I imagine a world beyond proprietary software, and GNU/Linux is the most promising implementation of that.

I don’t agree with reducing software-freedom to an issue of mere privacy-friendliness. I’m willing to be realistic about the security shortcomings of Libre software but not if the alternative is locked down silos and walled gardens.

You’re being heavily downvoted because this instance is “a community of free software and privacy enthusiasts” as the title on the front page suggests, and this in particular is the !opensource@lemmy.ml community. Discord is the complete antithesis of this, as it is a proprietary application locked to a centralized server that also spies on its users.

What is wrong with Discord (Richard Stallman)

Spyware level: Extremely High (Spyware Watchdog)

That being said, there are modern alternatives to IRC, such as Matrix, XMPP, Zulip, Mattermost, or RocketChat. However, I think IRC is fairly good at what it does.

I mean, what I want is a phone that I can own to the fullest extent possible. GNU/Linux is a plus, because I already use it on desktop and am familiar with it. Lack of Android apps is not much of a concern for me, although I have it on my todo list to learn how to develop replacements.

The PinePhone “does what I want it to do.” I can flash a new image very easily or boot from SD card if I feel the need to. It’s easy to get root and I have full access to my filesystem. It really is “like a computer in my pocket.” It needs polish but this is my ideal conception of a smart phone.

Android devices, despite also using Linux, present numerous hurdles to me that suggest that although I paid money to receive them, I don’t really own them. It feels like I have to go to ridiculous lengths just to get something that is as powerful as the OS I have on my PinePhone. Simply flashing LineageOS isn’t enough, I have to then patch Magisk onto the boot.img and reflash it (and apparently I have to do this every OS update as well!), then to enable apps to actually access the SD card I have to install a Magisk module, but of course that doesn’t actually do what I need to so I eventually stumble on this app on F-Droid that seems to work. Now I have a text editor that can access my SD card, something Mobian provides to me out of the box.

This suggests to me that I have a different conception of a “smart device” compared to most people. Truthfully, though, I don’t really have an issue with Android from a UI or usability perspective, I would not have a problem with an Android OS that didn’t have the restrictions Google places on it - but then we’d lose SafetyNet and proprietary apps would complain about root and we can’t have that…