Not so long ago, I made a post here about joining Mobile Linux club with my Pixel 3a XL. Back then, some people (shoutout to @Shatur@discuss.tchncs.de) asked me to share my experience after a while of use.

A lot of it will apply to all mobile Linux, while some points are rather device-specific.

There we go!

Quick recap of the setup

• Phone: Google Pixel 3a XL (google-bonito)
• OS: Nura (formerly known as postmarketOS) v26.06 - stable
• DE: Plasma Mobile

The Good

• All phone features do work. Calls, SMS, Mobile data are all operational. Calls do wake up the phone, as intended.
• Wireless connectivity works great. Both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are fully functional, and my Bluetooth headphones connect just fine (and there's even a Linux-native app for them made by a cool person!).
• Battery life, particularly idle, is incredible. On idle, the Pixel battery lasts almost a week, and it does survive a day of moderate use.
• The collection of mobile-friendly Linux apps is larger than I expected. Many other apps can also work with simple workarounds, like putting the phone in landscape mode. Support of common open-source media software (Navidrome, Jellyfin...) is very good.
• The controls are mostly intuitive to any Android user. Plasma didn't reinvent the wheel here: for the most part, the controls are instantly familiar. There are some annoying exceptions, though, like using swipe up to close apps, but somehow not the app drawer.
• The design is consistent and customizable. You can have all the same icons and menus as in desktop Plasma, and yet somehow they sit just right in the mobile phone design. You can customize the look with third-party styles, colors and icons, many of which are available both for desktop and for mobile. This way, I can get uniform design between both my PC and my phone, which is mind-blowing at first.
• Waydroid support is built in. You can run Android apps out of the box. There are limitations - not every app will work right, and running Waydroid in the background drains a lot of battery - but most Android apps run well and even send notifications to the main notifications menu.
• It is Linux, just the way you know it. If something works in desktop Linux, it should work here too. For example, I recently switched the mirrors (more on that later) through CLI and it reflected in Discover app store. I can type "sudo reboot" - and it does indeed reboot. All those little things work here. It's Linux, you already know it.
• SSH support. You can easily SSH to your phone and do whatever you want. Awesome if you run a mobile server, very useful when you just want to manage your phone from your computer. Works very well.

The Neutral

• Linux phone is boring - but intentional. It is there to do exactly what you tell it to. Answer emails? Done. Check messages? Alright. Make a call? No problem. Launch a game? Will do. Much in the spirit of Linux philosophy, the phone will do exactly what you tell it to - and not a tiny bit more. Combine that with the same philosophy on the side of apps, as well as limited entertainment options - and you get a very, very boring phone. For many, it will be a huge advantage - but if you're used to randomly binge on your phone for a bit of entertainment - this ain't it. You'll only address this phone with a clear intent of doing something.
• There are things about design philosophy that do differ from Android - and not everyone will like it. For example, when you invoke one app from the other on Android, you have to go back to the source app, while on Plasma it opens as a "new window" and you can select the source in the active app menu. There is also no system-wide way to go "back", and the respective gestures don't exist. Overall, I like Android way more, but there are neat features here, too.

The Bad

• The phone feels sluggish. I don't know whether it's specific to Nura, Plasma, or if it's just Pixel 3a being old, but the system often doesn't feel snappy at all. It doesn't freeze, but something doesn't feel right.
• Some software is very limited. Nura in particular is based on Alpine, which is already not the first pick for a mobile/desktop distro. Add ARM to the mix, and you have a very poor selection of certain applications. For example, I could not find VPN software that would work on this phone in my heavily controlled jurisdiction. And it's just my personal pain point - there's plenty of software that simply isn't available.
• Notifications are hit or miss. Often times, notifications didn't come from inactive apps until I opened them. This made me miss important messages, and it is unacceptable for such a device.
• Some features need fiddling. For example, mobile data didn't work out of the box or with the GUI settings, so I had to dive into setting the modem via CLI. It worked at the end, though.
• Browser options are generally quite bad. Browsing on mobile Linux is generally less than enjoyable. Angelfish is almost good enough, and the rest falls short very quickly.
• Official mirrors can be geographically restricted. As postmarketOS changed name and domain to Nura (nura.eco), their new domain effectively blocked me out. Combine that with lack of VPNs - and it made me change to alternative mirrors to restore update functionality. Given that these are official mirrors, this is not great.

Overall, it was a blast the first week I played around with it, but after the novelty had subsided, all the unpolished and raw parts of the system have hit me quite hard. Now, I'd rather quickly pop my Android phone to do what I actually want to do, and keep Linux phone for experimenting and helping some development. The system feels like it's still far from prime time, but I'm happy I tried nonetheless. The enthusiast part of me is satisfied.

We'll see how it goes from then on.

What is your experience daily driving Linux on a phone? Is there anyone with mightier devices running the system, or Mobian/other Linux enthusiasts? How is Linux working for you?

What is your ISP and country that makes you trouble accessing nura.eco?

i mostly agree with all these points. been using nura on fairphone 5 for a week with phosh. my fairphone 6 with eos stopped charging, even after replacing the usb port, so im in the warranty process now.

my microphone doesnt work for calls, but i had problems on android with this phone too. also it was not for sale in the us, so maybe it has something to do with that somehow.

surprisingly usable, and frustratingly unusable all at once lol.

id recommend the app "webapp hub" turns websites into apps on the phone. rely on waydroid more than id like and it crashes regularly.

have many notifications going to my protonmail, and leave the protonmail app open constantly to get them.

i use google voice which is annoying for degoogling, since everyone has my gv number. theres no app to properly integrate it. theres also no clear replacement. if i lose my phone i can call or text from a computer or my wifes phone. during the pandemic i cancelled my phone plan and still got calls and texts. this is truly going to be the hardest thing for my transition away from google.

@dadarobot @Allero Is the gv number portable? I assume if you could you'd have moved it.

Does wireguard-tools exist in the alpine repos? If so, you might be able to get the VPN working via CLI, just have to get a config from your provider.

It does, but regular Wireguard doesn't work in my country. If it works in yours - this should work.

I use Spider for the same purpose as Webapp Hub. It is indeed a lifesaver and I should have mentioned it!

Can't tell on my side as I don't use gv, unfortunately

SkyNet, Russia. Had issues ever since domain change, way before recent issues with SkyNet itself.

From what I've read, it is somehow a VoIP number only and I cannot switch it to a regular cell.

I did look into other VoIP services, but I quickly felt overwhelmed and do not understand sip and all the other stuff I need

The phone feels sluggish

Maybe I am just used to it, but LGTM on swmo on a much older device. Maybe it's that, or maybe it's because you are using Flatpak or something, or both?

I could not find VPN software that would work on this phone in my heavily controlled jurisdiction

#pogoda

I see... Anyways, so the easiest thing one hypothetical evil spy would do is just run the Tor daemon. "webtunnel" is the only option that still functions unfortunately (apart from meek but technological advancement made it unusable for most applications); source: friend. In /etc/tor/torrc:

SOCKSPort 0.0.0.0:9050
SOCKSPort [::1]:9050
ControlPort 9051 #optionally add the hashed control password thing
AutomapHostsOnResolve 1
UseBridges 1
# run `which lyrebird` if it doesn't run, will save you some nerves and feeling stupid
ClientTransportPlugin webtunnel exec /usr/bin/lyrebird

then add a few WebTunnel entries.

Bridge webtunnel [2001:db8:28ff:ae4f:c:9ef6:1722:ac46]:443 1098B4E153AB1666B4F63F48325A103FB005940F url=https://pod04.oneclickhost.eu/FeTyRXzPPAzwIjuxzWxwl09N ver=0.0.7
Bridge webtunnel [2001:db8:259c:faa6:24a9:cce0:c60f:4642]:443 23958FC105E58061AFD2DECC61D363F28AB36490 url=https://pod02.oneclickhost.eu/lzcHh4sbo8bOTwkc4IwkSxNS ver=0.0.7
Bridge webtunnel [2001:db8:11d3:d5e7:2939:8453:7baf:868f]:443 531640559965FB7501EB5C006018F61D1E9FA1BB url=https://cdn-34.triplebit.dev/Aec3euCh4ux3deij ver=0.0.2
Bridge webtunnel [2001:db8:8229:577b:8f3a:bc4c:7d18:24be]:443 4C26D2BA24011E89875857BDB338969D08CAAE0B url=https://test.notalot.org/ApKhNDWZv4MCjbH05W6eQFkF ver=0.0.4
Bridge webtunnel [2001:db8:4a7:f9d5:dd5:a50d:e609:b356]:443 0FF5783D11A1B411A5815CE0C6C25AD584D281FE url=https://cdn.xoomlia.com/dzq3/ ver=0.0.3

Whoops, I dropped some! How could I possibly do such a crime...

Then one could enable it in rc, or otherwise disable it there and run tor in a terminal each time. Test: env ALL_PROXY="socks5://[::1]:9050" curl https://check.torproject.org/ | grep -i congratulations.

Now, what most would be tempted to do is set that environment variable globally. This would actually be a mess because even a single application (Abaddon the Discord client for example) could use multiple libraries at once, some respecting it, some respecting /etc/sysconfig/proxy, others respecting gsettings and so on and so forth. It will basically just yell at the internet that you are using Tor. Sometimes even the application itself might have an option to proxy but it won't apply to a plugin or something.

Instead, one would install torsocks, add AllowOutboundLocalhost 1 and EnableIPv6 1 to /etc/tor/torsocks.conf (so that it's still usable with the environment variable), then copy .desktop entries of each program you want to run with Tor from /usr/share/applications into ~/.local/share/applications and change each Exec= line (yes, there are sometimes multiple) from, for example, abaddon to env ALL_PROXY="socks5://[::1]:9050" torsocks abaddon. The variable is still there for performance reasons, and because it may sometimes break without it.

Now, the Tor people don't want Tor Browser to be packaged for MUSL. For some reason. You could, for example, run a Debian container (or just Whoix at this point, ask if you want the env variables to use system tor regardless). You would be basically the only person with this atrocious screen size even with letterboxing; so I suggest you to embrace it, turn all knobs on in Librewolf, get the foxyproxy extension (make sure it's actually working) and be pseudoanon instead of fully anon. OR install chawan browser (ALL_PROXY will work for most things but not the Gemini part for example, use torsocks for Gemini).

AHEM, anyways...

Often times, notifications didn’t come from inactive apps until I opened them.

That's by design. Like GrapheneOS. It's weird if you do get notifications from closed programs, however; those probably run some daemon all the time.

I'm sure the project could still keep the repos available on the old domain in addition to the new one, perhaps ask them, if it helps with access.

Old domain redirects to the new one, unfortunately

But yes, this is to be talked through anyways

I see you're quite a detective :D

Yes, I know of webtunnel bridges, but I didn't try to run Tor on this device via CLI. Maybe I should!

@dadarobot I have a voip service (US company: callcentric.com, I find them quite good, but I don't know if they're worth it without a US address). The sip stuff is just in the background. It's like your internet IP number. It's provided by your ISP but you don't (usually) ever have to deal with it. Same with sip. The numbers you deal with look like regular phone numbers. There is some kind of argle-bargle regarding "regular" cell numbers. You can switch them to a voip service, but there's some kind of aggro about switching a voip number to cell. Or something. You're right about it all being horribly confusing. On purpose, I'm sure.