Those first few devices were aimed at developers, which is the reason I advised people not to buy the BQ Ubuntu Phone at the time. It was soon followed by Chinese manufacturer Meizu. Spanish manufacturer BQ became the makers of the first device running Ubuntu Touch in February 2015. Though it failed to get the desired amount, it still set a new record, with over $12 million pledged to the campaign.Īfter the failed crowdfunding campaign, Canonical teamed up with some device manufacturers to launch Ubuntu Phone. Keeping convergence in mind, Canonical (the parent company of Ubuntu) ambitiously launched a $32 million crowdfunding campaign to build the first Ubuntu Phone, Edge. The king of desktop Linux world, Ubuntu decided to expand its territory with its open source mobile operating system, Ubuntu Touch. Interested in it? Check out Librem 5 specifications and availability. It’s more of a Linux-based smartphone rather than a Linux-based smartphone OS, but I believe that the convergent PureOS should be able to run on other devices with some tweaks.
Running Free/Libre and Open Source software and a GNU+Linux Operating System designed to create an open development utopia, rather than the walled gardens from all other phone providers”. The motto of the Librem is to be a “phone that focuses on security by design and privacy protection by default. Apart from PureOS, it can run GNOME and KDE, with Debian, Ubuntu, SUSE, Fedora, and even Arch Linux. Purism claims that PureOS is convergent, and Librem smartphones will run it. They are also working on a Linux-based, secure smartphone called Librem 5. The security and privacy-focused company Purism has its own PureOS Linux distribution. Ubuntu tried it and abandoned the project. Ubuntu’s convergence efforts did not materialize, but this has not deterred others from their convergence dreams.Ĭonvergence, in simple terms, is having the same operating system running on desktops, tablets, and smartphones. However, you may keep an eye on the postmarketOS community edition of the PinePhone if you want to purchase a smartphone that runs it. PostmarketOS is in very early phases of development, and it is most likely that you won’t be able to use it like a regular smartphone yet.
PostmarketOS wants to achieve the same on the mobile platform, by tweaking Linux into a touch-optimized platform.ĭon’t get too excited. At the same time, you can run Linux on older computers easily.
#Open source software for cell phones android
You probably already know that, after a few years, Android and iOS stop providing updates for older smartphones. The idea is to enable a 10-year life cycle for smartphones. PostmarketOS (pmOS for short) is a touch-optimized, pre-configured Alpine Linux with its own packages, which can be installed on smartphones. It is being actively developed, and you can even find PinePhone running on Manjaro ARM while using KDE Plasma Mobile UI if you want to get your hands on a smartphone. Plasma Mobile is the mobile version of the desktop Plasma user interface, and aims to provide convergence for KDE users. Plasma MobileĪ few years back, KDE announced its open source mobile OS, Plasma Mobile. Just to mention, the list is not in any hierarchical or chronological order.
Let’s see what open source mobile operating systems are available. Top Open Source alternatives to Android (and iOS) I am going to list not one, not two, but several alternatives, Linux-based mobile OSes. So, what are the alternatives to Android? iOS? Maybe, but I am primarily interested in open-source alternatives to Android. But, due to the bundle of proprietary software that comes along with Android on consumer devices, many people don’t consider it an open source operating system. Android is still an open-source project, after all. It’s no exaggeration to say that open source operating systems rule the world of mobile devices.
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