Riley

I’ve got a Google Pixel 3a with postmarketOS installed on it right now for testing, and it really is a two-pronged issue with both hardware and software. Because it’s an older phone the battery drains within a few hours, nowhere close to all-day use. Because most of the software is designed for the desktop certain things are just impossible to use (the big pain point for me is Anki, but on the other hand it’s impressive how many GTK apps conform very nicely to the screen). The keyboard still feels pretty rough.

Hopefully the FSF dipping their hat into the ring will help existing projects like this in a rising-tide-raises-all-ships sort of way. Would be a shame for them to put effort into a software stack that goes nowhere (GNU Hurd), and pour $$$ into a hardware project that doesn’t make it to market or doesn’t do its job better than a cracked smartphone from 5+ years ago.

I think it is possible to switch to it now and have things mostly work out for you, but it will make your life harder. I remember switching to Ubuntu around 2010 and it’s almost to that level of experience. You’ll be giving up a lot, apps you “need” won’t work, but it’s at the point where it is a complete usable experience. For those that are willing to suffer for FOSS, I mean.

I wrote something similar about returning to traditional music formats on my own blog https://audiovalentine.com/2025/01/death-to-spotify-a-survey-of-alternatives/

> Vitalik Buterin

I think Memento is open source. It’s good for subtitles->Anki cards.

My devices are named after planets from Doctor Who: mondas, telos, skaro, villengard.

I always like to say the fruits of FOSS labour are the common heritage of mankind. It belongs to all of us as a public good, created and maintained by selfless workers. (Nevermind the fact that most FOSS projects are based out of Europe anyways).

The tech savvy will just buy a Raspberry Pi and install yunohost on it.

I do think a split keyboard design would serve a slate like this a bit better though.

I’d been looking into building something like this out of a Raspberry Pi, very cool that this is open source.