Linux Phones

Number 1 rule is to try it out on a second phone. Do not try with your current phone. Just don't.

Second rule : read the first rule again.

In all seriousness, I have had so much fun with mobile Linux OS's, trying out different phones and OS's but there's a deep learning curve and at the end of the day, there is not one that is completely ready to be use as a daily driver or have all the apps that I need - looking at you DUO Mobile (2fa).

However there is /e/OS, where is degoogled, has a built in tracker blocker and uses microG. Use it as a daily driver on my One plus 6t but its technically still Android. Someone did mentioned Murena, same OS.

Buy a cheap supported phone off of EBay and have a go. If you have any questions, let me know.

I would advise against it. Most of the Linux phones are really not "average user" friendly yet.

However if you have one of the well supported devices from here: https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/ you can give it a try.

Whether an average user can use a Linux smartphone depends largely on what the user does with a smartphone and which interface is installed on the smartphone.

Those who need proprietary apps on a smartphone will have their difficulties with Linux. However, if you are looking for a simple phone that comes with a dialer, a few other apps and a web browser, Linux is probably the way to go.

The following list is based on my own experience with the various graphical Interfaces and contains personal opinions and bias which may differ from other users. If I have wronged any project or offended anyone's opinion, it was not my intention to do so. I recommend everyone to make their own impression of the different projects.

Plasma-Mobile: As much as I love the plasma-mobile project, it is relatively unstable. the interface crashes constantly and is generally rather unreliable. Therefore I can't recommend plasma-mobile to "normal" users.

Phosh: Phosh works relatively stable now. The only problem I have with phosh are the gnome apps. They just don't suit my personal taste - no matter how much I try to like them. Other than that, Phosh seems to be a good option for "normies".

Ubuntu Touch: Many of us long-time Linux users like to run away from Ubuntu Touch. This is because the system is read-only and the terminal is more or less useless. Although you can remove the write protection, but that could harbor problems with OTA updates. The big advantage of Ubuntu Touch is that it is relatively easy to install and it works stable and reliable afterwards. The dedicated Appstore only lists applications optimized for Ubuntu Touch and the community is always friendly and helpful. All of this makes Ubuntu Touch of of ( if not ) the best OS for non-technical users in my opinion.

Sailfish: I have had little experience with Sailfish. Therefore I can't say much about it but it looks like Sailfish is also suitable for beginners.

SXMO: Suckless really sucks if you have no idea about tiling window managers and since most average users have no idea about tiling window managers SXMO will probably overwhelm them.

LuneOS: It looks visually very cool, however it seems to be no longer actively developed and since the last release is from 2019, I can unfortunately not recommend LuneOS ATM.

Hildon/Maemo: The concept is interesting, but Hildon does not seem to be fully mature enough to recommend it to regular users.

Glacier/Nemo: Here it is similar to Hildon. The concept is good, but the interface is still undergoing many changes and is not yet reliable enough for me to recommend it to regular users.

Capyloon: The OS looks really nice at first glance, but I have hardly tested it so far and therefore cannot recommend it.

@duckweed @linuxphones

I think, they are not quite there yet for the moment and the average user (but I am by no means a dev. or fluent in code).

However, I can really recommend you to look at alternative Android OS'es. Here it depends on what you want.

For Privacy, the best one is GrapheneOS. You can have all google stuff (apps and google services) running sandboxed. And you can create multiple users for different purposes: like one for your daily use, with no Gapps, and another one 1/

@duckweed @linuxphones

Linux phones lack in all aspects compared to AOSP: security and privacy enforcement (mandatory sandboxing, permission control, full-system MAC, verified boot), usability and compatibility with the mobile app ecosystem. The much better approach would be to get a Google Pixel and install GrapheneOS. This will get you a very secure and private smartphone with almost perfect Android app compatibility. Recommend reading about Linux phones on madaidans-insecurities.github.io