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

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 12 atm.

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 won't hold my breath, but it's sorely needed, so, we can hope.

I hope they can pull this off because we really need this.

I want a Linux phone so bad that I refuse to think about what it would be like because i'd be upset afterwards.

This is the original article

https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-turns-forty-with-a-new-president-and-a-new-campaign

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.

Hopefully this will recruit projects that already have significant headstart, such as Pine64. Otherwise, it would merely be performative.

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.

I've got a Google Pixel 3a with postmarketOS installed on it right now for testing, and it really is a two-pronged issue with both hardware and software. Because it's an older phone the battery drains within a few hours, nowhere close to all-day use. Because most of the software is designed for the desktop certain things are just impossible to use (the big pain point for me is Anki, but on the other hand it's impressive how many GTK apps conform very nicely to the screen). The keyboard still feels pretty rough.

Hopefully the FSF dipping their hat into the ring will help existing projects like this in a rising-tide-raises-all-ships sort of way. Would be a shame for them to put effort into a software stack that goes nowhere (GNU Hurd), and pour $$$ into a hardware project that doesn't make it to market or doesn't do its job better than a cracked smartphone from 5+ years ago.

I think it is possible to switch to it now and have things mostly work out for you, but it will make your life harder. I remember switching to Ubuntu around 2010 and it's almost to that level of experience. You'll be giving up a lot, apps you "need" won't work, but it's at the point where it is a complete usable experience. For those that are willing to suffer for FOSS, I mean.

I really hope this is super based

The only way to sucdeed here is to legally force all phones to have unlocked bootloader.

gimme gimme

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.

Honestly as long as they can fucking get something moderately priced that supports VOLTE and a decent camera I’ll buy it

Just because it's a libre phone, doesn't mean it's necessarily a linux phone. Or at least any more so than Android is a linux phone because it uses a heavily modified (almost unrecognizable) linux kernel.

There's nothing in the article that says they're just going to use a mainline linux kernel and throw a touch optimized version of some existing desktop on it (ubuntu touch, etc...)

Heck, they could be meaning that they're planning on making their own heavily modified kernel for their very own OS so as to skip all of the trouble that trying to make mainline linux into a handheld device has been so far. (similar to I believe how SailfishOS is doing it)

My hopes and my expectations could not be more at odds with each other, and the only thing I know for sure is that one of them will be smashed.

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.