6 ms·

The alternative is Android. Unfortunately the "alternative android" ecosystem isn't very good. My dream would be an android "distribution", that doesn't rely o

• beefsack 10y ago
  For me, a very interesting option at the moment is Sony's official AOSP builds for a number of Xperia devices[1]. You're able to build an image yourself from their source if you'd like slightly more comfort, and can run it without gapps if you're privacy or software freedom conscious. [1]: https://developer.sonymobile.com/open-devices/ https://developer.sonymobile.com/open-devices/
  • loxs 10y ago
    Interesting - if this is not buggy as hell, it'll be a good life extender of my Z3 Compact
• johncolanduoni 10y ago
  And kernels, and random software the drivers require, and special snowflake bootloaders, ... I'd love to see it, but considering how long it took desktop Linux distibutions to run semi-reliably on most PCs which have far fewer hardware differences and important components without even partially reverse engineered specifications, I'm very suspicious this is a feasible way forward.
• jhasse 10y ago
  > My dream would be an android "distribution", that doesn't rely on some murky "update by getting a new image somewhere if you're lucky enough that someone built one for your device". LineageOS (http://lineageos.org/ http://lineageos.org/) has OTA updates with UI: https://1.f.ix.de/scale/geometry/710x500/q75/imgs/71/2/1/3/6/5/2/2/08-9193144f71369d06.png https://1.f.ix.de/scale/geometry/710x500/q75/imgs/71/2/1/3/6... So your dream has already came true :)
  • soverance 10y ago
    I recently tinkered around with putting LineageOS onto a Samsung Galaxy S3. It was super easy to do, and is a really clean, fast, and efficient operating system. I personally enjoy it. I had previous experience with Cyanogenmod, and LineageOS is way better. Unfortunately, I've got an S6 as my daily user phone, and there is currently no stable version of LineageOS that supports the S6 (as far as I'm aware).
  • NoGravitas 10y ago
    Still has the "if you're lucky enough that someone built one for your device" problem. But that's more the fault of the hardware ecosystem.
    • izacus 10y ago
      This is why (just like for any other OS) you buy a device with explicit support. You don't buy a random laptop and then complain why macOS doesn't run on it... do you?
      • NoGravitas 10y ago
        It's not exactly the same, though. You can buy a random laptop and throw Windows on it, even if it's not the version it shipped with. You can throw Linux on it, and it will almost certainly be usable; sound may not work, it may not resume from suspend, and graphics may be unaccelerated, but if will basically work. If you're buying a new device, then yes, certainly you should shop for one that's supported on LineageOS or OmniROM, or whatever. But one of the uses of custom ROMs has been extending the life of older devices, and that ecosystem is very spotty.
        • ams6110 10y ago
          It is exactly the same. I put Windows 10 on an older Dell laptop. It mostly works, but it's not "supported" and I get blue-screens once in a while. There's just no practical way to keep supporting arbitrarily old devices, even for a company like Microsoft.
• captainmuon 10y ago
  Right, the monolithic images make sense for the phone manufacturers who want to update a lot of identical devices. Much less for the individual, who wants to install a distribution on their device (which e.g. might no longer be supported by the vendor). I always found it wierd that people talk about "flashing" "ROMs", like it's firmware. It's not, it is under the hood not too different from installing a desktop OS on a hard disk (except you can't pop in a USB drive, you have to use a cable and ADB). The (e.g. CyanogenMod) ROMs for different phones are not too different. In principle, you could wrap something around ADB that "flashes" (well, copies) a base OS, and then the needed drivers / radio / apps per model. Also wierd that you can't easily replace individual components. If I want to make a change to a base package or the kernel, I have to reflash everything, instead of replacing one file (well, you can yourself, but nobody in the scene offers that).
  • noisem4ker 10y ago
    >except you can't pop in a USB drive, you have to use a cable and ADB You can actually boot your device into TWRP and "flash" the OS zip from USB OTG.
• la_oveja 10y ago
  > My dream would be an android "distribution", that doesn't rely on some murky "update by getting a new image somewhere if you're lucky enough that someone built one for your device". While drivers are supplied as binary blobs, this will be impossible.