You can always use LineageOS with aptoid until Plasma mobile matures..
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There's Sailfish (based on ex-Nokia stuff), no idea how good or bad it is.
I have a Firefox phone that's now a brick. A Nexus 4 flashed to Ubuntu touch that is now about as much use. A Nexus 5X running vanilla Android as my daily driver. Even an old Nokia Lumia running Win10.
I had planned to get a FreePhone 2 with Ubuntu touch once my contract is up and I have finished paying for the Nexus 5X. However, that is not going to be happening now.
I'm getting to the point where a dumb phone is starting to sound like a nice idea and leave computer work until I get home and sat at my desk. Might be a refreshing change of pace not to be nagged. Also getting off the treadmill of feeling like I want/need a new phone all the time plus the expense of course.
Where have all of the premium dumb phones gone? Granny big button or uber cheap burner phones appear to be the only phones available.
I miss my Motorola Razr!
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I still have a RAZR lol. I like mine. Can't update it though (deb mobile).
I don't even know if it works anymore.
as far as im aware, google play services has always been closed source. As stated above, that's why Gapps isnt in cyanogenmod.
As for the other closed source apps, like camera and messages and whatnot, you have options with android to use open source alternatives, if you want.
Dont wanna use the stock camera app? Thats cool, throw a trusted camera apk on your phone.
I don't see why having things be closed source is a problem when it's all optional. Just root and uninstal/remove the closed source things you dont want.
Although please correct me if I'm missing the point entirely, as that's something I often do.
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your problem is selinix there
Lol no? selinux is in both versions "ma'am".
Okay, I'll ask the dumb question then.
Why the hell would you want to do this workstation stuff on a 4-6 inch screen when you can buy a 10" netbook to throw Linux on for cheaper than a modern smartphone? Like, who's walking around wishing they could run SolidWorks and full-fledged MS Office on their phone screen? There's not enough real-estate to do anything useful even if you had the capability to run a full OS.
It seems to me like the complaint here is one of philosophy more than practicality.
You talk about making some graphs, but how efficient can that be on a phone? What actual work can you no longer do that you would really want to? It's tough to understand why I should care when I can't think of a single reason to desire laptop-like features.
That's exactly why Samsung Notes are so popular. Great specs and they allow multiple pop up Windows with a stylus. They had the biggest screen and kept the stock Android features. At first... now they're just a regular Galaxy phone with a stylus no one used.
I want an old blackberry or for ubuntu mobile to stay a thing.
Trust me, I have a netbook. I have had several actually, and nothing beats my Optimus G LS970 for the stuff I do. I ended up making scripts that I could execute externally from machines, SSH is fucking yay, I get that a laptop is much more useful, but what I like a smart phone for is for it to be a remote management tool. New if I could maintain a 4.4 distro of android myself and have no problems I would, but I don't think thats really possible at this point.
I miss the Nokia N900 running Maemo. It was a almost full Debian phone OS that by default came with a terminal and recognized most debian commands. It had a slide out keyboard that was perfect. I loved the slide out keyboard. Also easy to turn into a PwnPhone and the wireless built in supported Monitor Mode and Packet injection.
I had one that I installed pwniexpress onto and overclocked. Ended up selling on ebay but thinking of getting another just for my hack bag.
It really doesn't complicate anything. They all run under the Linux kernel. A distro is just a specific preset of installed dependencies and programs. Some run older Linux kernel versions for stability reasons, and that's just about the main difference. The fractured excuse is not valid IMO, if people really want Linux to grow maybe we should all start contributing to the development all around, rather than relying on corporations and existing devs to do most of the work for us
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