On Friday 29 November 2019 14:43:12 elcaseti . wrote:
Good to hear that Sailfish OS is still around For many years, it was difficult to find a Sailfish OS phone that would support North American cellular frequencies. Hopefully, that has changed. Maybe there's a Sony phone, or some other phones that can be flashed with Sailfish OS & will support North American LTE frequencies. Great to hear that there's an Android emulator that works fairly well for Sailfish OS!
On Fri, Nov 29, 2019 at 2:26 PM deloptes deloptes@gmail.com wrote:
Robert Peters wrote:
HI, Does anyone recommend a Linux-based system that can be installed on a smartphone, to replace the Google Android system? Robert
I was using Nokia N9 before - the only linux based phone created ever and working perfectly for many years. From the project emerged Mer, Jolla and Sailfish OS.
Now I have been using Sailfish OS for the past couple of years and it works very well. I recommend having a look at it.
They use the AOSP program from Sony, so at the moment Xperia X and XA2 are officially supported, however there are many community ports for other devices. Disadvantage is the eco system and the android emulator is not available to the community ports. The emulator costs 50€ and you can use perhaps 90% of the android apps. For XA2 the kernel is 4.9 AFAIR with Android 8.x emulator. I personally have looked at many other options to replace N9 may be 5y ago but this was the only one that makes sense to me. It is very transparent and open and has a large community.
Some skills are required to flash and maintain, but well freedom is not something you get in the help desk.
regards
Please don't take this as an endorsement, since I have not actually installed it yet myself. I am still researching how to root my phone properly.
I don't know what models of smartphone are supported. I was hoping to find a cheap used phone for purposes of experimentation, before I mess up a working system. I hear that some newer phones are supposed to have a GNU/Linux OS already installed, but have waited a couple years for the big announcement, and still nothing.
Bill