6 ms·

And that's what rubs me the wrong way about the state of the world with mobile devices. I like fiddling with my hardware and trying different OSs on it. I lik

by Splines 15y ago

And that's what rubs me the wrong way about the state of the world with mobile devices. I like fiddling with my hardware and trying different OSs on it. I like being able to upgrade my OS as I see fit, and it's a shame that I can only do that on a very small selection of hardware. Asus is treading into interesting waters here. What if the Transformer Prime was a laptop that shipped with Windows 8?

marshray 15y ago
What if it were an ASUS motherboard that enforced code signing on boot?
freehunter 15y ago
This is why it still confuses me to this day that the hacker/computer literate community put their backing in Android instead of WebOS. Sure Android was released sooner (but not sooner-enough to have insurmountable traction), but the Palm Pre actually allowed for booting a kernel over USB and gave root access by typing in the Konami code. The Touchpad allows for running of Debian, quite well! WebOS had no chance to succeed because the community it catered to chose the Google name and unfulfilled promises over actual freedom.
- CrazedGeek 15y ago
  WebOS was on two very mediocre phones (if not at their release, then definitely years later when they were still the flagship devices) and wasn't open source.
  - freehunter 15y ago
    WebOS was open source except for Luna, and the devices were okay midrange phones at launch. After the market snubbed them, Palm didn't have enough money to keep creating newer and better phones.
- commandar 15y ago
  Android has an active hacker community because you can grab the code from git and build a working Android system. This is exactly what the CyanogenMod team does; Steve Kondik has even started referring to CM as an Android distribution ala Debian as opposed to a simple set of mods or patches. As much as I love WebOS, that just plain isn't possible with that platform. (this was posted from WebOS on a Touchpad that also has Android installed as dual boot. Care to show me the Android devices that have been hacked to run WebOS?)
  - freehunter 15y ago
    But you don't need to fork your own distribution from source to change everything about WebOS. New kernels and new environments are common, even before it became open source. The only thing closed source was the Luna desktop environment. I fail to see how your last point proves anything, all points considered.
    - prodigal_erik 15y ago
      Android provably can be made to work on phones which weren't even made with that in mind. This apparently didn't happen with webOS, which counters "you don't really need the source"—though hackers have a healthy disdain for that attitude even if it had been true.
      - freehunter 15y ago
        WebOS is the standard Linux kernel with a new desktop environment. If you can get the Linux kernel running on a device, throw on a WebKit browser and you've got WebOS. That's how its so easy to get Debian/Ubuntu running on a Touchpad with a simple chroot. WebOS aside, support the maker of (more) open hardware. Support the people who give you full control of your device by default (even if they didn't initially give you the source for their WM).
    - commandar 15y ago
      >The only thing closed source was the Luna desktop environment. So the only thing that was closed source was the part of the system that the user directly interacts with. Gotcha. Andy Rubin's definition of open is the one that a lot of the hacker community can abide by: https://twitter.com/#!/arubin/statuses/27808662429 https://twitter.com/#!/arubin/statuses/27808662429 It's impossible to do anything similar with WebOS right now. >I fail to see how your last point proves anything, all points considered. The kind of people that care about being able to hack on a system want full access to the system. Android provides that. The fact that Android is running on devices that the manufacturers of those devices never intended to run Android proves it. People that want open devices will generally prefer open software. There's absolutely nothing befuddling about that.

by Splines 15y ago

marshray 15y ago

What if it were an ASUS motherboard that enforced code signing on boot?

freehunter 15y ago

This is why it still confuses me to this day that the hacker/computer literate community put their backing in Android instead of WebOS. Sure Android was released sooner (but not sooner-enough to have insurmountable traction), but the Palm Pre actually allowed for booting a kernel over USB and gave root access by typing in the Konami code. The Touchpad allows for running of Debian, quite well! WebOS had no chance to succeed because the community it catered to chose the Google name and unfulfilled promises over actual freedom.

CrazedGeek 15y ago
WebOS was on two very mediocre phones (if not at their release, then definitely years later when they were still the flagship devices) and wasn't open source.
- freehunter 15y ago
  WebOS was open source except for Luna, and the devices were okay midrange phones at launch. After the market snubbed them, Palm didn't have enough money to keep creating newer and better phones.
commandar 15y ago
Android has an active hacker community because you can grab the code from git and build a working Android system. This is exactly what the CyanogenMod team does; Steve Kondik has even started referring to CM as an Android distribution ala Debian as opposed to a simple set of mods or patches. As much as I love WebOS, that just plain isn't possible with that platform. (this was posted from WebOS on a Touchpad that also has Android installed as dual boot. Care to show me the Android devices that have been hacked to run WebOS?)
- freehunter 15y ago
  But you don't need to fork your own distribution from source to change everything about WebOS. New kernels and new environments are common, even before it became open source. The only thing closed source was the Luna desktop environment. I fail to see how your last point proves anything, all points considered.
  - prodigal_erik 15y ago
    Android provably can be made to work on phones which weren't even made with that in mind. This apparently didn't happen with webOS, which counters "you don't really need the source"—though hackers have a healthy disdain for that attitude even if it had been true.
    - freehunter 15y ago
      WebOS is the standard Linux kernel with a new desktop environment. If you can get the Linux kernel running on a device, throw on a WebKit browser and you've got WebOS. That's how its so easy to get Debian/Ubuntu running on a Touchpad with a simple chroot. WebOS aside, support the maker of (more) open hardware. Support the people who give you full control of your device by default (even if they didn't initially give you the source for their WM).
  - commandar 15y ago
    >The only thing closed source was the Luna desktop environment. So the only thing that was closed source was the part of the system that the user directly interacts with. Gotcha. Andy Rubin's definition of open is the one that a lot of the hacker community can abide by: https://twitter.com/#!/arubin/statuses/27808662429 https://twitter.com/#!/arubin/statuses/27808662429 It's impossible to do anything similar with WebOS right now. >I fail to see how your last point proves anything, all points considered. The kind of people that care about being able to hack on a system want full access to the system. Android provides that. The fact that Android is running on devices that the manufacturers of those devices never intended to run Android proves it. People that want open devices will generally prefer open software. There's absolutely nothing befuddling about that.