by Amos Batto (2026-10-19), License: CC BY 4.0, Download: PDF, ODT

In response to my previous article asking, “Will Linux phones become a viable alternative to the Android/iOS duopoly?,” I received a torrent of comments at Hacker News, r/linux, r/Purism, r/mobilelinux, r/PINE64official, OSNews and on the forums at SailfishOS, Purism and PINE64. There were a total of 660 comments and still counting, so people have a lot to say on the subject of Linux phones.

The vast majority of commentators don’t believe that Linux phones will ever crack the market stranglehold that Google and Apple currently hold over the mobile phone industry. However, many of the commentators argued that we already have a free/open source mobile Linux operating system in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), which is the base on which Google and the phone manufacturers add their proprietary apps and services. They insisted that AOSP runs on a Linux kernel, so an AOSP phone already is a Linux phone. They asked why waste so much effort developing another mobile Linux operating system which won’t be nearly as good as AOSP. Other commentators argued that most people would never adopt Linux phones, because they are locked into one of the app ecosystems controlled by Google and Apple.

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