this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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Linux Phones
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The Discussion on Linux-based Phones.
Benefits:
- Hardware freedom.
- Perfect operating-system competition.
- Full utilization of specs.
- Phone lifespan raises to 10+ years.
- Less e-waste.
Linux Mobile Distros:
- Ubuntu Touch
- Sailfish
- FuriOS
- Postmarket OS
- Mobian
- Pure OS
- Plasma Mobile
- LuneOS
- openSUSE Mobile
- Nemomobile
- Droidian
- Mobile NixOS
- ExpidusOS
- Maemo Leste
- Manjaro Arm
- Tizen
- WebOS
Linux Mobile Hardware:
- Fairphone 5
- Volla Phone
- PinePhone
- FLX1
- Librem 5
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Feel like we should be able to install these OS on whatever device we want, same as PCs. Why lock a phone so much?
Because corporations would struggle to siphon an immense amount of personal data if they didnt control the software.
If nothing has changed since the time I looked into it, because every device (camera, display, SIM) basically needs its own driver wrote for it and it's the decision of the one ordering the designing of the phone to release it or not
Cause on ARM you don't have a bios and some other reasons why you need an OS specifically for each device
There are loaders for arm devices. They may not be typical bootloaders like for computers but they're not all that different. Like tow-boot or u-boot.
Eh, the BIOS is ultimately just some code on a ROM chip, it working the way it does was a design decision by IBM, it wasn't because of the CPU they used. There's nothing technical standing in the way of making a PC-like ecosystem based on ARM chips.
The reason phones don't have this is because they're (almost) always fully integrated systems where you don't ever swap out any of its parts for different ones, so there's no incentive to create a flexible system, both on the hardware and software side, that can deal with different hardware on-line over just baking in all the hardware-specific stuff off-line.
Previous generations really dropped the ball on this
Edit: The not resolving it so phones would be same as PC's