191–200 of 228 posts
I'm excited by this if I can do basic dev work from just my phone with a couple of accessories. It might mean for example, I don't need to bring my laptop home from work, in case of an urgent issue.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I very much doubt it. It doesn't run Windows stuff, so it's more of a competitor to Chromebooks, and those haven't sold like wild (less than 5% of new sales in 2016). Coupled with the fact that it restricts you in the choice of phone, and I think it's basically DOA.
"less than 5% of new sales in 2016" Given how saturated the laptop market is, that's actually not terrible.
I have pretty much given up on the prospect of running a full fledged FOSS OS on devices that don’t give access to the bootloader’s root of trust, or give you a userland that works with a kernel you can’t control (eg Crouton). It all sounds great until you start trying to do actuall work. As soon as you need anything that’s not provided by the manufacturer software image you start to notice all the foundational thing…
UBports is pretty close: https://ubports.com/ It uses libhybris, so they're limited to the original kernel or something close to it because of proprietary drivers. But it's a community project since Canonical stopped Ubuntu Touch development, and it's had a desktop mode like this for years! The PostmarketOS project is similar, with an explicit goal of mainline support where possible: https://postmarketos.org/ But yes…
You and the author of parent comment should read about Librem 5 (it is supported by UBports as well as GNOME and KDE).
I have pretty much given up on the prospect of running a full fledged FOSS OS on devices that don’t give access to the bootloader’s root of trust, or give you a userland that works with a kernel you can’t control (eg Crouton). It all sounds great until you start trying to do actuall work. As soon as you need anything that’s not provided by the manufacturer software image you start to notice all the foundational thing…
You forget there's also the security twonks in the mix. Those people in favor of forced updates and signing everything too. "Oh my god", they say "what if the user ran something bad !?".
Yes, you should be able to do some kind of override to say "yes I know what I'm doing and I accept the risks".
And... security twonks?
I have pretty much given up on the prospect of running a full fledged FOSS OS on devices that don’t give access to the bootloader’s root of trust, or give you a userland that works with a kernel you can’t control (eg Crouton). It all sounds great until you start trying to do actuall work. As soon as you need anything that’s not provided by the manufacturer software image you start to notice all the foundational thing…
Indeed. I'm on the lookout for a solid system that can boot a vanilla Linux kernel (something like an x86 laptop or ARM laptop, sub 10 inches preferably) that can make phone calls, receive SMS, and has a built in 4G modem. Does such a thing exist? I'd rather have a crap phone attached to a powerful computer, than a powerful phone that locks itself down so much that it's a crap computer.
I have pretty much given up on the prospect of running a full fledged FOSS OS on devices that don’t give access to the bootloader’s root of trust, or give you a userland that works with a kernel you can’t control (eg Crouton). It all sounds great until you start trying to do actuall work. As soon as you need anything that’s not provided by the manufacturer software image you start to notice all the foundational thing…
Indeed. I'm on the lookout for a solid system that can boot a vanilla Linux kernel (something like an x86 laptop or ARM laptop, sub 10 inches preferably) that can make phone calls, receive SMS, and has a built in 4G modem. Does such a thing exist? I'd rather have a crap phone attached to a powerful computer, than a powerful phone that locks itself down so much that it's a crap computer.
Maybe Sailfish OS?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed. I'm on the lookout for a solid system that can boot a vanilla Linux kernel (something like an x86 laptop or ARM laptop, sub 10 inches preferably) that can make phone calls, receive SMS, and has a built in 4G modem. Does such a thing exist? I'd rather have a crap phone attached to a powerful computer, than a powerful phone that locks itself down so much that it's a crap computer.
The closest thing to what you're describing seems to be the Librem 5[1]. It's a bit of an investment to get into now, but if you believe that such a product is worthwhile, I think it's worth backing even at this stage, just to show that the market is there. 1 - https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-5
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You forget there's also the security twonks in the mix. Those people in favor of forced updates and signing everything too. "Oh my god", they say "what if the user ran something bad !?".
This is absolutely the way to go for 99% of devices. Yes, you should be able to do some kind of override to say "yes I know what I'm doing and I accept the risks". And... security twonks?
I have pretty much given up on the prospect of running a full fledged FOSS OS on devices that don’t give access to the bootloader’s root of trust, or give you a userland that works with a kernel you can’t control (eg Crouton). It all sounds great until you start trying to do actuall work. As soon as you need anything that’s not provided by the manufacturer software image you start to notice all the foundational thing…
Indeed. I'm on the lookout for a solid system that can boot a vanilla Linux kernel (something like an x86 laptop or ARM laptop, sub 10 inches preferably) that can make phone calls, receive SMS, and has a built in 4G modem. Does such a thing exist? I'd rather have a crap phone attached to a powerful computer, than a powerful phone that locks itself down so much that it's a crap computer.
Though it's not yet shipped, and software/drivers seems to be mostly a community effort.