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Comment by johnnyanmac | Hacker News Reader

What's the big barrier stopping Linux from becoming a viable mobile OS? Or at least some completely de-googlefied AOSP?

Hardware. Mass manufacturing, plus the deep pockets of a corporation, mean that we've come to expect cheap prices for inanely powerful hardware. Yes I'm calling an $1,800 iphone cheap for what you get. That's cheap for what you get because if you're a tiny company, you can't get a phone of that level manufactured that you can still for anywhere near that price, and that's a super high end model. How many people are going to shell out $1,000 for a model with the specs of a $500 model just because it runs Linux? And that's before you even actually deal with the software. Specifically, driver support, battery life, and app support are the three big show stoppers there. The best option this second is a Pixel running GrapheneOS, and that's based on Android on Goolge hardware. (They did just announce getting off Pixels tho.)

A Linux smartphone has been tried before. That's not too say someone shouldn't try again, but just to say there are lessons to be learned from those attempts.

Yeah, that makes sense on the hardware end. It's really hard to compete and even some large players like LG ultimately fell out because of that.

But I was more speaking on the software end. You can certainly piss off Google if enough people decided to buy an android phone but have it boot up Linux instead. Might even piss off Samsung, so that's a plus. I assume the infrastructure to get APK support on Linux is a herculean task, though (that's the only way I see as a middleground until native linux apps work on mobile).

There is a way to run waydroid/android applications in Linux. I have personally tried it and honestly it does work great for the most part.

> How many people are going to shell out $1,000 for a model with the specs of a $500 model just because it runs Linux? And that's before you even actually deal with the software

Thanks for writing this comment because that's exactly something which I wanted to convey with my original comment too

GrapheneOS is already a viable de-Googled and significantly hardened and improved fork of AOSP. It runs on Google Pixels at present, with an OEM device planned for release in 2027.

I guess yeah, Most of my concerns were with Privacy but yea looks like grapheneos is a tradeoff I might have to make some day

but honestly its also the fact that I love cli tools and yea I can and I have used termux in the past but I really wish for a more first class for cli tools as well and I don't know but I just really wish to support linux tools.

Like I am just not satisfied with the current options we have right now and you can look at fragmede's comment as to why I mean that. I mean I just want a cheap affordable linux phone with just decent specs nothing too fancy. By decent I mean that I used to be on a dumb phone for a year with 32 mb ram iirc so perhaps my specs can be considered to be minimal but I feel like 2-4GB ram might be a good start. (prefer the 4gb option as to favour both me anad the masses)

Can framework or some other company go ahead and create a linux phone too please?

As one who previously had a PinePhone and really tried to make it work, I share the sentiment.

One problem is by the time you've modified the Linux kernel enough to suit it, and built the phone UI and broader software ecosystem around it, at some point you're just reinventing AOSP.

I'm hoping Debian on Android gets more mature, and works better on GrapheneOS.

Your best bet in the near term may be a used a-series Pixel with GOS on it. An old under-spec'd Pixel on sale was my entry point to GOS and contrary to my PinePhone experience, I knew instantly that was going to be the device for me for the coming years, and ended up upgrading a year later to a newer device.

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