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I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux

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Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux

#501

Post by [deleted] »

handedness wrote: post #496
seba_dos1 wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A device which first shipped seven years ago still requiring someone to properly configure a post-processing software stack to get viable pictures out of it (with no path to viable video) kind of makes my point for me. Except it doesn't. The photos I showed are as they come by default out-of-the-box on the default OS the device ships with. You're just making things up again.

I'll put it more succinctly: there's no photo on that page I'd be satisfied with out of an $800 device in 2026. If it was actually strong at everything else, it may well have a shot as a second device, but the Librem 5 doesn't come close there.

[deleted]

Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux

#502

Post by evilduck »

WorldMaker wrote: post #256
zx8080 wrote: post #198

If only a few techies will be able to use Linux phone, banks will freely lock payment services access down to two platforms: ios and android. No way out, it's happening right now (in the name of "security", of course, but surprisingly it does not stop scam from happening). Web will be locked down too, via secureboot stack browser integration (not -s, it's already actually monopolised to chrome only, as FF lives on fu…

It's what felt like what really killed Windows Phone. Too many things became "only available" through an iOS or Android app. Windows Phone was free as in beer towards the end and there's a possibility there would have still been a small but devoted techie audience on it, if so many things weren't already so broken from disappearing/vanished app support.

Microsoft also effectively killed a beloved OEM phone brand as a tax write-off in the process of Windows Phone shenanigans, and famously paid developers to publish shovelware to their app store, which synonomized their platform with low quality apps. Neither were very bright strategies. Ballmer also decided to sit at the starting line for a few years and only decided to enter the race right around the time iOS and Android were taking their victory lap. Being free at the end is the easiest way to also be equated with dead. Remember the final death throes of the Palm Pre and PalmOS? They were basically giving those away right before the brand completely died.

Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux

#503

Post by handedness »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #500
handedness wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's difficult to frame it as something that was mid-range in its time, as many, maybe most original backers probably didn't receive theirs until much later. COVID certainly compounded things and they can't be faulted for that. Purism was a case study in how not to handle delays, and faulting consumers for being overly picky or not supporting the product financially ignores the broader context. Some people may also o…

> as many, maybe most original backers probably didn't receive theirs until much later Original backers got it in 2020-2021. It took until 2023 to catch up with preorders made already after the original campaign ended. > Purism was a case study in how not to handle delays Agreed. > faulting consumers I haven't faulted anyone. I just made a "if I had a dollar for each time..."-style remark. > It was an absolute mess a…

All fair enough.

Edited to add: The people saying, actually, my device also reboots fairly often, do not inspire confidence.

Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux

#504

Post by dosisking »

reorder9695 wrote: post #294

I've come to the conclusion that I actually really like Android as an operating system, the internals seem remarkably well thought out and ideal for the mobile use case (so long as you're running a userdebug build with the ability to adb root in when needed), most of people's issues aren't really with Android (although Google reducing the AOSP release schedule isn't a good sign). I think the real problem is Google Pl…

> the internals seem remarkably well thought out

You could not design a worse system than Android, even if you tried to design the worst system possible

Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux

#505

Post by thelastgallon »

throwawayk7h wrote: post #253
thelastgallon wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps we can think of this? Use a linux phone and an android phone as VM. For apps that are not immediately available as Linux apps, we continue to use the android VM. We continuously make better apps available on Linux and maybe, just maybe eventually switch completely to Linux phone.

The problem is that Remote Attestation allows apps to reliably detect running in an emulator. Otherwise, it's already possible with waydroid.

Then, I guess the only (immediate) option is to make sure all apps also have a website too.

Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux

#506

Post by pjmlp »

rickdeckard wrote: post #331
reorder9695 wrote: post #294

I've come to the conclusion that I actually really like Android as an operating system, the internals seem remarkably well thought out and ideal for the mobile use case (so long as you're running a userdebug build with the ability to adb root in when needed), most of people's issues aren't really with Android (although Google reducing the AOSP release schedule isn't a good sign). I think the real problem is Google Pl…

> I think the real problem is Google Play Services. It's far, far too tightly integrated in a way that it just seems like Android was designed to be unusable without. This is somehow by intention. In the ramp-up of Android adoption, Vendors and carriers started to fork Android and deviate too much from the core. Google needed a leverage to tie them to stay compatible to the ecosystem, Google Mobile Services (GMS) was…

You are missing a few steps there.

First came Project Treble, where Android was refactored to actually have a stable ABI for drivers, by pretending Linux is a microkernel, all drivers run in userspace, use Android IPC to talk with the kernel, and are implemented in a mix of C++, Java and more recently Rust.

Since Android 8, traditional Linux kernel drivers are considered legacy.

https://source.android.com/docs/core/architecture/hal

However adoption by OEMs was still not enforced, because "our partners freedom" kind of thing,

So Project Mainline come to be, where Android was further modularised and userspace components could be updated via PlayStore.

https://source.android.com/docs/core/ota/modular-system

With, as already mentioned by others, APEX as delivery format,

https://source.android.com/docs/core/ota/apex

Naturally all of this only works via PlayStore services, and is related to the "Google Play System Update", or similar, that you can find in the settings section.

Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux

#507

Post by pjmlp »

vrinsd wrote: post #454
reorder9695 wrote: post #294

I've come to the conclusion that I actually really like Android as an operating system, the internals seem remarkably well thought out and ideal for the mobile use case (so long as you're running a userdebug build with the ability to adb root in when needed), most of people's issues aren't really with Android (although Google reducing the AOSP release schedule isn't a good sign). I think the real problem is Google Pl…

I think you are in the minority of people that feel Android is a well built "OS". Maybe from an end-user point of view it "does what you want" but its underlying architecture I think is pretty poor. I have spent the past 2 years off and on modifying AOSP (for "reasons") and I am constantly amazed the poor quality of the code base and badly architected the overall system is. It's a bunch of re-inventions of the wheel…

This is exactly why it is a well built OS, versus the lack of imagination of FOSS community to move beyond copying UNIX over and over again.

Yes, it has a few warts, still much better than fitting UNIX with X Windows on a phone, with a C SDK, like FOSS keeps trying since Open Moko.

Same kudos goes to Apple by pushing Objective-C and Swift, no matter what.

Microsoft unfortunately no longer seems to know what Windows is supposed to be.

Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux

#508

Post by pjmlp »

inigyou wrote: post #471
horsawlarway wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was one of those cases where "the road to hell was paved with good intentions". I'm old enough and was very pro-android in the early days when it first released. I absolutely remember the frustrations around having vendors just REFUSE to update the OS on devices. Even things that were brand spanking new often got left to rot, and the OS updates in those days were genuinely meaningful software updates - Lot…

Why would you want a forced selection of app store? Just make it so you can execute executables. If the user wants an app store, they'll install one.

Which is why, The Year of Desktop Linux is the fragmentation it is on, versus using Android, ChromeOS or WebOS.

Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux

#509

Post by KetoManx64 »

palata wrote: post #378
djfergus wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you (and the GP post) for the insight. I wonder if further developing microg or similar would be a better use of resources than Postmarket, Ubuntu touch etc? Would that be a faster path to wider adoption and therefore better chance of challenging the Android/iOS duopoly?

Well microg is just the client side, but it still communicates with the Google servers, right?

MicroG is a open source reimplementstion of a subset of Google services, it doesn't talk to Google by default unless you enable the settings that enable it.

Re: I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux

#510

Post by KetoManx64 »

mzajc wrote: post #469
theodric wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android doesn't have it per se, but Seedvault runs on various Android-derived systems (notably but not only GrapheneOS) and does a bang-up job of backing up both applications and data

"Bang-up" is a good description of what Seedvault does, because your backup will have holes in it. Anything made with Android's backup system has the same problem. Applications can specify that they can't be backed up, and you as a user have no way of overriding that. Highlights on my smartphone are Fennec (Firefox), Termux, Cromite, Element, Syncthing, various videogames and other utilities. I absolutely want these…

Swift Backup is the modern solution for backups if you have root access. It backups apps + data. I've migrated through 4 phones at this point without any notable issues. I use it to also do weekly backups of all my app+data which then gets Syncthing'd to a server and then snapshotted to my NAS in case I want to ever come back to a app version from weeks or months back.
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