Free Software Foundation Turns 40, Unveils LibrePhone
Free Software Foundation Turns 40, Unveils LibrePhone
The project, developed in partnership with veteran free software developer Rob Savoye, aims to create a fully free and open mobile platform, from the firmware to the operating system.
This is the original article
https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-turns-forty-with-a-new-president-and-a-new-campaign
I've got a Google Pixel 3a with postmarketOS installed on it right now for testing, and it really is a two-pronged issue with both hardware and software. Because it's an older phone the battery drains within a few hours, nowhere close to all-day use. Because most of the software is designed for the desktop certain things are just impossible to use (the big pain point for me is Anki, but on the other hand it's impressive how many GTK apps conform very nicely to the screen). The keyboard still feels pretty rough.
Hopefully the FSF dipping their hat into the ring will help existing projects like this in a rising-tide-raises-all-ships sort of way. Would be a shame for them to put effort into a software stack that goes nowhere (GNU Hurd), and pour $$$ into a hardware project that doesn't make it to market or doesn't do its job better than a cracked smartphone from 5+ years ago.
I think it is possible to switch to it now and have things mostly work out for you, but it will make your life harder. I remember switching to Ubuntu around 2010 and it's almost to that level of experience. You'll be giving up a lot, apps you "need" won't work, but it's at the point where it is a complete usable experience. For those that are willing to suffer for FOSS, I mean.
Hopefully this will recruit projects that already have significant headstart, such as Pine64. Otherwise, it would merely be performative.
I salute the early adopters who will suffer all the inconveniences of startups so the wider public can enjoy a non-corporate phone in the future. o7
Unless they can get this working with Android Auto or Carplay I don;t see it going anywhere.
I'm looking forward to get one of these just to play around with it, and maybe making some custom stuff for it.
I'm looking forward to actually seeing how my fucking works and what it's doing.
What a nice thing to do
I hope they can pull this off because we really need this.
Heard of Hurd, I don't think they can.
Damn. Software has existed 40 years now?
Not only that: it was big enough to get mad at 40 years ago already.
Oooh, I wonder if they're going to pursue a free phone based on Risc-V. It's a longshot but if they pull that off, it'd be like feeding two birds with one scone.
I really hope this is super based
I want a Linux phone so bad that I refuse to think about what it would be like because i'd be upset afterwards.
I have an original PinePhone. The phone itself is horribly outdated and slow, but the software itself (Phosh+Gnome) is suprisingly okay. Given a good enough phone (as in hardware) I can see myself actually using it and not being annoyed more than I was with early Androids.
Unfortunately what I understand is that FSFE doesn't intend to do hardware, only software platform, so I wonder whether they'll come up with anything interesting.
Running PostmarketOS on hardware such as the Oneplus 6T (which is 8 years old now) shows that you could truly have dog shit cheap hardware for this. As long as you have decent driver support for it.
Linux mobile phones are the fusion power of the FOSS world, always "right around the corner."
All the pieces are there, but none of them work together smoothly enough to be functional for anybody except the most hardcore FOSS enthusiasts.
When Proton started, it was kind of a joke, killed the Steam Machine idea in large part because the game compatibility was so limited. A decade later, we have a multi billion dollar handheld PC market lead by the Steam Deck, a Linux handheld that can play tens of thousands of Windows games without issue, in some cases with better performance than their native platform.
So it's certainly possible for things to completely change, but we need a big player or consortium of players to unite with a shared goal of getting a Linux Phone to the state where it's genuinely able to replace a traditional Android or Apple phone.
I'm very cautiously optimistic, I think it would come together much faster than Proton did for Linux gaming, but again, there needs to be a really heavy push into a singular device to start off. Like how the Steam Deck was, it allowed devs to have a singular platform to target for compatibility. Then, as the platform matures, competitors & innovators can enter the market and expand options, like how now there are multiple distros with builds for handhelds, like Bazzite, Nobara, and CachyOS.
I would love if Valve shipped and contributed to Plasma Mobile and Plasma Bigscreen alongside the existing Plasma Desktop. Or even if more Steam Deck users installed it so that it would get more interest.
Bazzite sounds like it would be a good start for the OS, though, and that exists now.
At this point I would not be surprised if steam built on top of the deck idea and the support it already provides for fairly responsive and configurable inputs, touch screen included, to launch a steam phone or something.
I mean deck isn’t all that far from having such a device. For the actual phone network stack they would likely just partner up with someone already in the space.
They’ve already had to tackle powering a lightweight portable device with a touch screen and adapting the UX for a small screen and non-kbd input. They’ve already established they can source parts and mass produce a competively priced device.
But realistically I can’t see it being that much better than the recent Linux phone offerings.
I won't hold my breath, but it's sorely needed, so, we can hope.
Just because it's a libre phone, doesn't mean it's necessarily a linux phone. Or at least any more so than Android is a linux phone because it uses a heavily modified (almost unrecognizable) linux kernel.
There's nothing in the article that says they're just going to use a mainline linux kernel and throw a touch optimized version of some existing desktop on it (ubuntu touch, etc...)
Heck, they could be meaning that they're planning on making their own heavily modified kernel for their very own OS so as to skip all of the trouble that trying to make mainline linux into a handheld device has been so far. (similar to I believe how SailfishOS is doing it)
Just because it’s a libre phone, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a linux phone.
Likewise, a so-called "Linux phone" isn't necessarily a libre phone, either. But, I don't care about Linux, I care about freedom, so a LibrePhone is important regardless of what Linux fans think of it, and if it is truly worthy of the word libre, it will be able to run your so-called "real Linux."
Finally, a GNU/Hurd phone! /s
Does anyone claim so? And does it matter much outside of (potentially) app support?
Why couldn't they just use usual Linux for that? Why a modified kernel? Is Linux as is not suitable for a phone?
Can't they just, idk, make a distro? Maybe from scratch? Pop!_OS is working on COSMIC. Can't they have their Linux-based OS, perhaps with its own things as needed, such as a phone-optimised DE? Or whatever the phone equivalent of a DESKTOP environment would be. A Mobile Environment, perhaps
If my laptop had touch screen with no other method of input built in, and were way smaller, could it not run Linux? Or is that different altogether?
Too many bits of a smartphone are proprietary hardware without open drivers.
Linux by design gives the user enough rope to hang themselves with.
And that's certainly not a problem when dealing with tech enthusiasts who know what, when and where to touch to avoid messing things up. But when you're dealing with getting a phone into the hands of ordinary people, that isn't going to fly because all of those people will at some point start mucking around inside and then expect tech support when they mess up.
For mainstream adoption, the linux kernel must and the desktop environment must be at least somewhat locked down.
My hopes and my expectations could not be more at odds with each other, and the only thing I know for sure is that one of them will be smashed.
As they would say: keep your hopes up and your expectation low to the ground
This is absolutely hilarious, a fully libre phone? What processor are they going to use thats 100% libre? Then what OS will it use? Android-libre? What a joke
I'd personally start by actually reading the announcement before complaining about it's content but you do you I guess
from the firmware to the operating system
gimme gimme
Honestly as long as they can fucking get something moderately priced that supports VOLTE and a decent camera I’ll buy it
I'd rather see a stable OS and ecosystem for good, Free apps that we can flash onto existing devices. I'm quite happy with my Fairphone (repairable! modular! ethical!) and we know that building and marketing a device is painfully expensive.
Let's make Debian or Arch just work on most phones instead of trying to compete in a saturated market.
work on most phones
A lot of the world can hardly get an unlockable phone.
Mobian is Debian designed for phones. PostmarketOS is another project doing the same thing, but with an alpine Linux base.
There isn't much concrete information, but my guess is that OS/ecosystem is exactly what this project is, and that they are not talking about physical hardware. Specially considering that they are putting the emphasis on free software (not hardware) and they are involving a software developer. Making a phone's hardware free would be an entirely different beast.
In the afternoon, FSF executive director Zoë Kooyman announced an exciting new project: Librephone.
Librephone is a new initiative by the FSF to bring full computing freedom to mobile computing environments. The LibrePhone Project is a partnership with Rob Savoye, a developer who has worked on free software (including the GNU toolchain) since the 1980s. "Since mobile phone computing is now so ubiquitous, we're very excited about LibrePhone and think it has the potential to bring software freedom to many more users all over the world."
Let's make Debian or Arch just work
Wonder why that's extremely rare on ARM devices, especially those with modems, and rarely works beyond proof of concepts on some very specific devices? Its not like you're the first to have this idea.
How old is your oldest working fairphone? I’ve heard too many bad things about software atrophy to declare it a success yet.
I'm using a Fairphone 4, which is 4 years old at this point (October 2021) and I'm still quite happy with it, but I owned the Fairphone 1 and 2 as well.
In terms of software atrophy, they do offer support for your device for 5 years, which is better than most, and because of its open nature, it's generally well supported by alternatives like Lineage or Calyx, but yeah, I'm still on Android 13. While I still get regular security patches and haven't really had a need for an upgrade, there's no denying that the FP4 is behind.
Of course, it's also easily repairable, supports an SD card and replaceable battery, so that's a tradeoff I'm happy with.
Let's make Debian or Arch just work on most phones
You have no idea how any of it works, do you?
Fighting closed source drivers, blobs, configurations, entitled users who want everything to work perfectly is not a child's play. Having control over the whole device like this project is huge.
I can't find any links to the project itself, only to announcements about the project. Anybody have anything more concrete? How far along is this project?
Please god, help me find my keys! Tell St. Anthony I need my keys!
Also could you make this Foss phone be real and reasonably priced below the cost of a gaming PC?
You may choose 1
Found them! Where's my Linux phone?
Why would anyone think that FSF is capable of releasing a unique and good device? It's gonna be a bog-standard Android device with some software modified/removed.
Might be ok for some people still though. Also I'll be happy to be wrong about my cynicism.
It’s gonna be a bog-standard Android device with some software modified/removed.
Really? That would be heavily antithetical to everything they do. I expect it would be a Linux distro (like PostmarketOS) with some blobs removed etc.
Because as much as they're ridiculed today by libcucks of OSS, FSF was a formidable force of software once. At some point in history literally the only way to avoid paying absolutely insane manufacturer license fees for things like compilers was using GNU tools.
If they put their ass into it, they can pull it off tbh
Interesting interview with FSF's new Executive Director Zoë Kooyman if you are curious about her/where the organization is at.
https://fossforce.com/2025/03/zoe-kooyman-on-post-stallman-changes-at-the-free-software-foundation/
Thanks !
I'll use my de-Googled and update-blocked S23 until it's physically unable to boot up, and hopefully by then I'll find something that can run this OS, assuming it's ready
Let's hope this lights a fire under Google's ass too, so everyone can have free and open phones.
F-droid maybe we'll find a new good home then?
F-droid for Waydroid enabled Linux phones?
F-droid for AOSP Android
Honestly, I prefer flatpaks with all the drawbacks, give me 100% freedom while providing Android like comfort... Like the new xdg permissions portal.
If the price is no good maps or banking apps, I'll gladly pay it. I just wish the graphene team worked on linux instead.
Waydroid isn't an "emulator" or a fully independent thing like Wine. It runs a full Android system in a container. It's no more or less dependent on Google than AOSP itself is.
Very cool
My fear with a Linux phone is debugging and troubleshooting. Reading logs and editing text files with a phone keyboard does NOT seem fun.
Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
But also, just because some activities are annoying on the phone does not mean you should be locked out from them.
Hmmm. How about an app for editing configs specifically?
Like, an entire protocol/standard thing for specifying the exact values accepted, too.
No more text-only configs, right?! And apps made specifically to give you a GUI to configure a specific service can still exist on top of this!
That would be a good idea to start this off... right?
Make the settings app extremely modular? Have it be able to parse most config file standards and even provide guidelines for common system config files?
RTFM!!!!!!!!
Do you have any idea how much of a barrier running something like "man nmcli" in terminal on a phone screen would be?
They in cahoots with androids killin aosp?
Tell me more about the phone! This has taken so long and I am ready to migrate to an open phone even if it's only for texting at this point.
Screw this OS monopoly by Apple and Alphabet.
Open to simple solutions here. I have a Pixel 4a 5g and iPhone 12 atm.
your pixel probably runs graphene, degoogle it.
you could probably run linux on it today too.