What are 'replicant' and /e/?

[wibble]

So, Replicant and /e/ are thought to de-google Android phones.  So, even they could potentially run on PinePhone, it sounds non-sense. They were build to run on android phones without the spy apps from google. So, why make it for a clean empty hardware as PP? Only because it can be done?? Defeats their goal.

The goal is to have a usable smartphone and app ecosystem without the Google/Apple requirement, and with long term support. They've run on android phones because until recently because there hasn't been an alternative, but it has a limitation in that the closed drivers required by much of the available hardware limit the ability to upgrade the kernel. Running on hardware with upstream kernel support removes this limitation. The AOSP base allows for a functional phone with relatively little effort, unlike the linux developments where we're missing widely adopted APIs for some of the core functionality expected in smartphones. Repositories like f-droid provide a decent number of open and phone-friendly apps, while we're struggling to make desktop apps fit a smartphone display and work well with only a touchscreen.

Replicant and /e/ are no more out of place than GloDroid. LineageOS and GrapheneOS would probably have been interested if the bootloader could meet their security requirements.