There's a reason why that's 98%+ of the market. There is a dichotomy between the two camps in the smartphone market, everyone else is fringe. On the fringe, good luck using banking apps, transit apps, vehicle rental apps, or other apps increasingly necessary and useful.

I don't think you know what you are talking about when you mentioned Xiaomi as an option. That would be among the dumbest options you could possibly choose.

Linux on the desktop is a valid choice, but as I said above, don't tell me to switch to it, it's just not practical in my life. I've tried over a dozen distributions since 2011 and probably over fifty releases of them, and Linux isn't there.

> On the fringe, good luck using banking apps

Tried that yesterday on CalyxOs with anonymous MicroG account and my banking app works fine. No problem with contactless nfc payments.

Aren't anonymous microG accounts illegal though? (Or at least a violation of the TOS.)

Also you can't use any paid apps with this method.

Maybe a violation of TOS, but I guess it's one of these things that would not be enforced at all. Same way as Oracle can't do much about Google using Java or Microsoft doesn't do anything about Wine.

Regarding the second point - that's true. I've heard there are some plans to add payments to the Aurora store/F-Droid (which are alternative app stores) but right now you can't use paid apps.

I consider this to be a plus though - gives me a chance to switch to open-source / self-hosted apps.

There isn't always an open-source alternative to what you need. Especially for people who use their computers for work.

True. That's why for work I still use a MBP. But I decided to separate work equipment/data/apps. That's a good thing to do anyway because of many reason.

> That would be among the dumbest options you could possibly choose.

You don't get to dismiss others' concerns by saying "it's a choice", and at the same time dismiss choices others present...

> Linux on the desktop is a valid choice, but as I said above, don't tell me to switch to it, it's just not practical in my life.

For Desktop, if I have to choose between macOS CSAM spyware of paying users or the Linux ecosystem and its tiny userbase of unpaid users I would go for using and targeting the paid users since they are the ones paying the bills and thats where the money is.

For smartphone alternatives, the phones themselves are still immature as well as the Linux phone software ecosystem which is again still light years behind. If they can't even run the same Android apps on modern Android devices, then it is close to no chance.

If they don't hurry up, Google Fuchsia will steam-roll them silently.

> I've tried over a dozen distributions since 2011 and probably over fifty releases of them, and Linux isn't there.

Likewise, with the GUI software I'm writing, 'Defining Linux support' is something that is not worth doing given that there are tons of distros out there and by selecting one or two distro's there will always be an endless amount of people asking to support X distro or Y distro.

> Likewise, with the GUI software I'm writing, 'Defining Linux support' is something that is not worth doing given that there are tons of distros out there and by selecting one or two distro's there will always be an endless amount of people asking to support X distro or Y distro.

There was a major game developer (sadly forgetting the name) who decided to support Linux as a test around 2018ish. The Linux users were only a few percent of their users but ~20% of the support tickets. They said never again.

Surprised to see Xiaomi on your existence list of maturity.

I'm not sure why, because: a) it exists, and b) it exists on a maturity scale :)