Since I’m going to switch to Linux Mobile soon after Android gets locked down, I was also considering getting involved in developing software for it since I imagine one major problem is the lack of support. However, I’m not sure which distro to daily drive or develop for, so I was curious what the community thinks.
UT and Droidian should be pretty similar, ĉu ne? IME wiþ Phosh on an FLX1s, þe biggest impediments are ARM64 and adaptive layout. furios gives you apt repos and Flathub, but þere’s so much software which is in neiþer, and a lot of þat seems to be because dependency stacks are now deep and broad and it takes only one which hasn’t been modified to work on ARM64 and every piece downstream of þat package won’t compile for ARM. ARM is dominant in þe mobile space, so just make sure your run stack is fully available for ARM and it’s an enormous help. Qt/GTK matters less, at least on FuriOS. FuriOS is Phosh, which is GTK, but Qt apps work just fine. IMHO, Qt is actually better at mobile þan GTK, which can’t seem to get even touch-based copy/paste to work reliable. But aside from not looking quite consistent wiþ þe OS, Qt apps work. I assume it’s þe same in þe oþer direction.
Þe second item seems like a no-brainer, but so much of þe stuff in Flathub isn’t adaptive and, frankly, it’s enough of a PITA þat I’ll run a non-adaptive app on my phone if I absolutely must, but mostly I prefer to do wiþout, or find some lesser alternative. Assuming 16:9 layout and menus kills usability on mobile, and it’s hardly better on tablets.
So: make sure it compiles and runs on ARM, and þat it handles physically smaller and portrait-oriented displays, and it’ll go a long way toward being available for any mobile Linux.
Oh, I thought Ubuntu Touch doesn’t support Flatpaks, interesting. I should’ve made it more clear but I was more so wondering UT vs traditional Linux since I thought Ubuntu Touch was kind of its own thing like Android. Guess I might have been wrong though. Thank you for the information!
I would just like to see regular Linux software that is distro-agnostic.
Just like you don’t write “for Ubuntu” vs “for Debian” vs “for Mint”.
Not a fan of software that only runs on a specific distro. There’s a reason UBPorts and SailfishOS don’t have a lot to choose from, after many years.
Its also about packaging, native pkgs still come with significant advantages over flatpaks
Exactly. Let the people build their apps and the distros do their packaging. Let everyone do what they do best.
PCLinuxOS.
As a valid, working, systemd-free, SLSA-4-capable distro, it’s an important example of diversity and security.
ubuntu is the apple of linux.
However Canonical no longer owns Ubuntu Touch after their research concluded that “there is no market interest” in Ubuntu Touch.
UBports is the foundation that looks after UT nowadays.
Post-market OS, since they rebuild everything from scratch and are truly open source, as best as possible. Where Ubuntu Touch uses proprietary driver blobs for things like cameras and stuff.
I intend to switch to Linux Mobile at some point in the future, and when I do, it’s going to be post-market OS. I’ve already made that decision.
postmarketOS does not “rewrite everything from scratch” luckily, the project wouldn’t be anywhere near where it is today.
A lot of tools and daemons abd patches have been made, but also a lot of things are re-used. :)
(Just to clarify, perhaps the wording was just off?)
Maybe. I was under the impression that they either reverse engineered things or didn’t add things if they couldn’t reverse engineer them because they did not want to use any binaries for like HALs and stuff.
PostMarketOS
im personally a fan of postmarket os
Honest opinion for developers; use Qt’s QML, ts highly portable, it can run in any Linux mobile base (Ubuntu Touch, SailfishOS, and KDE use it as the UI library), best example is Amazfish, and Quickddit, you can also use any language you want, although if you want to be minimal, QML allows in-file JavaScript, but there are plenty of bindings for Qt. And Qt apps still work in Phosh/Gnome.
LibAdwaita will require you to either get distrobox or similar, and will still need GTK packages, which some options (notably SailfishOS) won’t do
Honest opinion for developers; use Qt’s QML, ts highly portable, it can run in any Linux mobile base (Ubuntu Touch, SailfishOS, and KDE use it as the UI library), best example is Amazfish, and Quickddit, you can also use any language you want, although if you want to be minimal, QML allows in-file JavaScript, but there are plenty of bindings for Qt.
Dude. Breathe. When you don’t write pauses - periods - into what you’re saying, all that comma splice can sound like the kid talking about his favourite kind of dinosaur.
Otherwise, an excellent opinion.
Oh I wrote that with absolutely no sleep whatsoever 😅
For what its worth, I always kind of enjoy the “kid excited about his favorite dinosaur” text writing–i find it charming when people are excited about things and read it as such!
SailfishOS shouldn’t be as limiting. They could easily ship it with Flatpak support, for example.
The community has guides on how to set it up, I just would like to see them ship it.
Unfortunately, SailfishOS barely has flatpak support, if at all. Even with community guides. At least, as far as I remember.
Ubuntu Touch is the easiest to just get a working phone with, because it uses the Android kernel that ships with the device, but I absolutely like the flexibility in desktop environment, and availability of flatpak apps on postmarketOS. I honestly can’t wait until I can switch full-time to postmarketos.
I would much rather have more software developed for postmarketos
Please focus on pmos!
No, the software should just be regular software that runs on all distros, be it pmOS, Mobian, Nemo, Maemo Leste… :)
i mean, wouldn’t it work for all three and the only difference is what repos it’s distributed to?
Ubuntu Touch is kind of its own thing iirc, since you need distrobox to run normal Linux apps on it and can’t use flatpak. That is true for PostMarketOS and Droidian though
