best hope for mobile Linux is PostmarketOS

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labbe5
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Joined: Wed 13 Nov 2013, 14:26
Location: Canada

best hope for mobile Linux is PostmarketOS

#1 Post by labbe5 »

https://postmarketos.org/

On the current mobile landscape you get none of that. Even expensive phones only have few years of support. As time progresses, your phone becomes slower and slower, and the newest features will not work on it anymore. But postmarketOS builds upon a real Linux distribution, which has no reason to drop support for old devices at all and (assuming that you choose the right software) keeps the resource usage at a constant minimum instead of increasing it with every release. There's no reason to restrict features (such as full disk encryption) to newer devices either. We want to be able to use our devices until they break!

Is this mission impossible?

Outdated firmwares are a major security roadblock :
Mobile phones have dedicated chips for the cellular modem and wifi functionality. These chips only run with firmware files, which are little proprietary operating systems, that run alongside of your regular OS (such as Android or postmarketOS). In most cases they even have full access to the device's RAM, GPS and/or microphone.

As with all proprietary software, we can not look at the source code to look for security bugs and backdoors, and we can not update it when such security bugs become public. We are at the mercy of the device manufacturers to get updates, and they refuse to do so after the support of the device runs out.

Nowadays, practically every phone that is a few years old has such an issue - no matter which OS or ROM you install. Exploits are available in public, so everyone with enough IT knowledge (or money to get IT experts) can turn these older phones into surveillance devices.


Further reading :
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/10/succ ... untu%21%29
http://www.linuxandubuntu.com/home/libr ... smartphone
Last edited by labbe5 on Wed 11 Oct 2017, 17:33, edited 2 times in total.

Pelo

Puppy Linux TahrPup 6.0.5

#2 Post by Pelo »

Info italian.org (Facebook)
Published on 8 Sep 2017
Puppy Linux TahrPup 6.0.5 installed on a micro-SD card and run from a 9$ Alcatel One Touch 20.45X feature phone. The phone can still use micro-SD card as a storage for music, pictures, video etc.
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tallboy
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Joined: Tue 21 Sep 2010, 21:56
Location: Drøbak, Norway

#3 Post by tallboy »

postmarketOS seems very promising, but I was a bit surprised when I read that it is based on Alpine Linux. Huh??

labbe5, please allow me to sidetrack this thread for a moment:
I would have thought that they had googled the name Alpine before selecting it, because it's plain stupidity to use an already established Linux program name! Alpine is a very advanced email client for use in a terminal window, and it comes with it's own lovely little text editor named pico. I used Pine at the Uni from 2001 until Alpine's release in 2007, when it added unicode support to Pine. I still use Alpine 2.21 when I ssh to the Uni, it is very fast to operate from the keyboard by using the arrow keys to navigate, like in Lynx and Pinfo. Scroll up and down the email list, use the right arrow key to read an email, left to return to the list. Alpine has been in the RedHat, Fedora, Debian and OpenBSD repos for many years, it is extremely configurable. It is actually available in the Lucid 5.2.8.7 ppm, along with a standalone (lousy) file browser pilot and standalone editor pico.
"Alpine" = Alternatively Licensed Program for Internet News and Email, or alternatively, because of it's Apache license, Apache Licensed Pine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_%28email_client%29
http://alpine.freeiz.com/alpine/

So please excuse me for stealing your thread, labbe5, I hope the info was worth it. :D

tallboy
True freedom is a live Puppy on a multisession CD/DVD.

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greengeek
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Re: Puppy Linux TahrPup 6.0.5

#4 Post by greengeek »

Pelo wrote:Info italian.org (Facebook)
Published on 8 Sep 2017
Puppy Linux TahrPup 6.0.5 installed on a micro-SD card and run from a 9$ Alcatel One Touch 20.45X feature phone. The phone can still use micro-SD card as a storage for music, pictures, video etc.
Hi Pelo, do you have a link to the website detailing how Tahrpup runs on the alcatel?? cheers!

cthisbear
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Joined: Sun 29 Jan 2006, 22:07
Location: Sydney Australia

#5 Post by cthisbear »


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greengeek
Posts: 5789
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Location: Republic of Novo Zelande

#6 Post by greengeek »

Thanks. OK - so I assume that puppy is being loaded to the PC from storage in the alcatel - is that right? So just using the alcatel like a card reader. For a second there I thought the thread was suggesting that Tahr was running ON/IN the alcatel.

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