Comment by mft_
But why, indeed.
Years ago, I met someone (through another friend) who worked in CS, and was super into digital privacy. He was the first person I knew to run a Linux phone, for privacy reasons. He tried to pay for as much as possible by cash, and maintained his accounts manually on paper. The only way to contact him was by text message (intermittently, unreliably) or via a specific client using the Matrix protocol. My friend and I both installed the client to be able to contact him and maintain a friendship.
After a few months, we both lost contact with him simultaneously: something was updated in the client, and it was impossible to re-establish contact with him without a F2F interaction (="privacy"). Sadly, he was also uncontactable by text message. For both of us, the friendship simply ceased to exist.
My reflection is that such things --as with many things in life-- are on a spectrum. At some point on the spectrum, as you head towards the extreme end, your position on that spectrum (be it voluntary or --as with disease-- involuntary) start to impair your ability to live (what might be considered) a normal functional life. I'd also hazard that moving towards that extreme end of the spectrum beings increasing small gains, coupled with increasingly large downsides.
I'm not suggesting that running a pure Linux phone is extreme, but it's definitely in the middle zone where there are definite downsides.
It is kind of extreme. I personally daily drove the OG Pinephone for about a year-and-a-half, back in 2020. I bought in during the postmarketOS edition.
I'm still dealing with the fallout from the choices I made in order to conform with that phone. And at the end of the day... I got nothing out of it. Nothing but issues, problems and inconveniences.
The modem eventually stopped working for some reason, and I moved to an iPhone 7 that had been abandoned for quite some time.
It felt like I had let out a breath I had been holding in for years.