6 ms·

No matter how this turns out, I'm sure GrapheneOS will make a smart effort. https://grapheneos.org/ https://grapheneos.org/ But long-term, Android is such a m

by neilv 1y ago

No matter how this turns out, I'm sure GrapheneOS will make a smart effort. https://grapheneos.org/ https://grapheneos.org/ But long-term, Android is such a massive code base, and was designed more for surveillance and consumption, than for privacy&security and the user's interests. I think getting mainline Linux on viable and sustainable on multiple hardware devices is warmer, fuzzier foundation. (Sort of a cross between Purism's work on the Librem 5, and PostmarketOS's work on trying to get mainline Linux viable on something else.)

anonymous908213 1y ago
The problem is for developers. Abandoning Android for Linux is not viable for software developers who need to eat. Sure, we can use Linux smartphones ourselves, but if the software we make has a grand total of three people who ever lay eyes on it, that's less than ideal. And given how The Year of the Linux Desktop has gone, I think it'd be strongly preferable if we managed to stave off the tightening of control over Android rather than placing bets on the future Year of the Linux Smartphone.
- broodbucket 1y ago
  The Year of the Linux Desktop is kind of happening. Not at the scale that the meme implies, but I've never seen anywhere near as much adoption of the Linux desktop as this year. The combination of Valve's efforts, more usage of Linux gaming handhelds, distributions like Bazzite that have strong selling points for Windows gamers, and Microsoft pissing everyone off with everything that is Windows 11, the Linux desktop has some legitimate momentum for once
  - pimeys 1y ago
    And I can just take about any Linux distro, install it to about any computer and have an extremely nice device to work, play games, and handle almost any daily task with. I call that a huge success.
    - rob74 1y ago
      The odds of having just about any Linux distro work "out of the box" without manual tweaking on just about any computer are still pretty low I'm afraid (by "work" I mean "support all of the functionality"). For instance, the laptop I'm writing this on connects without problems to a Bluetooth mouse, but won't for the life of me work with my Bluetooth headphones.
      - gf000 1y ago
        > The odds of having just about any Linux distro work "out of the box" without manual tweaking on just about any computer Well, show me that magic OS that works on "just about any computer", because I am sure Windows ain't that. OSX only works on their select devices, and Windows have its own way of sucking. Let's be honest, there are shitty hardware out there and nothing will work decently on top. People just try to save these by putting Linux on top and then the software gets the blame.
    - microtonal 1y ago
      Yet, still 1/4th of the time my ThinkPad with Linux wakes with a Thunderbolt display connected it dies with a kernel panic deep in the code that handles DDC (no matter what kernel version). And the latest gen finger print scanner only works between 10-50% of the time depending on the day, humidity, etc., no matter hof often you re-enroll a fingerprint, enroll a fingerprint multiple times, etc. And the battery drains in 3-4 hours. Unless you let powertop enable all USB/Bluetooth autosuspend, etc. But then you have to write your own udev rules to disable autosuspend when connected to power, because otherwise there is a large wakeup latency when you use your Bluetooth trackball again after not touching it for one or two seconds. And if you use GNOME (yes, I know use KDE or whatever), you have to use extensions to get system tray icons back. But since the last few releases some icons randomly don't work (e.g. Dropbox) when you click on it. And there are connectivity issues with Bluetooth headphones all the time plus no effortless switching between devices. (Any larger video/audio meeting, you can always find the Linux user, because they will need five minutes to get working audio.) As long as desktop/laptop Linux is still death by a thousand paper cuts, Linux on the desktop is not going to happen.
  - vitorgrs 1y ago
    Especially considering how much software these days on Windows are all Electron/Web. So is not a hard switch as it once was. I switched from Windows to Linux it's been 2 years. One of the few things I missed on Windows, was the native WhatsApp app, as the Web WhatsApp it's horrible. Then a few months Meta killed the native app and made into a webview-app :)
    - LogicHound 1y ago
      It only takes one application to force you back to using Windows. e.g. HellDivers 2 didn't work well until recently on Linux. If you are playing certain factions it is a very fast paced game and I would frequently experience slow downs on Linux. So if I wanted to play HellDivers 2, I would have to reboot into Windows. Since running kernel 6.16 and updates to proton it now runs better.
  - LogicHound 1y ago
    It really isn't. This is a temporary sugar rush that comes after pretty much every time Microsoft does something awful. After a while the buzz will fizz out and the majority of those PC gamers that looked to switching go back to Windows. IME a lot developers don't even use Linux on their desktop machine. I've met three developers that use Linux professional IRL. A lot of devs have a hard time even using git bash on Windows. I am always called up by people at work because I am "the Linux guy" when they have a problem with Linux or Bash. Sure, there are a lot of people that use Linux indirectly e.g. deploy to a Linux box, use Docker or a VM. But if someone isn't running Windows, 9 times out of 10 they are running a Mac. More generally the thing that has paid the bills for me is always these huge proprietary tech stacks I've had to deal with. Whether it be Microsoft's old ASP.NET tech stack with SQL Server, AWS, Azure, GCP, what pays the bills is proprietary shite. I hate working with this stuff, but that what you gotta to pay the bills.
    - xvfLJfx9 1y ago
      I mean, this strongly has to depend on what kind of software you are developing. I don't know a single developer who primarily uses Windows. Literally everyone around me uses Linux for development work (and a large portion of them also use Linux for their personal machines).
      - LogicHound 1y ago
        Of course. However if a developer isn't using Windows typically they are using a Mac. In corpo-world. Everyone is using Windows. If they are using Linux it would be through a VM or WSL. I guarantee none of those people are using Linux at home. So for every developer you know that is using Linux, there are many more people using Windows supplied to by their IT department.
        yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
        > In corpo-world. Everyone is using Windows. If they are using Linux it would be through a VM or WSL. I guarantee none of those people are using Linux at home. And I guarantee that you're wrong, because I work a corporate job where I have to put up with Windows and am 99% Linux at home. (The other 1% is *BSD and illumos.)
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Not really, because Proton is Win32, kind of.
    - broodbucket 1y ago
      Half of the applications people use on Windows are just browsers in a native frame, at this point Win32 is just one of the many "stacks" that you can run on Linux.
- colordrops 1y ago
  Some people don't care and build on top of Linux anyway. This lockdown will accelerate this. At some point a critical mass will eventually be reached, perhaps with the assistance of some corporate entity or organization of some sort that pushes it over the edge. Then there will be a real open competitor. Will take some time though.
- otabdeveloper4 1y ago
  > Abandoning Android for Linux is not viable for software developers who need to eat. We'll finally get our ecosystem diversity back when the next geopolitical happening happens and Google bans Chinese android apps on bullshit pretexts. Wait a few years more.
  - socksy 1y ago
    Why would that affect anything? The Chinese Android ecosystem is already split from the Google one.
    - otabdeveloper4 1y ago
      > Why would that affect anything? The Chinese will eventually find it easier to sell their Chinese ecosystem devices to the world instead of catering to Google and American three-letter agencies.
  - microtonal 1y ago
    I'd rather like to see AOSP development spun off to a separate non-profit entity. Either by Google doing it or by a hard fork (which will need a lot of funding). Traditional Linux misses the polish and especially the security layering to be a good phone OS. Better to start from an already good base that works.
- jauntywundrkind 1y ago
  Waydroid does surprisingly well at running Android apps on Linux. Sure some apps won't work for whatever reason & HN commenters will have incredibly scathing things to say about that, but I bet there's a lot of folks who'd be cool with missing an app here or there. It sucks to be losing Android, but IMO it's an ecosystem in free-fall. Bootloaders are locked more and more, there's literally zero AOSP hardware buyable now, and the roms scene has diminished not grown over time. I totally think theres a Steam Deck moment waiting around a corner, where what seemed impossible a year ago shows up and is dead obvious & direct, and we all wonder why there were so many doubts before.
  - heavyset_go 1y ago
    > Right, but that's a choice from manufacturers, not a requirement of building a mobile platform. IMO, I think Microsoft gave up on running Android apps on Windows because they read the writing on the wall: Google will use Play Integrity/Protect to ensure Android apps only run on Google-approved devices/operating systems and nothing else. I think this is the ultimate fate for Waydroid, as well.
- juris 1y ago
  so the thing is, as an Android dev if I get embedded linux experience then I have lateral career movement to the peripherals that I'm usually writing apps for. While the intersection of app developers to embedded linux developers is probably very small, there is a smidge of incentive there, and that can be a powerful thing for the community: a lot of the pain points on linux phones feel hardware oriented (I complain loudly about the pinephone battery elsewhere in this thread). another tailwind might be in the gaming scene. I have the general sense that SteamOS has been an interesting gateway for technically-minded folks to be impressed by this Linux thing. A similar model for mobile phones might be a tailwind (like a SteamOS for ARM?) The reason why that's perfect is because it undermines the Google monopoly and creates an app ecosystem that people will absolutely flock to, at least for games ($$).
- vanviegen 1y ago
  I know it's been tried before (eg by Mozilla), but perhaps now the time is right for a web apps-only OS. Many developers would need some help to get offline functionality and updates right though.. And it would be really nice if these apps didn't require parsing megabytes of JavaScript libraries on startup. One can dream! :-)
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    My TV runs one, it isn't taking the world by storm. https://webostv.developer.lge.com/discover https://webostv.developer.lge.com/discover
    - vanviegen 1y ago
      It's got to be better than the laggy, unreliable, content-pushing Google TV crap that runs my TV... Right? Making a guess: nope. Same underpowered SoC, in order to save $5.
      - pjmlp 1y ago
        It is better than Android TV, which I also own, but in terms of ads, yep there are some as well. Differention, that is what all OEMs care about, netbooks already showed us that.
khimaros 1y ago
buy a used OnePlus 6 and load Mobian on it. quite functional these days running a mainline kernel.
- jauntywundrkind 1y ago
  (2018) makes me more than a bit sad. I have a OnePlus 6, and it was ok with the software I tried out ~3 years ago, and basically fast enough. But it's soul crushing how running mainline Linux is just so impossible for consumer mobile chips. It felt at the time like there was positive progress, more bits getting mainlined at a trickle but at least steady trickle rate. But it feels dark now. At least the GPU drivers everywhere have been getting much better, but I get the impression Qualcomm couldn't even ship a desktop/laptop after years of delay, is barely getting that in order now. It feels impossible to hope for the mobile chips anywhere to find religion & get even basic drivers mainlined.
charcircuit 1y ago
>than for privacy&security and the user's interests. Even if that was true, AOSP is better for privacy and security than any other Linux distro.
- fsflover 1y ago
  By which criterion? This sounds wrong.
  - rbits 1y ago
    https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/linux.html https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/linux.html
    - fsflover 1y ago
      It's a different approach to security. There are no malicious apps in GNU/Linux repositories. (And yes, Linux security should be improved; I run Qubes on desktop) https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/docs/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions#43-how-secure-is-the-librem-5-compared-to-an-android-phone https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/docs/community-wiki/-/wikis/F...
      - charcircuit 1y ago
        >It's a different approach to security That's like saying using a hole in a wall is a different approach to security than putting a lockable door in a wall. Sure no security is s different approach to security, but it's not an effective one. >There are no malicious apps in GNU/Linux repositories Maybe not intentionally malicous, but there have been bugs that can cause applications to act maliciously such as deleting users files. If an application gets exploited it could also do malicous things. Just because you trust the author of a program, that doesn't mean that sanboxing is pointless. Additionally programs like the terminal are a free for the user to run things like curl | sh which can run malware infecting the system and run wild since there is no security to stop it from doing almost anything. >Purism The wiki page pretty much says that they don't have privacy or security and don't have the resources to implement such features unlike Google or Apple. They also make some claims to try and pretend their platform is secure and private in order to help sell the Librem 5, a product they made with inferior privacy and security compared to Android.
3abiton 1y ago
The hope is lost for Android, there is no moving forward with google antagonizing its foss roots. Libre phone it is. We have to forcibly remove the bandage.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
  I wish you were wrong, but I don't disagree with assessment. I am on grapheneos ( edit: on pixel ) now, but even that should only be a pitstop now since google has decided to show its hand in such a nasty ( if not that unexpected ) manner.
  - surajrmal 1y ago
    Everyone is quick to ascribe malice without understanding why changes are made. It's never done for the reasons you think. Without a formal relationship between Graphene and Pixel, things were operating out of luck. This is why the next target hardware is starting with a business relationship. Even desktop Linux is most successful when business relationship between a vendor and the distro maker. Everything else is ripe for random breakage in support.
    - A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
      It is not quick. Whatever goodwill google had, it is gone based on their actions alone. And this is beside the point, because, I am not judging on what they intended to do, but what their actions, including after intense community backlash, were. In other words, their intent is irrelevant given the circumstances. Their actions, however, even without intended malice, will cause tremendous damage all around.
- preisschild 1y ago
  AOSP is open source so it could be forked.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Except many key features are nowadays delivered via APEX modules, distributed via PlayStore. https://source.android.com/docs/core/ota/apex https://source.android.com/docs/core/ota/apex
gf000 1y ago
> think getting mainline Linux on viable and sustainable on multiple hardware devices is warmer, fuzzier foundation. You just have to somehow speedrun the decades of development that went into Android to make it decently run on mobile hardware.. never really understood this "throwing out the baby" direction - the UNIX userspace model simply doesn't work on mobile (I would wager it also doesn't work on desktop anymore), has no security (everything runs as your user which made sense when you ran some batch job on a terminal with multiple other users, but nowadays when a single user has as many processes as all the user had back then it effectively means no security between any of those programs), there is no real resource control, no lifecycles, so the device will burn scorching hot and have terrible battery life. On Android (and iOS) apps were always living in a world with lifecycles so if they wanted to operate correctly, they had to become decent citizens (save state when asked, so they can be stopped and resumed at any moment). This also fits nicely with sandboxes and user permissions, etc. So without developing an alternative user-space for "GNU-Linux", it's simply not competing with android in any form or shape. And even if you do, now every GNU app has to somehow be ported to that userspace API (you can't just kill GIMP or whatever Linux process)
- franczesko 1y ago
  > You just have to somehow speedrun the decades of development that went into Android to make it decently run on mobile hardware Isn't this mainly due to proprietary drivers and firmware?
  - gf000 1y ago
    No, just take a look at how long and smooth does a pinephone run with "GNU Linux" vs stock android. Android devs actually backported a bunch of work to the mainline kernel with regards to low-level energy management, but that's only one half of the story. The other is your phone stopping unused apps gracefully, and being able to go back to sleep regularly.
    - surajrmal 1y ago
      The vast majority which lives in android userspace. The customer compositor, input stack, wlan daemons, etc, are all tuned and optimized for power efficiency. Also, these days, there is a lot of hardware controlled directly by userspace - it's not just the GPU. And those hardware are generally important for offloading a lot of conpute and reducing wake ups. Things seem to only be trending further in this direction.
preisschild 1y ago
> Android is such a massive code base, and was designed more for surveillance and consumption I disagree. I have been using de-googled / de-spywared Android for a decade now and I really love it. Once you remove google mobile services and rely on open source applications Android feels really good. Also its questionable if projects such as purism or even the pinephone will ever offer such good security and privacy as a de-googled Pixel with GrapheneOS will. https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/112712864209034804 https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/112712864209034804
palata 1y ago
> Android was designed more for surveillance and consumption, than for privacy&security and the user's interests I disagree. The Android security model is better than the Linux one. I am very happy with GrapheneOS, I don't have much to complain about. The problem is that Google sucks and nobody enforces antitrust laws. But it's not just Google: how many Android manufacturers don't suck, really? Do they contribute to AOSP at all? Probably not. Do they build reasonable devices that could run something like GrapheneOS? Nope. Just relocking the bootloader is often a problem.
- zzo38computer 1y ago
  > I disagree. The Android security model is better than the Linux one. In some ways it probably is, but it still isn't that good in my opinion (although some of the problems have to do with the way the settings and controls are working rather than the security model itself, there are also problems with the security model itself too). (I think there are other problems with Android (and other operating systems) too.)
  - palata 1y ago
    > although some of the problems have to do with the way the settings and controls are working I was talking about the security model.

by neilv 1y ago

anonymous908213 1y ago

The problem is for developers. Abandoning Android for Linux is not viable for software developers who need to eat. Sure, we can use Linux smartphones ourselves, but if the software we make has a grand total of three people who ever lay eyes on it, that's less than ideal. And given how The Year of the Linux Desktop has gone, I think it'd be strongly preferable if we managed to stave off the tightening of control over Android rather than placing bets on the future Year of the Linux Smartphone.

broodbucket 1y ago
The Year of the Linux Desktop is kind of happening. Not at the scale that the meme implies, but I've never seen anywhere near as much adoption of the Linux desktop as this year. The combination of Valve's efforts, more usage of Linux gaming handhelds, distributions like Bazzite that have strong selling points for Windows gamers, and Microsoft pissing everyone off with everything that is Windows 11, the Linux desktop has some legitimate momentum for once
- pimeys 1y ago
  And I can just take about any Linux distro, install it to about any computer and have an extremely nice device to work, play games, and handle almost any daily task with. I call that a huge success.
  - rob74 1y ago
    The odds of having just about any Linux distro work "out of the box" without manual tweaking on just about any computer are still pretty low I'm afraid (by "work" I mean "support all of the functionality"). For instance, the laptop I'm writing this on connects without problems to a Bluetooth mouse, but won't for the life of me work with my Bluetooth headphones.
    - gf000 1y ago
      > The odds of having just about any Linux distro work "out of the box" without manual tweaking on just about any computer Well, show me that magic OS that works on "just about any computer", because I am sure Windows ain't that. OSX only works on their select devices, and Windows have its own way of sucking. Let's be honest, there are shitty hardware out there and nothing will work decently on top. People just try to save these by putting Linux on top and then the software gets the blame.
  - microtonal 1y ago
    Yet, still 1/4th of the time my ThinkPad with Linux wakes with a Thunderbolt display connected it dies with a kernel panic deep in the code that handles DDC (no matter what kernel version). And the latest gen finger print scanner only works between 10-50% of the time depending on the day, humidity, etc., no matter hof often you re-enroll a fingerprint, enroll a fingerprint multiple times, etc. And the battery drains in 3-4 hours. Unless you let powertop enable all USB/Bluetooth autosuspend, etc. But then you have to write your own udev rules to disable autosuspend when connected to power, because otherwise there is a large wakeup latency when you use your Bluetooth trackball again after not touching it for one or two seconds. And if you use GNOME (yes, I know use KDE or whatever), you have to use extensions to get system tray icons back. But since the last few releases some icons randomly don't work (e.g. Dropbox) when you click on it. And there are connectivity issues with Bluetooth headphones all the time plus no effortless switching between devices. (Any larger video/audio meeting, you can always find the Linux user, because they will need five minutes to get working audio.) As long as desktop/laptop Linux is still death by a thousand paper cuts, Linux on the desktop is not going to happen.
- vitorgrs 1y ago
  Especially considering how much software these days on Windows are all Electron/Web. So is not a hard switch as it once was. I switched from Windows to Linux it's been 2 years. One of the few things I missed on Windows, was the native WhatsApp app, as the Web WhatsApp it's horrible. Then a few months Meta killed the native app and made into a webview-app :)
  - LogicHound 1y ago
    It only takes one application to force you back to using Windows. e.g. HellDivers 2 didn't work well until recently on Linux. If you are playing certain factions it is a very fast paced game and I would frequently experience slow downs on Linux. So if I wanted to play HellDivers 2, I would have to reboot into Windows. Since running kernel 6.16 and updates to proton it now runs better.
- LogicHound 1y ago
  It really isn't. This is a temporary sugar rush that comes after pretty much every time Microsoft does something awful. After a while the buzz will fizz out and the majority of those PC gamers that looked to switching go back to Windows. IME a lot developers don't even use Linux on their desktop machine. I've met three developers that use Linux professional IRL. A lot of devs have a hard time even using git bash on Windows. I am always called up by people at work because I am "the Linux guy" when they have a problem with Linux or Bash. Sure, there are a lot of people that use Linux indirectly e.g. deploy to a Linux box, use Docker or a VM. But if someone isn't running Windows, 9 times out of 10 they are running a Mac. More generally the thing that has paid the bills for me is always these huge proprietary tech stacks I've had to deal with. Whether it be Microsoft's old ASP.NET tech stack with SQL Server, AWS, Azure, GCP, what pays the bills is proprietary shite. I hate working with this stuff, but that what you gotta to pay the bills.
  - xvfLJfx9 1y ago
    I mean, this strongly has to depend on what kind of software you are developing. I don't know a single developer who primarily uses Windows. Literally everyone around me uses Linux for development work (and a large portion of them also use Linux for their personal machines).
    - LogicHound 1y ago
      Of course. However if a developer isn't using Windows typically they are using a Mac. In corpo-world. Everyone is using Windows. If they are using Linux it would be through a VM or WSL. I guarantee none of those people are using Linux at home. So for every developer you know that is using Linux, there are many more people using Windows supplied to by their IT department.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
        > In corpo-world. Everyone is using Windows. If they are using Linux it would be through a VM or WSL. I guarantee none of those people are using Linux at home. And I guarantee that you're wrong, because I work a corporate job where I have to put up with Windows and am 99% Linux at home. (The other 1% is *BSD and illumos.)
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Not really, because Proton is Win32, kind of.
  - broodbucket 1y ago
    Half of the applications people use on Windows are just browsers in a native frame, at this point Win32 is just one of the many "stacks" that you can run on Linux.
colordrops 1y ago
Some people don't care and build on top of Linux anyway. This lockdown will accelerate this. At some point a critical mass will eventually be reached, perhaps with the assistance of some corporate entity or organization of some sort that pushes it over the edge. Then there will be a real open competitor. Will take some time though.
otabdeveloper4 1y ago
> Abandoning Android for Linux is not viable for software developers who need to eat. We'll finally get our ecosystem diversity back when the next geopolitical happening happens and Google bans Chinese android apps on bullshit pretexts. Wait a few years more.
- socksy 1y ago
  Why would that affect anything? The Chinese Android ecosystem is already split from the Google one.
  - otabdeveloper4 1y ago
    > Why would that affect anything? The Chinese will eventually find it easier to sell their Chinese ecosystem devices to the world instead of catering to Google and American three-letter agencies.
- microtonal 1y ago
  I'd rather like to see AOSP development spun off to a separate non-profit entity. Either by Google doing it or by a hard fork (which will need a lot of funding). Traditional Linux misses the polish and especially the security layering to be a good phone OS. Better to start from an already good base that works.
jauntywundrkind 1y ago
Waydroid does surprisingly well at running Android apps on Linux. Sure some apps won't work for whatever reason & HN commenters will have incredibly scathing things to say about that, but I bet there's a lot of folks who'd be cool with missing an app here or there. It sucks to be losing Android, but IMO it's an ecosystem in free-fall. Bootloaders are locked more and more, there's literally zero AOSP hardware buyable now, and the roms scene has diminished not grown over time. I totally think theres a Steam Deck moment waiting around a corner, where what seemed impossible a year ago shows up and is dead obvious & direct, and we all wonder why there were so many doubts before.
- heavyset_go 1y ago
  > Right, but that's a choice from manufacturers, not a requirement of building a mobile platform. IMO, I think Microsoft gave up on running Android apps on Windows because they read the writing on the wall: Google will use Play Integrity/Protect to ensure Android apps only run on Google-approved devices/operating systems and nothing else. I think this is the ultimate fate for Waydroid, as well.
juris 1y ago
so the thing is, as an Android dev if I get embedded linux experience then I have lateral career movement to the peripherals that I'm usually writing apps for. While the intersection of app developers to embedded linux developers is probably very small, there is a smidge of incentive there, and that can be a powerful thing for the community: a lot of the pain points on linux phones feel hardware oriented (I complain loudly about the pinephone battery elsewhere in this thread). another tailwind might be in the gaming scene. I have the general sense that SteamOS has been an interesting gateway for technically-minded folks to be impressed by this Linux thing. A similar model for mobile phones might be a tailwind (like a SteamOS for ARM?) The reason why that's perfect is because it undermines the Google monopoly and creates an app ecosystem that people will absolutely flock to, at least for games ($$).
vanviegen 1y ago
I know it's been tried before (eg by Mozilla), but perhaps now the time is right for a web apps-only OS. Many developers would need some help to get offline functionality and updates right though.. And it would be really nice if these apps didn't require parsing megabytes of JavaScript libraries on startup. One can dream! :-)
- pjmlp 1y ago
  My TV runs one, it isn't taking the world by storm. https://webostv.developer.lge.com/discover https://webostv.developer.lge.com/discover
  - vanviegen 1y ago
    It's got to be better than the laggy, unreliable, content-pushing Google TV crap that runs my TV... Right? Making a guess: nope. Same underpowered SoC, in order to save $5.
    - pjmlp 1y ago
      It is better than Android TV, which I also own, but in terms of ads, yep there are some as well. Differention, that is what all OEMs care about, netbooks already showed us that.

khimaros 1y ago

buy a used OnePlus 6 and load Mobian on it. quite functional these days running a mainline kernel.

jauntywundrkind 1y ago
(2018) makes me more than a bit sad. I have a OnePlus 6, and it was ok with the software I tried out ~3 years ago, and basically fast enough. But it's soul crushing how running mainline Linux is just so impossible for consumer mobile chips. It felt at the time like there was positive progress, more bits getting mainlined at a trickle but at least steady trickle rate. But it feels dark now. At least the GPU drivers everywhere have been getting much better, but I get the impression Qualcomm couldn't even ship a desktop/laptop after years of delay, is barely getting that in order now. It feels impossible to hope for the mobile chips anywhere to find religion & get even basic drivers mainlined.

charcircuit 1y ago

>than for privacy&security and the user's interests. Even if that was true, AOSP is better for privacy and security than any other Linux distro.

fsflover 1y ago
By which criterion? This sounds wrong.
- rbits 1y ago
  https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/linux.html https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/linux.html
  - fsflover 1y ago
    It's a different approach to security. There are no malicious apps in GNU/Linux repositories. (And yes, Linux security should be improved; I run Qubes on desktop) https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/docs/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions#43-how-secure-is-the-librem-5-compared-to-an-android-phone https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/docs/community-wiki/-/wikis/F...
    - charcircuit 1y ago
      >It's a different approach to security That's like saying using a hole in a wall is a different approach to security than putting a lockable door in a wall. Sure no security is s different approach to security, but it's not an effective one. >There are no malicious apps in GNU/Linux repositories Maybe not intentionally malicous, but there have been bugs that can cause applications to act maliciously such as deleting users files. If an application gets exploited it could also do malicous things. Just because you trust the author of a program, that doesn't mean that sanboxing is pointless. Additionally programs like the terminal are a free for the user to run things like curl | sh which can run malware infecting the system and run wild since there is no security to stop it from doing almost anything. >Purism The wiki page pretty much says that they don't have privacy or security and don't have the resources to implement such features unlike Google or Apple. They also make some claims to try and pretend their platform is secure and private in order to help sell the Librem 5, a product they made with inferior privacy and security compared to Android.

3abiton 1y ago

The hope is lost for Android, there is no moving forward with google antagonizing its foss roots. Libre phone it is. We have to forcibly remove the bandage.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
I wish you were wrong, but I don't disagree with assessment. I am on grapheneos ( edit: on pixel ) now, but even that should only be a pitstop now since google has decided to show its hand in such a nasty ( if not that unexpected ) manner.
- surajrmal 1y ago
  Everyone is quick to ascribe malice without understanding why changes are made. It's never done for the reasons you think. Without a formal relationship between Graphene and Pixel, things were operating out of luck. This is why the next target hardware is starting with a business relationship. Even desktop Linux is most successful when business relationship between a vendor and the distro maker. Everything else is ripe for random breakage in support.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
    It is not quick. Whatever goodwill google had, it is gone based on their actions alone. And this is beside the point, because, I am not judging on what they intended to do, but what their actions, including after intense community backlash, were. In other words, their intent is irrelevant given the circumstances. Their actions, however, even without intended malice, will cause tremendous damage all around.
preisschild 1y ago
AOSP is open source so it could be forked.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Except many key features are nowadays delivered via APEX modules, distributed via PlayStore. https://source.android.com/docs/core/ota/apex https://source.android.com/docs/core/ota/apex

gf000 1y ago

> think getting mainline Linux on viable and sustainable on multiple hardware devices is warmer, fuzzier foundation. You just have to somehow speedrun the decades of development that went into Android to make it decently run on mobile hardware.. never really understood this "throwing out the baby" direction - the UNIX userspace model simply doesn't work on mobile (I would wager it also doesn't work on desktop anymore), has no security (everything runs as your user which made sense when you ran some batch job on a terminal with multiple other users, but nowadays when a single user has as many processes as all the user had back then it effectively means no security between any of those programs), there is no real resource control, no lifecycles, so the device will burn scorching hot and have terrible battery life. On Android (and iOS) apps were always living in a world with lifecycles so if they wanted to operate correctly, they had to become decent citizens (save state when asked, so they can be stopped and resumed at any moment). This also fits nicely with sandboxes and user permissions, etc. So without developing an alternative user-space for "GNU-Linux", it's simply not competing with android in any form or shape. And even if you do, now every GNU app has to somehow be ported to that userspace API (you can't just kill GIMP or whatever Linux process)

franczesko 1y ago
> You just have to somehow speedrun the decades of development that went into Android to make it decently run on mobile hardware Isn't this mainly due to proprietary drivers and firmware?
- gf000 1y ago
  No, just take a look at how long and smooth does a pinephone run with "GNU Linux" vs stock android. Android devs actually backported a bunch of work to the mainline kernel with regards to low-level energy management, but that's only one half of the story. The other is your phone stopping unused apps gracefully, and being able to go back to sleep regularly.
  - surajrmal 1y ago
    The vast majority which lives in android userspace. The customer compositor, input stack, wlan daemons, etc, are all tuned and optimized for power efficiency. Also, these days, there is a lot of hardware controlled directly by userspace - it's not just the GPU. And those hardware are generally important for offloading a lot of conpute and reducing wake ups. Things seem to only be trending further in this direction.

preisschild 1y ago

> Android is such a massive code base, and was designed more for surveillance and consumption I disagree. I have been using de-googled / de-spywared Android for a decade now and I really love it. Once you remove google mobile services and rely on open source applications Android feels really good. Also its questionable if projects such as purism or even the pinephone will ever offer such good security and privacy as a de-googled Pixel with GrapheneOS will. https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/112712864209034804 https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/112712864209034804

palata 1y ago

> Android was designed more for surveillance and consumption, than for privacy&security and the user's interests I disagree. The Android security model is better than the Linux one. I am very happy with GrapheneOS, I don't have much to complain about. The problem is that Google sucks and nobody enforces antitrust laws. But it's not just Google: how many Android manufacturers don't suck, really? Do they contribute to AOSP at all? Probably not. Do they build reasonable devices that could run something like GrapheneOS? Nope. Just relocking the bootloader is often a problem.

zzo38computer 1y ago
> I disagree. The Android security model is better than the Linux one. In some ways it probably is, but it still isn't that good in my opinion (although some of the problems have to do with the way the settings and controls are working rather than the security model itself, there are also problems with the security model itself too). (I think there are other problems with Android (and other operating systems) too.)
- palata 1y ago
  > although some of the problems have to do with the way the settings and controls are working I was talking about the security model.