761–770 of 907 posts
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Source on most of China/India not having heard of libreoffice?
Kingsoft recently announced that WPS Office has 620M MAU users, the bulk of which is in China. Microsoft has even more Office users in China https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinas-microsoft-office-rival... So if China has heard of LibreOffice, they clearly didn't like what they've heard...
Does it also mean that developers in "bad" countries will not be able to create installable Android apps?
Perhaps Android could run sideloaded apps in a container. I know Android apps are already somewhat contained by userid.
perhaps the users should be allowed to install whatever they want on the devices they own? this "security" narrative google spews is weak, considering how much malware fails to be detected by play store
I'm going to say something that probably will get me down votes: Why do we have to beg Google to keep Android open? Seriously. So many open source projects have risen out of real and concrete needs and successfully made their way into our every day lives. A new platform needs to rise that breaks out completely from Google. I've given PostmarketOS a go (with a PinePhone) and while today I can't say it isn't a daily dr…
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Back in '99 Linux didn't run Excel/Word/Powerpoint or most games, but I ran it anyway. What others call showstoppers are for me inconveniences. I have a motorolla edge 2024 that I'll load whatever open source phone OS will work well enough to place calls and browse the web. I'll keep another phone for the rare times some corporate/government overlord requires it. Many folks who refuse to use smartphones, similarly ow…
> Back in '99 Linux didn't run Excel/Word/Powerpoint It still doesn't btw.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/free-office-on...
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I'm going to echo the sibling comment that this comparison conveniently centers on GrapheneOS while conveniently ignoring anything they don't do; for example, a firewall using root is useful, but since they've decided user's can't be trusted with control of their devices that's right out.
Eylenburg's site has comparisons between a bunch of different types of software and services with a significant focus on privacy and security rather than aesthetic customization features, etc. For the Android comparison, GrapheneOS is the only privacy and security hardened OS included in the comparison. DivestOS used to be included before it was discontinued. An OS not including Google Mobile Services and branding it…
I was arguing on the other axis. It's got good coverage of OS options, but the list of features is indistinguishable from someone saying "okay, this is what GOS does; how do others compare to each of its selling points?"
> None of the operating systems listed in the comparison include app accessible root access.
There is a difference between not shipping something by default, and being actively hostile to it.
> Giving unconstrained root access to a huge portion of the OS including the application layer including a GUI application for managing firewall rules is not a well secured to implementing it.
Agreed, that would be foolish. Thankfully, nobody is suggesting that. Just use a permission prompt, like every android root solution has for... over a decade? I don't think I've ever seen anyone not putting root behind a permission prompt, actually.
> RethinkDNS is a good example of an app providing support for local filtering via the VPN service app feature without losing the ability to use a VPN. RethinkDNS supports using a WireGuard VPN or even multiple chained WireGuard VPNs while doing local filtering of both DNS and arbitrary connections.
AFAICT, RethinkDNS demonstrates the problem quite nicely. On, say, my laptop, I can configure arbitrary VPNs and firewall rules, and I can configure them independently. Android conflates them such that - if not using root to work around the official way - your firewall app and your VPN app must be the same app. It's nice that RethinkDNS has specifically added wireguard support to its firewall app, but the fact that they needed to is a symptom of a poor design.
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> Back in '99 Linux didn't run Excel/Word/Powerpoint It still doesn't btw.
It can via Chrome. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/free-office-on...
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I mean, this strongly has to depend on what kind of software you are developing. I don't know a single developer who primarily uses Windows. Literally everyone around me uses Linux for development work (and a large portion of them also use Linux for their personal machines).
Of course. However if a developer isn't using Windows typically they are using a Mac. In corpo-world. Everyone is using Windows. If they are using Linux it would be through a VM or WSL. I guarantee none of those people are using Linux at home. So for every developer you know that is using Linux, there are many more people using Windows supplied to by their IT department.
And I guarantee that you're wrong, because I work a corporate job where I have to put up with Windows and am 99% Linux at home. (The other 1% is *BSD and illumos.)
Please, just give users the ability to say whether they want this "extra safety" control on. (If it even is extra safety, but whatever.) If they don't, they can sideload, and use F-Droid, and etc. And then we can debate whether it should be default on, or default off, and how hard it should be to turn off.
(I do not use iPhone nor Android and I won't, even if they do fix these problems.)
It'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?
Linux on mobile is fun, but really I want AOSP and its superior security model and SDK. Now I hate Google as much as the next person, but I also hate all the other Android manufacturers who just don't do better. Ideally, major manufacturers would all contribute to AOSP to make sure that it runs well with their devices. And then we could install the "AOSP distro" we want, be it GrapheneOS or LineageOS or whatever the…
I was under the impression that we got that with GSI, including that Google required a device to support GSIs in order to be certified or something like that. Am I misremembering?