I'm optimistic that PinePhone may finally be the one to do it, at least to an extent that it's usable if you're willing to hack on it.

> usable if you're willing to hack on it

Most people need things just work.

An important lesson from my openmoko days - "sorry I didn't get your call sweetie, see I needed a new video driver for my window manager animations so I recompiled my kernel and that broke the modem..." ....... turns out to not be a good excuse for missing significant-others calls on a regular basis!

I concur. But if we have a platform that is actually suitable for the community to work on, we can get to that point.

Much like Ubuntu made desktop Linux a viable prospect for many people, after being enabled by Debian, I could see a future libre smartphone being enabled by the work done on PinePhone.

Well maybe, but even Ubuntu / Debian aren't workable for most people. I've used Linux and FreeBSD since the 90s and I'm still pleasantly surprised when my printer works out of the box.

They're great for developers, but they've been unable to provide a usable and simple alternative for most people. Imo, partly because a lack of incentives since developers tend to create for themselves. Partly due to fragmentation leading to projects moving in every direction at the same time, which does not lead to a consistent or simple user experience.

Actually Ubuntu is not less usable than Windows 10. Ex on intel NUC - wifi on Ubuntu : out of box - wifi on windows : plug ethernet, install driver manually. Old printers works better on Linux, eg when driver do not work on windows 10. Libre Office outof box, Office : where is my key ? ...

"Actually Ubuntu is not less usable than Windows 10."

For you and me maybe. But don't expect other people to have your standard of software choices etc.

The problem is Ubuntu, but that consumers have migrated from desktops/laptops to Phones. (Bad for Linux, and bad for society as it's much easier to be a non-passitive participant on a desktop/laptop.)

for most people app selection on ubuntu is big enough to never need anything more only professional/rare software sometimes has no support/suitable alternative

- Can I install my "favourite program" on Linux?

Well sure, it's supported on X, Y and Z!

- Oh but I'm on distro A.

Oh sorry, that's not supported. But here's a post by some guy on some forum who says he made it work by doing a bunch of complicated things no one understands.

We're talking about Ubuntu. Distro X is always Ubuntu. Y and Z are usually picked from Debian, Red Hat, Fedora and Arch

This is often no longer an issue thanks to Flatpak & Steam Proton built-in Windows emulation.

In addition, there's a significant subset of people who's only program they use is a web browser.

This is obviously quite doable with basically any distro.

Yes, while this has issues of its own (as long as the web services they are using are centralized and corporate controlled) I have observed the less technical users I have been helping with computer issues are totally happy as long as they sit in front of a computer with a web browser, where they can log in to their online accounts and get going.

Some might want a full mail client and possibly a printer configured and that's about it.

When I am purchasing HW peripherals, I always check Linux support in advance. Since I started doing that, I had zero compatibility problems.

The problem with Desktop Linux was by the time it got better, regular people spent too much time on phones and not enough time on laptops/desktops.

But I can't really imagine phones going away that fast---what, we all get some Uber regulated neural thing? I think the tech companies are too unpopular for that---and so I think PinePhone can catch up. Plus, the Duopoly is way more annoying for regular users than Windows ever was.

It probably won't. I love my Pinephone just like I love desktop Linux, and both are great choices for people who keep up with tech, but neither will reach more than a few percentage points of marketshare without a $100m+ marketing push. They would need the help of some tech philanthropist to make it to the mainstream.

Those were pretty poor attempts: corporate driven and not very cooperative.

Since PinePhone became available, Linux distributions made huge leaps forward - Debian/Mobian especially.

If you mean Jolla, that's still a thing - I (and many of my friends) run official supported Sailfish OS on Xperia hardware:

https://jolla.com/sailfishx/

And there are community maintained builds for the PinePhone and many other devices.