In response to community feedback, Liberux is adding a cheaper, entry level option to it’s crowfunding campaign
Its „adding” one?
So, in other words, they just promised that they can do double The r&d for The same funding.
Cool to see a Linux smartphone, but holy moly, what a terrible name!
I like how their idea of entry level is a 16GB RAM phone for €890.
It’s a bit diffident when you don’t have big megacorp subsidies (Meta, Google, various local-market apps, etc) & have to buy all hardware from third parties. And perhaps not have planned obsolescence. And upsales. And ad revenue. And frown upon slave or unhappy workforce & other negative society impacts.
Also it looks like an ok phone, low spec cameras, but still the usual dimensions, OLED, enough RAM & CPU to be usable in desktop mode, Linux.
well I guess it cannot run medium sized AI models or something. but also, the question arises what is their price for a mid level phone
what was the price before?! lol
Another model they put on Indie Go Go is €1300.
€890, meh
convergence!
Well you could plug a PinePhone on… pretty much anything with a USB-C dongle. I did plug it on a large (like… 70") screen and a mechanical keyboard and mouse mostly for testing purposes. It was cool. Still it felt under powered compared to even an entry level laptop modern laptop so… conceptually yes, in practice, meh.
You don’t think with the proper specs that it could behave much more akin to a modern laptop? Not to overhype or anything, but it feels like people have been waiting on something like this for a long time.
Absolutely but even their high end model has just a RK3588S 8-core 64-bit with a Mali-G610 MP4 … and that’s not exactly a powerhouse if you check benchmark with like an i7 which would already be several years old, not even high end.
This is not a “fair” comparison and yet, in practice if you sit down with that setup and you start to use Blender and Firefox with a tutorial running in the background, it’s going to feel sluggish quickly IMHO.
I suppose those are some valid reservations. I just think they’d be for different use cases anyway.
What would make you excited for something like this?
@carzian I paid about $60 for a used unlocked Galaxy Android phone, whatever the dollar equivalent of 890 euros is, it’s out of my budget.
Pardon my ignorance, but why people keep trying Linux phones when you can develop on top of open source android version, like GrapheneOS? Linux desktop apps are not exactly secure.
Because the Android SDK is owned and controlled by Google. They’ve consistently made decisions to make it harder to stay out of their ecosystem (like the new “Integrity” API).
As consumers, we would vastly benefit from having another choice that isn’t controlled by one of the biggest tech companies in the world.
Yes, this.
Google is slowly but consistently closing down the ecosystem (that should have been openv all the way through anyways).
Just like with the search engine, the early ad-free serve-everyone-equally stage is dead. Now the monopoly is about to monetise what it can & control all the things.
(Thighs might escalate a bit quicker since the “Googles android” is prob at it’s peak market share rn & the China alternatives are gonna steamroll even oven giants like Google and Apple to a significant extent.)
I can’t talk for others I’m personally interested in Linux phones (I have 2, PinePhone and PinePhone Pro) because I do not want to rely on Android because it’s lead, maintained and basically in practice owned by Google.
I would also much prefer to have “just” Linux because I know it better and because IMHO we reached a point, already few years ago, where “mobile” does not mean much anymore. “just” a computer with a battery is enough due to the power available.
IMHO the SteamDeck is the existence proof of that.
Linux desktop apps are not exactly secure.
Can you please clarify?
While lots of this is problem of desktops in general, but:
- Linux applications can access your entire home folder, which likely contains most of your data. It can also access e.g. state of other applications, which can be bad.
- While flatpak somewhat mitigates the issues, it is half-baked: permissions are granted directly when you install the app, and user has to manually revoke the permission - Needing e.g. FlatSeal for this is insane as well. With Android/iOS, the user only grants permission when needed, which reduces lots of attack surfaces.
- Doesn’t too many apps want your home folder access by default? If you think about it, it is a huge security issue - you basically have to trust the app to keep your secrets intact.
- Mic access can be very problematic, esp when it would be enabled by default if app requests it. Although I don’t know to which extent this would be abused.
Linux applications can access your entire home folder
That’s the default because that’s what most people want, or at least expect.
You can perfectly start an application within a container or even a dedicated user.
Nearly nobody does this not because Linux does not permit that, it does, but rather because most people believe (rightfully or not) they do not need this level of separation.
True, but asking user about permission to home folder vs. granting permission by default is huge difference. Also doesn’t flatpak also grant other permissions the app wants as well? Like the Mic permission.
The “know it better” is, I think, a big argument, that’s imo often a bit overlooked. Android does not have that much “tinkers” as “proper” Linux has. For the average Gnome DE @ Ubuntu user, Android forks are fine. But if you’re the kind of person, who optimizes their Arch system with cool scripts from Github, you won’t get the same experience on LineageOS. I know Termux is a thing but that feels more like a workaround.
Edit: Had to reword the comment, because people thought I was talking about malware and supply chain attacks.
Edit2 to clarify my point: I think big downside of Android is that if you want to tinker with it, you basically have to be an android developer. With “proper” Linux the barrier to entry is smaller and the learning experience is more granular. Hence why we think “we know ‘proper’ Linux better”.
Android does not have that much “hackers” as “proper” Linux has
It’s hard for Android to have hackers precisely because Google and manufacturers are trying their best to prevent that. They do not allow rooting, they blocks features on rooted devices, etc. So they do their absolute best to keep on exercising control despite collaborating on open source software.
… so why are eg flatpak apps less secure than Android ones?
And Play & Apple stores are full of unchecked scam apps. They basically are solving this by securing the os more. Yet apps (even Instagram) can still take pics without your action. I assume they listed in on you too.
The app (& SDK) argument I think has more to do with user- and dev-base. Something that Microsoft failed at in the mobile market. So basically we need a quality/seamless way of running Android apps on Linux.
And since we can run Win games on Linux very nicely I think this wouldn’t be that much of an issue … Tho minimal industry support (eg banking apps) is still needed.
I worded my comment badly. I was not talking about supply chain attacks, rather the ability to tinker on “proper” Linux which you don’t get on Android.
Android is a semi-immutable (heavily modified and basically owned by Google) distro that runs app in sandboxes.
What is the difference?
The difference between Android and “proper” Linux? You said it:
Android is a semi-immutable (heavily modified and basically owned by Google) distro that runs app in sandboxes.
That is not what “tinkerers” want. They want access to the system. I have not tried it but can you even run an android app from the command line? I guess you can somehow but that just brings me to my other point. You kinda have to be an Android dev to tinker with Android, while on “proper” Linux the learning experience is more granular.
edit: indeed running Android apps from CLI is not very tinker-friendly:
Sorry, I couldn’t follow/I don’t think I understood you.
Why wound you want or need to run anything via CLI?
Most Linux users never use anything CLI (similar MacOS & Windows). Why would Linux phone users? And what does that have to do with android app devs?
we need a quality/seamless way of running Android apps on Linux
Like Waydroid? There was a thread recently on that and it seemed (even though not necessarily a representative sample) most people used it for… games, not “actual” applications. They were NOT used for banking apps also (at least I don’t remember anybody mentioning that) because I bet most people just go on their bank website for that.
The issue is that the banking app is often the only way to get 2 factor authentication. The other way is to use SMS but that can be hijacked by social engineering attacks so it cannot be considered secure.
use SMS but that can be hijacked by social engineering attacks
Can you please share an example? I’d be curious how that would work, especially if it works while understanding how it works.
It’s nothing sophisticated. You just steal someone’s phone number by calling their phone service provider pretending to be them. I don’t know how serious this threat is but for this reason SMS is not considered secure in the “security circles”.
https://www.howtogeek.com/358352/criminals-can-steal-your-phone-number-heres-how-to-stop-them/
… people miss Android … to play Android games? Omfg.