by wezm on 9/14/20, 9:48 PM with 8 comments
by Fnoord on 9/14/20, 10:31 PM
NewPipe is a good FOSS frontend for YouTube.
/e/ might be a good solution, preinstalled on a Fairphone 3. Its a modular smartphone, and /e/ is based on LineageOS + microG. LineageOS for microG can use GMS (Play Store), that part of the point of microG.
There's also UBTouch.
postmarketOS is more a reference model.
One could use GrapheneOS on a Pixel. The Pixel 3a was a good bang for buck, generally Pixel phones are.
SailfishOS is the continuation of Nokia's Maemo/MeeGo. Its an OS with strong privacy options, a good UI (though very gesture-based therefore learning curve), it can run on some smartphones like certain Sony Xperia, and it has Android emulation (requires a license).
Other than that your OS list seems reasonably complete. GNOME, KDE, and Enlightenment all 3 have a DE pivoted for touchscreen.
> Get a basic phone for calls and texts and do everything else on a real computer, possibly an ultra compact like the GPD Pocket 2.
Terrible build quality, don't recommend. They also ship with some evaluation BIOS, and Windows 10 Starter Edition or something like that. Wouldn't trust, though you can run Linux on it as well (and on Windows, you can use Netflix plus offline storage (!!)). Redmi 7 and such have low build quality, and I wouldn't wanna use MIUI.
> Especially due to some things only being possible with a smartphone like ride sharing.
You may get away running that application in a web browser, or running Android in an emulator for such.
Doesn't make sense to me if you dislike Google, to use Facebook related applications. That being said, everyone here uses WhatsApp. I prefer Signal over WhatsApp.
I have no idea what people need all that horsepower for in their pocket. If you can't self service the device (replacing hardware, battery, etc) the lifetime of the device is just too limited regardless.
by nuker on 9/15/20, 12:06 AM
Consumers and developers have very different interests. Article is written by a consumer, but the reasons above apply to developers. This aside, its a very good post.
by zepto on 9/14/20, 9:57 PM
If we want a good alternative to Apple, we need to actually vote with our wallets and possibly our keyboards, and this piece is a great contribution to doing so.