It's finally the time for Sailfish OS / Linux Smartphone OSes!
Keep Android Open
201–210 of 907 posts
Re: Keep Android Open
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is a temporary sugar rush that comes after pretty much every time Microsoft does something awful. I think what it fundamentally comes down to is that for consumer-oriented Linux to see widespread adoption, it needs to succeed on its own merits. Right now, and since forever, Linux exists in a space for the majority of consumers who consider it where they think "I might use it, because at least it's not the othe…
I agree, with a caveat. The vast number of consumers don't even know Linux/BSD or any the alternatives exist. I have zero faith in a Linux smartphone. What will happen is that there will be some GNU/FSF thing with specs that are 15 years out date and you will have to install Linux via a serial console using Trisquel and the only applications available will the Mahjong (yes I am being hypobolic).
Clearly hyperbole! We'll also have TuxPaint, SuperTuxKart (CPU rendering only, because the toolchain doesn't support Android's HAL), and a couple of (long-abandoned) LibreOffice forks that crudely adapt different subsets of the interface for a touch device.
Re: Keep Android Open
#203Re: Keep Android Open
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because we “allow nazis” doesn’t mean society will turn into an authoritarian dictatorship. People are not stupid.
> People are not stupid. There are plenty of stupid people around. We interact with them every day.
Yes. And society with good education has fewer stupid people. You don’t stop “bad” ideologies by outlawing them, you stop them by arguing for a free society and education.
Re: Keep Android Open
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
And I can just take about any Linux distro, install it to about any computer and have an extremely nice device to work, play games, and handle almost any daily task with. I call that a huge success.
Yet, still 1/4th of the time my ThinkPad with Linux wakes with a Thunderbolt display connected it dies with a kernel panic deep in the code that handles DDC (no matter what kernel version). And the latest gen finger print scanner only works between 10-50% of the time depending on the day, humidity, etc., no matter hof often you re-enroll a fingerprint, enroll a fingerprint multiple times, etc. And the battery drains…
I had so many more issues running Windows over the years than Linux. BSODs were a common occurrence, and yearly fresh installs were a thing to keep my computer usable.
I moved to Mint almost 4 years ago at this point, running it on a now fairly old Dell G5 from 2019. Runs as smoothly as ever.
I had one problem during this 4 year run (botched update and OS wouldn't start). Logging to terminal and getting Timeshift to go back to before the update did the trick. Quick and painless. I could even run all the updates (just had to be careful to apply one of those after a reboot).
I have no idea what you are talking about. Maybe I am just very lucky with Linux.
Re: Keep Android Open
#206Before buying a smartphone I tried to find an inexpensive model that supports open source OS, but I couldn't. What open OS support is ether expensive Pixels, or outdated models. The solution, I think, would be a regulation that forbids manufacturers of any chip or device CPU from making obstacles to reprogramming the device (using fuses, digital signatures, encryption etc). So if you buy a device with CPU and writabl…
> a regulation that forbids manufacturers of any chip or device CPU from making obstacles to reprogramming the device
Except regulations are now moving in the opposite direction: to mandate device locking.
Re: Keep Android Open
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yet, still 1/4th of the time my ThinkPad with Linux wakes with a Thunderbolt display connected it dies with a kernel panic deep in the code that handles DDC (no matter what kernel version). And the latest gen finger print scanner only works between 10-50% of the time depending on the day, humidity, etc., no matter hof often you re-enroll a fingerprint, enroll a fingerprint multiple times, etc. And the battery drains…
I have had worse experiences on each and every count with various Windows installs on various laptops, and yet it is the "de facto" desktop OS.
That is simply not true. I have tried to get so many people on Linux, just for it to fail when they try to do something simple, enough times in a row for them to want to go back to Windows.
I really wish it was seamless and good, but it just isn't (and frankly it's a bit embarrassing it isn't given desktop environments for GNU Linux have been in development for 20+ years).
Re: Keep Android Open
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because we “allow nazis” doesn’t mean society will turn into an authoritarian dictatorship. People are not stupid.
Hmmm. The rise of nazis to power from time to time is evidence to the contrary. Most people, might not be 'stupid'; but complacency in the population is enough to drop the guard down.
I am not arguing for complacency. I am arguing that authoritarian ideologies are won over with arguments, not by outlawing them.
Re: Keep Android Open
#209It's a lost cause.
We need to focus on pmOS: https://postmarketos.org/
With both Android and Chromium, we're ultimately at Google's mercy.
btw, does anyone know if Huawei is following along with this in their fork?
Re: Keep Android Open
#210Back in the 2007 or when it came out in Sweden I bought the iPhone and started developing for it. This was cool, new and exciting and it was fine as long as my company was paying the $100 fee every year. But then I switched jobs and worked at a company which produced mostly open source code. Suddenly I would have to pay $100 every year just to be able to put my own software on the phone ... This is why I switched to…
This situation would have been avoided if we, as community of engineers, had insisted on full and uncompromised open source (Stallmanist or GPL way) right from the start instead of going the ESR way of half-hearted open source where it's technically open but corporates get to have a free lunch and make abuses. Like most coders, I also prefer the permissive MIT/Apache/BSD licensing for most software projects but incid…
But Linux is GPL. That didn't stop Google from using it as a basis for something that is not GPL and in fact not even open source (Google Play Services).
What leverage does a community of engineers have to insist on anything? Android could be entirely closed source. So could Chrome.
It would be naive to assume that the power dynamics in our society can be fundamentally altered by a 10 line software license.