this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
295 points (97.7% liked)

Linux

57909 readers
1114 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml
nooter692@lemmy.ml
MarcellusDrum@lemmy.ml
cypherpunks@lemmy.ml
cyclohexane@lemmy.ml
d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz
295
The state of Linux phones in 2025 (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works to c/linux@lemmy.ml
253 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Linux phones are still behind android and iPhone, but the gap shrank a surprising amount while I wasn’t looking. These are damn near usable day to day phones now! But there are still a few things that need done and I was wondering what everyone’s thoughts on these were:

1 - tap to pay. I don’t see how this can practically be done. Like, at all.

2 - android auto/apple CarPlay emulation. A Linux phones could theoretically emulate one of these protocols and display a separate session on the head unit of a car. But I dont see any kind of project out there that already does this in an open-source kind of way. The closest I can find are some shady dongles on amazon that give wireless CarPlay to head units that normally require USB cables. It can be done, but I don't see it being done in our community.

3 - voice assistants. wether done on device or phoning into our home servers and having requests processed there, this should be doable and integrated with convenient shortcuts. Home assistant has some things like this, and there’s good-old Mycroft blowing around out there still. Siri is used every day by plenty of people and she sucks. If that’s the benchmark I think our community can easily meet that.

I started looking at Linux phones again because I loathe what apple is doing to this UI now and android has some interesting foldables but now that google is forcing Gemini into everything and you can’t turn it off, killing third party ROMS, and getting somehow even MORE invasive, that whole ecosystem seems like it’s about to march right off a cliff so its not an option anymore for me.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] krunklom@lemmy.zip 1 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

So in other words they're perfectly suited for day to day use?

I have zero need for any of the janky bullshit features you listed, so this is great news!

[–] kalpol@lemmy.ca 1 points 17 hours ago

Literally my reaction. What is a good Linux phone to try?

[–] bobbyfiend@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago

This is awesome because I don't want or need any of those things. If this is all that's missing, I think I'm ready for a Linux phone when my android dies.

[–] danhab99@programming.dev 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

3 - voice assistants. wether done on device or phoning into our home servers and having requests processed there, this should be doable and integrated with convenient shortcuts. Home assistant has some things like this, and there’s good-old Mycroft blowing around out there still. Siri is used every day by plenty of people and she sucks. If that’s the benchmark I think our community can easily meet that.

Of all the things that my phone is supposed to be able to do this is the one thing I never touch. It has never worked better for me than just doing it with my own two thumbs.

Does anyone actually use their voice to control their phone (not voice typing)?

[–] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 12 hours ago

That's funny, I never use 1 and 2, but I use 3 often.

I used to use tap to pay, but I recently acquired one of those adhesive credit card holders that has obviated my need for to pay.

I have an old car and just have my phone in a holder if I need to see turn by turn directions. Unfortunately the credit card holder fucks with the phone stand a little bit, but it mostly still works. The few times in my life I used android auto I disliked it.

I most often use voice assistant to ask for a song to play on Spotify. This was really convenient with "hey google" while I was driving or had my phone in my pocket listening to headphones, but I live without it these days.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

tap to pay, voice assistants, carplay...everything I hate about modern phones. Don't threaten me with a good time, Linux.

[–] witness_me@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago

You may not like tap to pay or CarPlay but I and a lot of others do.

It’s a deal breaker for me to not have these two features in a product I’d like to spend hard earned money on.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] sudoer777@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago

I was wondering what everyone’s thoughts on these were:

  1. It doesn't work on GrapheneOS either, so I got separate devices I carry with me that do the tap-to-pay instead, and they've been a godsend. They're super compact as well and came for free when I opened the accounts.

  2. I don't own a car, on ebike I use my screen.

  3. Normally I use my fingers. If they're not available I yell cuss words at my phone until they're available again.

[–] ki9@lemmy.gf4.pw 3 points 1 day ago

Voice assistant through homeassistant is great. You can plug into an AI. There are guys using the SIP plugin to dial chatgpt from a landline.

https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/15jjkkm/i_built_chatgpt_into_my_rotary_phone_and_made_it/

Of course, you can also self host AI models if you have the hardware. I'm not there myself yet... but the tech is ready.

[–] irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

RCS text messaging is another to consider, at least in the US. The carriers implanted it in a proprietary way, so only Apple and Google apps have it. It's a poor substitute for an IM/chat app and not private and secure like it was promised due to poor implementations, but it's still far better than plain SMS. I still have people I can't get to use Signal or another secure IM app.

The Android Auto is the only one I'd be sad about. I love not having to use my phone's screen for navigation and the navigation built into most cars is crap and expensive to keep maps and data updated. I like being able to use any navigation app, though Google Maps/Waze is still the only one I've found that has both live traffic info, which is extremely important with my city, and reading the street names rather than just "turn left" it says "turn left on some street" so I don't have to look at the screen as much.

I use GrapheneOS and that's what I won't be able to replace once I finish my Immich and Home Assistant self host setups to replace Google Photos and Google Home/Nest, but st least they are sandboxed a bit.

Though Google has been moving to make it even more difficult to use their apps on these alternate OSes. Like I just found that Google Photos latest version pops up a not closeable error screen if it doesn't have full "photos and video" access. Doesn't work with the limited access or storage scopes that come with GrapheneOS, at least for now. I have photos I don't want google to scan and index even if they are not being uploaded, which they do now. It's obviously a ploy to get access to your data since it used to work fine. Now, I just use the mobile website instead until I have time to get Immich totally working and get people to switch if they want to see my stuff or share with me.

[–] sudoer777@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I think JMP.chat supports RCS, and it lets you text through Cheogram or another XMPP client. I believe it also upgrades the connection if both users are using Cheogram similar to Signal when it supported SMS

[–] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

This is like a google voice number? Do they do VoIP and voicemail transcription, because I don't have a replacement for Google voice yet.

https://jmp.chat/

Edit: yes they do voip, voicemail, and transcriptions, but they do not do RCS yet. When they do, I might consider switching, especially if I can use their voicemail for my regular number, like gv.

JMP does not (yet) support these features:

  • RCS, which allows for video calls over the phone network.
[–] sudoer777@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Apparently the RCS is being tested still. Other than that, yes it's similar to Google voice but the clients are open source

[–] bent@feddit.dk 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Which phone did you find where these are the only problem you encountered? I don't care about any of these things and haven't been finding any usable Linux phones.

[–] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

What problems have you had?

[–] bent@feddit.dk 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

They're slow and clunky as fuck for starters. Cellular is very spotty.

Do you have a good alternative I can look into? I really, really, really want them to work. The only usable Linux phone I've seen is Jolla, but I'd much rather have Mobian or Arch on mobile or some other fully FLOSS alternative

[–] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 11 hours ago

I'm too deep into the android ecosystem, sadly, but if I found a good Linux phone I'd try it.

[–] utopiah@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago

I fallback to a deGoogled phone precisely because Linux phone isn't up to my expectation in terms of convenience for now.

You can check my post history but just during the last few days :

... so yes, not there yet

PS: on "assistant" (I really think the naming is over-blowing capabilities) I have been using HomeAssistant daily for years now. I have a Nabu Casu on my shelf... and didn't even set it up because it was either 3rd party service dependencies (not why I rely on HA) or a very complex setup. So... I would recommend not looking there, at least few months ago when I received mine, sadly.

[–] pineapple@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

This is pretty cool, the fact that you can run android apps on Waydroid is awesome. I might try POST-marketos on an old s9 I have lying around.

[–] buddascrayon@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

google is forcing Gemini into everything and you can’t turn it off,

You can still shut off Gemini as of right now. I don't know what it'll be like in the future though.

[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Google said they are going to make it so you can turn off directly interacting with Gemini but it will always be running in the background, spying on you.

[–] buddascrayon@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Source please

[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)
[–] buddascrayon@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Oh, I've seen that. I've had assistant turned off for like 2 years now. It became a security hazard when they took away the sound indicator that it was listening.

[–] bitjunkie@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

"Damn near usable day to day" - what I've been hearing about Linux since the beginning of time

[–] procapra@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago

Maybe not true for phones, but the linux desktop IS usable day to day, and I'd say this has been true for atleast the last 5 years. KDE and GNOME are both fully fledged desktops, and with the popularity of snaps and flatpaks there isn't really alot getting in the way of software installation either. Even wine/proton has come so far I don't see the "linux bad for gaming" as an actual excuse anymore.

I started using linux exclusively on desktop in 2021 and I'm not any kind of programmer or anything, just a regular user. :)

[–] doomsdayrs@lemmy.ml 18 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Someone did do some work on reimplementing the Android Auto Client Server API.

Just needs time and interest.

https://github.com/tomasz-grobelny/AACS

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] DharmaCurious@startrek.website 9 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Help a non-techy out. I've fully switched my computers to Linux (fedora workstation, silver blue, and ubuntu). Been Linux only for several years now. Silverblue is probably my favorite. I'm willing to make the switch for my phone, too. But there are a few things I'm pretty reliant on:

My banking apps, cash app, and, embarrassing as it may be to admit, Grindr.

Any chance of getting those?

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›