A small community project is building immutable Fedora images for tablets and phones.

The mobile Linux space is more active than most people realize. Projects like postmarketOS, Ubuntu Touch, and KDE Plasma Mobile have been chipping away at the idea that your phone or tablet has to run something made by Google or Apple.

And while none of them are household names yet, they are picking up real interest from power users who want more control over their hardware. Of course, most people stick with Android or iOS, and that is fine.

Both platforms are mature, well-supported, and not going anywhere. But for the ones who want something genuinely open and free of platform lock-in, things are getting better.

  • Ajinomoto@piefed.socialEnglish
    32·
    8 days ago

    Feel like we should be able to install these OS on whatever device we want, same as PCs. Why lock a phone so much?

    • piccolo@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      27·
      8 days ago

      Because corporations would struggle to siphon an immense amount of personal data if they didnt control the software.

    • marius@feddit.orgEnglish
      5·
      7 days ago

      Cause on ARM you don’t have a bios and some other reasons why you need an OS specifically for each device

      • GeneralDingus@lemmy.cafeEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        There are loaders for arm devices. They may not be typical bootloaders like for computers but they’re not all that different. Like tow-boot or u-boot.

      • Hetare King@piefed.socialEnglish
        2·
        7 days ago

        Eh, the BIOS is ultimately just some code on a ROM chip, it working the way it does was a design decision by IBM, it wasn’t because of the CPU they used. There’s nothing technical standing in the way of making a PC-like ecosystem based on ARM chips.

        The reason phones don’t have this is because they’re (almost) always fully integrated systems where you don’t ever swap out any of its parts for different ones, so there’s no incentive to create a flexible system, both on the hardware and software side, that can deal with different hardware on-line over just baking in all the hardware-specific stuff off-line.

      • Batmorous@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        7 days ago

        Previous generations really dropped the ball on this

        Edit: The not resolving it so phones would be same as PC’s

    • INeedMana@piefed.zipEnglish
      4·
      7 days ago

      If nothing has changed since the time I looked into it, because every device (camera, display, SIM) basically needs its own driver wrote for it and it’s the decision of the one ordering the designing of the phone to release it or not