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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,

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.
    - gf000 1y ago
      I have had worse experiences on each and every count with various Windows installs on various laptops, and yet it is the "de facto" desktop OS.
      - didacusc 1y ago
        That is simply not true. I have tried to get so many people on Linux, just for it to fail when they try to do something simple, enough times in a row for them to want to go back to Windows. I really wish it was seamless and good, but it just isn't (and frankly it's a bit embarrassing it isn't given desktop environments for GNU Linux have been in development for 20+ years).
        gf000 1y ago
        I'm not saying it's seamless and good. I'm saying that I have had windows fail in similar or worse ways. For example the laptop I had from my previous employer (a pretty beefy Dell) was failing to go to sleep, I had to unplug the charger and the HDMI cable on my desk each night, otherwise every second night it was keeping my monitor lit on the lock screen; when low on battery it clocked the CPU down so much that the whole system froze to a grinding stop not even the mouse pointer was moving, and even after putting it back on the charger it remained similarly unusable for a good 10 mins.. Like I have been using Linux since the Xorg config days when you could easily get a black screen if you misconfigured something, but at least those issues are deterministic and once you get to a working state, it usually stays there. Also, Linux has made very good progress in the last decade and it has hands down the best hardware support nowadays (makes sense given that the vast vast majority of servers run Linux, so hardware companies employ a bunch of kernel devs to make their hardware decently supported).
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    As long as it isn't a gamer laptop.
- 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.

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.
  - gf000 1y ago
    I have had worse experiences on each and every count with various Windows installs on various laptops, and yet it is the "de facto" desktop OS.
    - didacusc 1y ago
      That is simply not true. I have tried to get so many people on Linux, just for it to fail when they try to do something simple, enough times in a row for them to want to go back to Windows. I really wish it was seamless and good, but it just isn't (and frankly it's a bit embarrassing it isn't given desktop environments for GNU Linux have been in development for 20+ years).
      - gf000 1y ago
        I'm not saying it's seamless and good. I'm saying that I have had windows fail in similar or worse ways. For example the laptop I had from my previous employer (a pretty beefy Dell) was failing to go to sleep, I had to unplug the charger and the HDMI cable on my desk each night, otherwise every second night it was keeping my monitor lit on the lock screen; when low on battery it clocked the CPU down so much that the whole system froze to a grinding stop not even the mouse pointer was moving, and even after putting it back on the charger it remained similarly unusable for a good 10 mins.. Like I have been using Linux since the Xorg config days when you could easily get a black screen if you misconfigured something, but at least those issues are deterministic and once you get to a working state, it usually stays there. Also, Linux has made very good progress in the last decade and it has hands down the best hardware support nowadays (makes sense given that the vast vast majority of servers run Linux, so hardware companies employ a bunch of kernel devs to make their hardware decently supported).
- pjmlp 1y ago
  As long as it isn't a gamer laptop.
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.