tougher switch.

Personally, I do rely on things like Google Maps and so the replacement would need to work decently well, but it seems like we're getting there slowly.
 

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