UX: Investigate support for mobile phones #23
Description
Intro
It's a preparation for the long future, where mobile devices with pure Linux OSes would evolve, to be usable enough as a daily-driver device. Which also includes Gidro-OS.
Context
I rooted + flashed Android devices with custom ROMs & I was active in xda-developers forum.
Doing those operations allowed me to have some freedom in customization with mobile devices, to be mostly free from Google & to have more trust in open source part of code that is running, while still having a relatively good user experience.
I don't root Android phones anymore, as I have no need for customization it brought me & it's bad for security. But I still install custom ROMs like LineageOS. I would install GrapheneOS instead, but it's not available for devices I buy.
iPhones are not in my radar, since they're too restricted in customization for my liking & I don't like the way how iOS functions.
I also don't like that it's not possible to run partly or fully open-source OS on it.
I am generally tired of Android & iOS devices. I would like some change.
Current Linux mobile OSes, while having many other issues, have 1 major blocking issue, which I don't see as solved anytime soon.
That is the lack of the good system infrastructure, which would guarantee great system reliability in terms of:
- reliable, clean & non-interruptible system updates
- reliable, clean & non-interruptible application updates
- clean system/local-user separation
- having reliable factory reset functionality
- having good app ecosystem
Fedora Silverblue with rpm-ostree, btrfs filesystem & focus on flatpaks easily beats mobile Linux OSes in all of those areas, except factory reset, which is not yet implemented.
Android shines in all those areas, except where application & system updates are interruptible.
Solution?
Remember how I mentioned that custom ROMs are not easy to make on Android devices?
And for good amount of Android devices, how it can be tough to find a good custom ROM?
Well, with mobile Linux OSes evolving, one day, Gidro-OS can be the ideal custom ROM that I always wanted!
Making custom images with BlueBuild is much easier than making custom ROMs, while also being more reliable.
Let's say some Linux phones have full support in upstream Linux kernel.
What does this mean?
This means that I can install Gidro-OS on it without doing any tinkering & enjoying the great user experience!
I would love to have pure Linux phone some day, ideally with Gidro-OS, so this is just another motivation to do this.
Blockers
Desktop environment
Gnome doesn't support mobile devices well yet.
Gnome Mobile is separately made as a testing ground for mobile devices, which intends to gradually merge things upstream in Gnome.
Hardware support
There are no mobile devices which have full hardware support inside the vanilla Linux kernel, which Fedora uses.
And some other minor blockers, which are not important now.