As much as I love Linux I’ll be the first to admit that it probably won’t catch on with average users for a long time. Most people really don’t want to have to troubleshoot anything and just want something that works out of the box, and Linux isn’t really able to deliver that consistently.

I’m curious to try a Linux phone myself, but being in Canada importing new hardware is expensive and the other phone models that are compatible are ancient, and often without VoLTE support which is gonna be mandatory pretty soon here

They’ve been saying “maybe it’s the year of the Linux desktop” for years, mobile Linux only reliably works on a handful of specific modern devices and some fairly old ones

I wouldn’t hold my breath for it

Meanwhile in Canada, if something falls into a niche good luck finding it in person. It’s getting beyond frustrating trying to buy in person to avoid Amazon, then finding out that nowhere carries it and having to order from Amazon anyway.

That’s what we get when Canada is a handful of monopolies in a trenchcoat instead of a country.

It specifies the European market, not sure how well it’ll play with Canadian service providers. I’ll have to wait and see before dropping $1000 (before shipping) on it. VoLTE is pretty much required here and last I heard that was tricky for Linux phones

For now I have GrapheneOS on a Pixel 8 Pro, but I’ll keep an eye on this one to see if it’ll be compatible in Canada

The comments keep mentioning Linux phones, have they managed to get Linux running on mobile hardware that I won’t have to go on an archaeological dig for?

This is the start of corporations trying to completely phase out owning your own hardware.

This needs to fail hard or it will spread to every other major vendor. But in this timeline every evil deed seems to succeed and be rewarded. Be sure to hoard your old hardware, you’ll likely need it later.

I did, it’s a buggy undercooked mess that doesn’t work half the time. The app that’s officially supported is missing half the features. Trying to get people to switch to it is like pulling teeth as the onboarding process in overly complicated for the average user.

Meanwhile Signal works right out of the box with very little fuss.

Genuinely interested, but any time I look into it it requires hardware that’s expensive to import or many years out of date.

The oldest phone I still have lying around is my Pixel 7 that was my initial jump into GrapheneOS, I haven’t found any distros that are compatible with a Pixel newer than a 4a. If anyone knows of a compatible distro I’d make the jump.

Sorry for the delayed, haven’t checked Lemmy in a bit. This is a topic I very much want other perspectives on.

It’s not distro specific, more so when I’m looking for help with specific issues that are often not distro specific. I don’t really post to ask, I look for solutions first and then ask after exhausting all other options.

Doesn’t really matter where I end up; some distro’s forum, Reddit, Stack Overflow, Lemmy, etc. I always end up finding dickheads telling the OP to learn how to use search or berating them for not understanding the issue enough to provide the exact information they want (yes, they can’t help without the right info but they don’t have to be dicks about it). Or they’re just super condescending when giving an answer. I tune them out and scroll past for the actual answers, but they’re there in a good chunk of posts I find.

I can see how it would be incredibly discouraging for someone making the leap for the first time. Tech communities often forget how little the average user knows about computers.

100% this. The Linux community seems very hostile to people trying to learn. The amount of times I’ve looked something up just to find a thread answered with “learn how to use search” or people just being outright mean to someone who is just figuring the basics out…

The year of the Linux desktop is never until the community gets its toxic shithead problem under control.

Matrix needs more time in the oven before it’s ready for widespread adoption.

I really did try to make it work (for months) but it’s a buggy and unpolished experience, everyone that tried it with me ended up going back to Discord and Signal for communication.

Well, that’s… less than ideal. I use a couple of their services, it was a royal pain in the ass to get all my email stuff moved over to Proton in the first place.

I’ll have to keep an eye on what they’re doing, I’ll take this as a warning sign. I’m moving most of my stuff to self host anyway, with the exception of email.

What did I miss? I’ve seen comments like this a couple times and I’m not entirely sure what happened.

Element X is still missing a lot of features, “ready” is an exaggeration I feel

No Spaces support in particular is a dealbreaker for me

The new release isn’t out on F-Droid my friend, last updated 3 months ago as of this comment.

My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.

I’m not sure how or why, but Magic Earth has a FAR more complete address list than OSMand or Organic Maps where I live. It must be pulling from another data source as well, OSM doesn’t have addresses for several neighborhoods in the city but Magic Earth does.

Would anyone know why that would be?

OSM not having massive chunks of my home city really does leave me with either Google Maps or Magic Earth.

A few things spring to mind as someone who lives in Alberta:

Alberta is looking at transferring control of some of our hospitals to the catholics (Covenant Health has a former premier and the former health minister on the board of directors, hmm) for a start. UCP has also been eyeballing getting Alberta to leave the CPP.

Can’t speak for other cities, but Calgary has been turning into a shit hole for years now. Homeless people and drug addicts are all over the place lately. Rents are spiking just like everywhere else.

Personal anecdote, the last time I had to take transit there was still blood on the wall of the station where a guy had been stabbed a few weeks prior. 2023 was a nasty year for transit stabbings.

For now.

This was almost a decade ago but it was a real life issue extending online, blocking might have made the in person stuff worse. Hard to say, teenagers are awful.

These days I simply don’t keep company I don’t enjoy so it doesn’t become an issue. I also stepped away from posting on social media at all until I recently joined Lemmy and Mastodon.