I have a Chuwi Minibook X N100, 12GB LPDDR5 RAM, and a 512GB NVMe drive. Got it for about $200, new. I asked for a Linux discount since I had no desire for Win11, and they obliged! It's not my only machine: I got it to keep in my backpack at all times and it works well for that. At 2 lbs with laptop and tablet modes, I'm pretty happy! Just wrote a bunch of heavy-ish Ruby code on it and it kept up quite well.
There's room for great lower end hardware, but I'm not sure if it'll be any good running Windows.
No problem. Honestly, I have this on my mind a lot these days. It feels like I'm being forced out of an apartment and I'm wondering where I'm going to put all my stuff. First I left the iPhone for what I thought was greener pastures on Android and now I'm finding that there's not a lot of great options that don't give Google or Apple complete control. What little trust I still had in Google has basically disappeared. We need open phones and I'm more willing than ever to buy one. And if that doesn't work with how carriers operate, I guess a dumber phone or a cheap smartphone just to do phone calls and data is what I'll do.
Anyway, for navigation, try out Organic Maps. It's not as good as Google Maps in some ways, but in other ways it's better. I'm honestly very impressed with it as an open source project. I think you have to use a Google signed version of it to run it on Android Auto though, but honestly, maybe it's better just to have a phone holder instead of the finicky Android Auto experience that at least I go through.
LineageOS? /e/OS? ArrowOS? Android has so much momentum that seems like it would be difficult to avoid a fork. I know Waydroid exists, but I'm not sure that's good enough. Ubuntu Touch sounds really cool too, but I've put effort into it with a used Google Pixel 3A and it's not an easy, cheap thing to try out right now. And it's still dependent on binary blobs for drivers, as far as I know. Not a great situation.
Regarding banking apps and things like that, I don't run into to any issues except for not being able to scan checks for deposit on the mobile website. And also I have to have physical credit cards. If you can't do what you need, consider changing to a local credit union which has your interests in mind far more than a for-profit bank.
I've never run into a need for apps for a government purpose, but perhaps I will someday.
I'm sure my situation where I live may be different than your situation where you live.
I don't use an open source fork of Android daily and from what I can tell the best option that exists today.
The only hardware that I know will continue to be open enough for this to be viable in the future is Fairphone. I hope there are others. I would definitely would NOT trust Google Pixel to remain open for the foreseeable future.
Personally, I'm trying to get out of the habit of using my phone anyway, so I might as well have laptop or desktop hardware that can fulfill my needs.
Hard agree. I pay for monthly hosting like FreshRSS, Wallabag, etc and support the devs who make those projects. Privacy and developer support. And it's not that much.
Definitely interested in making Firefox, Thunderbird, etc sustainable too.
I'm glad people are mentioning Wallabag. It's open source and self-hostable, so it's not as likely to disappear on you. If you don't want to bother with self-hosting, there are some hosted options available: https://github.com/wallabag/wallabag/wiki/wallabag-ecosystem...
I've run Wallabag before but stopped around the time my son was born so I'd have more time to take care of him. And... I switched to Pocket. Oh well! I guess I'll switch back now, probably for good.
https://github.com/petitstrawberry/minibook-support
Awesome speaker improvements too:
https://forum.chuwi.com/t/minibook-x-improve-speakers-on-lin... https://codeberg.org/diamondburned/minibook-impulse