It is based on the Ångström distribution, comprising various pieces of free software.

Afterwards the development of software for the Openmoko phones was taken over by the community and continued in various projects, including SHR, QtMoko and Hackable1.

[4] Applications targeted for Android must be substantially rewritten and are largely not portable.

Many existing Linux desktop apps can be easily ported to Openmoko.

(However the limited computational power and screen resolution require substantial reworking of existing applications, in order to render them usable in a finger-oriented, small-screen environment.)