# Phosh

15 Hacker News commenters recommended Phosh and 7 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended for a daily-usable, easy-to-use graphical interface on mainline Linux phones; critics say it is slow and memory-heavy.

## Why people recommend it

- Daily-usable, easy-to-use mobile interface (2 comments): "Phosh aims to provide a daily-usable, robust and easy to use graphical user environment for mobile devices running mainline Linux." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48763367)) "Phosh aims to provide a daily-usable, robust and easy to use graphical user environment" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48766330))
- Good on tablets and docked use (2 comments): "Both Phosh and PlasmaMobile turn into a "proper" desktop when "docked"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47368762)) "Absolutely the best tablet experience for Linux." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48795216))
- Improving fast and community-maintained (3 comments): "the company gave a lot to the community by developing libadwaita and Phosh" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50265099)) "The software side (Phosh, KDE, etc) is now improving fast" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50053160)) "can be maintained by the community" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50275696))

## What people warn about

- Slow and unoptimized performance (5 comments): "The slowness of Phosh is purely a consequence of the current, unoptimized software state" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49198068)) "how unbearably slow Phosh and Linux apps are on the Furiphone" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49191345)) "the software is unbearably slow due to Phosh and libhybris" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49769573))
- Heavy RAM use and GNOME dependencies (3 comments): "On my phone there's 770MB RAM consumed by the entire system with Phosh running right now." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48797530)) "Phosh pulls in GNOME - gnome-settings, gnome-session etc. Seems like a very strange bundle to bring in for an extremely power constrained device" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48794370)) "But now I know it's running gnome I won't even consider trying" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48794567))
- Clunky on older devices (2 comments): "Phosh on a <2015 device is much more painful though." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48794408)) "it's still a bit clunky and fiddly." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46614770))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Plasma Mobile](https://hackerapproved.com/p/plasma-mobile.md): 16 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Phosh", https://hackerapproved.com/p/phosh/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).