What are the technical obstacles to be overcome,
Its not a technical obstacle preventing me from having one.
The companies that make the ones that do exist won't offer them for sale on my continent.
this post was submitted on 04 May 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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jolla-devices.com seems to ship to a ton of places. I just got a Sony Xperia with SailfishOS. Seems pretty decent so far. I'm in the US with Mint Mobile.
With a big caveat that it's not fully FLOSS. But it is a Linux phone.
I thought pine64 shipped world wide. Have you looked into the pine phone?
Pinephone and even Pinephone Pro are incredibly outdated as of today. They might work for just messing around with, but for a daily use phone, that's not going to work.
Pine64 doesn't ship to some countries, specifically neither Ukraine nor Russia. Occationally I see ads from someone buying one when in EU and then selling it here at multiple times the original price.
I haven't looked recently. Didn't know they now ship globally.
Antarctica?
Then get an "Android phone" with decent mainline kernel support. Pixel 3a has decent support, several SDM845 phones have decent support, some others...
Interesting pod cast (1.5 hours, but can read the transcript too)
Essentially we stand in the early days of linux on phones - they say it's like Linux on the desktop was 20 years ago. As the guest makes clear, there are a myriad of issues starting with getting a list of the devices from the bootloader (as no ACPI), a lack of drivers for hardware as manufacturers don't feed into the mainline linux kernel, a lack of software that can use that hardware to it's pull potential (the camera being an obvious one) and a lack of phone apps as the big popular apps aren't built for linux mobile.
But it seems like things are moving slowly in the right direction, and its interesting to hear how much is going on in so many different areas.
As most of us in this group probably already know, there's Ubuntu Touch, which I've seen on some phones, even being sold on ebay, on Pixel 3As. There's LineageOS & PostmarketOS, but they only run on certain phones, and the setup learning curve is challenging. And finally, seemingly the most popular one, GrapheneOS, only currently works on certain Pixel phones, but there is a partnership with Motorola, so we'll see how that goes. I don't know if any of these except Ubuntu Touch are considered Linux, though.
Does LineageOS count? It's just Android in its pre-google state.
PostmarketOS, Mobian, Maemo (RIP) and even Ubuntu Touch are what I'm thinking of when we talk about Linux on Smartphones.
Been using a Linux phone as my main phone since January; after, like, 5 years of wanting to get off Android, I'm not ever going back, if I can help it.
Which device? Which OS?
FuriLabs's FLX1s; it runs Debian (I think testing?).
It utilizes Halium, to get hardware fully working, but that's a temporary tradeoff I'm willing to make to finally be able to daily-drive a Linux phone.
Last I checked they were pretty bad for the price, but that could be outdated by now?
Depends on what you want. A used Pixel 3a or some other model can be very cheap and has decent mainline support.
Does it now? ~~I literally have one~~, tried postmarketos iirc, and it kept failing at several steps. Eventually put graphene on it which did work, but that's not quite linux.
Edit: nope, I have a 4 or 4a, nvm
I was talking about buying a phone that works out of the box primarily, but you're right, buying an older phone is an option. Though I'd like to have something on par with a flagship google/oneplus/samsung device in screen resolution, battery life and picture quality mostly
I've got a Fairphone 5. For Mobian we still need to add the patches for speaker audio. Then it is a usable phone. Camera works, but image quality is not yet the same as for Android, but it is slowly getting there. For now I just carry an Android phone for photos, but I expect that to be unnecessary within this year, seeing how much effort some people put into it.
I don't think I would try that on my main phone. Maybe another phone. That'd be fun.
Yeah, also keep your main phone and make a slow switch. It will take a while to find your favourite software and figure things out. You might even try several UIs and might re-flash a couple of times. Most people are not comfortable having no usable phone for a couple of weeks.
No good small phones for Linux. The few phones I’ve seen that I’d get only take custom roms, no good for security or longevity if the maintainer decides to get a new phone…