Fedora for Mobile Devices?

Project Discussion
1

Hello Friends

Just being curious if Fedora perhaps has in schedule the intention to create a branch for Mobile devices with a minimum GUI, I meant

The ideal scenario is install Fedora as GUI in any mobile device to run the minimum set of apps such as

  • Web Browser
  • Office Tools (Lets assume LibreOffice releases one for Linux)
  • PDF

Thanks for your understanding

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Do you mean phones?
If so, basically no.
There is a Fedora ‘Mobility’ Special Interest Group though…

If you mean tablets, you could possibly hack your own together, but it will take some fiddling.

Your best option for mobile Fedora is a laptop.

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There’s the KDE Plasma Mobile spin:

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Good find!
It would be good to see how well it works and on what devices, and how battery life is.

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Thanks for the replies

With mobile device I meant:

  • Cellphones
  • Tablets
  • iPads

Thanks for the link shared

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I would recommend Pocketblue - a Fedora Remix. Running it myself on a OnePlus 6 right now:

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Thanks for the link Niko!

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I remember there was an Ubuntu phone project a long time ago but they abandoned it. Shame. Would love to see Fedora Phone. I dont like the direction iOS is going in, but I also have issue with Android because its so locked into Google. A de-Googled pure Linux phone would be awesome. Would it sell to the general public? Can anything break the iOS/Android duopoly at this point?

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Ubuntu Touch seems very much active. You can even buy Volla phones with it installed.

Jolla seems to be another interesting project.

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There are a few options, but limited hardware to run them on.

I would not regard any mobile phone technology as truly secure. With a mobile phone, one is always at the whim of the carrier and all its faults and responsibilities. This even applies to old Nokias and dumb phones.

I spent years digging into ‘the best phone’ and I finally settled on a mainatream device that has an additional on board encryption chip. There are a couple of major brands that do this. Theoretically, it keeps data I choose encrypted from the OS provider.

For people worried about their phone, I would suggest using a regular PC. It is possible these days to communicate only over the internet. But more importantly, “don’t worry and learn to love the bomb”.

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Thanks for the replies

Apollo 18

I remember there was an Ubuntu phone project a long time ago but they abandoned it.

I remember the Ubuntu branch too … not sure if they abandoned

noyb

Ubuntu Touch seems very much active. You can even buy Volla phones with it installed.

Thanks for Ubuntu Touch

Jolla seems to be another interesting project.

Thanks for the mention of jolla too

MatH

I would not regard any mobile phone technology as truly secure. With a mobile phone, one is always at the whim of the carrier and all its faults and responsibilities. This even applies to old Nokias and dumb phones.

Interesting point of view but

  • My goal is bring back to life the mobile device as a simple client in the LAN

Being the latest scenario use only as terminal

I spent years digging into ‘the best phone’ and I finally settled on a mainatream device that has an additional on board encryption chip. There are a couple of major brands that do this. Theoretically, it keeps data I choose encrypted from the OS provider.

Understood

For people worried about their phone, I would suggest using a regular PC. It is possible these days to communicate only over the internet. But more importantly, “don’t worry and learn to love the bomb”.

Valid point

But if my own cellphone/tablet/ipad (or any device of your own family) can be keep it in use as a client in the LAN thanks to Linux is a good new. It is a kind of expensive hardware. Same in old laptops based on 32 bits

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In 2013, I used a LinuxOnAndroid app to run Fedora 17 on a Nexus 7 tablet. The app ran Linux in console mode, but you could start a vnc server in Fedora and install a vmwVNC app on Android to run X11 applications. It didn’t require rooting the device or booting the device into Linux. If you just want to run a web browser or libreoffice under Fedora instead of under Android without risking bricking your phone, it might be enough, but it won’t give a seamless Fedora desktop.

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Hello William

Thanks for the reply and for the app mentioned

The LinuxOnAndroid project has practically 2 GitHub repositories

Anyway it is very out of date

Did you replace that app by other?

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idk man, Linux on a phone seems farfetched…I remember seeing a GNOME phone (I think?) and it looked so laggy I can’t imagine people even trying it…and with how much they’ll have to catch up to match iOS and Android…don’t think it’s gonna happen.

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Link to the Mobility wiki: Mobility - Fedora Project Wiki

@manueljordan Feel free to come and chat on the Matrix channel, there is also some guys who work on the Pocketblue which was mentioned here already.

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Hello Tomi

Link to the Mobility wiki: Mobility - Fedora Project Wiki

Thanks for that link … interesting

@manueljordan Feel free to come and chat on the Matrix channel, there is also some guys who work on the Pocketblue which was mentioned here already.

Huge thanks for the invitation. Is the chat tracked/saved (as here) in case I need see the history of communication?

Thanks to all

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Chat is saved so you can view the history of communication.

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Understood I am going to join there soon

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thanks for bringing up this topic! i used to have the old jolla phone about 6 years ago…

i really did like the OS overall - it had some unique UI/UX stuff that was quite efficient and visually pleasing. but there were so many annoying bugs and missing features we take for granted on other mobile platforms. so it couldn’t function as my main device… :face_with_diagonal_mouth: took a gander at the sailfish os website recently since the new jolla phone is up for pre-order and it honestly doesn’t seem like they’ve changed much in that time. disappointing, but i guess it’s kind of a miracle they still are able to keep the lights on?!! :laughing: the mobile OS wars have claimed the lives of many tech behemoths - remember blackberry OS10 that was and still is the best touch-first OS of all time! honestly. i wish it was still going. built on that rock solid QNX, it virtualised android apps like nothing back in 2013! :exploding_head:

anways, sorry for that diversion. i am considering the new jolla phone as a second device. but it’s too expensive for that and i’ll wait for the device to ship anyways. good to see them doing decently well with the pre-orders, though! a few years ago nobody cared about having a 3rd/4th option for phones…

there is also the fairphone project which has honestly surprised me with how much they’ve achieved with limited resources. the repairability has improved with each model and they still support the old devices! unheard of! a few models were able to run ubuntu touch and pure os (from the librem project). the new fairphone 6 is actually good enough to be a main phone if you are looking for a new device.

speaking of which anyone know how the pinephone and librem projects are going?? :eyes:

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Pinephone is essentially dead in the water. I hate to describe it such, there is much to like about their products, but this one never overcame battery issues. Not enough by in from OS developers.

EDIT: I had someone on Mobility Matrix group tell me today that they can make their PinePhone last for 7 days by suspending everything except the incoming phone listener. See pinephone/gsd-media-keys-manager.c.patch at main ¡ Cyborgscode/pinephone ¡ GitHub pinephone/suspendguardian at main ¡ Cyborgscode/pinephone ¡ GitHub

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