Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 225 posts

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#151

Post by new_realist »

znpy wrote: post #136
m463 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a purism owner, and a long-time linux user... I think that is a fantasy statement. Theoretically, there could be an open platform like the PC (with usb + pcie + ATX case/power supply + etc..) with open interfaces. However the reason this came into existence was by microsoft's design to commoditize the hardware to drive software sales of its (closed) operating system. With cellphones all of those interfaces are bei…

> I think Linux will always be behind commercial/proprietary platforms. the dumb thing of this whole situation is that 50% of the "commercial/proprietary platforms" in this market are android phones, still using Linux as kernel.

That's because the kernel is a commodity. Whether it's Linux or Mach, the user can't tell the difference. It's just plumbing.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#152

Post by disqard »

new_realist wrote: post #151
znpy wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Linux will always be behind commercial/proprietary platforms. the dumb thing of this whole situation is that 50% of the "commercial/proprietary platforms" in this market are android phones, still using Linux as kernel.

That's because the kernel is a commodity. Whether it's Linux or Mach, the user can't tell the difference. It's just plumbing.

This is an excellent observation.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#153

Post by fragileone »

eric__cartman wrote: post #111
xhkkffbf wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, it's also priced dramatically lower. It's not fair to compare a current iPhone, priced at more than $1200 on the open market, with the Pine Phone priced at $150. This is where they chose to bring a phone to market and I think it's a smart move. They'll attract a bigger audience and make it easier for people to sim-swap and experiment. When the distros get good enough, they can price out higher end hardwar…

I'm all for having tuxphones but even a $100 Android phone creams the Pine Phone in every aspect regarding performance. The sad truth is until the soc vendors don't start properly supporting a mainline Linux kernel and offer open source drivers we will be stuck with devices that haven't left the "wow this is cool but I wouldn't use is as my only phone" territory.

Unfortunately this is even less likely in future once Fuschia matures and Google are able to replace the kernel with it on Pixel phones.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#154

Post by int_19h »

Valkhyr wrote: post #150
int_19h wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue it's the other way around - FOSS UI/UIX is two decades ahead , because it didn't participate in the UX regression that has plagued us in those past two decades. This isn't entirely true, because e.g. Gnome has been an enthusiastic adopter of all those anti-patterns. But, unlike other platforms, you still have other DE options to choose from.

We can all discuss whether or not a certain UI/UX pattern is appropriate or not (and I certainly agree that many of the changes Apple have made in the last decade have been for the worse). But all personal preferences aside, Linux UI/UX feels to me at less consistent than macOS - both aesthetically/visually (between different UI toolkits etc) and in terms of behaviour (keyboard shortcuts, how well they work with touc…

I would agree with this sentiment across different DEs/toolkits, but the reality of the modern Linux desktop of a normal user is that it's just not that common. And within a single DE, they're plenty consistent. More so than Win10, say.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#155

Post by goodpoint »

new_realist wrote: post #151
znpy wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Linux will always be behind commercial/proprietary platforms. the dumb thing of this whole situation is that 50% of the "commercial/proprietary platforms" in this market are android phones, still using Linux as kernel.

That's because the kernel is a commodity. Whether it's Linux or Mach, the user can't tell the difference. It's just plumbing.

This can be also phrased as: software freedom does not reach the end user.

That's why GPL and AGPL exist.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#156

Post by advael »

I've moved my sim card over to a pinephone, and I have to say, the main pain point right now is battery life. I think the thing is a great little linux system, and while the UX of things like Phosh isn't perfectly slick, it can come with time and I mostly use my phone as a way to get interrupt-level messages and serve cellular data as a wi-fi network anyway. But power management for this device seems really immature, so the battery lasts maybe a couple hours in real-world usage at best. I think that's down to power management ultimately, so I think it needs to be a development priority if adoption is to pick up

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#157

Post by zepto »

spankalee wrote: post #98
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will definitely be more secure, but probably drastically less open, since there won't be any GPL code underneath for people to demand copies of. Fuchsia, once it reaches the level of polish required of proper Google products, will be as closed as iOS. And security will be the justification for it.

The Fuchsia code itself is open, and while a vendor could make changes and not release them, a project like Pine wouldn't do that. That would indeed be a major motivation to use a Pine-like over other vendors.

Just like Darwin, the open source kernel of iOS…

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#158

Post by goodpoint »

spankalee wrote: post #69
fabrice_d wrote: post #35

The biggest threat to Linux on phones could be Fuchsia. If/when Google decides to switch to a Fuchsia base for Android, all the chipset vendors will follow suit and that will make it even harder to find chipsets that can be used with a Linux kernel - upstream or not. That will dry up the amount of effort put into making Linux a good mobile platform. Maybe the stable binary api of Fuchsia drivers will be usable on Lin…

Fuchsia is a much more secure and updatable platform. It'd be wonderful if there was a Pine-like for Fuchsia, especially if they can use open drivers.

> Fuchsia is a much more secure

Secure from what? One of the major risks in the mobile phone threat model is surveillance carried by the vendor, the OEM and so on.

Closed source drivers, OS components and apps are themselves the attack vector.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#159

Post by goodpoint »

amelius wrote: post #70

What sandboxing/app-deployment systems does Linux offer today, and which one is the most promising? Are they secure, and do they offer fine-grained permissions?

Firejail is by far the most mature for sandboxing desktop/phone applications.

It's available on Mobian and is shipped with hundreds of profiles for popular applications.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#160

Post by 2pEXgD0fZ5cF »

mbreese wrote: post #133
kazen44 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i disagree, KDE has one, if not the best ui out there. it is consistent, customizable and not a resource hog. windows's UI has been a mess since the XP days, and osx is atleast consistent, but hides a lot of functionality in name of clean design.

And I disagree with you. And it’s not because I think KDE is horrible… it’s not. I prefer the Gnome style but KDE is quite polished. But I disagree because it is really rare to have a completely unified UI with Linux. We have separate applications for Gnome and KDE for most tasks. Sometimes one is better than the other, or one has a feature you need, but you have many different competing applications. If you want to…

> it is really rare to have a completely unified UI with Linux

I mean neither does Windows 10, which basically does a split between at least 3 different styles. Tacked on top of everything sits the metro post Windows 8 style, but is a toy UI for many aspects, click on a random setting and it is likely you will then encounter settings in the windows XP/7 style.

The third one is the older Windows XP style UIs, which you still encounter once you have to venture outside of regular user territory (registry editor and the like).

Post reply on HN