So, after following the discussions for quite a while, I decided to pull it off.
Having gone though the support list of various distributions, I chose Pixel 3a for my setup. Among the dirt cheap smartphones, it seems to enjoy the support of almost everything.
I decided to install PostmarketOS with Plasma Mobile. In the meanwhile, I also tested Mobian (didn’t work for me for some reason) and Gnome (I ended up being too much of a KDE fanboy).
The overall experience is, honestly, mixed. It sure is exciting, and I’ve spent a whole day tinkering here and there (and feeling a bit nostalgic for the day I felt this way about Linux as a whole), the hardware support was a pleasant surprise, up to multipoint Bluetooth TWS headphones, but still, system stability isn’t anywhere near a daily driver, and software support lags behind in many ways.
In any case, now I too have a platform to look into the future. Year of Linux mobile, anyone? :)
P.S. Any advice on censorship-resistant (VLESS/Reality/AmneziaWG-based) VPNs for PostmarketOS on ARM devices?
It’s a container, not a full VM, so it’s a bit lighter on resources.
But no, you have to start this container up before apps are operational. So you either have to have the container up and running all the time (consuming quite a lot of battery in the process), or you’ll have to wait for it to spin up every time and miss out on any notifications or background activity from this container.
It’s very much not perfect rn, and it’s not a simple translation layer like wine. And hopes for having a translation layer are quite low, as a huge chunk of Android apps directly depends on Google services and various Android system features. We have better hopes in developing the Linux-native ecosystem, but it’s a little bit of a chicken and egg problem, despite some large developer groups slowly claiming the space.