You can also take the work from postmarketOS and port it over to mobile-nixos, they work pretty similarly. I’ve now ported mobile-nixos to a few old devices and I love it. I now have an ebook reader, a games console and various phones running NixOS.
The user interfaces are never quite right, but it’s great to have a bunch of powerful ARM-based devices with full access to NixOS.
I’m a bit surprised no one has brought up the pinephone yet (or the pro, since that’s the one that’s got usable hardware specs). It has a keyboard case, is relatively modern ARM, and moderately good firmware/software support (YMMV).
An important omission in my opinion is pip-tools (pip-compile + pip-sync), since the dependency management topic is brought up. I’d love to see it up there in the comparison table alongside poetry and pipenv if people are going to use this as a reference or share it. It is a widely used and perfectly valid way of solving the problem.
Does anyone know of any platforms like this available now?
Yes, the MNT Pocket is pretty much a successor of the N900: https://mntre.com/media/reform_md/2022-06-20-introducing-mnt-pocket-reform.html
It’s open hardware, and the indie lab / company that produces them has a track record of delivering their promises.
PinePhone with the keyboard case is not too far off.
N900 with postmarketOS can do all of the “things your iphone can’t”, and it also has functional wifi, a modem, etc.
postmarketOS supports a bunch of devices, you might even have one laying around!
https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices
You can also take the work from postmarketOS and port it over to mobile-nixos, they work pretty similarly. I’ve now ported mobile-nixos to a few old devices and I love it. I now have an ebook reader, a games console and various phones running NixOS.
The user interfaces are never quite right, but it’s great to have a bunch of powerful ARM-based devices with full access to NixOS.
I’m a bit surprised no one has brought up the pinephone yet (or the pro, since that’s the one that’s got usable hardware specs). It has a keyboard case, is relatively modern ARM, and moderately good firmware/software support (YMMV).
modem is 3G, so it won’t work with U.S. carriers at least. there may be a few countries which still have 3G carriers but I don’t know which.
still a great suggestion though.
I love my N900, but it’s also really starved for RAM, even back in the day. I can’t imagine how well a modern Linux stack would run on it.
it runs alright as long as you don’t try to use the “modern” web :D
remiss not to mention the DragonBox Pyra, though “available” is a stretch:
https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/
An important omission in my opinion is pip-tools (pip-compile + pip-sync), since the dependency management topic is brought up. I’d love to see it up there in the comparison table alongside poetry and pipenv if people are going to use this as a reference or share it. It is a widely used and perfectly valid way of solving the problem.