Furilabs Linux Phone

Apparently it is based on Halium, so it's probably not going to run mainline Linux any time soon. On the other hand, I'm less happy with Android than I pretty much ever have been, so having some more options outside of relatively unusable Linux phones and being stuck with modified Android firmware certainly does not hurt.

I am definitely interested, especially if the team working on it is as active as it seems they are. Definitely one of the biggest bummers with PinePhone and PinePhone Pro was realizing that the community was largely on its own; that could work well, but in practice progress has been slow and painful and I stopped paying attention.

I would really like to see more projects doing cellular Linux devices in general. It doesn't need to be a candybar smartphone, if someone can jam a cellular modem into a MicroPC I'm sold at any price I can afford.

I work on this device. We are currently QAing the latest update with our community, which contains a lot of goodies and improvements shaped directly from community feedback. You can see previous changelogs at https://furilabs.com/changelog

I am obviously a little biased, but this is probably the first Linux phone that people can actually use. Someone in our community switched from iPhone to this without much of an issue.

I don't care about running stuff out of the box, but NixOs support would be awesome!

I want to get one of these to play around with soon: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/OnePlus_6T_(oneplus-fajit...

Does anyone have NixOS+Halium working?

Anyone tried running KDE?

Not on this device in particular, but I've seen it done in the Droidian community. Similar steps should work, although I heard it's a little janky.

The SDM845 stuff looks quite promising for mainline but unfortunately the platform is definitely showing its age (and camera is still completely broken on every device as far as I know...)

Still, it's something!

Since you guys are running Gnome, you might be interested in helping with (or funding) this native GTK WhatsApp client: https://github.com/tobagin/whakarere/

Since these days something like >90% of people is on WhatsApp, it’s beyond quintessential to have a good WhatsApp client.

My biggest hold-up with that sort of work is that Facebook has previously threatened to ban users who use third-party clients, and then they have gone through with the threat. Is this no longer the case?

Meta also threatened app makers to start a lawsuit. Whatsapp Plus, Whatsup and Mitakuuluu people stopped on that threat. I don't see a reason why Meta would change their stance on this.

There is now a law from the EU, I think it is the DMA, which could change things for people living in the EU regarding interoperability. I haven't read anything about practical follow-ups yet.

By the way, only releasing source code as a blueprint might be fine, that happened before. I might remember it wrong, but it might be lame, the mp3 encoder.

I can't speak for everyone, but I've been using WhatsApp since ~2010, mostly the official client but with bouts of unofficial client usage, and I've never been banned.

Probably not very detectable for Meta since it uses a wrapped webview, but I've been using ZapZap on Linux for a good while now and I haven't seen a ban yet.

My gripe with any of the open source phones is that id apps such as bankid don’t work without the secure token storage of Android. Is this Solvable?

The Sailfish OS phones are in some use, and they've been running full blown linux since 2013.

if something can happen and haven't happened to you, doesn't warrant a comment i believe. it doesn't help much to figure the data points for the cases were it does happen, since it's implied everyone to whom it have happened would have lots of opportunities to post comments it never happened before.

You could always protect the signing certificates in the apps with derived passwords, still the length of passkeys practically acceptable to type in on a phone is too short to safely protect a certificate vs a bruteforce attack without some kind of HW assisted storage.

In the end it also boils down to what devices the BankID app providers are willing to support, I have a hard time seeing anything but iOS or Android devices being supported in the near future, Esp as Swedish BankID's now also requires NFC support to read the local police issued ID cards (had to get a new testing-device just due to this requirement).

Note: BankID is the name of personal identity apps that support authentication and signatures in Sweden, Norway and Finland, the authentication is used to access a myriad of both public and private sites like tax office, unemployment, healthcare and gyms. The signatures done via the apps are generally accepted to be of as good legal standing as a signed paper.

Has a well-behaved third party client ever been an issue?. A third party client that does things like retain deleted messages, report that read receipts are enabled but never actually sends them or other 'anti-social' behaviors is definitely asking to get banned.

Nokia N900 and N9 ran on Linux in 2009 and 2011.

N900: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N900

N9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N9

I've never heard of BankID in Finland - perhaps the common name is something else?

[1]: In July 2021 Facebook sent the developer of Unfollow Everything a cease-and-desist letter because he made a browser extension which helped people use Facebook less.

[2]: In 2020, Facebook shutted down the NYU Ad Observatory by shutting down the Facebook accounts of Cybersecurity for Democracy team members Damon McCoy and Laura Edelson.

[1]: https://12challenges.substack.com/p/how-to-deal-with-receivi... [2]: https://cyber.nyu.edu/2021/08/21/facebook-disables-ad-observ...

Possibly the OnePlus 6? This isn't an area I'm too well versed on though

Using a Sailfish OS phone since 2013 - just saying. ;-)

The Motorola A1600 ran Linux in 2008. But even then people didn't want a flip phone.

Can i run my own gui like sxmo on it easily?

Interesting history! "Motorola became the first company to use Linux on a mobile phone when it released the Motorola A760 to the Chinese market on February 16, 2003." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MontaVista#Mobile_phones

Not true for the Poco F1 (although AFAIK you still need to build your own kernel on postmarketOS to enjoy this): https://fosstodon.org/@joelselvaraj/112621744555315631

Shift6mq is supposedly close, with OnePlus6(T) its more difficult due to I think the way the sensor is connected.

Currently, the Pixel 3a is the most promising device in terms of Camera Support on a Qualcomm device with mainline kernel from what I can gather.

Easily probably not the word I'd use. Anything that runs on wlroots should be doable with not a lot of effort. Beyond that, tricky. sxmo doesn't use hardware acceleration though so not too bad.

Right, used 2 of them as my primary phone between 2015 and 2024 when the hardware broke not many weeks ago. Just recently ordered their new one, which is a bit cheaper than this Furi. Admittedly a risk purchase because not much is known about it yet.

Also typing this on the ultra-cheap hardware made for the Indian market nearly a decade ago. Well, admittedly they have already announced to discontinue support and I never dared to carry it as my primary phone.

Now the last weeks I was forced to use Android as my primary phone. Really a suprise what crappy piecemeal Android is compared to SailfishOS made by a tiny company struggling economically forever.

Halium is based on libhybris, to my understanding that was developed when Nokia stopped making Linux phones and some of their developers started making their own under the name Jolla/SaifishOS in 2011.

While Nokia could maintain their own Linux kernel that's impossible for a small vendor/team. There is no realistic alternative to taking the Android kernel provided by the SoC vendor.

I would also have commented: Not supported in Finland. I think I have read articles that they tried to get marketing share, but AFAIK they have failed completely.

On the positive side in Finland you can use SIM Toolkit for legally sanctioned 2FA (mobiilivarmenne). That should be much easier to implement without having Google involved.

Is there any phone that runs mainline Linux/upstream Debian, and is available to buy right now?

I'm sick of big companies who removed the word Consent from their dictionaries. I want something I can own and trust again. Being able to run android apps would be great, but given how closed source Android has become, I doubt that apps run on an open system would be reliable.

> this is probably the first Linux phone that people can actually use

I'm actually using GNU/Linux phones since 2008. Never relied on Halium.

100% mainline - not really yet, but from those that are close to mainline and on which you can run Mobian (which is upstream Debian with a small repo overlay for stuff not ready to go into Debian proper yet) and that you can buy new right now are Librem 5, PinePhone and PinePhone Pro.

If second market also counts then there are a few more options available - mostly former Android phones where hardware support is spotty though, so do your research first. That said, everyone's needs are different and what's there can already fulfill the needs of plenty of people, so it's a matter of figuring out whether you in particular are in this group yet or not.

> Probably not very detectable for Meta since it uses a wrapped webview

Interesting, my naive understanding is that push notifications won't work and battery life should be greatly affected, how do things work for you?

It's a swedish thing.

Thank you for this helpful explanation! Hopefully one of these three will be will be good enough for my needs.

Interesting, seems OP bank and Nordea allows logins/registrations from their own and other banks ID apps (all separate though). Vero and Kela allows logins from mobiilivarmenne and all the bank identifiers via the tunnistautuminen.suomi.fi service.

I guess it's the opposite to what happened in Sweden where Telia was the only mobile provider that had an identity solution (that had any uptake), but afaik gave up due to the omnipresence of BankID that is a streamlined system supported by all the major banks.

As a private sector application developer, would one integrate with MV, the suomi.fi portal or is it a fragmented system?

Sorry, I am not familiar how to address the issue from a developer perspective. All bigger services offer id via all banks plus mobile certificate. I believe the mobile certificate service is backed by Telia, even if your SIM is from another operator. Infamously Moi does not even offer the service at all.

Whether the banks have any common backend/provider or you need to deal with all of them sperately I don't know.

The OnePlus 6 can run mainline Linux, though apparently audio in calls drops sometimes. [0]

0: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/OnePlus_6_(oneplus-enchil...