this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2026
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Linux Phones

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Community about running GNU/Linux on phones. Projects like Ubuntu Touch, Plasma Mobile, PostmarketOS, Mobian etc. Either on former Android phones or hardware like the PinePhone.

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which Linux Phone Distro should I use? (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 months ago by Bullerfar@lemmy.world to c/linuxphones@lemmy.ml
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I am looking forward to changing out my Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. But I am very confused of what to choose, of the many options. Here is some criteria you guys could maybe help me choose the perfect fit from:

1: has to be able to use some android apps still, because of government- & banking applications. 2: the car runs it's own android system, but android auto would be nice to still have. 3: It would be awesome to be able to use the linux phone as a pc as well. I loved the videos I have seen from ubuntu touch, where you just connect to a screen through usb c and you have a desktop environment. That is just awesome! 4: I am kind of pro EU. So if the OS is developed in europe and the phone that supports it from the factory is also EU based, it's a huge plus in my book. Not a deal breaker though. My trusy on USA has just dissapeared sadly.

Hope someone will be able to help me out here! Thank you.

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[–] exu@feditown.com 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

PostmarketOS is probably the largest one you'll find. It supports a huge range of devices, some better some worse. You might have worse driver support and fewer features on newer devices, because PostmarketOS is focused on using the upstream kernel with minimal patches.

Most other mobile Linux distributions use Halium as a translation layer between the Android core and Linux userspace. More stuff might work, but you're still using the ancient Android kernel and proprietary drivers.

Written from my Fairphone 5 I got yesterday to put PostmarketOS on it.

[–] sorghum@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If you don't mind me asking, where did you get and how much did you pay for your Fairphone 5?

[–] exu@feditown.com 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I got it used from a local online store. 240 CHF that's ~265 EUR or ~300 USD

[–] Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Fellow swiss guy apparently. It means I ain’t the only one on Lemmy and the only one interested in Linux phones. We might be 2 in the entire country😅

[–] remo@feddit.org 1 points 2 weeks ago

I'm from switzerland too😉 i think there are more!

[–] JoeBidet@lemmy.ml 11 points 5 months ago

my general answer to this would be PostmarketOS, but it's just personal bias ;)

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 4 points 5 months ago

Ubuntu Touch will probably have the lowest friction as most things work on it as it reuses the Android drivers.

But on carefully selected devices PostmarketOS or Mobian can work.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de -5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

GrapheneOS is a common choice for Android phones. (It's Android, though. Not a Linux phone distro!)

Supported devices: https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices

Banking app compatibility: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos/

That'd still leave you within the Android ecosystem. And it's fairly easy to install, maintain and operate. Though, the phones currently come from Google. And it's still Android, so ultimately comes from Google.

If you want to avoid Google and Apple entirely, I don't think there are many options except a proper Linux phone. There are some few older(?) smartphones supported by projects like PostmarketOS. But do your homework first. It's an entirely different experience, there's often stuff missing or cumbersome to configure or not available at all. And the camera might suck. It's great he have Linux on phones. But I from my own experience, there are severe downsides for regular every-day life, including banking apps, android auto, push notifications, battery life, etc...

Edit: By the way, the Android compatibility layer for Linux is called Waydroid. Maybe you can look up if your banking apps etc work with Waydroid in the first place. I don't think we have any comprehensive list, so that probably needs to be googled for the individual apps, or tested on a Linux computer.

[–] tophneal@sh.itjust.works 8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I might be mistaken but I think op wants to replace the android on their Samsung, which would rule out graphene

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

The way I read it is - they want to replace their phone and buy a new one. In case someone wants to replace the software on a Samsung phone, I don't think there's good options. Samsung phones rarely get good Custom ROMS or anything like that. I think what people do is root them, install Magisk and remove some crapware. But that's basically it. Or you'd experiment with some unsupported repack or early effort at LineageOS with SELinux turned off or something like that. Linux doesn't seem to work either. It's often 10 year old models and most models don't have calls working or wifi and a bunch of other things don't work... I'm not aware of any Samsung with usable Linux support.

[–] Bullerfar@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

No, no. I know it isn't possible to boot another linux OS on the Samsung phone, So I will be buying a new phone as well.

I know of Jolla Phone comes with SailfishOS, and Fairphone ships with the option of preinstalled /e/OS

But I have no idea if those are great options. I have no experience with any of the linux options.

[–] quixote@mastodon.nz 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

@Bullerfar @tophneal One thing you have to watch out for with linux phones (if it's important to you) is:

Do they actually work as phones?

Sending and receiving texts, that sort of thing. Super basic stuff. I had a pinephone for a while and it had a bug where it wouldn't wake from suspend for an incoming call or message. A bit inconvenient!

On the forums, the talk would be about how well you could use IRC or the like. That's nice. But I'd use a laptop for that. For me at least, a phone needs to be a phone.

Currently using Graphene which really does work, but isn't a linux phone in the sense you're using it (I think?).

[–] tophneal@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You're right. PinePhone/Pro is the only Pine device I haven't tried just bc there was so much holding it back from being a feasibly reliable phone.

I can only kinda speak towards using Sailfish (but not the phone device.) I booted a dev IMG of it for a while on an OG PineTab. Its probably much more mature now, but once I got used to it Sailfish was a great mobile device OS.

[–] quixote@mastodon.nz 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

@tophneal Interesting. I only saw screenshots of Sailfish. I loved the way it looked.

[–] tophneal@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 months ago

It definitely looks more polished now, but seems to still be mostly the same as when I last used it. Definitely the first good looking mobile Linux UI IMO. What really set it apart to me was the edge swipes. They worked a lot like the gestures of other mobile OSes, but each screen edge had a separate UI function/destination (hopefully that makes sense). The instinct to swipe page history definitely messed with me in the browser, I kept sending myself to the home screen 😂