Only if I can install a program without needing a developer account with the manufacturer.

A lot happier than with a linux phone. Would love to have an illumos phone too, but won't get my hopes up for that happening any time soon...

A BeOS phone would be pretty sweet.

Yes, I would like a FreeBSD-powered phone that can run Android or iOS consumer apps totally sealed inside virtual machines.

One VM per app would need a lot of RAM. Maybe one VM for Linux/Android, and one for iOS, would be a decent compromise. We'd still 'waste' some RAM, but isolation between different Android apps could be handled by cgroups/namespaces.

He said Android or iOS. It seems like massive overkill to have a phone that can run both. Even running Android apps well is a pretty tall order, running iOS apps natively on your own open source phone seems like a pipedream. It took even Google a long time and a lot of investment to get Android apps to work reasonably well on ChromeOS.

True. The question is whether the Linux emulation can be good enough to satisfy Android. There are lots of funny quirks ...

I wish something like CloudAPI/Capsicum would take off to be more secure, while also being an open platform, instead of Linux ubiquity rendering standards irrelevant.

Technically iOS is the closest thing to a *BSD-powered phone, because of the Darwin lineage.

BUt in practical terms it's the most locked platform in existence, so stretching definitions hardly matter here.

Is somebody working on one?

I have no idea. I was asking because I wanted to understand better the position of the person to whom I replied. They said they wanted Linux specifically, and not just open source.

I didn't understand why it's so important for it to be Linux, as opposed to any other operating system that's as hackable/customizable. So I wanted to know if I had missed something.

> I didn't understand why it's so important for it to be Linux, as opposed to any other operating system that's as hackable/customizable.

I should apologize for my response then. I'd thought you were alluding to iOS, and thought that it was strange to bring that up when discussing configurable OS's.

I don't think it being Linux is too important for people. If somebody made a working FreeBSD for a phone and there was official support for that device, then people wouldn't be all "Well, it's not Linux". I don't think I've seen any interest from BSD maintainers to bring any form of it to phones though.

As it is now, the PinePhone is officially supported by Manjaro and that makes it the most obvious option. Also, all attempts thus far to bring open source to mobile has been some form of Linux, so it's natural that when people think "open source phone", it's probably going to be using Linux. PinePhone itself already has 18-ish different distros, including ports of Debian and Ubuntu, so it's certainly well on its way.

If I get a PinePhone then I will try to run NetBSD on it, the SoC is supported by all BSD variants.

Let me know how that goes.

No! On the other hand, a TempleOS phone would make my day, and the CIA's.