Fairphone 6 linux compatibility

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1

Hello everyone,

I am interested in buying a Fairphone one of these days.

Probably I’ll be willing to try ubuntu touch at some point, and currently it looks like FP4 and FP5 have full compatibility, but nothing is mentioned about FP6, apart from some kernel patches.

Do we have any ideas about this currently?

Would it be sensible to buy a FP5 instead of 6 because of that?

Let me know what you think!

2

I guess the forum of Ubuntu Touch is a better place to get infos about support for the FP6.

Looking at older topics for FP4 and FP5 it took around 1 year to get a new Fairphone supported after its release.

3

Thanks for the information.

4

Ubuntu Touch status on Fairphones is :

  • FP2 has stable 16.04 channel (Xenial, outdated) and probably will not get 20 or 24.04
  • FP3 has stable 20.04 channel (Focal) and probably will get 24.04 (Noble)
  • FP4 has stable 20.04 channel, and devel 24.04
  • FP5 has devel 20.04 and 24.04 and probably only get stable under 24.04
  • FP6 has no publicly available eta and will probably get devel 24.04 one day

It took almost 2 years for FP5 port to reach usable status (like for FP4), there is no date available for stable release.

I would not expect FP6 port to reach stable faster.

FP6 is a different device than FP5 but don’t have more ram, rom, or a significantly more powerful APU.

If you want a working Ubuntu Touch device right now and not willing to bet on porting speed for FP6, choose FP5, it’s 100€ cheaper in addition.

One year is not enough to have a daily usable device.

For now the only thread about FP6 on UT forums :

5

Thanks for the recommendation!

6

Interesting, I would have thought it should be compatible? In the mean time, I’ve been doing some bash coding on it using Android Termux pkgs :blush:

7

I have to admit, I just looked at the posts that said the FP4/5 was added to the UT installer. But indeed, that doesn’t really say if it’s daily driver ready. Just the earliest point in time when it was made available to the regular users (I assume that adventurous people can try to install the early dev stages of an image without the installer or some kind of beta feature in it).

8

One can indeed install manually early builds on devices, but devices “reach” installer almost all time when still in development, installer gives you the choice for any device which channel you want to go (stable, RC, devel).

9

Little update to say that FP3/3+, FP4 and FP5 got updated with Ubuntu Touch first stable 24.04 release, among other phones.

10

Any news about Ubuntu Touch port for FP6?

11
12

They talked about it in Q&A 180. Marius is working on it but no release date yet…

13
14

Postmarket no Mobile Data…….

15

Some updates fellow Fairphone users interested in Ubuntu Touch.

There’s a little change in the “channels” regarding Ubuntu Touch branchs.

This is important because can be confusing.

The “for daily use” OS channel is still called “stable”.

The “release candidate” OS channel for testing pre-stable release still is called “RC”.

BUT the dev channel, which can be updated every day or so, and is not for using as a daily driver device operating system, is now called "daily" channel. (I insist : NOT for daily use).

Take care not to use this “daily channel” to install or update your Fairphone, unless you’re willing to test stability of beta releases and risk getting an unusable device meaning having to reinstall with UBPorts installer !

Also, Fairphone 5 now has a beta (“daily”) update channel for testing Ubuntu Touch based on Ubuntu LTS 26.04.

Enjoy freedom :wink: