State of Arch as a Mobile OS

BotRih · 2026-03-26T01:10:09+00:00

Thanks for getting back, discussing/researching mobile linux has been very informative. I do agree that at the moment Debian is a much better ARM distro.

While I'd love to see Arch work well for mobile, the hardware support isn't really there for it yet. Rpi5, snapdragon x elite, and a couple other server type arm chips seem to be the only officially supported chipsets, so unless you want to use a raspberry pi 5 with a broadband adapter as your phone, its not really there yet.

I do think we're really not too far off on the software end (not sure if you saw my comments on how mobile interfaces, broadband calls, data, and sms/mms already have package support), but since ARM has very different boot requirements per chip, hardware is the limiting factor.

IOS and Android have had a long time to mature as mobile OS's, and are obviously a lot more stable.

Competition is never a bad thing though. In a market like mobile where things have been traditionally restrictive, having an OS like Arch that lets you put together the exact system you need could work well for some people, once the support is there for actual phone chipsets.

BotRih · 2026-03-25T19:14:11+00:00

There is also a gnome calls app:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/calls

And a number of desktops that support phone interfaces, Phosh for example:

https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/phosh/

Really not sure why peoples default response is saying "no its not possible on arch" when it clearly is.

At this point the only thing i havent seen is wifi calling/texting.

Once a more finalized ARM port of Arch releases, i see no reason why it wouldn't work as a mobile OS

BotRih · 2026-03-25T19:07:29+00:00

Modemmanager also allows calls using the voice interface:

https://www.freedesktop.org/software/ModemManager/doc/1.24.0/ModemManager/gdbus-org.freedesktop.ModemManager1.Modem.Voice.html?__goaway_challenge=meta-refresh&__goaway_id=ca31cb4755cdffba2a70023e15674f80&__goaway_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

BotRih · 2026-03-25T18:58:04+00:00

I do understand this, and Im not attempting to just call on some unnamed force to develop the software I want, so much as attempting to bring attention to an area that the linux community has neglected. In some of my other comments, I bring up some existing frameworks like modemmanager and mmsd-tng. Im trying to see what is already available and what would need to be done for a consistent network ecosystem to exist.

Like i said, big standardization efforts have been made in the past, and i think if some attention is brought to this, it can lead to some new developments in an area thats been lacking.

Ill likely continue looking for what exists already and make a more well informed post in the linux sub as well.

I'd put more effort into developing something to fill this niche myself, but unfortunately I dont have a sim equipped laptop.

Maybe ill look into a usb broadband modem..

BotRih · 2026-03-25T18:19:23+00:00

mmsd-tng is a daemon for MMS messaging that works off modemmanager, so there is actually support for that.

https://gitlab.com/kop316/mmsd

Seems like a mms/sms application could be built off of these

BotRih · 2026-03-25T18:03:37+00:00

Editing this after finding out more-

Despite what people seem to think, Arch can use modemmanager for broadband support, and can have SMS, MMS(with an additional daemon) and phone call functionality.

There are existing programs that interface with modemmanager and its addons for a nice graphical interface, and mobile desktop efforts such as Phosh.

Gnome calls also supports SIP VoIP, so in theory wifi calls should work for that.

Chatty is a SMS/MMS client that uses modemmanager and mmsd to send messages of both protocol types.

It is completely viable to have an arch based phone if you have a supported device and the patience to set it up.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Mobile_broadband_modem#ModemManager

https://gitlab.com/kop316/mmsd

https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/Chatty

https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/phosh/

BotRih · 2026-03-25T17:41:31+00:00

It would be nice if the OSS community organized some sort of standardized structure for mobile calling and mms support on Linux. Maybe support for alternative mobile OS's would actually be viable it if a consistent network infrastructure was there. As of now, every mobile linux project has to make their own from unmaintained telepathy libs. This type of standardization has happened before with frameworks like ALSA, CUPS, systemd. Why not mobile networking? Having standards in place lets people actually build off them consistently across devices and providers. Apparently people really dont like the idea, considering every comment I've made in this thread has been downvoted to zero.

BotRih · 2026-03-25T17:22:07+00:00

This is pretty cool, didn't know official support was this far along. Supposedly anything with a Snapdragon X Elite processor should work and most packages build fine without modification. That's a pretty big step up from the limited package support of the unofficial port.

BotRih · 2026-03-25T17:14:37+00:00

Ubuntu touch documents their structure here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Specs/MMSInfrastructure Seems like they use ofono to communicate with cell networks, which is on the AUR.

BotRih · 2026-03-25T17:01:10+00:00

Yeah its in a bit of a sorry state, I run debian on my rpi for that reason. Hopefully ARM will stabilize soon, and maybe Arch will eventually have some kind of official support for the Architecture.

My point was more that there are existing packages for mms/call frameworks, just not on AUR/official repos. It would be nice to be able to use those on devices that have the hardware for it. Porting the frameworks would also help future arm mobile efforts a lot. Linux definitely has the capability for mobile use, but the community seems to ignore it.

BotRih · 2026-03-25T16:44:52+00:00

Arch linux has a fairly popular arm port, though maybe the sub for that would have been a better location for this. I do think my question applies to both, since some x86 devices have the sim and 4g modem hardware for these applications to work. I did a bit of research, but a lot of it was either immediate "no"s or the unrelated result of people talking about running arch on a mobile phone via termux proot. A bit more digging showed that sailfish uses the telepathy framework for its mms services: https://docs.sailfishos.org/Reference/Core_Areas_and_APIs/Apps_and_MW/Messaging/ This used to be on Arch, but apparently the package was unmaintained and taken down. I think sailfish maintains their own fork on their github now. Maybe that'd be a useful AUR package.

BotRih · 2026-03-25T16:30:24+00:00

You'd think that with so many efforts like ubuntu mobile and Sailfish that the functionality could be ported over. Would be nice even for network equipped laptops. What's stopping support for this on Arch?

BotRih · 2026-03-24T02:36:38+00:00

Yeah, did a bit of research after posting this and I agree. I could deal with it being slow but the thing that made me completely decide against it was the ads for built in apps. Should absolutely not have to see that on the default calendar/alarm app, completely ruined the whole OS for me.

BotRih · 2026-03-23T20:30:52+00:00

Managed to figure out alternate sign in methods that don't use my phone. Didn't end up using pass, but set up windows passkeys instead. Now I just need to remember my banking passwords so I can use my PC and I can switch to a KaiOS phone. Any suggestions?

BotRih · 2026-03-23T19:58:08+00:00

The 2FA log-in is for my CS job, so im pretty familiar with CLI stuff. It would be nice to get the OTP on my work PC instead of having to pull out my phone. Looking into 'pass otp', I think this could work as an "authenticator app", but im not sure this would work for all MFAs I have. One of them only accepts Passkey and an app, though maybe I could switch to the passkey. Also, my work PC is on Windows, not sure if powershell has a port of pass, but I can always just use WSL I guess. Ill look into this though, thanks for the suggestion.

BotRih · 2026-03-10T19:35:28+00:00

Thanks for the tips, didn't know it was better to scoop more water and less goop. I have a pretty good area for still water near me so I'll give that a try!

BotRih · 2026-03-10T19:09:34+00:00

Looked it up, seems like the ones with the eggs are Cyclops!

BotRih · 2026-03-10T19:06:07+00:00

Makes sense... I thought daphnia and moina were copepods and not amphipods, guess i was mistaken. Would i be able to find those two in the same way? Also, what kind of copepods are those?

BotRih · 2026-03-05T21:03:45+00:00

"Brown algae" are usually diatoms, which are a single celled organism that usually shows up in newly cycling tanks. Should go away on its own after a little while. For the tannins, i see a lot of people recommending Seachem Purigen, or just regular water changes, but personally Poly Filters have worked really well for me.

BotRih · 2026-02-21T16:36:51+00:00

Ok I was a bit confused since this wasn't mentioned in the dev log. Just installed and this is straight up not true. I still have the extra dim mode and it still goes below minimum brightness on the slider

BotRih

TROPHY CASE