4 ms·

>If you are a tinkerer or prefer to install your custom OS, then you'd choose a "foss" device like the pinephone, librem or other. Except the hardware and ecos

by aftbit 4y ago

>If you are a tinkerer or prefer to install your custom OS, then you'd choose a "foss" device like the pinephone, librem or other. Except the hardware and ecosystem of those suck in comparison to The Big 2 (iPhone and Android). If I could install a custom OS on iPhone, I'd buy one in a heartbeat. Otherwise I'm stuck with AOSP on my Pixel.

isodev 4y ago
> Except the hardware and ecosystem of those suck in comparison to The Big 2 (iPhone and Android). Yes, and the irony is that Apple can afford to develop impressive hardware thanks to their "vertically integrated" offering. People like it and spend a lot of money to have it. Why don't FOSS phones have the budget to create this kind of experience then? Maybe there are ways for this to be improved, or perhaps we shouldn't try to decouple a phone from the ecosystem it was created for. A lot of money and energy is now being pointed at trying to make Apple and Google loosen their grip on hardware. At the same time (in my view), this would not address the root cause, which is that there are no effective means for economic advantage generated by foss software on proprietary hardware to find its way back to the community.
usrn 4y ago
Not having to run Android makes up for the mediocre hardware on the Pinephone IMO. Also Linux has a far more healthy ecosystem than Android.
- ElectricalUnion 4y ago
  Android/Linux is Linux. You must be confusing "Linux" with Systemd/Linux.
  - usrn 4y ago
    Yeah I mean GNU/X11/Linux obviously. I don't always want to write it out because most people know what I mean. The Android userspace is actual garbage. It's very heavy and the UI paradigm means you're sitting staring at blank screens while you wait for things to load or switch or whatever and things are constantly getting evicted from memory and forced to restart (or crash sometimes.) It made some dubious amount of sense when phones had 512mb of ram but once you hit 1Gb it just became this over complicated mess that adds nothing but pain. Android's app ecosystem isn't much better, it's mostly converging with iOS as a tool for corporations to deploy their telemetry into your life rather than a platform for running useful community maintained software. Because of this most of the useful software projects for it are slowly dying if they're not already dead.
    - ElectricalUnion 4y ago
      > The Android userspace is actual garbage. It's very heavy and the UI paradigm means you're sitting staring at blank screens while you wait for things to load or switch or whatever and things are constantly getting evicted from memory and forced to restart (or crash sometimes.) It made some dubious amount of sense when phones had 512mb of ram but once you hit 1Gb it just became this over complicated mess that adds nothing but pain. Compared to your average desktop computer, Android at least tries to use SELinux, and by-app unix user partitions. Systemd/Linux "Flatpak app" and "snap app" security by comparison is awful. I think that Termux, (once you get past Zygote forking) to be reasonably fast and responsive, and it runs on almost barebones Android/Linux fine. So I don't think it's fundamentally related to the Android userspace platform as well. > Android's app ecosystem isn't much better, it's mostly converging with iOS as a tool for corporations to deploy their telemetry into your life rather than a platform for running useful community maintained software. I think we all need more libre software in our lives. Or at the bare minimum, more things like F-Droid; not ideal since the base OS is still somewhat locked, but a start.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    Systemd is not a desktop environment... The closest equivalent is Gnome or Elementary OS because those are trying to provide a dedicated platform for developers.

by aftbit 4y ago

isodev 4y ago

> Except the hardware and ecosystem of those suck in comparison to The Big 2 (iPhone and Android). Yes, and the irony is that Apple can afford to develop impressive hardware thanks to their "vertically integrated" offering. People like it and spend a lot of money to have it. Why don't FOSS phones have the budget to create this kind of experience then? Maybe there are ways for this to be improved, or perhaps we shouldn't try to decouple a phone from the ecosystem it was created for. A lot of money and energy is now being pointed at trying to make Apple and Google loosen their grip on hardware. At the same time (in my view), this would not address the root cause, which is that there are no effective means for economic advantage generated by foss software on proprietary hardware to find its way back to the community.

usrn 4y ago

Not having to run Android makes up for the mediocre hardware on the Pinephone IMO. Also Linux has a far more healthy ecosystem than Android.

ElectricalUnion 4y ago
Android/Linux is Linux. You must be confusing "Linux" with Systemd/Linux.
- usrn 4y ago
  Yeah I mean GNU/X11/Linux obviously. I don't always want to write it out because most people know what I mean. The Android userspace is actual garbage. It's very heavy and the UI paradigm means you're sitting staring at blank screens while you wait for things to load or switch or whatever and things are constantly getting evicted from memory and forced to restart (or crash sometimes.) It made some dubious amount of sense when phones had 512mb of ram but once you hit 1Gb it just became this over complicated mess that adds nothing but pain. Android's app ecosystem isn't much better, it's mostly converging with iOS as a tool for corporations to deploy their telemetry into your life rather than a platform for running useful community maintained software. Because of this most of the useful software projects for it are slowly dying if they're not already dead.
  - ElectricalUnion 4y ago
    > The Android userspace is actual garbage. It's very heavy and the UI paradigm means you're sitting staring at blank screens while you wait for things to load or switch or whatever and things are constantly getting evicted from memory and forced to restart (or crash sometimes.) It made some dubious amount of sense when phones had 512mb of ram but once you hit 1Gb it just became this over complicated mess that adds nothing but pain. Compared to your average desktop computer, Android at least tries to use SELinux, and by-app unix user partitions. Systemd/Linux "Flatpak app" and "snap app" security by comparison is awful. I think that Termux, (once you get past Zygote forking) to be reasonably fast and responsive, and it runs on almost barebones Android/Linux fine. So I don't think it's fundamentally related to the Android userspace platform as well. > Android's app ecosystem isn't much better, it's mostly converging with iOS as a tool for corporations to deploy their telemetry into your life rather than a platform for running useful community maintained software. I think we all need more libre software in our lives. Or at the bare minimum, more things like F-Droid; not ideal since the base OS is still somewhat locked, but a start.
- imtringued 4y ago
  Systemd is not a desktop environment... The closest equivalent is Gnome or Elementary OS because those are trying to provide a dedicated platform for developers.