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LinuxPhoneApps

alpha.linuxphoneapps.org

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Re: LinuxPhoneApps

#11

Post by miohtama »

yyyk wrote: post #6
marcodiego wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux phones are much more about freedom, privacy, control, ownership and choice than about java not being cool. I watch the linux phones progress since qt greenphone and your comment is the worst one I've read about it more than a decade.

My comment wasn't about the Linux phone (I get what you wrote) but about Linux phone apps . The smarter play would have been to fork AOSP, but if not that, at least do not write the userland in C.

I worked with Maemo (N900) and OpenMoko, back in a day. Before that with Nokia and MyOrigo. You are 100% correct, Apps need to be tightly coupled with the underlying UI framework. Outside AOSP, Only Flutter and Qt are credible contenders with the amount of developers and resources. It takes at least a team of 50 - 100 people to make a UI framework for a smart phone. Gnome and KDE can barely make it to desktop.

Also, anything interpreted like JavaScript or Python is too slow for UI apps. Not because of CPU, but because of startup delay caused by the IO hit and getting the code running.

Re: LinuxPhoneApps

#12

Post by bubabug »

yyyk wrote: post #6
marcodiego wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux phones are much more about freedom, privacy, control, ownership and choice than about java not being cool. I watch the linux phones progress since qt greenphone and your comment is the worst one I've read about it more than a decade.

My comment wasn't about the Linux phone (I get what you wrote) but about Linux phone apps . The smarter play would have been to fork AOSP, but if not that, at least do not write the userland in C.

If your goal was to make a worse version of android, that would be a smart play.

But mobile linux can be more than a dumbed down mobile OS. Writing apps in this way makes it capable of "convergence", which means it can run a full desktop OS.

Re: LinuxPhoneApps

#13

Post by SahAssar »

yyyk wrote: post #6
marcodiego wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux phones are much more about freedom, privacy, control, ownership and choice than about java not being cool. I watch the linux phones progress since qt greenphone and your comment is the worst one I've read about it more than a decade.

My comment wasn't about the Linux phone (I get what you wrote) but about Linux phone apps . The smarter play would have been to fork AOSP, but if not that, at least do not write the userland in C.

If you define "Linux Phone" as including AOSP (android) then the term is basically meaningless since by that definition we have had linux phones for 15+ years.

The "linux phone" movement is not about creating another AOSP fork.

Re: LinuxPhoneApps

#14

Post by yyyk »

marcodiego wrote: post #7
yyyk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment wasn't about the Linux phone (I get what you wrote) but about Linux phone apps . The smarter play would have been to fork AOSP, but if not that, at least do not write the userland in C.

Using AOSP really looks like a smart move. F-droid is already a finely curated app repository and very clear about anti-features. Nevertheless, I don't think linux on phones, apart from the UI, is very different from linux on the desktop. So it can be stable and secure. If anbox manages to run well on these distros then there will be no lack of apps. The UI will take some time to mature but, after all, not using AOSP…

The threat model is different, we really do have to lock down phones a bit more because they're used for user identification (but I think not to the draconian level Google and Apple do).

The result of not using AOSP is having to reimplement stuff, and it's not like this ecosystem has a lot of free labour just waiting around. Yes, Google would have diverged, but so would the community. If you're already willing to go for a Linux phone, compatibility probably isn't your main concern.

I still wish them luck. With the way Apple and Google are going, there may be no other choice eventually.

Re: LinuxPhoneApps

#15

Post by yyyk »

bubabug wrote: post #12
yyyk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment wasn't about the Linux phone (I get what you wrote) but about Linux phone apps . The smarter play would have been to fork AOSP, but if not that, at least do not write the userland in C.

If your goal was to make a worse version of android, that would be a smart play. But mobile linux can be more than a dumbed down mobile OS. Writing apps in this way makes it capable of "convergence", which means it can run a full desktop OS.

Should we want convergence? 'Converging' OSs so far are horrible either for desktop or phone (e.g. Windows 8).

Ordinary apps could have been kept in Java while still allowing a full developer environment with the typical C tools (something Android/iOS aren't interested at all to do).

Re: LinuxPhoneApps

#16

Post by rvz »

vorpalhex wrote: post #5

Glad to see us moving more and more to a linux phone ecosystem. Obviously this ecosystem is still early but exciting to see the foundations being laid.

True. The way to get the users interested and increase adoption is by having the majority of Android apps being available on the Linux phone ecosystem fully working.

On top of that, they need to be quick or else Google will steam-roll them silently with Fuchsia and the Flutter ecosystem right under everyone's noses.

Re: LinuxPhoneApps

#17

Post by nynx »

Frankly, open-source phones need more powerful processors. The current ones can barely handle modern websites (and before people get in a tizzy about how the web is bloated, that’s too bad and people need it to work well since there won’t be a fleshed-out app ecosystem).

Re: LinuxPhoneApps

#18

Post by pjmlp »

bubabug wrote: post #10
yyyk wrote: post #2

Linux phone apps: "Let's reimplement all of Android's basic app system in a less secure language because Java isn't cool and Unix should be always in C"

We don't need to reinvent anything, just adapt desktop programs to a smaller screen. You can still run java programs if you prefer using a slow, overcomplicated programming language. However I will stick to GTK4.

Maybe glade will support Gtk4 still in this decade, meanwhile I rather use JetPack Composer.

Re: LinuxPhoneApps

#19

Post by pjmlp »

nine_k wrote: post #8
marcodiego wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux phones are much more about freedom, privacy, control, ownership and choice than about java not being cool. I watch the linux phones progress since qt greenphone and your comment is the worst one I've read about it more than a decade.

I don't see how AOSP is not free enough, or is not Linux enough underneath. I think these programs are much less resource-hungry than a JVM-based phone suite. Though yes, I wish it wasn't C or C++, but Rust, Zig, Golang, D, what have you. The problem is that all GUI toolkits worth considering in the native space are either deeply C (GTK, fltk), or deeply C++ (Qt), and adapting them to these languages is neither idiom…

Android doesn't use a JVM, and does a mix of JIT and AOT with PGO.

https://source.android.com/devices/tech/dalvik/jit-compiler?...

Re: LinuxPhoneApps

#20

Post by marcodiego »

pjmlp wrote: post #18
bubabug wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need to reinvent anything, just adapt desktop programs to a smaller screen. You can still run java programs if you prefer using a slow, overcomplicated programming language. However I will stick to GTK4.

Maybe glade will support Gtk4 still in this decade, meanwhile I rather use JetPack Composer.

AFAIK glade won't support Gtk4. Cambalache and drafting are major promises for that: https://blogs.gnome.org/xjuan/2021/02/28/cambalache/ https://gitlab.gnome.org/chergert/drafting
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