Interesting new entry into the smartphone-that-runs-desktop-Linux market. This one in particular appears to run Debian Trixie and uses Phosh as its desktop shell.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/26/furi_phone_flx1_debian_smartphone/
@kyle It's Droidian. It runs Debian(ish) userspace on top of Android HAL. Very different to actually running Debian.
@dos @kyle The article cold have been more clear here but I still think another supported device could become a net positive for gnome, phosh and the LinuxMobile ecosystem.
"The Hong Kong-based company is working with a Chinese OEM to make sure that there are native Linux drivers for all the device's hardware." could be promising if native means "mainline".
@agx @dos @kyle I work on this phone. you hit the nail on the head; it is our goal to share and upstream as many of our improvements as possible throughout our shared stack. you may have already seen me around GitLab now and again. :)
re: mainline, afraid it's not in our roadmap. getting the device in a halfway semi-usable state would be a decade-long project and the result would be ~the same to an end user. we prefer to focus our energy on improving the userspace (e.g. GTK perf, Firefox, etc)
@agx @dos @kyle unfortunately there isn't much we have in that regard. couple examples: a) the kernel we got didn't even have a commit history; b) we couldn't get the datasheet for the display panel.
I'm aware this isn't optimal, but perfect is the enemy of good & we had to start somewhere. if this goes well, we'll probably have better leverage in the future for that sort of stuff.
