

I own a OnePlus 6 with postmarketOS. My daily driver is a Pixel 7 with CalyxOS and microg turned off.
Despite having effectively only FOSS apps on my Android daily driver, I can’t daily drive postmarketOS. It’s making great progress, but isn’t nearly stable enough as a modern smartphone, and several other issues hold it back;
- Sleep states. Currently you get to choose between your phone going to sleep (~ a day battery life) but without notifications, incoming calls, alarms, etc. Or your phone “staying awake”, where you’ll have those features but only ~4 hours battery.
- Hardware video decoding, which “can work” but only in select apps, and they’re not great for mobile.
- Audio issues, such as no audio from the earpiece, microphone not working, or no audio at all.
If you rely on non-foss Android apps, there is Waydroid, but it’s not a perfect solution and might have issues.
It’s not a “waste of money” if you want a device to experiment or tinker with, or if you want to follow progress of Linux mobile, but it is extremely unlikely to replace your daily driver.
Great, the touchpads are amazing for mouse-related stuff while handheld. I can comfortably use mouse heavy menus with them. Obviously, a lot closer to a laptop touchpad than an actual mouse, but still a lot better than a joystick as mouse.
A Steam Deck is a PC. If you dock it, you can hook up a mouse+KB and a monitor, and use “desktop mode” (KDE plasma) to use it exactly like any other Linux desktop. Docked “gaming mode” makes it feel more like a home console for PC games (and emulators). It is even possible (though not recommended) to install Windows.