[HN Gopher] Is there hope for Linux on smartphones? [video]
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Is there hope for Linux on smartphones? [video]
        
       Author : McSinyx
       Score  : 64 points
       Date   : 2022-08-23 17:53 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (media.ccc.de)
 (TXT) w3m dump (media.ccc.de)
        
       | NuSkooler wrote:
       | It's mentioned already, but: Android.
       | 
       | Discounting Android as "Not Linux" enough is a mind boggle to me.
       | Perhaps not "GNU" enough, but certainly the spirit of Linux --
       | customized for the particular needs, stable, fast, works on a
       | plethora of hardware, etc.
        
         | nivenkos wrote:
         | When I think of a Linux phone, I really want something that
         | supports a full GNU/Linux desktop as convergence.
         | 
         | The Steam Deck does this perfectly!
        
           | Teever wrote:
           | Damn, you got me thinking now, that Valve of all people could
           | probably put out a Linux phone.
           | 
           | The Steam Phone could be a game changer.
        
             | Bilal_io wrote:
             | I would buy a Steam Phone, and I'd want a big Valve logo on
             | its back, and an easter egg that says "half-life 3 is not
             | coming"
        
             | hrbf wrote:
             | For a niche market, possibly. However, I just don't see
             | Valve as a company being interested in becoming a phone
             | manufacturer. What would realistically be in for them? It's
             | strategically mostly irrelevant to their core business,
             | with the sole exception of the Steam Store. But to create,
             | develop and support a whole phone platform (hard- and
             | software) just to sell mobile games? I don't see it.
        
               | jnwatson wrote:
               | You underestimate the size of the opportunity. The mobile
               | game market was $119 billion in 2021.
        
               | hrbf wrote:
               | Given the complexities involved in such an endeavor, I'm
               | still confident in my assessment, especially when
               | confronted with a one-liner just throwing a large number
               | against the wall. If Microsoft couldn't get a mobile OS
               | off the ground, despite trying, I don't see what the
               | opportunity size has anything to do with it. Focusing on
               | (even casual) gamers with specialized hardware works for
               | a gaming-focused company, whereas a general-purpose
               | device would not. Compare Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck.
               | Strictly speaking this is part of mobile gaming, with
               | significantly higher margins.
        
             | nivenkos wrote:
             | Yeah, I think the main issue is getting support for
             | WhatsApp and banking and ID services (that usually block
             | even just rooted Android phones).
             | 
             | I'm literally writing this comment from my Steam Deck.
        
             | coffee_beqn wrote:
             | I don't believe that can happen. The steam deck kind of
             | works because they pack in a bunch of peripherals that
             | won't fit into a phone. The touchscreen experience on it is
             | miserable. 99% of steam games with touchscreen controls
             | would be totally a sad experience.
             | 
             | What it is is a laptop in a funny case.
        
             | saidinesh5 wrote:
             | You may actually be onto something here!
             | 
             | Especially if the smaller steam deck clones like Aya neo
             | Air Pro ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw-0ngNgGC0 ) can
             | support voice calls and a decent camera (the only other
             | things my "mobile gamer" friends care about in a phone), I
             | think there will be a niche market around it. Nokia N-Gage
             | reborn!
             | 
             | We already have decent enough android apps support on linux
             | using anbox / waydroid. For the edge case android apps.
        
         | notmyaccountt wrote:
         | Google created an Android userspace that requires Google
         | services to do anything meaningful. This violates everything
         | Linux stands for.
        
           | colordrops wrote:
           | Not great, agreed, but they did at least architect the OS so
           | that they are decoupled and you can build without them very
           | easily. In fact the largest custom ROM doesn't bundle with
           | them by default (LineageOS). What do you need Google services
           | for?
        
           | est31 wrote:
           | I think it's better to come up with replacements for those
           | Google services and apps instead of rewriting the entire
           | operating system. You need to solve the same problems on a
           | linux smartphone as well, so Android gave you a lot of time
           | savings, and I doubt the app sandboxing is even remotely as
           | good on those non-Android linuxes. For Google Play for
           | example there is F-droid, for push messages/FCM there is
           | UnifiedPush, for Google Maps there is Osmand.
        
         | cma wrote:
         | When mapping shared memory or checking for the right broadcast
         | subnet requires calling into Java code... it isn't Linux on the
         | user side so much anymore.
        
         | humanwhosits wrote:
         | fuchsia (+starnix for legacy) might make android much less
         | linux-y over the long term
        
         | OJFord wrote:
         | I suppose it depends what you mean/want by 'Linux'? In a
         | nutshell I suppose I want systemd & config files.
        
         | kitsunesoba wrote:
         | Vanilla Android or AOSP might kinda have "Linux Spirit" but I'm
         | not sure what gets shipped on most consumer devices does...
         | lots of random things locked down (including boot loader,
         | sometimes), crapware all over the place, drivers and kernel
         | changes that aren't upstreamed making it difficult to install
         | anything but carrier/manufacturer-flavored Android, etc.
         | 
         | I think most people rooting for "smartphone Linux" are looking
         | to be able to swap and customize OSes on their phones and
         | tablets as easily as they do on their x86 PCs without futzing
         | around with device specific ROMs and the like.
        
           | colordrops wrote:
           | Android has something called GSIs (Generic System Images)
           | that will run on any device that supports Android 9 and
           | above. They don't always support custom hardware, but this
           | isn't really any different from pure Linux. Instead of
           | building a mobile ecosystem from scratch, why not build a
           | community around submitting drivers to a build based on GSI?
        
           | zozbot234 wrote:
           | Even AOSP is running something quite far from a mainline
           | kernel, although they've been gradually reducing the delta
           | with Linux proper. It really is a fork.
        
             | azinman2 wrote:
             | But why is a fork still not Linux? Every major distributor
             | runs a fork.
        
           | calvinmorrison wrote:
           | My pixel broke (was running CalyxOS, lineage before that),
           | and I had to get a quick burner phone to make work calls. Got
           | a $200 dollar used samsung. I didn't realize what utter trash
           | nonsense is loaded onto normal phones. It's absolutely
           | bonkers what Samsung did to destroy Android with no value
           | add.
        
           | sleepymoose wrote:
           | >including boot loader, sometimes
           | 
           | Perhaps in the past, but it feels like more and more this is
           | shifting toward the expectation, rather than the exception.
        
         | water-your-self wrote:
         | The android operating system is not open soruce.
        
           | CharlesW wrote:
           | https://source.android.com/docs/setup/start/licenses
        
             | realusername wrote:
             | Unfortunately there's not a single device on earth that
             | runs AOSP to my knowledge, even the emulator does not.
        
               | colordrops wrote:
               | Are GSI images not built off of AOSP?
        
             | blendergeek wrote:
             | That is the license for the Android Open Source Project.
             | Unfortunately, Google has spent the last fifteen years
             | moving many parts of the stack and almost (if not) all the
             | core apps to Google Proprietary versions. Most apps in AOSP
             | no longer receive updates at all.
             | 
             | The dream is here is not just that we would be running "an
             | open source stack" but that the active development would be
             | on the open source stack. Sure, there are new releases of
             | AOSP. But take a look at the core apps: Contacts, Calendar,
             | Camera, Email, Location services. These are _all_
             | proprietary now.
             | 
             | Android is open source in the same sort of way that MacOS
             | is open source. There are some open source bits in there.
        
               | colordrops wrote:
               | Who cares about the google user space apps? There are
               | viable open source alternatives for all of them. It's
               | like saying Linux is not open source because Redhat
               | bundles proprietary software with their distro.
        
         | bhedgeoser wrote:
         | What they're referring to as linux is actually gnu/linux, or as
         | I like to call it, gnu+linux.
        
         | lrvick wrote:
         | Android is Linux but it has nowhere close to the fully open
         | source freedom of a traditional Linux workstation. This is why
         | I carry a tiny linux laptop.
        
           | CharlesW wrote:
           | Phones are not PCs/general-purpose computers. Do you want
           | your TV to be a general purpose computer as well? (Having put
           | my family through a Media Center PC and TV remotes with
           | keyboards/trackpads for several years, I don't recommend it.)
        
             | realusername wrote:
             | > Phones are not PCs/general-purpose computers.
             | 
             | That's just the opinion of the manufacturer, we don't have
             | to agree.
             | 
             | Phones have banking and government apps, they are general
             | purpose computers from their usage alread
        
               | bitwize wrote:
               | Bankers and governments don't _want_ your phone to be a
               | general purpose computer. That 's why you can't run your
               | banking app on a rooted phone. From a security
               | standpoint, "general purpose computing" is really just
               | "arbitrary code execution" -- generally a _bad_ thing.
               | 
               | We are approaching the sunset of general purpose
               | computing in the consumer space. There's nothing you can
               | do. Accept it and move on.
        
               | kube-system wrote:
               | "General purpose computing" does not imply any particular
               | security model, it refers to a device with a variety of
               | end user purposes.
               | 
               | It is in contrast to a special purpose computer, which
               | smartphones clearly are not.
        
             | megous wrote:
             | You missed quite a lot of history then. Smartphones are
             | general purpose computers for the last 12 years or so.
        
             | cma wrote:
             | I run termux on mine and wish termux wasn't so restricted
             | by google/android.
        
           | nivenkos wrote:
           | What do you use a small laptop? Seems there's nothing
           | ultralight and small like the Asus Eee and Acer Aspire One
           | these days (even though you'd think it'd be easier with ARM
           | now).
        
             | zozbot234 wrote:
             | > What do you use a small laptop? Seems there's nothing
             | ultralight and small like the Asus Eee and Acer Aspire One
             | these days
             | 
             | They're called "Ultrabooks" now. Buy an older one on the
             | used market if you don't care about top performance.
        
             | nfriedly wrote:
             | Not the OP, but you should take a look at
             | https://www.gpd.hk/ they have a handful of small devices
             | targeted at different niches.
        
           | jcynix wrote:
           | I'm quite happy with Termux on Android. Allows me to rsync my
           | data for backup or imports, I can ssh into real Linux
           | machines, process images with ImageMagick, etc. Sharing
           | documents from inside other apps works too (you can set up
           | scripts in Termux as receivers). Sure, full control of a
           | device would be great, but I'm better off with Android after
           | I migrated from IOS.
        
         | not2b wrote:
         | Yes, articles like this illustrate that RMS had a point, as
         | annoying as he can be about it. Android is obviously Linux.
         | What's missing is all of the things GNU and BSD brought to the
         | party.
        
       | hrbf wrote:
       | Simple answer: no. Apart from Android that is. Non-specialized
       | Linux will never be supported by manufacturers because there's
       | simply no economic incentive to do so.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | mayoi wrote:
       | Android works just fine on my smartphone.
        
       | yyyk wrote:
       | There isn't any hope for Linux on the smartphone, at least not
       | Linux as actually intended in the talk.
       | 
       | A proper solution needs to run perfectly on users' existing
       | hardware or it won't be run at all. There are a lot of old
       | unupdated devices which should be ripe for the picking. The only
       | solution close to matching the OSS community's resources is the
       | Android kernel for all of its problems. The Linux smartphone
       | community is way too ideological (far more than even RMS was back
       | when OSS started) to do it - they won't use Android, and their
       | hardware would also be way behind for similar reasons.
       | 
       | So irrelevance it is, unless some rich sugar daddy company
       | decides to make an entrance to the smartphone market, but I don't
       | see any plausible contenders.
        
       | orangepurple wrote:
       | Arch Linux ARM can be installed on Android with Termux
       | 
       | I run scipy and numpy on my phone with it. A bit painful because
       | I can only see about six lines of code at a time but I wrote a
       | few thousand lines of ML code with vim on my cell phone in the
       | last two months.
       | 
       | https://github.com/SDRausty/termux-archlinux/
        
         | dredmorbius wrote:
         | Termux is a godsend on Android, and remains The Only App Which
         | Does Not Specifically and Precisely Suck (though EinkBro is
         | giving it a good run for its money).
         | 
         | Termux _still_ has a host of limitations and weaknesses _which
         | are imposed by the Android environment itself_ , including
         | being capriciously killed by the OS, lack of multiple users,
         | blocked access to most of the filesystem, and a relatively
         | limited (though impressively growing, I have to admit) set of
         | utilities. At last check, this includes X11 utilities and at
         | least some of TeX, both quite formidable.
        
           | orangepurple wrote:
           | Termux is awesome but the native environment is suffocating.
           | I didn't even bother with Termux utilities after one hour of
           | messing around. I went straight for the Arch Linux ARM proot
           | environment and it contains ALL of the Arch Linux utilities.
           | For example you will never get scipy to compile in normal
           | Termux because you can't reasonably get a compatible Fortran
           | compiler built and configured. Arch Linux ARM is the best
           | "distro" within Termux and the installation script is
           | seamless and supports multiple users!
        
             | dredmorbius wrote:
             | Suffocating for lack of packages?
             | 
             | I'll note that Termux has about 1/3 the package count of
             | RHEL / CentOS. It's not everything, but for a mobile
             | distro, it's quite good.
             | 
             | That said:
             | 
             | 1. Thanks for the Arch suggestion. I'll take a look at
             | that. Root required?
             | 
             | 2. _Even with a full-fledged distro installed_ , if you're
             | running unrooted Android you're still grossly crippled by
             | the overarching (so to speak) Android system in terms of
             | filesystem and process management and interference.
        
       | MartijnBraam wrote:
       | I think this talk does a great job of explaining why AOSP is not
       | a solution
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | jqpabc123 wrote:
       | Hardware manufacturers have no incentive to support it.
        
         | rbanffy wrote:
         | Erm... Android is Linux.
        
           | JCWasmx86 wrote:
           | Just the kernel is Linux, but with the "Linux" that is meant
           | here, it has basically nothing in common, be it e.g. in the
           | userland or "the spirit".
           | 
           | The Linux from "Linux Smartphones" e.g. fosters an open,
           | user-first ecosystem, as opposed to the often very closed and
           | locked Android Smartphones. Another examples are e.g.
           | Safetynet or the Google Play Integrity API. Those primarily
           | don't server the users. Or apps that either complain or even
           | stop working on rooted phones. We have admin/root on normal
           | PCs and nobody is complaining there.
        
             | 3836293648 wrote:
             | Just the kernel is linux, but isn't basically all of the
             | hardware support we need in the kernel?
             | 
             | Sure, we're still out of luck with trying to run mainline
             | kernels, but what's stopping us from running normal GNU
             | userland on top of a working Android kernel?
        
             | mmsnberbar66 wrote:
             | > We have admin/root on normal PCs and nobody is
             | complaining there.
             | 
             | That's true.
        
             | mulmen wrote:
             | Linux is _only_ a kernel. What most people mean when they
             | say "Linux" is actually "Linux _distribution_ " which is
             | the Linux kernel plus some userland like GNU or Android.
        
           | matrix12 wrote:
           | I think they conflate GNU with Linux kernel.
        
             | what-imright wrote:
             | Why is the title "Is there hope for linux on smartphones?"?
             | 
             | If it said "Is there hope for GNU on smartphones?" the
             | answer would be a resounding no, because the community is
             | fractured and politicized to the degree the products are
             | uncompetitive. Pinephone is an example. Then there was the
             | Ubuntu effort.
             | 
             | Android, being partly closed as the GPL2 allows for, is
             | proof that Linux can be highly successful without the GNU
             | crowd. And perhaps they should stop taking credit for
             | software they didn't write. They made the license.
             | 
             | For all the complaining, the free software community hasn't
             | designed from the ground up and released one single
             | production class handset alternative at a time when the
             | culture consumes in the billions. That's says a lot. The
             | infighting and utopian idealistic virtue signaling is in
             | sharp contrast to the reality of the platforms the GNU
             | crowd has built.
        
               | tingletech wrote:
               | most of the user space tools originated from GNU (such as
               | gcc), linux really just brought the kernel.
        
               | what-imright wrote:
               | Just? It's 28 million lines of code, the world's largest
               | software project
        
       | neverrroot wrote:
       | Guess it depends on what your standards are. You can have it
       | everywhere from today to likely never. Want just basic stuff, no
       | apps store, no good camera, no good runtime on battery? Today, go
       | get one. Value security more than anything else? Available today.
       | Want a high end smart phone with proper open source
       | Linux/Software and apps store, great camera, fast and great
       | battery runtime? Likely never. Linux won't get the required
       | investment, nor will the hardware manufacturers provide the
       | required support (no incentives). Even the Linux Desktop
       | experience can't properly get there in 2022.
       | 
       | But a proper Linux phone, say something like a PinePhone is great
       | as a second phone.
        
       | lynndotpy wrote:
       | I think it's time we take a descriptivist view of "Linux",
       | because there _is_ some hard-to-describe way that Android isn 't
       | "Linuxy". If a good mobile graphical BSD OS appeared from nowhere
       | , we might consider it "Linuxy-er" than Android.
       | 
       | The presentation does a good job of explaining what is missing
       | for a good "Linux smartphone ".
        
       | elagost wrote:
       | If anyone actually watched the talk Guido addresses Android at
       | about 2 minutes in, and why it's not a actually what Linux users
       | want.
        
       | z3t4 wrote:
       | Nokia had Linux on their smartphone until Microsoft bought them
       | and stopped everything, they even shut down the app store. The OS
       | was called MeeGo. Part of the Nokia team however started their
       | own company called Jolla and still produce smartphones running
       | Linux, they call their OS Sailfish. (ignoring the fact that
       | Android also uses the Linux kernel).
       | 
       | The problem with alternative phone OS:es is that in the country I
       | live you must have either an iPhone or and Android phone because
       | the ID monopoly and Payment monopoly refuse to support other
       | operating systems...
        
         | anthonyhn wrote:
         | >Nokia had Linux on their smartphone until Microsoft bought
         | them and stopped everything, they even shut down the app store.
         | The OS was called MeeGo.
         | 
         | There is a fork called Maemo Leste [0][1] that is actually
         | still around and updated. I have it running on a droid 4, and
         | it works pretty well. The UI is still the same Hildon UI.
         | Definitely a fun OS and device to play around with, and
         | interesting in that it's the only mobile OS I'm aware of that
         | is running Devaun.
         | 
         | [0] https://maemo-leste.github.io/
         | 
         | [1] Technically a fork of Maemo, the predecessor to MeeGo.
        
         | sgc wrote:
         | I could get by with only using banking websites in the browser.
         | But Why does Jolla not yet support any Pixel phones? I have
         | wanted to try it out for years, but not to the point of trying
         | to make things work on my own.
        
         | zamadatix wrote:
         | Even just unlocking an Android device causes most to stop
         | working. I can't even log into PayPal app, which I assume is
         | mostly just a WebView, because my phone is unlocked. At the
         | same time it is apparently fineI do the same thing from the
         | browser on my phone?
        
           | yosito wrote:
           | I used an Android phone with CalyxOS and microG for a year
           | and never had this problem. There were a few apps I had a
           | hard time getting APKs for without the Play Store, but even
           | those I found I could side load from other devices that had
           | the Play Store.
        
       | cloudymeatballs wrote:
        
       | rvz wrote:
       | > while we're picky about free software on our laptops, desktops
       | and servers lots of us have a truck load full of proprietary
       | software in their pocket every day. Does it have to be that way?
       | 
       | It doesn't have to be like this, but it is also not 'early days'
       | anymore and we have given this idea lots of time to gain any
       | meaningful traction and it's very clear that there is almost no
       | interest from the wider industry.
       | 
       | Thus, as demonstrated for many years of failed alternatives,
       | unfortunately buzzwords like 'privacy', 'non-free software' and
       | 'Linux' have little to no use to gaining traction and selling to
       | mass market in a comparable manner against the existing duopoly.
       | 
       | And before you say 'Android', it is has tons of closed source
       | userland software and subsystems and will get even worse once it
       | moves over to Fuchsia OS. Therefore 'Android' as a free software
       | example is disqualified.
       | 
       | We are talking about Linux distros designed to run on phones with
       | 'free software'.
        
         | usrusr wrote:
         | But how many man-months of development on the GPL subset of the
         | Android stack are funded by the mostly closed product, each
         | day? From _some_ angles, I 'd say that it's not a failure at
         | all (from others it certainly is), more like working as
         | intended.
        
         | jrockway wrote:
         | Is this the one time people should be calling it GNU/Linux?
        
           | matrix12 wrote:
           | Very fine point. GNU runs on many operating systems, and so
           | to conflate GNU and Linux seems absurd.
        
             | cassianoleal wrote:
             | GNU runs on many kernels. GNU is part of the operating
             | systems where it runs.
        
               | matrix12 wrote:
               | GNU is not a boolean value. One can use portions of it
               | without throwing away everything they use.
        
               | cassianoleal wrote:
               | Fair point, but I was responding to "GNU runs on many
               | OSs", saying that GNU is actually part of the OSs (and
               | not something that runs on top of it), regardless of how
               | much GNU there is in any particular OS.
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | Perhaps if someone makes WineHQ but for iOS apps instead of
       | Windows applications.
        
       | makz wrote:
       | Before answering that question I'd ask: why would we want that?
       | 
       | My answer is no, it didn't work on the desktop, it won't work on
       | the smartphone, for more or less the same reasons.
       | 
       | As much as I like Linux and FOSS, Linux is just a bad OS for the
       | average consumer.
       | 
       | For hackers, makers, DYI enthusiasts, etc. Linux is wonderful,
       | however, what's the market size for a Linux smart phone for this
       | people? I bet it's tiny.
        
         | Bilal_io wrote:
         | Maybe we can do it backwards this time, take the Chrome
         | approach with Linux, build a UI launcher for mobile that is as
         | simple as possible and once it's complex and has a healthy
         | touch-friendly apps translate it to desktop.
         | 
         | Look at Steam Deck and what they've done. They could use the
         | same approach to launch a Phone OS.
        
         | aquaduck wrote:
         | Didn't work on the desktop? I've been running Linux exclusively
         | on my desktops for 15 years. Desktop Linux is better today than
         | it's ever been.
         | 
         | Why does every OS need to be suitable for average consumers?
         | Librem and Pine64 are doing great work in the mobile Linux
         | space on the hardware side, and projects like PostmarketOS are
         | doing great work on the software side. These are niche products
         | for motivated enthusiasts, as they should be. They'll never
         | grow to billions of users, nor should they. The tech industry's
         | "grow massive or the product is worthless" mindset is
         | pathological, in my opinion.
        
         | sgc wrote:
         | Why is it 'just bad'? I have installed Linux (either Debian or
         | Ubuntu) for several non-tech-savvy family members, and they
         | have used them for years without incident. I once talked to my
         | mom about Linux and she mentioned that her Windows worked great
         | for everything, she would never change. I told her to look at
         | the splash screen when she booted up ;)! She had been on Linux
         | for a good 10 years without noticing.
        
       | usrusrusrusr wrote:
        
       | ddevault wrote:
       | I'm typing this comment from a Poco F1 I set up with postmarketOS
       | and Phosh earlier this week and so far it's very promising. Will
       | write up a proper review next week. Much better than the
       | Pinephone so far.
        
         | nextos wrote:
         | This sounds very interesting. Can you elaborate a bit further?
        
           | saidinesh5 wrote:
           | Not the Op, but Poco F1 has Snapdragon 845, which is like the
           | flagship soc 3 years ago, and can boot mainline kernel:
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtfTJbLiYfg .
           | 
           | Iirc they even got Windows 10 booting on that phone.
        
         | asdfqwertzxcv wrote:
         | Looking forward to your review!
        
         | branon wrote:
         | This is interesting. Communities like postmarketOS put in a lot
         | of effort to adapt their distribution to hardware that would
         | otherwise be running Android.
         | 
         | Perhaps targeting commodity hardware is a more viable strategy
         | than contending with newer platforms like Pinephone. Sure the
         | device is more open, but most of the software support falls on
         | the same community of developers. Lord knows they have enough
         | build targets to maintain already.
         | 
         | I'm sure there will always be a place for custom hardware like
         | Pinephone, Librem 5, but repurposing a flagship Android device
         | is going to be a better value proposition for most people.
         | 
         | I own a first-gen Pinephone and it seemed really promising for
         | a while. As things got fixed and the state of affairs improved,
         | I think everybody's expectations shifted whether they realized
         | it or not. Phone calls and SMS work perfectly, but after that
         | started working, now I want it to do GPS and navigation. Doing
         | this is possible, but pushes the poor Pinephone's hardware to
         | its limit.
         | 
         | I think offloading progressively more tasks to a computer is
         | perfectly natural, but ultimately (for me at least) this killed
         | the Pinephone's viability. I wound up hitting a glass ceiling
         | way too soon for comfort.
         | 
         | It's one thing if software support for specific tasks is
         | nonexistent - this is a solvable problem, the community marches
         | forward and fixes this as a matter of course.
         | 
         | But what do you do when you have the software support, but it
         | just doesn't run on your Allwinner A64?
         | 
         | Maybe things have improved yet more since the last time I
         | tried. I'll have to check out Pure Maps again.
        
           | linmob wrote:
           | Things keep improving, slowly but surely. BTW: Mepo is a
           | mapping app that performs great on the PinePhone:
           | https://sr.ht/~mil/Mepo/
        
           | zozbot234 wrote:
           | > Perhaps targeting commodity hardware is a more viable
           | strategy than contending with newer platforms like Pinephone.
           | 
           | It depends on the hardware. If it can be properly supported
           | on the mainline kernel, then sure. Otherwise, you're not
           | gaining all that much compared to just running a "cooked"
           | Android-based ROM.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | Havoc wrote:
       | Inclined to say no - mainly because of the camera. The gap
       | between ability to mechanically take a pic and what the flagships
       | are doing with AI driven post processing seems not only big but
       | growing.
       | 
       | Short of die hard linux/FOSS fans noticably worse pics is going
       | to be an absolute show stopper
        
         | mixmastamyk wrote:
         | Shoot raw then import into darktable. This seems like the
         | simplest way to get there until more infrastructure is
         | developed.
        
           | __d wrote:
           | If that's the simplest way to get a decent photo, then Linux
           | phones are going to have a _very_ limited audience.
        
         | zekica wrote:
         | Look at what Intel is doing with MIPI IPU6 webcams. The
         | solution already exists.
        
         | johndough wrote:
         | The problem is not AI - many of the best "AI" publications are
         | open source after all. The problem is that hardware vendors do
         | not provide access to their signal processing chip's internals.
         | It is damn near impossible to even make a phone call these days
         | without some obscure binary blob or magic chips that nobody
         | knows what they do but are able to control every aspect of a
         | phone.
        
           | michaelt wrote:
           | _> many of the best  "AI" publications are open source after
           | all._
           | 
           | In my experience there's also very little _detailed_
           | documentation about what cutting-edge phone cameras are
           | doing.
           | 
           | You can get some vague descriptions (focus stacking? exposure
           | stacking? ISO stacking? ML bokeh? Special handling of faces
           | in multiracial groups? Shake compensation? Super-resolution?)
           | which is all very well shooting from a tripod - yet modern
           | phone cameras do their magic at 4k 60fps even while moving?
           | All while running on battery?
        
           | megous wrote:
           | Some do. Pinephone Pro's ISP has some public docs and
           | mainline Linux support.
        
       | [deleted]
        
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