Anyone who thinks Linux can gain a momentum on mobile should look at Samsung and Huawei efforts to get off Google. It seems almost impossible even if you already have a foothold in mobile industry.
Will Linux phones stay around this time?
331–340 of 491 posts
Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?
#332I 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?
Edit:
Wikipedia overview, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs
MIT licensed as of March 23, https://marc.info/?l=9fans&m=161650489113326
Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?
#333I'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.
Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
Android runs Linux. Android is not GNU/Linux.
Wow. So normally we say: Linux is the kernel and GNU is the userland. (Remember GNU/Hurd?) So, what is Android? Does Linux run the Android userspace, or does Android run the Linux kernel...
No, “GNU” is the operating system project, which includes the userland components, the kernel, and everything else. Just like “Windows” is not ntkrnl.dll, nor is “Windows” the sum of explorer.exe, cmd.exe, etc. – “Windows” is the overarching project name. “GNU” is the same.
People who think of “GNU” as userland components likely are influenced by the accident of 1990’s history that was the prevalence of SunOS (etc.) systems with added GNU command utilities. But the GNU command line utilities were originally meant to be for a (yet to be written) complete GNU operating system, including a GNU kernel, Hurd. But since the GNU operating system was to be compatible with Unix, and the command line utilities were good, people liked to run the command line utilities on proprietary Unix variants, and later the same happened when a Linux-based Unix system was cobbled together; the GNU utilities were there for the taking, and they were very useful in creating a complete Unix-based system, based on Linux. This probably created the confusion that GNU = userland utilities and Linux = operating system, even though almost the opposite being true.
Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?
#335This is kind of anecdotal to Meego, WebOS, FirefoxOS and all the other forms of them that happened in the past. I don't think that people will use the phone solely because it's Linux. They'll use it if it can solve their tasks at hand. Personally I think that Linux will never take off if we won't create financial incentives to make and deploy apps, additionally to fix the mess that's user rights/permission management…
Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?
#336I hope they do. I crave a high speed pocket web browser that truly belongs to me. I hate Apple so much for the abusive relationship they have trapped me in. Their phones are amazing but it’s morally corrupt not having access to the source code. We consumers, collectively, have a right to know what these things are doing. I’m addicted to my phone and it contains my whole life. I believe that in the future we will look…
Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
You judge from subjective view. Should we all? I do not like macOS and Windows experience. It is full of distractions. http://sergeykish.com/side-by-side-no-decorations.png
> It is full of distractions Define distraction in terms of computing first.
* application name
* ability to max, min, move
* list of running applications
* ability to run other applications
* content length and my progress
* actions on content
I don't need any of these. Like Amazon Echo users probably don't require ever present poster of available actions. Instead I have places — several of work places, generic browsing, messaging, media controls, services.
Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you, but I think discoverability for me is a lot more critical for software I use infrequently versus something I'm glued to several hours a day.
I learned about the space bar trick after 2 years of using iPhone after my son showed me a post on a forum. This made fixing typos much more quicker.
Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You might have hit on a solution here: Electron, or, ideally, a really nice mobile-first web browser with access to APIs provided by the underlying Linux OS. I’m essentially imagining a phone OS that decouples the front-end and backend design. Implement the apps as APIs. Implement the UI using HTML5 so more designers can use their existing skills to contribute & the GUI layer can be replaced more easily. The experien…
Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is full of distractions Define distraction in terms of computing first.
Popups, weird confirmation dialogs nobody reads, configurations hidden in X different uis without console interface, the amount of screen space wasted for whatever reasons and the possibility that the wasted space contains text and icons that suddenly start to blink and move (attention seeking apps), .... I feel distracted working on Windows or Mac. As if someone is putting stones everywhere and i have to mangle inbe…