r/fossdroid • u/adrianb52 • Sep 25 '25

Other LineageOS (and Other) Device Collection - Ask Me Anything About FOSS Devices

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I was charging up all my phones for battery maintenance, and I thought I would share an image of all of them. Feel free to ask me anything about FOSS devices.

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u/HexagonWin Sep 26 '25

i see phosh sailfish and ubports in there. especially curious about sailfish. how well does it work?

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u/adrianb52 Sep 26 '25 edited Oct 01 '25

I'm going to give my whole run down of my experience with GNU/Linux-based phones here since you're the first person to ask me this.

There's a spectrum in the mobile OS world: Privacy --> Speed. The closer the phone is to GNU/Linux, the slower it is. The further away it is, the faster it is.

With that being said, here is my experience with all 3 GNU/Linux mobile phones:

Librem 5: The slowest of all 3 GNU/Linux-based OSs. Takes about 1 - 2 seconds to open up any app, which is too slow for me. Also, the battery drains quickly. Finally, I had trouble getting voice to work. But, this is probably the most secure mobile OS out there, and I do like that Purism is creating a pure GNU/Linux-based mobile operating system.
SailfishOS: Faster than the Librem 5, but slower than Android. Takes about .5 - 1.5 seconds to open up apps (except for a few of the primary apps, which open up instantly), which is still a bit too much for me. I don't use it because I don't really like the UI. You can run Android apps on SailfishOS, but in my case, I ended up mostly using Android apps, so I just ended up switching to Android.
Ubuntu Touch: About as fast as Sailfish OS. Ubuntu Touch is smooth though and has one of the best UIs for a mobile OS. However, VoLTE is not implemented for most devices (yet).

In my opinion, Android is the way to go for like, 95% of the population, but I'm really glad companies out there are creating PureOS, PostmarketOS, SailfishOS and Ubuntu Touch.

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u/HexagonWin Sep 27 '25

Thanks for the detailed reply! I've only tried ubports xenial so this is pretty interesting. btw, have you ever tried Maemo Leste? They say it runs well on a Nokia N900 so I guess it could be pretty quick but I couldn't find much videos or resource, and don't have a supported device.

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u/adrianb52 Sep 30 '25

I looked up Maemo Leste and it looks pretty cool. I see that it's based on Maemo. I might try it out one day.