my only trouble is the HW specs, I don't want a mid-low device, I am willing to spend the same I spend for a mid-high Android phone, as long as they manage to keep the basics working , ie solid browser, capable GPS navigation, port/wrap most used IM platforms. I used a Flame phone for a while, no major problems, until most IMs stopped working... people want to stay connected to everyone else... that's what 99% of users do.
Will Linux phones stay around this time?
181–190 of 491 posts
Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?
#182I'd be shocked if it took off. The FOSS development paradigm seems to be allergic to good UI design, and this is far more important for people on mobile than desktop.
It seems to me that the root cause is that OSS is often developed by people already using it. They are used to weird interface and not benefiting from it being usable by newbies. So there is much smaller motivation to improve it. And even if someone new joins project they will be often also used to weird interface once they contribute.
I think it's simpler than that.
Unpaid developers overwhelmingly prefer to work on the intellectually "sexy" problems such as encryption or compilers, to the detriment of the boring-yet-important stuff like UI improvements and hardware compatibility (let alone proper QA).
Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?
#183Android phones are Linux phones. The fact that Android marketing gets away with misrepresenting this fact is highly annoying, and it is one of the more ugly cases of the open source engine underneath each Android phone being used by what is essentially to all intents and purposes a closed source device.
This is precisely what the FOSS community has been advocating against and in my opinion isn't any worse or better than various router and other appliance manufacturers that appropriate open source tech for 98% of their usecases and then lock it up with a thin closed source sauce and some service that is grafted on to guarantee lock in and their business model.
Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?
#184I'd be shocked if it took off. The FOSS development paradigm seems to be allergic to good UI design, and this is far more important for people on mobile than desktop.
It's a case of developer UI. Has nothing to being "allergic" to "good UI design".
Being able to design something friendly to the average user, yet powerful enough to be friendly to power users, is a very difficult task to accomplish.
Developers understand the latter quite well, I think, as they themselves are power user-types. The former... well, that requires having dedicated designers who know how the average user thinks, as well as perhaps guinea pigs in the form of the average user. And that might require a lot more funding, perhaps.
Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?
#185Android phones are Linux phones. The fact that Android marketing gets away with misrepresenting this fact is highly annoying, and it is one of the more ugly cases of the open source engine underneath each Android phone being used by what is essentially to all intents and purposes a closed source device. This is precisely what the FOSS community has been advocating against and in my opinion isn't any worse or better t…
In android’s case the use of Linux is an implementation detail though.
Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?
#186I was thinking about Plan9 lately, and Mobile is THE platform for it...i think. Since you are ~always online, how cool would it be when your phone is just the terminal, the CPU/File/Authentication-Servers sitting in the DC, is that the future?
Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, Android is mature and secure, but it's not private . No one seems to talk about this much, but there are a few Android "features" that had to be designed by sociopaths. The main one for me is the complete lack of control of network traffic. Other than a VPN loopback app, which is pretty janky, there is no way to disable network traffic per app. Even with a VPN loopback, there is no way to only allow network traf…
By the way, my colleague has some crappy Huawei phone, which previously killed background apps [1], but this week received an update that changed the behaviour to simply disabling them from accessing the internet. [1]: https://dontkillmyapp.com
This is a simple but wonderful idea!
Hope more vendors follow. Google changing permission model to allow any app internet access was the stupidest decision made by a company in this millennium
Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because Android is Google's own property, it's not like a standard Linux distribution by any stretch of imagination. I'm not even against proprietary apps (just against proprietary drivers of course), it's just that transforming Android to make it behave normally is just more and more work every year. Some people (including myself) would prefer to have the same system they have on their desktop on their phone, with t…
A compatibility layer for Android apps would really make it viable. I just don't want to fight my OS to be recognized and treated as its owner. In that respect I really like how I can run Windows games on Linux via Proton and Steam; an otherwise good game can ship with all kinds of crap (like having their own launchers stuck in the system tray), but when I'm done the whole Wine-sandbox collapses and I'm back in a Lin…
>A compatibility layer for Android apps would really make it viable. I just don't want to fight my OS to be recognized and treated as its owner.
This is the real reason we need this. Without competition from free alternatives our phones will get locked down "for our benefit" harder and harder and it won't be done for our benefit.
More tracking, more of our data sold, more DRM, etc.
Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the other hand, I think designers aren't that into contributing to FOSS - traditionally designers have been more on "paid" side of computation.
Not sure about that, I just think that "design" has a lower barrier to entry. A pure designer cannot one day find themselves writing code for a major piece of opensource software. A pure programmer can find themselves arranging some UI and designing a logo on Inkscape, that won't look and feel great. Put the two together and something magical can happen, though not always, as design is so easy the programmer can be o…
It’s even worse, I think. Good UX design looks deceptively easy, but is actually incredibly hard. So hard that a lot of programmers don’t even recognize how terrible they are at it, or how high the skill ceiling actually is. They think UI design is pretty colors and rounded buttons.
In a functioning software company, the managers recognize this skill difference and simply order the developers to implement what the designers suggest. They grumpily do. (It’s obviously not always so stereotypical. I’m exaggerating to make a point.)
In a typical OSS project, no one can give orders. The programmers ignore any good design suggestions because they don’t recognize those, and implement their own crappy ideas instead. Sometimes while arrogantly dunking on the designer who tried to make a contribution. Consequently, UX quality is abysmal, and anyone who could fix that is driven away. I don’t see a solution to this.
Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems to me that the root cause is that OSS is often developed by people already using it. They are used to weird interface and not benefiting from it being usable by newbies. So there is much smaller motivation to improve it. And even if someone new joins project they will be often also used to weird interface once they contribute.
I think it's simpler than that. Unpaid developers overwhelmingly prefer to work on the intellectually "sexy" problems such as encryption or compilers, to the detriment of the boring-yet-important stuff like UI improvements and hardware compatibility (let alone proper QA).
Yes. And good UI design requires a look of work and effort to get it right. You need many skills, or a good team to do it and that's rare in FOSS.