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Linux phones are more important now than ever

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Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#151

Post by j45 »

internet2000 wrote: post #107
joshdavham wrote: post #101

Pardon my potentially naive question, but would Samsung ever develop their own OS? I imagine they're not necessarily happy about some of the latest changes to android.

Bada and Tizen. They've been trying for 15 years. Tizen in particular is as Linux as it gets. Long story short: it's not something the market wants.

The market doesn't care what it's coded in, its just about end user convenience and usability.

Android is Linux based, and so is iOS. They focused on the UX and what it took.

It leaves it possible for linux to do it again.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#152

Post by j45 »

lutusp wrote: post #88

Total agreement with the article's conclusions. I'm an Android developer who once had about six apps listed in the Play Store. But as time passed, maintenance became more and more baroque, and a simple Android version change required me to rewrite all my apps or lose my listings. Like many developers, I gave up. Then Google announced a decision to disallow sideloading (not clear when this will take effect) and many t…

Makes me think about mobile first web apps that just run out of the browser.

Maybe Palm Pre's had it right all along with the html/js based OS in WebOS at that time. Just a little ahead of their time for OS, and missed challenging the iPhone by a bit.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#153

Post by nine_k »

hypeatei wrote: post #62
jeffparsons wrote: post #17

My Android phone prevents me from taking screenshots if an app author doesn't want me to. My Android phone prevents me from recording phone calls at the request of my carrier, even though it's totally legal for me to do so in my jurisdiction. I'm not loving where this is all going.

> prevents me from taking screenshots if an app author doesn't want me to The most frustrating part about this "feature" is that you don't know it's enabled until the screenshot is taken and you're left with a picture of nothing. That and some app authors thinking they're protecting you with this (referring to banking apps in particular)

Now consider the fact that an arbitrary other app can take a screenshot clandestinely, via API. Would you like it to happen when you're looking at the summary of your accounts? your list of credit card numbers?

The problem is that certain actions should only be acceptable if initiated by the user, physically. Think of the way Ctrl+Alt+Del works in Windows. This, of course, is not possible if you don't have enough fingers for the action, or something; here comes the loophole of assistive technologies, widely (ab)used for that on most platforms.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#154

Post by kmeisthax »

What you want isn't a "linux phone", what you want is a gun to put to the developers' heads so you can scream "let me tamper with your shit".

If you just want "a phone OS", AOSP is still there and worth forking. But you don't want a phone OS, you want apps. And nobody is going to write apps for an AOSP fork (see also: Fire Phone). Actually, nobody is going to write apps for anything other than Android and iOS, just in general (see also: Windows 10 Mobile). App development for two phone platforms is already enough of a pain in the ass. Furthermore, Google will absolutely be anticompetitive and de-Google your phone OS whether you want it or not.

But more importantly, if you do manage to create a third platform that people actually use, you are going to immediately be inundated for requests to lock down the phones in exactly the ways you object to, because a certain subset of app developers want or need that kind of DRM. And you're not going to get those apps without a DRM story that matches Google and Apple's.

Streaming apps want encryption to the monitor.

Games want a kernel the user can't modify.

Banks want your phone to be a credit card you can't do fraud with.

Hell, when macOS got support for native iOS apps, they specifically designed it so that iOS App Store apps won't run if you modified the OS in any way. And even then, a lot of iOS app developers specifically blocked macOS usage. The phone vendors aren't selling an OS, they're selling DRM.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#155

Post by Nursie »

derbOac wrote: post #127
Nursie wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of major banks worldwide have apps, and they usually require un-rooted phones. People here seem to think this is some sort of Orwellian attempt to control them, but the reasons are more mundane and technical - many of them (mine included, from two countries) use security facilities on the phone to secure your accounts. For example, my HSBC UK app has replaced the little calculator thing they used to ship, and u…

> going back to having to have a dedicated security device. ... and ...? There are ways to implement security without tying it to one of two app stores. Companies might even get creative and figure out hardware standards for secure verification that are portable, open, and give the user control. They figured out sim cards, and are worried about GAI they created taking over the entire world, they could figure this out…

> ... and ...?

Personally I prefer the device convergence rather than having to have another thing to keep track of. Plus the added factor of biometrics over pure hardware 2FA.

But you do you, as they say, the point is there are tradeoffs.

> There are ways to implement security without tying it to one of two app stores.

It's not just about the app store - people want to be able to run these on rooted devices, which is an end run around the security guarantees these apps currently rely on.

> Companies might even get creative and figure out hardware standards for secure verification that are portable, open, and give the user control.

I wish you the best of luck in this endeavour.

I hope that they already aren't relying on client-side security any more than they have to. I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with the APIs around biometrics to know if there's a useful way a server can use the onboard devices to verify a user's identity without relying on client-side security in one way or another though.

It's true on desktop we have stuff like FIDO2 authentication using hardware tokens, which are supported on open systems like firefox on linux. I'm sure it's not insurmountable or unthinkable to do similar on phones. At the least there would need to be a system of remote attestation for the biometric hardware, and a way for it to provide a verifiable response to a remote server. Far from insurmountable, but someone will need to actually do it.

Goes against FOSS still though if there are processors in the system which can't be user-controlled, and biometric chips which perform remote attestation (see the recent discussions on how passkeys are fundamentally OSS-hostile).

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#156

Post by rjdj377dhabsn »

akagusu wrote: post #5

Linux phones are useless for common people until they can run government and bank apps.

I think the only viable solution is going to be to have 2 devices: one for government and financial services and one for everything else, where you still have some hope of privacy.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#157

Post by socalgal2 »

jeffparsons wrote: post #17

My Android phone prevents me from taking screenshots if an app author doesn't want me to. My Android phone prevents me from recording phone calls at the request of my carrier, even though it's totally legal for me to do so in my jurisdiction. I'm not loving where this is all going.

It's not just phones. Try asking ChatGPT/Gemini anything the hive mind in SV doesn't want you to ask. Try asking it anything the hive mind as decided has only one possible answer. It's only going to get worse

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#158

Post by bobthecowboy »

maheart wrote: post #126
VariousPrograms wrote: post #116

As someone willing to put up with all manner of nonsense (overpriced/underpowered hardware, clunky UI, endless troubleshooting), battery life on mobile Linux devices alone prevents me from using them in the real world. Is there a single Linux phone/tablet that can last an 8 hour day of actual use? Librem/Pinephone/Juno can't. My uConsole can't. Different category, but my MNT mini laptop lasts like 4 hours and can't b…

>Is there a single Linux phone/tablet that can last an 8 hour day of actual use? What's "actual use"? Furi FLX1 has the best battery life I've seen on a Linux phone. Idling, it last 3+ days. I'm sure it could survive 1 whole day of "actual use". I also think almost any (official) SailfishOS device would last a day of actual use.

I've been considering this as my Android exit plan (as part of a slow rolling de-googling effort, even before the recent "sideloading" news). Are you using it as a daily driver? I'm sort of surprised it doesn't get brought up more.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#159

Post by rjdj377dhabsn »

anticorporate wrote: post #49
akagusu wrote: post #5

Linux phones are useless for common people until they can run government and bank apps.

I've heard this argument before and yet I've never understood it. What government apps do people run? Why do you need to access your bank account on your phone? Is this some payments model that's just not common in my country where we still use physical credit cards for everything?

> Why do you need to access your bank account on your phone?

Many banks require you use their app to do anything, e.g., make transfers, approve debit card transactions, register your biometrics to unfreeze your account, etc.

And no, choosing a bank without these requirements isn't possible in some countries.

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