Imagine in (hopefully many) years your current phone breaks and you buy the then current Fairphone model, which has multiboot ability (up to 5 OSes) and can run any(*) OS (#dic:operatingsystem). Also all these OSes run smoothly and have all the functions youâd expect and that the philosophy behind the OS permits included. Which OS(es) would you install on your Fairphone?
Why are these OSes included and others not?
Since this is a hypothetical poll about future FP models Iâm including all popular OSes that run on current Fairphones already as itâs not to be taken for granted that they will work on future models too.
I also included the two OSes that got >25% on the last poll as well as the ones that were suggested to be included in the next poll.
For OSes that werenât suggested so far please add them to the wiki post below so they can be included in the next poll. You can already vote for them by selecting the âotherâ option.
(*)EDIT: Oh yeah and obviously only FLOSS (#dic:floss) OSes are included. Everything else would be too unrealistic - even for such a hypothetical poll.
B2G OS - although Firefox OS is discontinued by Mozilla, B2G OS lives on in KaiOS and there are a few people working on projects to revive it in various ways.
FreeBSD - Truly Open Source, no GPL, Much cleaner and robust OS than Linux, Seems to support Qualcomm SnapDragon
I picked âotherâ as I would like to see a pure Linux running on my next pocket computer (also knows as mobile phone). Therefore I am looking at Purism, but my Fairphone is not even 2 years old and I want it to reach at least 5 years, so the developers have at least 3 more years to build me a wonderful free operating system.
postmarketOS ( pmOS ), is a touch-optimized, pre-configured Alpine Linux that can be installed on smartphones and other mobile devices. The project is at very early stages of development and is not usable for most people yet.
Letâs see where they are in 2022.
Did you understand the difference to Pursim? To me it sounds an identical approach, just that they are building their own hardware and are not trying to port pure Linux to existing devices.
postmarketOS is just a Linux distribution that has a great toolchain that you can use to install it. It offers many different interfaces (what we have packaged already) that you can choose from. PureOS (on the Librem 5) will probably only have Phosh and Plasma Mobile available and is backed solely by one company (Purism)
The one thing I mostly care about is having it run a mainline kernel and free drivers for all hardware. When thatâs done the remaining bits of the operating system are all but flavour.
Donât forget that postmarketOS is based on Alpine Linux and thus uses musl rather than glibc like most major Linux Distros (including PureOS since its based on Debian). That has some major implications on what will run on your device but then so does running an ARM SoC.
Also, I donât think it would be possible to run PureOS on a Qualcomm based device unless someone does their own spin of it allowing non free drivers and repository.
On a separate thought, is there a release of Plasma Mobile thatâs a full OS or would it just be a matter of installing it on top of PureOS or postmarketOS?
Ubuntu Touch is pure linux⌠and itâs awesome. Iâve been using it as daily driver now for 3 years? I have it on my FP2 now. Pretty solid. With a bit more dev help there is no question UT is the future.
@wayneoutthere I agree. It seems like a good match between ethical hardware and ethical software. Iâm surprised there isnât more collaboration between the two.
Itâs actually not. Ubuntu Touch always uses the same kernel that Android uses on a specific device. It is not a mainline kernel like the one postmarketOS is aiming for. A quick search led me to this discussion on the ubport forum. Maybe this explains it well:
Doesnât make any less pure linux tbf the main reason for it is drivertho
afaik
another drawback i suppose is the root being read only i suppose but iâm sure if overlayfs can be backported or all ut devices be upgraded to a kernel that supports it, if it doesnât already, even that could be resolved
Ubuntu Touch makes use of a GNU userspace, I guess. This makes it rather GNU. But neither Ubuntu Touch nor Android are pure Linux. Pure Linux doesnât exist, by the way - Linux is only a kernel, but who interacts with a kernel directly? Even GNU/Linux isnât universal since there are Linux distributions which donât make use of GNU but of BusyBox - such as Android.
Iâd like the same freedom as in Gnu/Linux, so Iâm looking for a system without default appâs, the choice to install only these appâs I really want, the freedom to choose a GUI myself, and a phone without proprietary blobs. So if a future Fairphone would be the one without proprietary drivers, Iâll buy it.
First, using the same kernel version that android uses, doesnât make it not being a GNU/Linux distribuition, the kernel is one of very few things that is mostly equal between android and GNU/Linux systems, both the changes made to the kernel and the drivers for the SBC are really small comparing with the rest of the kernel.
Ubuntu Touch uses the version of the kernel that allows the run the necessary drivers proprietary drivers that canât be recompiled on more recent versions. Whenever devices allow us to use upstream kernel versions, they will be used on those devices that allow us to do that.
Ubuntu Touch is what I really want to run on any device. And Ubuntu Touch shares values with Fairphone and possible future versions with up to 10 years of support will make it even a greater option for an environment friendly device that provides a great return on investment. So I believe there should be an option to get a Fairphone device with Ubuntu Touch pre-installed, with joint support from Fairphone and UBports.
Iâm not against also supporting other Free Software OS, Iâm just personally not interested in using those.
But neither Ubuntu Touch nor Android are pure Linux. 
Pure Linux doesnât exist, by the way - Linux is only a kernel, but who interacts with a kernel directly? Even GNU/Linux isnât universal since there are Linux distributions which donât make use of GNU but of BusyBox - such as Android.
