Oh, Purism. The guys who included a separate chip to deny the user the ability to upgrade the firmware, so that they could meet FSF's completely arbitrary requirements for a honorary badge of freedom (see the hypocrisy?), but neglected an IOMMU, so the baseband (or any other device on the bus) can wreak unlimited havoc (see the irony?). Great alternative indeed.

> separate chip to deny the user the ability to upgrade the firmware

This is false: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26784382 and https://old.reddit.com/r/Purism/comments/pcos2x/would_it_be_...

> neglected an IOMMU, so the baseband (or any other device on the bus) can wreak unlimited havoc

The Librem 5 doesn't need an IOMMU, because it uses separated components, and it uses serial buses (USB 2.0/3.0, SDIO, I2C and I2S) that don't allow direct memory access, so there is absolute no chance of the WiFi/BT, cellular modem, GNSS and USB controller being able to access the RAM or the SoC's cache

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30769589

Do you think that all laptops are also totally insecure, since they use USB?

"No chance of DMA access"

The USB URB structure have a field named 'dma_addr_t transfer_dma', used for DMA access. I've abused that to chain vulnerabilities. To boot, it is possible to develop an I2C-B2C or SPI bus master which is capable of DMA toward the host memory. Linux 2.5 kernels and later, USB device drivers have additional control over how DMA may be used to perform I/O operations.

Do any of these guys actually read the hardware specs or do any real hardware hacking?

Commadore 64 also hasn't lost support and McDonald's made a new Gameboy game.

Android runs mainline Linux. The Linux phone has no benefits.

My Librem 5 currently runs Linux 6.4. Which Android runs it?

I don't know, Google integrated the mainline Linux kernel a while ago. Probably most of the modern ones.

PostmarketOS fills the plaything niche like the Librium 5 and pinephone do but much cheaper with much better old hardware. Aside from a checkmark of running the latest kernel and hardware switches what can the librem 5 do an Android phone can't do much better? They aren't good phones.

Lifetime updates, no proprietary drivers, support of tens of different operating systems, schematics, openPGP card, desktop apps and convergence, verifiable security.

Those are features but not descriptions of good uses. Running a small laptop or steam deck fulfills all of that and much more and I've yet to see an instance where it's a good use. Again it sounds like a plaything to tinker with, with no real world use as a phone or computer.

Can you name any good real world uses?

> Running a small laptop or steam deck fulfills all of that

Why on earth do you need two separate devices (phone and laptop), when you can use one for both use cases (phone with convergence)? No synchronization or double-backups and maintenance required. Also, decreasing the amount of e-waste is a good thing as well as fighting with the user-restricting duopoly.

It looks like for you Linux itself is also just for tinkering, since you can already do everything with Windows and MacOS, isn't it?

Again can you name a real world use Android can't do?

Coming home, connecting my phone to keyboard and screen and continuing using it as a desktop. Using it as a thin client for any Linux server with the full access to desktop tools while on the go. Open your email/ssh session with authorization by the smart card, so that even if the phone is stolen or hacked, nobody else will have access to it. 100% defense against the corporate surveillance included in Android and iOS.

More: https://forums.puri.sm/t/which-applications-do-you-find-to-b...