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Leaving Apple and Google: /e/ first beta
- misterkola 8y agoThis looks like a great project ;)
- some_account 8y agoI understand and welcome more alternatives to Lineage but what's wrong with their user interface? If you want to make a better Lineage, I think having built in default app stores like Apkpure, encrypted system proxies, isolating apps from each other in better ways... Aren't those more worthy privacy oriented things to work on?
- the_duke 8y agoNone of those will get you media attention, a successful kickstarter and funding, though.
- faag36 8y agoJudging by the name I thought this was a 4chan board.
- settler4 8y agoAt least it's not /r/os
- bocklund 8y ago> We decided to adopt “/e/” as a textual representation for the symbol of “my data is MY data” Discussion appears to be here: https://www.indidea.org/gael/blog/leaving-apple-and-google-e-is-the-symbol-for-my-data-is-my-data/ https://www.indidea.org/gael/blog/leaving-apple-and-google-e... I appreciate the reason for the name change, but if the goal is to target laypeople, /e/ is not obviously pronounceable or meaningful for my mom or kids/teens.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- willio58 8y agoTotally agree, and I think it’s extremely important to have better branding if you’re actually trying to reach those user groups
- faag36 8y agoThis kind of project will never get any kind of attention by laypeople, so it's good that they know that and aren't even trying. Less wasted energy :-)
- 1023bytes 8y agoAnd it's very difficult to search for
- raverbashing 8y agoThis should be higher in branding concerns today If you're not googleable, you're going to have a hard time
- ObsoleteNerd 8y agoI actually miss the days of bastardized short words as product names. Yeh some of them got a bit ridiculous, but they were unique and easily searchable. Flickr, Google, etc. People were creating brands that stood out, were memorable, and they owned their entire results pages. Now we're using common nouns as names for everything and it has completely broken the ability to search for both the product AND the common nouns.
- Sujan 8y agoWhich is why the section in the article continues: > We understand that this textual representation is not ideal for talking about the project and searching about it. > We have decided to hold off on change to the name for the beta release. Along with the v1 stable version, we will introduce a new name for the mobile system that will be easy to remember and to adopt. So: They are aware and have a plan.
- pkaye 8y agoDo they audit the apps in their app store to make sure they are safe?
- sharkjacobs 8y agoThis post is on a Medium blog. Life is compromise.
- mothsonasloth 8y agoI can't wait for Medium to go the way of blogger, into the halls of internet obscurity.
- sharkjacobs 8y agoI'm just worried it will go the way of geocities.
- addicted 8y agoWhy aren’t companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook not setting aside a few million dollars a year to support efforts like this and the Firefox phone? Heck, even the carriers would be so much better off if they spent some money on similar projects. They don’t need to spend too much, and if one of them takes off, especially if it’s open source, then it helps reduce the tremendous risks they face since the mobile OS market is currently completely owned by 2 of their competitors.
- vilaca 8y agoMicrosoft is in the phone business too.
- faag36 8y agoThey gave up on mobile years ago. Both hw and sw.
- iwaffles 8y agoNot entirely true. They shifted focus on mobile to continue making mobile software for other OSes.
- faag36 8y agoWe were talking about Windows Phone, not Outlook for iOS or stuff like that.
- rijoja 8y agoWhich makes it interesting for them to have an OS that won't lock particular software out in a play akin to what MS is trying to to to Valve by using their monopoly, a dogmatic Richard Stallman approach to this would ironically save them from that.
- Sileni 8y agoStill? I thought they had spun off their mobile hardware division and were instead mostly focusing on mobile software. Would make some sense for them to try to do the same thing they did with PCs and IBM back in the day, since the OS is already open source (mostly).
- tejohnso 8y agoForked from Lineage but it's unclear what problems are being solved that aren't already solved by Lineage.
- craftyguy 8y agoWorse, it's forked from an old version of LineageOS that will be deprecated/unsupported once 16.0 is out.
- cmurf 8y agoAre they skipping 15 for a bunch of phones? I'm on a 2015 Motorola phone that still gets weekly 14.1 updates, and I kinda wonder if it's just EOL even for Lineage.
- subway 8y agoIt's probably EOL. Generally speaking you still depend on the device manufacturer to ship a compatible vendor partition in order to run a given version of LineageOS. This means that if your device doesn't have an official version of Android 8, then it will never be able to run LineageOS 15.
- craftyguy 8y ago> Are they skipping 15 for a bunch of phones? If your device doesn't already support 15, then it's highly unlikely that it will ever seen an official release with 15, or 16, or anything >14.1.
- cecja 8y agoThat's just bullshit there are always phones getting late support for newer releases sometimes even over 1 1/2 year later. Don't spread lies like this.
- petecox 8y agoI wouldn't call it a hard fork, more a downstream derivative. In a similar way, Ubuntu rebases itself on debian unstable every 6 months or so. That is to say Duval based his product on whichever LineageOS release was 'current' at the time but plans to sync to the next available release when his next development cycle allows (which is Oreo, currently).
- FrankyHollywood 8y agoGreat initiative, have been looking for an alternative for some time. I had high hopes for Sailfish (https://sailfishos.org/ https://sailfishos.org/) but for a while it only ran on Sony Xperia, current status not clear to me. Anyone has experience with Sailfish? Will have a look at /e/ this weekend!
- xsw 8y agoI ran it a long time back on a nexus 4, was pretty good. My biggest problem with it is apps. There's 2 or 3 apps that I really need and these are iOS or Android only
- azinman2 8y ago“BlissLauncher has original icons“ It looks like a very slight variation of iOS. Not particularly original at all.
- plufz 8y agoMy exact thought.
- tobltobs 8y agoThey even have round corners.
- LordDragonfang 8y agoI was going to reply and say "original" just means not directly copied, but now that I look back at the screenshot, I would believe anyone telling me that it was of a new iOS version.
- setpatchaddress 8y agoI don't understand what this Android fork has to do with Apple.
- atticmanatee 8y agoThe launcher!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ikeboy 8y agoI just want a high end phone that supports something like lineageos, has a micro SD slot, and decent battery life. Somehow it's hard to find.
- biktor_gj 8y agoThen go with Oneplus. 2 years and 2 months and my oneplus 3 with dual sim or 1 sim/ 1 sd card is still working perfectly fine and receiving updates, getting Android P before 2019 (in theory)
- duiker101 8y agoAny Samsung phone?
- dreamcompiler 8y agoSamsungs have crappy battery life and no SD slot. I know because I'm typing this on a Galaxy S6.
- Guillaume86 8y agoGalaxy S8/S9 do have micro SD, battery life still not great but on par with other similar phones I think.
- amaccuish 8y agoHas anyone managed to extract the launcher?
- mmjaa 8y agoI really wish someone would have the balls to do something really ass-kicking, like make a PhoneOS that can run all your functions and still give you something special .. it seems to be within grasp in various and sundry vertical embedded markets, but nobody has the druthers to take on Apple. So really, its not just the OS/distribution/custom-tweaked-environment/game-engine. Its also the hardware. Like, how can I get the hardware I need to try this out, without going through hoops? To me that's a bit more of an issue than a broiled and flailed distro-dejour re-incarnate...
- biktor_gj 8y agoHey, first of all, I love to see the custom rom scene still doing its thing. I think we need to keep fighting to keep our phones as open and as 'ours' as possible. But we, and I mean, a big 'we' as everyone in XDA Developers, Lineage OS developers etc, have as a group a tremendous knowledge in this area.In fact, for the most developed phones, we know almost everything about them. If only everyone could get toghether and do something _better_ than an Android derivative... I've been thinking for a while in Libhybris. There's a lot of people working on tweaking a library that talks to closed vendor blobs, on which every single one of them is different, to be able to use native libraries directly with files that were compiled for a framework that isn't available on the target system. What if we could use the Android Framework as an API layer, instead of rewriting everything for every single version of every single library ever shipped with an Android phone? I am talking on stripping down most of an Android AOSP image, just up to the point where the System Server kicks in (just up to a modified Zygote or something like that), and then use the open Android API specifications to actually talk to the hardware through it. Then we could make a standard library which would work with _every single Android phone_ Ubuntu touch, Firefox OS were a failure because they weren't compatible with the existing ecosystem and because developers wouldn't invest in making apps for _yet_ another framework. But Sailfish OS has an Android compatibility layer that lets them run Android apps in their Nemo/Mer/Maemo/Meego hybrid. Chrome OS can also run Android apps. If you can get those two poins toghether, you can have a platform where most of the available phones can run your OS, and you can also take advantage of the million of applications developed for Android. If you add that to either Ubuntu Touch, Purism's OS, KDE Mobile or any other OS which is still in development, you could have the biggest the Community has had for the last 10 years. Edit: typos everywhere
- mook 8y agoI have vague recollecting of FirefoxOS being like that, where the underlying layer (gonk?) was Android-derived. They certainly didn't go for an Android-compatible app layer though.
- fabrice_d 8y agoYes, Gonk is composed of the Android kernel, hardware abstraction layer and some userspace daemons. With HIDL it should be easier to build a clean abstraction on top of any Android base starting at Oreo.
- graphememes 8y agoThe name will be the largest barrier to entry. It is not easy to say, remember, or look for. This was dead before it even got off the ground, which is unfortunate because the OS looks nice.
- osrec 8y agoI tried typing the name /e/ into my address bar, and literally could not get my browser to trigger a search. It kept assuming it was a path to a file!
- JBiserkov 8y agoTry ? /e/
- chooseaname 8y agoIsn't this the point?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- suyash 8y agoCalling it "eOS" could be a viable name for lay people. Officially it can still be /e/.
- JBiserkov 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS
- shirakawasuna 8y agoeOS has trademark issues. Same reason that elementaryOS doesn't use it and actively discourages users from doing so. Though... users call it that anyways. OP is right - they should really fix their name to address all these issues: (1) Search engine-ability. Zero people are going to be able to discover this. (2) Unique domain name. e.com/io/whatever is already taken (so is eos.com). (3) Not trademarked.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y agoThis looks very interesting. I'm not sure I understanding all of the forking though - why not just leverage LineageOS, K9 etc. as is just as to leave more time/energy for the other bits rather than having to separate maintain (security patches etc.) the forked bits?
- PaulHoule 8y agoBoring. I'd like to see a smartphone that ditches the "app" model (where your phone is an appendage of other people's brands) to a "personal assistant" (where your phone works for you.)
- jakecopp 8y agoI like that idea, but I think the real world implementation of that would be one huge monolith app (still owned by one company) like WeChat. Maybe if Google made an app which integrated all their services :P
- calgoo 8y agoI would like the OS to have 1 messaging app, 1 email app, 1 calendar app etc. Then underneath, each provider has their own interface to their backend. Then we can integrate everything into one system. Now this idea still needs a lot of work. But, IMO we need to get away from the app model onto some new paradigm. Present us with our information /data directly without having to open apps. Think android widgets on steroids. Windows phone actually had some of this, with letting you create tiles that where contacts or other info.
- MK_Dev 8y ago"no google no play(store)"
- dcalixto1 8y agoif this work will be great! and ppl are not so concerned about privacy but the google imposition of google apps and services into their phones. that's one of factors ppl use linux and bsd.
- bb88 8y agoWhat if I want to have google services? While it's awesome you're building a competing infrastructure, it's dead in the water (at least to me) if it doesn't integrate with what I have already.
- ekianjo 8y agoIts not for you then. The project is about getting away from Google.
- flaque 8y agoFor the love of all that is holy give me back my scroll on your website. https://e.foundation/ https://e.foundation/ I thought we got rid of this scrolljacking nightmare.
- crehn 8y agoWhy do people do this? It makes for dreadful UX. Reimplementing scrolling is already a sin; in this case it's even worse. The whole website feels slow, the scrolling is confusing and inconsistent. Same thing with floating navbars and other fancy stuff, don't do it if you're unable to make it perfect.
- chooseaname 8y agoWe really need more than two main players in the the mobile OS game.
- ofcourseianal 8y ago“be far more respectful of user’s data privacy” “the chat application is Telegram” Is this satire?
- jakecopp 8y agoI thought Telegram supported user privacy? Please explain.
- jczhang 8y agoThe target demo seems to be one that wouldn't care for this product.
- sixstringbudha 8y agoWhen I see things like these, I always think. Oh look, another thing that will eventually get bought out. I mean, I woulnd't want to depend on one of these things unless the people behind them has shown a enough defiance against the buying power of money.
- rapnie 8y agoLove /e/ .. waiting for it. Loved eelo better (I know: the name clashed). I guess naming your phone e is one more way to become untraceable by Google (or DDG for that matter). Luckily there is also the 'foundation' part to search for.
- auct 8y agoNo