Does this mean Linux phones might finally be on the horizon? I know Pine64 has existed for a couple of years, but the software is still not in a useable state.
In the long run, yeah. I wouldn’t say they’re on the horizon, even when major distros do support RISC-V there will still be serious issues and I doubt most programs will work. I’d wager about 4 years until risc-v is usable for average use.
How would this change anything Linux Phones? Debian has had support for ARM CPUs for quite awhile, which is what nearly all of today’s smartphones run. So how does RISC-V support change anything now?
I feel like this would be a lot more viable today than it was when Ubuntu and Firefox tried it. Progressive Web Apps have come a long way, both in terms of quantity and quality. Newer desktop Linux apps have more flexible designs as well, so they could probably be adapted more easily than back then.
They all have functional mobile sites though, and those can be wrapped into an app-like experience on the client side easily enough.
I basically did that with Facebook back when I still used it. The official app was so outrageously shitty, so I used third-party apps that wrapped the mobile site.
It wouldn’t be great but it’d be good enough for early adopters (mostly technical users). Enough to make a viable niche perhaps, and grow from there.
Add comment