my general answer to this would be PostmarketOS, but it's just personal bias ;)
this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2026
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Linux Phones
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Community about running GNU/Linux on phones. Projects like Ubuntu Touch, Plasma Mobile, PostmarketOS, Mobian etc. Either on former Android phones or hardware like the PinePhone.
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PostmarketOS is probably the largest one you'll find. It supports a huge range of devices, some better some worse. You might have worse driver support and fewer features on newer devices, because PostmarketOS is focused on using the upstream kernel with minimal patches.
Most other mobile Linux distributions use Halium as a translation layer between the Android core and Linux userspace. More stuff might work, but you're still using the ancient Android kernel and proprietary drivers.
Written from my Fairphone 5 I got yesterday to put PostmarketOS on it.
If you don't mind me asking, where did you get and how much did you pay for your Fairphone 5?
I got it used from a local online store. 240 CHF that's ~265 EUR or ~300 USD
Fellow swiss guy apparently. It means I ain’t the only one on Lemmy and the only one interested in Linux phones. We might be 2 in the entire country😅
GrapheneOS is a common choice for Android phones.
Supported devices: https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices
Banking app compatibility: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos/
That'd still leave you within the Android ecosystem. And it's fairly easy to install, maintain and operate. Though, the phones currently come from Google. And it's still Android, so ultimately comes from Google.
If you want to avoid Google and Apple entirely, I don't think there are many options left. A Linux phone would be an option. There are some few older(?) phones supported by projects like PostmarketOS. But do your homework first. It's an entirely different experience, there's often stuff missing or cumbersome to configure or not available at all. It's great he have Linux on phones. But I don't really recommend it to anyone who needs a phone for regular every-day life and banking apps, android auto etc...
I might be mistaken but I think op wants to replace the android on their Samsung, which would rule out graphene
The way I read it is - they want to replace their phone and buy a new one. In case someone wants to replace the software on a Samsung phone, I don't think there's good options. Samsung phones rarely get good Custom ROMS or anything like that. I think what people do is root them, install Magisk and remove some crapware. But that's basically it. Or you'd experiment with some unsupported repack or early effort at LineageOS with SELinux turned off or something like that. Linux doesn't seem to work either. It's often 10 year old models and most models don't have calls working or wifi and a bunch of other things don't work... I'm not aware of any Samsung with usable Linux support.
No, no. I know it isn't possible to boot another linux OS on the Samsung phone, So I will be buying a new phone as well.
I know of Jolla Phone comes with SailfishOS, and Fairphone ships with the option of preinstalled /e/OS
But I have no idea if those are great options. I have no experience with any of the linux options.
@Bullerfar @tophneal One thing you have to watch out for with linux phones (if it's important to you) is:
Do they actually work as phones?
Sending and receiving texts, that sort of thing. Super basic stuff. I had a pinephone for a while and it had a bug where it wouldn't wake from suspend for an incoming call or message. A bit inconvenient!
On the forums, the talk would be about how well you could use IRC or the like. That's nice. But I'd use a laptop for that. For me at least, a phone needs to be a phone.
Currently using Graphene which really does work, but isn't a linux phone in the sense you're using it (I think?).
You're right. PinePhone/Pro is the only Pine device I haven't tried just bc there was so much holding it back from being a feasibly reliable phone.
I can only kinda speak towards using Sailfish (but not the phone device.) I booted a dev IMG of it for a while on an OG PineTab. Its probably much more mature now, but once I got used to it Sailfish was a great mobile device OS.
/e/ is android AFAIK. Their security is also kinda shit.
I think graphene is the best option on purely practical basis, but if you feel strongly about using a Linux project instead of an android based project, you'll want to look elsewhere.
Ubuntu Touch will probably have the lowest friction as most things work on it as it reuses the Android drivers.
But on carefully selected devices PostmarketOS or Mobian can work.