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-   -   2020 : Mobile phones with pre-installed Replicant (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-mobile-81/2020-mobile-phones-with-pre-installed-replicant-4175668946/)

Michael Uplawski 02-04-2020 01:02 AM

2020 : Mobile phones with pre-installed Replicant
 
It is one of those threads ...

I followed the link on https://fsfe.org/campaigns/android/liberate.en.html#OS to Technoethical and found all the advertised phones out of stock.

How would you do if having a Replicant-smartphone were important...
Let's say: important to you?

It is not yet for me, but 0 is also not much to stir my interest.

business_kid 02-04-2020 04:46 AM

You seem to have done your Homework.

Have you looked at the latest Huawei non-Android phone? It has forked the open source bit of Android, afaik. Personally, I don't buy that Huawei are spying on the world, and don't intend visiting China anytime soon, so I don't care. My sort (JWs) are banned in China anyhow, so they'd hardly be keen to have me. We must be doing something right :).

Michael Uplawski 02-04-2020 06:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by business_kid (Post 6086035)
You seem to have done your Homework.

Not good enough, it seems.

In the answer to an inquiry about the future of these Replicant phones, Technoethical explain that they are available on pre-order. Apart from that they accept payment by means which are forgotten my most of the online selling ... companies.

Quote:

Have you looked at the latest Huawei non-Android phone?
Reads like: “If you frown on cancer, how about diabetes ?”

Quote:

It has forked the open source bit of Android, afaik.
There are forks and forks.

Quote:

Personally, I don't buy that Huawei are spying on the world, and don't intend visiting China anytime soon, so I don't care. My sort (JWs) are banned in China anyhow, so they'd hardly be keen to have me. We must be doing something right :).
That is the drama of our times... you have choices. In a way.

ondoho 02-04-2020 01:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael Uplawski (Post 6086000)
I followed the link on https://fsfe.org/campaigns/android/liberate.en.html#OS to Technoethical and found all the advertised phones out of stock.

How would you do if having a Replicant-smartphone were important...

I don't think there's any guarantee with these pre-installed devices, that they would work better or be more stable or less error-prone than if you install it yourself.
The installation process does not look more involved than for, say, LineageOS.
And I am sure you can get one of the supported devices on ebay for way less than 100€.

Also, are you aware what the Replicant project status is and what it will mean for your installed system? Not everything will work...

FWIW, I'm currently invested in this.

business_kid 02-05-2020 04:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael Uplawski (Post 6086064)
In the answer to an inquiry about the future of these Replicant phones, Technoethical explain that they are available on pre-order. Apart from that they accept payment by means which are forgotten my most of the online selling ... companies.

Silver Shekels? Bank Drafts? Amuse us
Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael Uplawski (Post 6086064)
Reads like: “If you frown on cancer, how about diabetes ?”

Come on, be serious.
Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael Uplawski (Post 6086064)
There are forks and forks.

ROTFL

Michael Uplawski 02-05-2020 12:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ondoho (Post 6086215)
I don't think there's any guarantee with these pre-installed devices, that they would work better or be more stable or less error-prone than if you install it yourself.
The installation process does not look more involved than for, say, LineageOS.
And I am sure you can get one of the supported devices on ebay for way less than 100€.

Thank you for the inspiration.
I am difficult. Once I had to install Linux on a customer's Compaq IPAQ. It meant erasing the Windows-CE system, to find out what to do next, to find a Linux system which would run on the thing... oh. Looks like my boss was informed, I got Familiar Linux... then pray and hope that something will reboot. It did.
But that was no fun. I do not want to repeat the experience, neither with foreign, nor my own “hardware”.

The second thing is eBay. There are other platforms, also French ones (and German of course) which I might actually use.

Quote:

Also, are you aware what the Replicant project status is and what it will mean for your installed system? Not everything will work...
Currently, nothing works. I have never owned a “smartphone”. If I saw a penguin dancing on a telephone-display it would mean a completely new chapter in my life's story. There is no need for more, right now.

Quote:

FWIW, I'm currently invested in this.
This, too, looks very nice. I am not in a hurry and currently do not “need” a smartphone. But I answer to people who wonder what alternatives exist to Google or Apple.

Michael Uplawski 02-05-2020 12:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by business_kid (Post 6086408)
Silver Shekels? Bank Drafts? Amuse us

Bank transfer.

273 02-05-2020 01:15 PM

Since this thread is already off the zero-reply threads my answer is I would try to purchase a phone running GNU/Linux. I attempted but this may still be a failure. If it works I will "share with the group".

ZT13 02-05-2020 05:42 PM

For anyone interested to know also the perspective of a Technoethical representative:

We encourage people to flash devices themselves. That is the easy and fairly predictable part. People that already have a device and prefer that we do the flashing for them, can opt for our Replicant installation service. We also thoroughly test and clean the device we receive from customers.

The problem is that most Replicant-supported phones that one can buy from other sources than Technoethical don't have fully functional hardware, even if they are advertised as refurbished. We really spend a lot of time on testing, fixing, replacing and refurbishing devices to make them grade A, so that our customers can have the best chances of using a phone with Replicant as their daily driver.

Replicant is a completely libre LineageOS-derivate verified by the FSF. While GNU/Linux on a phone is so much better than Android/Linux, there still isn't a completely libre GNU/Linux distribution for phones. For now we are in contact with the Maemo Leste developers and they seem to be receptive to the freedom concerns that we've brought to their attention.

ondoho 02-06-2020 01:17 AM

^ Thanks for replying!
Quote:

Originally Posted by ZT13 (Post 6086670)
While GNU/Linux on a phone is so much better than Android/Linux, there still isn't a completely libre GNU/Linux distribution for phones.

Is too!
https://maemo-leste.github.io/
https://leste.maemo.org/Main_Page
I know, I keep pushing this. For good reasons. They have persistently been working on it, they got funding, they got realistic but not too egoistic goals, and they work with a good basis originally developed by professionals. They also have a fairly big community of dedicated hackers behind them who have long been thirsting for a dist-upgrade for their devices.

ZT13 02-06-2020 03:55 AM

I don't want to enter a debate here. There are proprietary blobs (for WiFi, graphics etc) included in Maemo Leste and the developers are aware of this freedom issue. This is not to undermine the effort and great development results, it's just facts.

boughtonp 02-06-2020 09:12 AM

I'm interested in a libre OS, but also in an ethical device (like the Fairphone). (I'd also love a device with a five-row qwerty hardware keyboard, but nobody else seems to care.)

Currently the Fairphone is Android, but other OSes with be supported "soon" - I'm tempted to just order one and wait until either LineageOS/Replicant or PureOS can be installed (or even help with that if the barriers are within my capabilities).

Are there any alternatives worth considering or reasons not to do that?

273 02-06-2020 11:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boughtonp (Post 6086883)
(I'd also love a device with a five-row qwerty hardware keyboard, but nobody else seems to care.)

I am typing this on one right now but Linux support is, sadly, still "being worked on".
Heck, I can even use Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V for copy + paste and the keys are backlit.

ondoho 02-07-2020 01:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZT13 (Post 6086794)
I don't want to enter a debate here. There are proprietary blobs (for WiFi, graphics etc) included in Maemo Leste and the developers are aware of this freedom issue. This is not to undermine the effort and great development results, it's just facts.

I knew you were going to say this, but I still wanted to push my favourite project! :redface:
Let's put it like this: Leste is about as free as Debian proper.
I much appreciate your (plural) work on Replicant though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by boughtonp (Post 6086883)
I'd also love a device with a five-row qwerty hardware keyboard, but nobody else seems to care.

The Motorola Droid 4 has it! And it's the 2nd best supported device for Leste afaics.
Quote:

Originally Posted by boughtonp (Post 6086883)
I'm interested in a libre OS, but also in an ethical device (like the Fairphone) ... Currently the Fairphone is Android ...

It always seems to be either the hardware or the software that's "ethical", never both :(
BTW, the fairphone is "as ethically produced as realistically possible" - some of the components used in smartphones nowadays cannot be had "ethically".

Personally I prefer to always buy used smartphones. In my book, that's ethical. Grassroot economics, just like the software development.

business_kid 02-07-2020 04:13 AM

Personally, I don't think firmware is ever going to be an issue. Having been involved from the other side (Hardware R&D) you're often running some fairly low level cpu optimized for the hardware at hand, e.g. network control. Your ram, & program storage are limited. Microcontrollers are inclined to be very good at switching individual legs, and poor at normal cpu work. Owners/managers are paranoid, as they career (and perhaps their company) is history if they end up carrying the can for some security issue. ISPs, logs & firewalls will notice all internet IPs accessed anyhow, so your chances of getting caught are high. Huawei was a special case only because they were the output devices, and a 5G transmitter may just have got away with it, but their access back into their own systems would be limited. I'm sure they suffer from the same paranoia everyone else does. No peripheral board or chip runs hot, do they? So that outputting your hard drive contents as well as doing what it's told might take days or even weeks.

What concerns me about these alternative OSes is the size of the Dev team. If it's too small, updates are not forthcoming. The guy cops on (Like Cyanogen) and gets a life.


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