Tux Machines

Melbourne duo working on using Linux phones as general computing devices

Posted by Rianne Schestowitz on Dec 05, 2023

That's how one of them, long-time Debian developer Russell Coker, puts it. The other, Swinburne University computer science student Yifei Zhan, says his aim is "to make the free/libre mobile ecosystem more secure and usable, and encourage potential developers and power users to hack on it".

The duo applied for, and obtained, grants from Linux Australia earlier this year, with the money helping to buy a Linux phone for each of them. Russell initially chose the PinePhone Pro as the hardware they would use; it runs an open-source operating system, has a removable battery and also has hardware switches to turn off WiFi and Bluetooth if needed for security reasons.

But now, he has found that this device is not working as well as expected. "The PinePhonePro is not working as well as I hoped. One major issue is that it doesn't work reliably for phone calls," he said.

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