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Seriously question; why is the answer to this not a phone that can just run GNU/Linux? Is it just the lack of application support? I mean, you’ll have blobs, bu

by K0balt 2mo ago

Seriously question; why is the answer to this not a phone that can just run GNU/Linux? Is it just the lack of application support? I mean, you’ll have blobs, but at least at the os level you’ll have options? Can’t you run an android sandbox in Linux? Docker phone? I’m sure I’m missing something here, but what?

achierius 2mo ago
Desktop operating systems != phone operating systems. You need to have a lot of support for things like "sleep apps you're not using right now" or you'll burn through battery. Not to mention that we tend to expect a lot of functionality which only works when the OS enables it, e.g. the sort of app-to-app coordination enabled by Android's App Intents. You certainly could build something like that on top of DBus, but, well, you'd have to build it.
- zekica 2mo ago
  xdg already provides "portals" and "XDG Intents" that implement most of what android does. Flatpak implements most of the sandboxing you have on android. It doesn't have feature parity but IMO it doesn't need to. CGroups and systemd-user can prevent apps from running in the background.
- K0balt 2mo ago
  This seems to be a case of “I want to use services from companies that are built on business models hostile towards my sovereignty, privacy, and rights! ; I can’t believe hostilecorp wont let me work around their hostileOS?” I mean, it really sucks that so many people have made themselves dependent on this crap, but at some point you just have to stop buying the poison or stop complaining that it makes you sick. The poison to utility ratio has gotten so high that it’s getting increasingly attractive just to ditch the whole thing. You either have to draw the line or accept that there is no line, and that you will yield any degree of agency in exchange for convenience. For so many people, big corporations decide what they will buy, where they will eat, who they will date, how they will interact, what they believe, where they will go, how they will get there. Multiple choice is not choice. It is the illusion of choice in a fully packaged life.
  - paweladamczuk 2mo ago
    Or maybe it's a case of "I want to own the place where I live and the only way to achieve that while supporting a family is participating in the economy based o hostileOS"? It's easy to have a principled stance when the only currency it costs you is your own convenience and standard of living. For many people, life is not as simple as that.
    - K0balt 2mo ago
      I wouldn’t say it’s easy. It takes extreme measures. I left my home country with my family of 5 and built an off grid community in an agricultural area in the developing world because I was not happy with the practical agency that was considered permissible under my circumstances. While I have developed skills that have enabled me to do the work involved, this was done without having even meeting the median household income. So, no, it’s not the only way, but it may be the only way while staying on the reservation. You have to want freedom bad enough to give up the security of the beaten path in favor of the uncertain and often unpredictable consequences of your own decisions. yet, I write this on my hostilephone lol.
Telaneo 2mo ago
Many of the apps that people need to have smartphone to access will not run in an Android sandbox. Banking apps are the obvious example. Not to mention that the options outside iOS and Android are slim and for the most part bad (or atleast simply even worse than those).
- drdexebtjl 2mo ago
  Is it because the sandbox is bad and does not perfectly simulate the computing environment of a real device? Because to me it sounds like a cat and mouse game that Google and banking apps are destined to lose.
  - bilkow 2mo ago
    It's because of the Play Integrity API, which AFAIK runs downloaded binaries in the DroidGuard environment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_Integrity_API https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_Integrity_API The strongest levels require hardware key attestation (which, in my understanding, uses a certificate that's baked in secure hardware and signed by Google): - https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-guide https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu... - https://developer.android.com/privacy-and-security/security-key-attestation https://developer.android.com/privacy-and-security/security-...
    - wolvoleo 2mo ago
      Still. It must be possible to extract such a key. Even hardware key storage is not 100% safe.
  - lucianbr 2mo ago
    There is hardware attestation that prevents a perfect sandbox from being possible. Unless you know how to build a sandbox that can simulate a TPM with a key inside that only Google knows. Or something like that. I'm not an expert but there's plenty of information on the internet about this. It's definitely more than "the sandbox is buggy".
zb3 2mo ago
Because this will be less profitable. Google created a cartel-like model where if you make a device that doesn't respect user choice, you will make more money because Google will share with you, providing you obey their rules. This model is attractive for almost everyone - Google, OEMs, operators and even governments.. the only side that loses here is.. the user. This situation can't be solved with market forces alone, it must be solved by law.
jeroenhd 2mo ago
Energy efficient Linux is hard. Vendors aren't doing the hard work for anything but Android. So, most hardware won't work (for more than a few hours) using normal Linux. postmarketOS and other projects are working tirelessly at bringing Linux to phones. SailfishOS too. Plenty of Android apps even run inside these runtimes. App compatibility relies on apps supporting (very) old Android versions, though. It's also flaky in many areas and with how few Linux phones have decent GPU support, there's also a performance challenge there. For some apps, running on Linux doesn't work because the app developers chose to only run on Play Certified, original firmware (Play Integrity and friends). Those apps cannot be patched to work right unless they implemented their checks badly.
- zb3 2mo ago
  > Vendors aren't doing the hard work for anything but Android. Because of Google's cartel-like structure where OEMs get more profit by joining, Google shares some revenue from screwing the user. > postmarketOS and other projects are working tirelessly at bringing Linux to phones. postmarketOS has ZERO partnerships with any OEM, their device support is "as is" and done by volunteers, not by vendors like Qualcomm or Mediatek. > SailfishOS This one is interesting, but currently the "Jolla Phone" can't be bought "right now", you can order for October.. I see some hope in Murena too, they partnered with Fairphone / Gigaset, so the device support is real there, but it's still Android..
zzril 2mo ago
There is the PinePhone. It has 3GB of RAM and needs to be charged daily. It's barely enough for my use case, which is essentially "I need a browser and a shell". Haven't tried an emulator yet. Don't think I will - they're slow enough on my laptop, and I'm not interested in spending my time on reversing anti-emulator checks all day. And I don't like being forced into having a Google account, so anything that goes beyond a calculator app won't run anyway.

by K0balt 2mo ago

achierius 2mo ago

Desktop operating systems != phone operating systems. You need to have a lot of support for things like "sleep apps you're not using right now" or you'll burn through battery. Not to mention that we tend to expect a lot of functionality which only works when the OS enables it, e.g. the sort of app-to-app coordination enabled by Android's App Intents. You certainly could build something like that on top of DBus, but, well, you'd have to build it.

zekica 2mo ago
xdg already provides "portals" and "XDG Intents" that implement most of what android does. Flatpak implements most of the sandboxing you have on android. It doesn't have feature parity but IMO it doesn't need to. CGroups and systemd-user can prevent apps from running in the background.
K0balt 2mo ago
This seems to be a case of “I want to use services from companies that are built on business models hostile towards my sovereignty, privacy, and rights! ; I can’t believe hostilecorp wont let me work around their hostileOS?” I mean, it really sucks that so many people have made themselves dependent on this crap, but at some point you just have to stop buying the poison or stop complaining that it makes you sick. The poison to utility ratio has gotten so high that it’s getting increasingly attractive just to ditch the whole thing. You either have to draw the line or accept that there is no line, and that you will yield any degree of agency in exchange for convenience. For so many people, big corporations decide what they will buy, where they will eat, who they will date, how they will interact, what they believe, where they will go, how they will get there. Multiple choice is not choice. It is the illusion of choice in a fully packaged life.
- paweladamczuk 2mo ago
  Or maybe it's a case of "I want to own the place where I live and the only way to achieve that while supporting a family is participating in the economy based o hostileOS"? It's easy to have a principled stance when the only currency it costs you is your own convenience and standard of living. For many people, life is not as simple as that.
  - K0balt 2mo ago
    I wouldn’t say it’s easy. It takes extreme measures. I left my home country with my family of 5 and built an off grid community in an agricultural area in the developing world because I was not happy with the practical agency that was considered permissible under my circumstances. While I have developed skills that have enabled me to do the work involved, this was done without having even meeting the median household income. So, no, it’s not the only way, but it may be the only way while staying on the reservation. You have to want freedom bad enough to give up the security of the beaten path in favor of the uncertain and often unpredictable consequences of your own decisions. yet, I write this on my hostilephone lol.

Telaneo 2mo ago

Many of the apps that people need to have smartphone to access will not run in an Android sandbox. Banking apps are the obvious example. Not to mention that the options outside iOS and Android are slim and for the most part bad (or atleast simply even worse than those).

drdexebtjl 2mo ago
Is it because the sandbox is bad and does not perfectly simulate the computing environment of a real device? Because to me it sounds like a cat and mouse game that Google and banking apps are destined to lose.
- bilkow 2mo ago
  It's because of the Play Integrity API, which AFAIK runs downloaded binaries in the DroidGuard environment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_Integrity_API https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_Integrity_API The strongest levels require hardware key attestation (which, in my understanding, uses a certificate that's baked in secure hardware and signed by Google): - https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-guide https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu... - https://developer.android.com/privacy-and-security/security-key-attestation https://developer.android.com/privacy-and-security/security-...
  - wolvoleo 2mo ago
    Still. It must be possible to extract such a key. Even hardware key storage is not 100% safe.
- lucianbr 2mo ago
  There is hardware attestation that prevents a perfect sandbox from being possible. Unless you know how to build a sandbox that can simulate a TPM with a key inside that only Google knows. Or something like that. I'm not an expert but there's plenty of information on the internet about this. It's definitely more than "the sandbox is buggy".

zb3 2mo ago

Because this will be less profitable. Google created a cartel-like model where if you make a device that doesn't respect user choice, you will make more money because Google will share with you, providing you obey their rules. This model is attractive for almost everyone - Google, OEMs, operators and even governments.. the only side that loses here is.. the user. This situation can't be solved with market forces alone, it must be solved by law.

jeroenhd 2mo ago

Energy efficient Linux is hard. Vendors aren't doing the hard work for anything but Android. So, most hardware won't work (for more than a few hours) using normal Linux. postmarketOS and other projects are working tirelessly at bringing Linux to phones. SailfishOS too. Plenty of Android apps even run inside these runtimes. App compatibility relies on apps supporting (very) old Android versions, though. It's also flaky in many areas and with how few Linux phones have decent GPU support, there's also a performance challenge there. For some apps, running on Linux doesn't work because the app developers chose to only run on Play Certified, original firmware (Play Integrity and friends). Those apps cannot be patched to work right unless they implemented their checks badly.

zb3 2mo ago
> Vendors aren't doing the hard work for anything but Android. Because of Google's cartel-like structure where OEMs get more profit by joining, Google shares some revenue from screwing the user. > postmarketOS and other projects are working tirelessly at bringing Linux to phones. postmarketOS has ZERO partnerships with any OEM, their device support is "as is" and done by volunteers, not by vendors like Qualcomm or Mediatek. > SailfishOS This one is interesting, but currently the "Jolla Phone" can't be bought "right now", you can order for October.. I see some hope in Murena too, they partnered with Fairphone / Gigaset, so the device support is real there, but it's still Android..

zzril 2mo ago

There is the PinePhone. It has 3GB of RAM and needs to be charged daily. It's barely enough for my use case, which is essentially "I need a browser and a shell". Haven't tried an emulator yet. Don't think I will - they're slow enough on my laptop, and I'm not interested in spending my time on reversing anti-emulator checks all day. And I don't like being forced into having a Google account, so anything that goes beyond a calculator app won't run anyway.