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?