Tag: linux mobile

Last year I wrote two blog posts about #LinuxMobile; the first was a conceptual piece about how linux mobile could be a safer mobile technology for children. The second was my experience using Ubuntu Touch (UBports) for a week.

Hold on to your hats; I’ve leveled up. I have now been using mobile linux for two months as my daily driver (i.e. my main mobile device). This blog post is to share my experiences with linux on mobile to help others decide if it’s right for them (tldr; likely not).

Why now?

I have been an enthusiastic proponent of open source and linux since the early days of Ubuntu and Inkscape which blew my mind about the functionality available in free software. I was already a convert by 2005 – although I confess there were some very rough edges, particularly to Ubuntu at the time (ndiswrapper to enable wifi was a particular memory).

I was an unashamed fanboy of Google from 2004, being an early adopter of gmail and then google drive. In 2006 we were using google docs to collaborate live at the (long defunct) Mid Wales Energy Agency, functionality that still doesn’t seem to have made it into every organisation I come across nearly twenty years later 🙄.

I kept buying Android because – well I loved it, being an open source project – and what was the alternative? Closed source (and expensive) Apple? I mean, Google’s motto was ‘Don’t be evil’ – what could be more unambiguous? I guess time proved me to be hopelessly naive on that one.

It wasn’t until the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and the Brexit vote, when I started to realise what was happening with data aggregation and political advertising. Suddenly I saw that, far from Google being one of the good guys, it was one of the major players actively contributing to a world of data collection without properly informed consent, propogation of targeted misinformation, and democracy for sale to the deepest pockets.

This understanding led me to ditch Instagram (2019) and Twitter (2020) and eventually google’s version of Android when I moved to GrapheneOS. However, even de-googled versions of Android still depend to a significant extent on google services, depending on what apps you need to use. Which is where Linux on Mobile comes in!

Mobile Linux – software and hardware

I wrote about mobile linux in 2024 in my blog post on the suitability of the software for children. In the 15 months since that blog post the software has improved markedly. To take one example, in April last year PostmarketOS was not quite at the same version of linux as desktop. Now both mobile and desktop are more or less using the most up to date versions.

New entrants into the hardware world include Furi Labs (with a live product), Liberux that recently launched a crowdfunder for their NEXX phone that achieved 10% of it’s £1.25m goal, and the DawnDrums DivineD phone. These are on top of existing manufacturers that were operational a year ago, such as the Librem 5 by Purism and the Pine64 set of products.t

Apart from the bespoke products listed above, the list of android phones that can be repurposed for linux grows monthly. Although advances are being made by a range of development teams including Mobian and Ubuntu Touch, the most interesting development for me is being undertaken by PostmarketOS which has a list of many compatible devices, helpfully listed by their launch date. PostmarketOS has a variety of flavours to try such as Phosh, KDE Plasma Mobile, Sxmo or Gnome.

I like the interface, and I already had an old OnePlus 6 – one of the best-supported devices – so that’s what I decided to use as my daily driver.

Friction

Slide 3 of my presentation to Tech for Good Cymru in May 2025 says simply:

Warning: do not use linux mobile

with a picture underneath it of a goblin and three mobile phones representing my own use case (more on that in a sec).

Slide 4 of the presentation reminds the delegates, in case they forgot the previous slide, to not use linux mobile.

I confess that part of the reason for emphasising this was reverse psychology; I want to show people how challenging it can be to daily drive precisely to incentivise those in the audience who like a challenge to try it, in the same way that the fabled but non-existent Shackleton advert to find people to join his expedition to Antarctica emphasised the hardships of the trip, and high likelihood of failure.

Indeed, several attendees at the event told me on the evening that they would definitely be trying out linux on their mobile devices. Target achieved!

Using mobile linux as my daily driver has introduced significant friction into my life. My OnePlus 6 cannot receive phone calls due to some terrible audio problems (presumably hardware as the audio is listed as working on the website). This means that I am using a second linux phone, a OnePlus Nord N100 running Ubuntu Touch, as my ‘phone call and text’ device, and also as a mobile hotspot for my OnePlus 6 for when I need internet out and about.

Sadly with Android locking down the security of banking apps, Waydroid is no longer a viable method to use some mission-critical things like banks or the gov.uk ID check. And due to GPS not working well/rapidly without the Android functionality, navigation apps aren’t brilliant on linux phones either. Which means that I need a third ‘burner’ Android phone specifically for these very few use cases. Luckily this sort of phone is readily available and cheap second hand on ebay.

Still; I generally find myself out and about with at least two phones, and the third at home, unless I’m going away for a few days in which case I need all three. Hence the image of the goblin with the three phones.

I’m holding out for a relatively recent Android phone to become functional which will enable me to retire my two existing linux phones.

My experience so far

Two months in, how is it going? Well – my use case is fairly straightforward. I listen to a lot of podcasts at 1.75x speed, and I like to listen to epub books read by TTS engines. Both these needs were perfectly met on my Pixel 6 running GrapheneOs. They are not at all perfectly met on my OnePlus 6, but I guess they achieve Minimum Viable Product status.

For example, the Podcasts app (by far the best one I’ve tried) does allow variable playback but it needs setting manually each time rather than being a global setting, and also doesn’t auto delete podcasts after listening.

For books, my epub software of choice, Foliate, works perfectly for reading, but for TTS is a bit clunky. I can only get it to use the robot voice and it doesn’t remember my place between phone shut-downs, starting always at the start of a chapter. This cannot be changed manually either, so if the phone shuts down (which it occasionally does randomly) you have no choice but to listen to the book from the start of (any) chapter, often hearing again something you just listened to earlier that day.

Bluetooth generally is ok, but sometimes drops for no apparent reason. A minor frustration but something I can live with.

Years ago I used to play quite a few games on Android, but that decreased to just Sudoku for the few years on GrapheneOS, and now the only game I have on my linux phone is Shattered Pixel Dungeon which works flawlessly and is excellent.

I should round off with a mention of the camera – which has just been upgraded to a very basic version that just about works albeit with poor focus and strange hues. THIS IS A HUGE ACHIEVEMENT and a massive improvement on previous where there was no camera functionality at all. This would definitely not be suitable if you want to take photos of special occasions, family events etc but I can always use my second linux phone for that.

In general I use my OnePlus 6 for approximately 90% of my activity, my OnePlus Nord 10 for 8% (calls, camera and texts) and burner Android for 2%.

So…why bother?

This is the most obvious question. Deliberately introducing friction into your daily life must surely rank as an act of stupidity? Certainly some people close to me think exactly that 🤣

Here’s a few responses.

1. Something I haven’t yet mentioned is that I don’t like being tracked and having my data harvested by big tech. This is probably not something that is in your mind regardless of what mobile system you use. But, like the air you breathe, it’s there. Everyone around you is being tracked. Their every interaction is being meticulously logged and sold to hundreds of companies and states globally. Stepping out of that ecosystem has its own value, even if it feels more philosophical than practical for now.
   
2. If I’m honest, I love being at the cutting edge of technological change. I feel like I am probably the only person in Wales daily driving linux at the moment. The regular updates are great to see. I feel as though I’m part of an important journey to a more free and open future.
   
3. If you’ve read my post about linux phones and children, you’ll understand that I think there are potential benefits for linux mobile for children in particular. Me using mobile linux will enable me to be in the best possible place to support my own children when it comes to them getting their first smart phones.
   
4. Finally…maybe friction is the point. If we (collectively) are spending too much time on mobile devices, and not enough in nature or with friends and family, having a phone that doesn’t constantly demand your attention is a positive and practical step towards a rebalanced life.

Summing up

Even though using mobile linux has introduced additional friction into my life, I’m sticking with it. I feel as though I’m part of a tiny global experiment, a rebellion like in Star Wars against the might of the Empire. The rate of development is astonishing, and I am convinced that many of the friction points will be smoothed off or eliminated completely within the next year or so. And when that happens, I want to be able to help other people sign off from the surveillance economy and become liberated, happy and healthy mobile linux users!

List of current apps

I thought it might be interesting to others to know what apps I have on my linux mobile. I’ve added links if they are not automatically provided in the installation process.

• Audio player (previously Decibels)
• Authenticator – perfectly functional MFA app
• Blanket – for nice sounds
• Camera – notes as above
• Clocks
• Console
• Contacts
• Dialect – for translation
• Files
• Firefox
• Flare – for signal messaging
• Foliate – notes as above
• Fractal – for matrix messaging
• Image viewer
• Materialgram – for Telegram messaging
• Nextcloud desktop client
• Papers – for pdf viewing
• Parabolic – for downloading videos
• Podcasts – as noted above
• Shattered Pixel Dungeon
• Shortwave – internet radio player
• Showtime – video player
• Software
• Text editor
• Thunderbird – works brilliantly with ‘sudo apk add mobile-config-thunderbird’ in PmOS 25.06
• Tuba – Mastodon client (can be used with other fediverse types)
• Warehouse – for managing flatpaks
• Web apps – for creating PWAs for sites of interest. I use mine for yr.no, ebay or other regularly vistited sites that I don’t want to have to launch firefox and browse for

Acknowledgements

I offer my deep and sincere thanks to everybody who has contributed to or supported open source software. Everything from the kernel to individual apps is a labour of love and generosity to humanity, and I am humbled by historic and ongoing efforts to make software accessible to all, no matter background or circumstance.

Edits

Altered one of the ‘why bother’ entries to focus on friction being helpful for reducing the draw of electronic devices, rather than the incentive to keep up to date with development of linux mobile.