18

I know of the FreeRunner, but are there any other Linux cell phones out there? Are they any good?

scjorge
  • 361
  • The iphone could loosely be considered a linux phone too, no? More like a unix phone, but whatever. – Falmarri Sep 19 '10 at 10:40
  • 1
    Wake up guys, no-one else cannot analyze the question about "Are they any good?" This topic really needs some compare and contrast. –  Mar 23 '11 at 23:07
  • 3
    [BOUNTY] I want to attract more serious answers that are less about euphoric products of today but concentrate to analyze the question "Are they any good?" and intrinsic factors. I will award the bounty to the person that critically analyze, compare and contrast the phones. Answers only covering explicit marketing issues and abstracted-boxed hacks is not what I am looking for. I hope clear understanding of intrinsic features (outlined in my answer). So are there any "linux" phone that address the weaknesses there? And please tell whether the product is free-as-freedom or free-as-beer –  Mar 23 '11 at 23:24
  • i just bought a brand new n900 and i am not satisfied with it. TL;DR: i have a feeling that the people who designed the phone did not know linux very well. yes, it's linux, but it's very easy to brick, there are no manpages, programs you would expect to have aren't there, "optifying" means that your PATH is completely confusing, and setting up the environment to compile programs on it is so difficult due to the fact that it hasn't really been supported by nokia since 2010 or so. lots of 'official' repositories have simply been offline for a year or more... not worth it. get an android. – ixtmixilix Mar 07 '13 at 20:40
  • @Falmarri No, that would be BSD. –  Jul 31 '14 at 12:08
  • do you mean mainline linux? – scjorge Jan 29 '24 at 13:31

6 Answers6

26

Nokia N900 is one of the Linux based phones I know. It even has a terminal app out of the box to access shell!

blntechie
  • 101
  • Anyone know when the next iteration is coming? – xenoterracide Sep 19 '10 at 18:06
  • For info, it is running maemo, based on debian. You can even run a full Debian vm on it ! – Benoît Vidis Sep 19 '10 at 19:27
  • 1
    the family, N8XX and N9XX, has very poor keyboard designs -- darn hard to get even tilde and programming quotes -- that kills your productivity like hXll. Android phones in conrast, such as G1, have much better keyboards but otherwise not like Nokia family. Cannot recommend any of the infant products, they are disgraceful. I got rid of my Nokias and Androids, I think not worth to waste time on them yet. –  Dec 18 '10 at 21:22
  • 2
    @blntechie: will the Maemo branch get buried because Nokia is becoming Micro.*? I cannot make head-or-tail about the hypocrisy, business people really have short memories, once they were competitors and now they are almost the same thing. What is going on? I think N900 sounds too speculative and too much poor marketing. Why cannot they make better products and concentrate less on extrinsic factors? I want a better tool to my pocket. -1 because of too bombastic view, without mentioning any shortcomings. –  Mar 23 '11 at 23:01
  • It'll take a long time for someone to pry my N900 out of my cold hands. I LOVE the phone. It's like carrying a small computer around with me, complete with standard linux hackability. – Wes Hardaker Mar 24 '11 at 03:58
  • 2
    @Wes Hardaker: I once tried that toy and I got fed up with bad the keyboard and such things, then I bought N810 supposingly better keyboard but it was very slow to use. I wish there was a phone a bit like G1 (with good keyboard) but more engaging-deep-marketing. I want to know more about the phone, not just chrooting. I want multitasking-shells by default and such things. Any ideas why they are not there? It would be cool to have some sort of realistic power phone with many IOs like RS232 and such things so I could use it in more applications. kosh things are getting bad now with the Trojan. –  Mar 26 '11 at 22:28
  • @hhh: you can edit the keymap to make the keys be whatever you want. EG, adding a tilde and other things requires messing with the keymap. – Wes Hardaker Mar 26 '11 at 22:45
  • @hhh: I'm not trying to push the N900, FYI... But you keep asking questions! it does support chrooting and certainly has multi-tasking shells (and I'm not sure why you seem to think it doesn't). – Wes Hardaker Mar 26 '11 at 22:47
  • @Wes Hardaker: it has multitasking gui but not shells as far as I know and by chrooting you may get multitasking-shell-abstraction. Try CTRL+ALT F<numb> to switch between the modes and then compare that to your desktop machine, it should work much differently, of course, there may be some abstraction. The things I want to is a desktop-style CTRL+ALt F<numb> functionality, haven`t found it in any phone yet. –  Mar 27 '11 at 00:33
  • @Wes Hardaker: always when you change from defaults, you are playing with fire. I would not touch a toy with poor defaults, hints deeper probs although it can still be fun for a time. As I said G1 was superb in usability (keyboard etc) but they went to mess up with things and when you come up to read too much obfuscated code, I got enough. I am fine with a laptop, communicator and 1110 phone. They work to some extent, although far a way from perfect but better than almost ready gizmos. I cannot believe that people are satisfied with poor products, why don't you ask for quality? –  Mar 27 '11 at 00:45
  • 3
    hhh: Ahh... that's not shell multitasking, that's terminal virtualization. I suspect on the N900 you could write something to switch between open xterm windows which would be similar, and then bind it to a key, but you're right that functionality isn't there now. – Wes Hardaker Mar 27 '11 at 08:44
  • A full screen terminal emulation with screen-n900 may be similar to ctrl+alt Fx switch for getty. http://maemo.org/packages/view/screen-n900/ – Yves Martin Mar 20 '13 at 08:43
23

All Android based phones are also Linux machines. Take into consideration that they run a Dalvik or Java Virtual Machine on the top.

Android relies on Linux version 2.6 for core system services such as security, memory management, process management, network stack, and driver model. The kernel also acts as an abstraction layer between the hardware and the rest of the software stack.

scjorge
  • 361
Pawka
  • 161
  • 1
    Android may be based on a Linux but you can't make much out of it. There is no realy way to install your own packages, or access the shell etc –  Aug 06 '10 at 08:18
  • What about rooting? –  Aug 06 '10 at 14:55
  • 3
    @Janusz you can install a full linux distro on android phones, i.e. http://www.talkandroid.com/android-forums/android-development/1091-install-debian-android.html –  Aug 09 '10 at 05:28
  • 3
    @Nathan Tomkins: Only certain phones - the bootloader needs to be unlocked and the phone rooted. The process to get Debian on the G1 was pretty difficult initially, but it's refined. –  Aug 09 '10 at 16:29
  • @Broam I understand that it's difficult, but even still, it's possible if you're willing to make the effort ;) –  Aug 10 '10 at 01:42
  • 5
    If you need to "root" something... it kinda defeats the purpose of "freedom". Might as well rent from Apple. – xenoterracide Sep 19 '10 at 18:06
  • 3
    "rent from Apple" - muahhahaa. +100 man. I just realized that iphones are exactly that - you don't own them - you rent them :) – Stann Feb 03 '11 at 16:48
  • 5
    Android phones run a modified Linux kernel, but they are not real GNU/Linux systems. Their software is mostly buggy corporate crapware, and you have to download buggy software from dubious forums to root (and often wreck) your phone to be able to do anything interesting. It's just unethical marketing that has people talking about Android being a "linux phone". I know that Linux means the kernel, technically, but closed corporate apps are not what people are thinking of when they say "Linux"... – J. Taylor Mar 24 '11 at 08:46
  • @jrtayloriv: spot-on. The reality and the broad marketing do divert a lot, stones to the deep marketing really. It is a bit like Micro.* marketing W[^s]s all-the-time as W[^s]s although W[^s]s died when they stopped support, not mentioning that it is actually W[^s]s NT -dev branch. I am giving -1 for this suggestion because it does not define the term linux phone, it is very misleading term to use without explanations because the marketing and the reality divert again. Any idea about the other phones like WebOS, FreeRunner or Palm Pre? –  Mar 26 '11 at 22:13
  • 1
    If it runs a Linux kernel, it can run a GNU/Linux system in a chroot if the appropriate software is installed. Android doesn't include a lot of system utilites that you'd expect in a GNU/Linux environment. But it is not overly difficult to get Debian installed in a chroot environment with the debootstrap utility. Once you do this everything is just an apt-get away. – LawrenceC Mar 10 '13 at 18:56
9

Palm's WebOS phones are Linux powered as well. They do not need to be rooted to gain access to the system. WebOS has a very active home-brew community and many standard Linux packages available via optware. I've got my Palm Pre set up as a web server, accessible via ssh, and even had samba running on it for a while. Check out WebOS Internals.

ATC
  • 116
3

Even older than the FreeRunner was the GreenPhone. It ceased production in 2007. The software did manage to live on as QtMoko/Debian for the FreeRunner.

  • @Broam: any idea whether this phone have features like real shell (no busy-box abstraction) or other features outlined in my answer? –  Mar 26 '11 at 22:16
3

Are they any good?

My answer is about Nokias and Androids. I recommend you to wait with them until the problems fixed below.

Poor Keyboards with Nokias but not with Androids, at least G1. Poor usability in both camps however will hinder your productivity

The family, N8XX and N9XX, has very poor keyboard designs -- darn hard to get even tilde and programming quotes -- that kills your productivity like hXll. Android phones in conrast, such as G1, have much better keyboards but otherwise not as open as Nokia family, opennes here is a very subjective term -- however hard they market their phones with "open source", they are not. Heard Nokia N900 is more open than N8XX but if I have understood right it still have some code like related to transmitter/antenna closed, check the current state from Freenode's Maemo channel, this can change like a windmill. As for Androids, I tried everything like Cyanogenmod, Dev phones but just busy-box-cli-abstraction and multi-tasking commandline not possible (not in Androids and not in Nokias) -- again a blow to productivity.

Some infant problems with current "linux" phones

  1. native multi-tasking CLI (no abstraction pling-pling like busy-box), not the same as Nokias "GUI multitasking"-marketing-pling-pling
  2. missing/implemented-poorly programs such as GNU Screen, Mutt, Vi, irssi and such basics (bad for productivity)
  3. poor QWERTY keyboard with hard-to-use programmer-keys, please, no more display clicking like with Nokias
  4. no native Debian or similar OS running, you need to box it at least with N900
  5. not open and obfuscated code, like with Cyanogenmod's Nvidia driver (not verified just rumour in Freenode's #cyanogenmod, speculation)

Cannot recommend any of the infant products, they are disgraceful in their usability and debatable openness. You may like some of their features like SSH but you will encounter productivity problems. I got rid of my Nokias, Androids, Cyanogen-mod-messes -- will go back if I can find a phone with fixed above problems.

Please, let me know if you know any phone that address the problems -- and seriously why the title is about "linux", I want BSD phone, any idea whether any OBSD phone planned or in production?

  • 2
    Sync a bluetooth keyboard to it. – LawrenceC Mar 23 '11 at 19:11
  • @ultrasawblade: or you could just take SSH connection and use your computer to use it but it limits its usage possibilities a lot. I tried it with N810 but due to its poor design the mini-usb (or was it micro-usb actually ... dxmn non-standardized inferior products) won't charge the phone and it ran out of battery very quickly, very poor design. If I can remember right, G1 could be charged through usb and transfer data but I got fed up to it because I needed to carry a heavy battery and the reasons above, went back to nice simple 1110-Nokia/Communicator -combo while waiting better times. –  Mar 23 '11 at 22:53
2

  1. there is a growing list here: Documenting devices with mainline Linux support - Help needed

  2. things are changing constantly, and new projects are emerging:

… and more?

Pablo A
  • 2,712
scjorge
  • 361