this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2026
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I fail to see the point. The company sells laptops with Ubuntu preinstalled not phones which are the targets of such apps. Linux phones are still in their infancy and for Android we do have excellent apps like Mapy pulling their data from OSM. What am I missing?
I think about this a lot and if you can even consider Linux phones in their infancy. There are no modern Linux phones that fully work as a phone. Its the joke about this being the year of Linux over and over. Ubuntu touch was started in 2011 and since then it hasn't changed or advanced in any meaningful way. Every other Linux phone distro is basically the same story. I would love to even be able to get a Jolla phone in the US, but that's not an option. I occasionally see people say they are using Linux phones as a daily driver, and then find out they are using some obscure or ancient hard to get phone. Or better yet, it's just a secondary phone. They are a curiosity at best which makes me sad.
I think that as a community we should try to keep android as open as possible first of all.. I daily drive GrapheneOS for instance and I don't feel the need for a Linux phone. I get that both can coexist but I'm afraid we won't be able to carve a big enough niche to male Linux phones work.
They may be working on a Linux-based car head unit, which is kinda between a phone and a laptop (like a tablet, which it basically is). If that's the case, something like this would be a required app, and current (non-android) Linux offerings are somewhat limited (basically it's just PureMaps and a couple forks, which all work but are a bit janky). If they end up with something useful, it would be great for both phones and cars.
This makes a lot of sense actually. It'd be awesome to have more options for head units. I'm not sure about the target though, amateurs working on their car or restoring old models? I don't see a lot of companies choosing a Linux based head unit for their cars. But the same argument could be said for Linux phones too.
As the owner of multiple cars from the '90s and 2000s, I 100% need a Linux head unit.
Yeah, personally I'd be their target audience, if they announce it soon enough and it doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I can also see some european manufacturers looking to decouple from the US tech being somewhat interested.
A friend of mine is restoring an old muscle car and I bet he'd love something like this as well. It's a niche but we Linux enthusiasts can be quite passionate so I do think the audience is out there for sure.
I think organizations working around sensitive installations could be interested.
For example the car used to drive around nuclear powerplants, military installations or just industrial equipment. Modern cars have GPS and cameras and you don't want to have random cameras recording around sensitive installations.
They could remove the cameras but then the car would not be road legal anymore.
A Linux based head unit would allow them to customize it to the level of security they require while still retaining the benefit of modern cars.
It's a niche but a niche that have the means to infest a lot in development
So I am their target as well. I like to utilize it in a DIY motorcycle navigation based in a raspberry with a display. Their are no great options for motorcycles at this point. And I love to diy it.
The repository is called "car navigation" so yeah.
Qt Company itself also invests heavily in Qt for Automotive platforms.