The most reliable Linux phone I've ever had was a Nexus 5 running #UbuntuTouch.
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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.
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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.
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@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.
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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.
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@Blort @williamtries And fully working by the next OS update in about a month.
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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.
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@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...
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You're referring to Hallium, right? Or do you mean in mainline?