The project, developed in partnership with veteran free software developer Rob Savoye, aims to create a fully free and open mobile platform, from the firmware to the operating system.
For all of those following, I emailed Rob and he confirmed that the focus of the project to start is reverse engineering binary blobs on existing android devices, but he is currently only at the discovery phase of picking which phones to start with. He is first checking LineageOS compatible phones using his toolset here: https://codeberg.org/rsavoye/librephone/src/branch/main/doc/index.md
I swear they unveiled the libre phone 10 years ago.
I have a Purism Librem 5 phone which is fully FOSS Linux phone.
The name keeps throwing me off lol
I mean when I was looking up there have been people that have been using the term libre phone for somewhere around a decade or so. Hell I found an old Reddit post from 8 years ago that talked about asking if it’d be possible to make a pure libre phone. And then of course it came across the Lebrim 5 that you mentioned there so I’m sure they originally used that term as well.
Incidentally what do you think of the phone do you have just the standard one or do you have that premium one?
I won’t hold my breath, but it’s sorely needed, so, we can hope.
That’s funny. I can’t hold my width.
Sometimes I can’t hold my
heigdthdepth.You are all out of line
Some people can hold their length, but only in private.
Just ask your mom
You can hold my girth
And my axe!
As long as y’all maintain your altitude.
And avoid getting raptured. Otherwise we’ll hear no end of your Arch installs.
I salute the early adopters who will suffer all the inconveniences of startups so the wider public can enjoy a non-corporate phone in the future. o7
I’m looking forward to get one of these just to play around with it, and maybe making some custom stuff for it.
I’m looking forward to actually seeing how my fucking works and what it’s doing.
how my fucking works and what it’s doing.
I think only you can answer that one, friend
As soon as my current phone is paid off I am going to get this. No more fucking Spyware up the ass.
The project just launched and is a software-first project. We won’t see a Libre Phone available for a while yet.
Then I will make do until then.
And if Hurd is any indication I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Unless they can get this working with Android Auto or Carplay I don;t see it going anywhere.
Nah, fuck that.
I’d rather see Linux on the head unit, too.
I’d still want an Android Auto and Apple Carplay equivalent.
I want my 2030 car to still be able to get the latest and greatest hardware and software in 2040 via me upgrading my phone.
Fuck cars
I want a Linux phone so bad that I refuse to think about what it would be like because i’d be upset afterwards.
I have an original PinePhone. The phone itself is horribly outdated and slow, but the software itself (Phosh+Gnome) is suprisingly okay. Given a good enough phone (as in hardware) I can see myself actually using it and not being annoyed more than I was with early Androids.
Unfortunately what I understand is that FSFE doesn’t intend to do hardware, only software platform, so I wonder whether they’ll come up with anything interesting.
Running PostmarketOS on hardware such as the Oneplus 6T (which is 8 years old now) shows that you could truly have dog shit cheap hardware for this. As long as you have decent driver support for it.
I’m just over here, mad that I have a Oneplus 7 pro lying around and there’s no port for that. For none of the 3 distros I could find that support the 6T. So I’m suspecting there’s some reason why it’s just not feasible.
It’s an epic phone and it could be so good with a lighter weight OS than Android.
I’m making this comment with a OnePlus 6T I got 8 years ago when it was new and it has never needed repairs, so I wouldn’t exactly call it dogshit. Even the battery still lasts a couple days of heavy use before needing a charge, though that may have more to do with my efforts in reducing software overhead over the years. (Also making sure almost everything I ever view on it has an AMOLED dark background)
I hope they can pull this off because we really need this.
Heard of Hurd, I don’t think they can.
Maybe Hurd never went anywhere but they are responsible for as much of what constitutes “Linux” as the Linux kernel is. Linux never would have amounted to much without GCC, the GNU tools, and the GPL.
gimme gimme
Linux mobile phones are the fusion power of the FOSS world, always “right around the corner.”
All the pieces are there, but none of them work together smoothly enough to be functional for anybody except the most hardcore FOSS enthusiasts.
When Proton started, it was kind of a joke, killed the Steam Machine idea in large part because the game compatibility was so limited. A decade later, we have a multi billion dollar handheld PC market lead by the Steam Deck, a Linux handheld that can play tens of thousands of Windows games without issue, in some cases with better performance than their native platform.
So it’s certainly possible for things to completely change, but we need a big player or consortium of players to unite with a shared goal of getting a Linux Phone to the state where it’s genuinely able to replace a traditional Android or Apple phone.
I’m very cautiously optimistic, I think it would come together much faster than Proton did for Linux gaming, but again, there needs to be a really heavy push into a singular device to start off. Like how the Steam Deck was, it allowed devs to have a singular platform to target for compatibility. Then, as the platform matures, competitors & innovators can enter the market and expand options, like how now there are multiple distros with builds for handhelds, like Bazzite, Nobara, and CachyOS.
At this point I would not be surprised if steam built on top of the deck idea and the support it already provides for fairly responsive and configurable inputs, touch screen included, to launch a steam phone or something.
I mean deck isn’t all that far from having such a device. For the actual phone network stack they would likely just partner up with someone already in the space.
They’ve already had to tackle powering a lightweight portable device with a touch screen and adapting the UX for a small screen and non-kbd input. They’ve already established they can source parts and mass produce a competively priced device.
But realistically I can’t see it being that much better than the recent Linux phone offerings.
None of what you described is an issue with Linux phones.
We need open firmware for broadbands.
Yeah well, this is of course just a singular anecdote, but my experience with any touch-based de on Linux hasn’t been great.
No Linux phone I have ever seen has had a particularly competitive pricing. Or specs.
But perhaps there has been some major advancements I’m not aware of in the past week.
In any case, your latter point is true.
So which ones have you tried?
I would love if Valve shipped and contributed to Plasma Mobile and Plasma Bigscreen alongside the existing Plasma Desktop. Or even if more Steam Deck users installed it so that it would get more interest.
When Proton started, it was kind of a joke, killed the Steam Machine idea in large part because the game compatibility was so limited. A decade later, we have a multi billion dollar handheld PC market lead by the Steam Deck, a Linux handheld that can play tens of thousands of Windows games without issue, in some cases with better performance than their native platform.
Proton’s existence did not overlap the existence of the Steam Machine program, like at all. Proton’s initial release was on the 21st of August 2018. Steam Machines were first released in 2015 and had been delisted from Steam entirely by April 2018.
Wine existed back then, sure, but Steam Machines didn’t benefit from DXVK, VKD3D, or any of the myriad per-game and gaming-oriented tweaks that Valve and Codeweavers have made to Wine in the version bundled with Proton. For most people, the prospect of using Wine on a Steam Machine was a huge pain at best. Valve’s official position at the time was that they were helping pay for Linux ports of games.
Fair point, I thought Proton went back farther than that.
I think my overall point is right still though, Linux gaming (native or otherwise) has become not just viable, but in some cases objectively superior to gaming on Windows in terms of raw performance. Pretty amazing, and in even less time than I originally thought lol.
Yeah. It’s improved by leaps and bounds since DXVK and VKD3D came into existence. Wine was already incredibly robust and powerful with like 20 years of development on it, so Proton combining Wine with those other 2 projects for better DirectX support and then also managing Wine prefixes and tweaks automatically brought us from “if you’re persistent and tweak a lot of settings a good chunk of games work” to “most games just work”, and now even “if a game doesn’t work on Linux now it’s because the devs are blocking it actively”
And of course, Valve’s active financial support and direct contributions to all of the projects involved has improved the reliability and performance of all of the tech involved by leaps and bounds.
Bazzite sounds like it would be a good start for the OS, though, and that exists now.
I’m celebrating!
As a linux phone guy this is good news. Any more pushing towards a more solid linux phone environment is a big plus.
I’m not holding my breath either hence “Hurd” project be amazing if this will be faster than 20 years. I’m hopeful at least.
Removed by mod
Tell me more about the phone! This has taken so long and I am ready to migrate to an open phone even if it’s only for texting at this point.
Screw this OS monopoly by Apple and Alphabet.
Open to simple solutions here. I have a Pixel 4a 5g and iPhone 15 Pro* atm.
I’d love to try it, but I imagine it will take 20 years for something like this to come even close to usable as a daily driver.
your pixel probably runs graphene, degoogle it.
you could probably run linux on it today too.
GrapheneOS for Pixel 4a 5G is deprecated.
What’s keeping me from doing this is that i won’t be able to run my banking apps anymore then. And I can’t be arsed to carry two phones
Graphene is actually better than most custom ROMs in that it can contain Play Services and a few other apps, effectively acting as 2 phones in one. Where I’m from, banking apps don’t need strong Play Integrity, just Play Services.
I mean, carrying two phones would defeat most of the purpose anyway if one isn’t degoogled in the first place, they’re still getting all that tracking and they’ll be able to associate it with all the online activity of your degoogled phone that’s conveniently always in the same location.
linux phones will never run banking apps either.
Perhaps there’s this magic app called a “web-browser” I could introduce you to…
banking doesn’t work on just web browsers anymore on most of the world’s banks. i WISH.
Huh, they still work for all my banks here in the US. Not sure how you’re supposed to access your bank account on your PC otherwise. Some banks you’ll have to use the “use Desktop version of the site” option in a mobile browser to get it to work, but it will still work.
access your bank account on your PC otherwise
we’re not. not without a phone.
Damn, that actually sucks.
Especially when virtualization options are expensive/unavailable on mobile CPUs.
atm i use the one bank that doesn’t enforce root for the 2fa portion of the app.
that will soon not be an option though, i guess i’m gonna need two phones now.
Install waydroid or something or use the browser. The more you put off switching the worse it’s going to get for everyone. You can also just keep another phone in your car on airplane mode and connect it to your hotspot when you need to check your account. There are ways I guess.
Well it might not even be a phone, maybe it’s only a software project that needs to partner with manufacturers that would include it in their phones. The article doesn’t really mention much.
Either way, I’m starting to get excited.
Oooh, I wonder if they’re going to pursue a free phone based on Risc-V. It’s a longshot but if they pull that off, it’d be like feeding two birds with one scone.
Honestly as long as they can fucking get something moderately priced that supports VOLTE and a decent camera I’ll buy it
I really hope this is super based
I’d rather see a stable OS and ecosystem for good, Free apps that we can flash onto existing devices. I’m quite happy with my Fairphone (repairable! modular! ethical!) and we know that building and marketing a device is painfully expensive.
Let’s make Debian or Arch just work on most phones instead of trying to compete in a saturated market.
Let’s make Debian or Arch just work
Wonder why that’s extremely rare on ARM devices, especially those with modems, and rarely works beyond proof of concepts on some very specific devices? Its not like you’re the first to have this idea.
How old is your oldest working fairphone? I’ve heard too many bad things about software atrophy to declare it a success yet.
I’m using a Fairphone 4, which is 4 years old at this point (October 2021) and I’m still quite happy with it, but I owned the Fairphone 1 and 2 as well.
In terms of software atrophy, they do offer support for your device for 5 years, which is better than most, and because of its open nature, it’s generally well supported by alternatives like Lineage or Calyx, but yeah, I’m still on Android 13. While I still get regular security patches and haven’t really had a need for an upgrade, there’s no denying that the FP4 is behind.
Of course, it’s also easily repairable, supports an SD card and replaceable battery, so that’s a tradeoff I’m happy with.
Do phone calls and RCS work 100% of the time? (I really hope the answer is “yes” because I really want to get out of the closed source ecosystem.)
I’m afraid I have no idea what an RCS is, but maybe that’s a network/region specific thing? I’m in the UK using GiffGaff (O₂) and the phone, SMS, and data works exactly as well as everyone else’s… which is to say perfectly in most places and sporadically on the train due to the dead zones on the route.
There isn’t much concrete information, but my guess is that OS/ecosystem is exactly what this project is, and that they are not talking about physical hardware. Specially considering that they are putting the emphasis on free software (not hardware) and they are involving a software developer. Making a phone’s hardware free would be an entirely different beast.
In the afternoon, FSF executive director Zoë Kooyman announced an exciting new project: Librephone.
Librephone is a new initiative by the FSF to bring full computing freedom to mobile computing environments. The LibrePhone Project is a partnership with Rob Savoye, a developer who has worked on free software (including the GNU toolchain) since the 1980s. “Since mobile phone computing is now so ubiquitous, we’re very excited about LibrePhone and think it has the potential to bring software freedom to many more users all over the world.”
Let’s make Debian or Arch just work on most phones
You have no idea how any of it works, do you?
Fighting closed source drivers, blobs, configurations, entitled users who want everything to work perfectly is not a child’s play. Having control over the whole device like this project is huge.
Mobian is Debian designed for phones. PostmarketOS is another project doing the same thing, but with an alpine Linux base.
work on most phones
A lot of the world can hardly get an unlockable phone.
