Will Linux phones stay around this time? • Hacker News Board

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#341

Post by jeroenhd » Sun, May 02, 2021, 2:02 PM UTC

EvilEy3 wrote: post #314

pyrale wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not parent poster, but the interface works as a plaster that obfuscates the stuff I need. Add to it the many mobile imports pushed onto the user (don't care about cloud? Well, W10 cares, and it will push it at every turn) and you get a product that's built to push how Microsoft thinks you should use your computer. My aging father has used Microsoft OSes since dos, and W10 is the first product he's having real trouble…

Original question was regarding UI. What's wrong with W10 UI?

Neither of the parents' posters, but my gripes with Windows 10 come down to these:

- Unreliability of UI elements (mixed responsiveness, difficult to see what are buttons and what are labels)

- Too much wasted space in their current design language, and related to that

- Too much distraction by visual eye candy (background images behind buttons in the email client, for example)

- Somehow, despite having every advantage in manufacturer driver support, still laggy animations

- After years, search is still bad and unpredictable, to the point I have to type "updat" to go to Windows Update because "update" will take me to Bing to tell me about how to update my PC.

- Inconsistencies. Many of those are because of the decades of backwards compatibility, which I can forgive, but even the modern Windows 10 apps have inconsistent designs[1]. Icons from four Windows versions that can all be seen on the same screen if you navigate deep enough through the seconds, even though Windows uses a unified resource loading mechanism for most system resources.

None of the alternatives are perfect, of course, but some are just _less worse_ in my opinion. Compared to the W10 shell, Gnome feels much snappier to me. Also, after finally fixing the bug that made the Windows 10 start menu break, a new start menu bug has been introduced to my system that makes it impossible to use the search bar in the start menu when it's opened start button on my left screen, breaking "winkey > program name > enter" _again_.

On Linux, audio sometimes breaks, or external monitors only work after an update. When nothing breaks, the system works great. On Windows, everything always kind of works, but not completely. Whatever I'm trying to do, something is broken in a way that's not bad enough to invest time into fixing, but still annoys me to no end. On macOS, you need to buy the expensive Apple hardware or it won't work at all. I have no need for expertly-graded colour-accurate screens sporting extreme resolutions, but you don't get any other options if you want to experience the macOS UI. I can't say much about the most recent macOS UI because I can't even run it, which makes it impossible to compare.

Of these three, I've settled with Linux, especially Gnome, as the "least broken" UI.

In the mid to late years of Windows 7, the Windows UI greatly outperformed most alternatives. With Windows 8, the system got very usable after the 8.1 update came out. After Windows 10, with the introduction of "operating system as a service", the UI seems to be in a perpetual state of "nearly finished, just needs a few more updates" because of the constant addition of more features and integrations.

[1]: Although it's been improving, I still notice stuff like this every now and then: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/7aw5ps/i_just_no...

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#342

Post by hypertele-Xii » Sun, May 02, 2021, 2:07 PM UTC

codeflo wrote: post #189

1_player wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Programming a complex system can be achieved from the bottom up: Volunteers keep adding and sharing stuff. Old stuff becomes obsolete. The system marches on.

UI design in contrast is a top-down effort. You can't just mix and match various works from people. It's about information flow and consistency. A unified interface has to be agreed upon, and then implemented across the board. And any part of the system that fails to meet that standard, essentially breaks the UI.

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#343

Post by megous » Sun, May 02, 2021, 2:12 PM UTC

slver wrote: post #328

megous wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What consumer problems this solves depends on who the consumer is. For me as a dev/consumer and a long time Linux user it solves a lot of usability issues. For people used to Android, who don't want to develop anything, or don't care about software licenses, or being able to debug and control their devices when issues happen, it solves little, compared to a random locked down Android phone. For people who just want t…

You've defined your market, it seems, as enthusiast developers who want Linux. But stock Android (without the Google services) is that already. It's FOSS, it uses the Linux kernel, and it comes with the infrastructure to run mobile apps. Even better, it's compatible with many Android apps (as long as they don't need Google Services). So what problem would another Linux mobile OS solve?

To me GNU/Linux is the simpler more familiar ecosystem. Android is big and complicated, with different tooling, different APIs, different everything.

On GNU/Linux phone I can write apps in regular electron if I like (not some cordova mess), I can access any Linux API and don't need to split my knowledge between mobile and desktop. I can write my phone apps with LAMP or node stack if I want and it would not be some limited kludge or some custom runtime. I can run any of the many apps I've already made over the years there, with miniscule porting effort. I can run postgresql on my phone to store data locally, and not invent some special data backend just for the phone.

I don't need to package anything, just copy a file and run it.

I can probably do all that with Android too, but it just seems like it would be a horrible kludge.

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#344

Post by ex_amazon_sde » Sun, May 02, 2021, 2:12 PM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #145

j-james wrote: post #114

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…

> Android is mature and secure, but it's not private

Nitpick: you cannot have security-but-not-privacy.

If a system does not protect the confidentiality of your data from the eyes of the manufacturer it is breaching security.

Security is much more than being protected from attacks. A torch application that reads your contact list and location fits squarely into the definition of trojan/spyware/malware.

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#345

Post by sergeykish » Sun, May 02, 2021, 2:13 PM UTC

EvilEy3 wrote: post #315

herbst wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't see how any of this happens all the time. If I were to maximize terminal and IDE/Browser I won't see those things either.

You've just described it, you need intermediate step of maximizing. You can get away from distraction for a while.

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#346

Post by fsflover » Sun, May 02, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #138

smhost wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I just want it for completeness. With phone hardware getting powerful enough to run mid-to-high end games, I want to be able to carry around a phone that I can hook up peripherals to and use it just like I would use a desktop. The Android ecosystem is pretty good in its own way, but it's qualitatively different compared to the Linux ecosystem for my use case. Windows and several popular Linux distros are…

Exactly, I would love a smartphone-size universal computing device, to use on the go or plug into desktop/laptop docking devices when needed. The individual parts are all there. Phones are powerful enough, we have USB-C with displayport for docking, KDE/qt has (or used to have?) an alternate small/touch GUI setup, phones can throttle their CPUs up when placed in a dock with active cooling, every individual part of th…

> I would love a smartphone-size universal computing device, to use on the go or plug into desktop/laptop docking devices when needed.

Are you aware that it's a thing already? https://puri.sm/products/librem-5

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#347

Post by fsflover » Sun, May 02, 2021, 2:15 PM UTC

EvilEy3 wrote: post #266

ekianjo wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand the desire for a Linux phone as so described in the article as a daily driver. So you are fine throwing your phone every 2 years or so once the manufacturer stops releasing updates?

Google and Samsung offer at least 4 years of support. This number will increase in the future as they decouple stuff from core OS.

Drivers are still tied to an old non-upstreamed Linux kernel, aren't they?

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#348

Post by fsflover » Sun, May 02, 2021, 2:17 PM UTC

robolange wrote: post #19

Openmoko failed for so much more than financial reasons. It's been a while since I've thought of that fiasco, but my memories: * The leadership was terrible. They had no clue what it took to make a mass market product. They just assumed that they would sell hardware and a community would provide a working operating system and apps magically. * The hardware was buggy. There was one issue that if you let the battery dr…

> They just assumed that they would sell hardware and a community would provide a working operating system and apps magically.

This is exactly how it works with Pinephone now, and it works really well.

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#349

Post by allenu » Sun, May 02, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

AussieWog93 wrote: post #182

matkoniecz wrote: post #161

Earlier 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).

In my opinion, improving user experience isn’t something that is easily done piecemeal. It’s one of those things that can require architectural changes to get right, and so it’s difficult to improve on existing projects. Fixing bugs and making things faster is “easier” in a sense because the end goal is obvious and you can target specific portions of code to make immediate improvements. Improving UX can mean making many architectural changes before being able to reap any fruit from your labor. I say this as someone who has worked on a lot of apps. I can’t imagine the difficulty of making several pull requests and getting them accepted without any clear output in the product itself.

Re: Will Linux phones stay around this time?

#350

Post by dasyatidprime » Sun, May 02, 2021, 2:26 PM UTC

mch82 wrote: post #299

konart wrote: post #212

Earlier 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…

There's a prior attempt in the form of Firefox OS, which tried to push the “Web technology as driver of local UI” thing. Some cursory looking around suggests that webOS may also have done this, but I'm not as sure (it would make sense from the name).