What happened to running what you wanted on your own machine?
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Re: What happened to running what you wanted on your own machine?
#2The one word answer to this?
Linux.
Re: What happened to running what you wanted on your own machine?
#3> Sadly, over the years, Android has been steadily walking back that openness. The justifications are always reasonable on their face. Security updates need to be mandatory because users are terrible at remembering to update. Sideloading apps need to come with warnings because users will absolutely install malware if you let them just click a button. Root access is too dangerous because it puts the security of the whole system and other apps at risk. But inch by inch, it gets harder to run what you want on the device you paid for.
As much as I want to agree with this author (and do, to an extent) they are also providing the exact and honestly-pretty-good reasons for why this is happening: computers have breached containment, and they did it a long time ago. Computers are not just for us weird nerds anymore and they haven't been for some time; they're tools for a larger, more complicated, more diverse userbase, many of whom are simply not interested in learning how to computer. They just want shit to work, reliably. Random software on the Internet is not a path to reliability if you also don't know how your thing actually works.
I mourn this too but let's not pretend it's simply what happened because corporations are evil (though they are for sure that).
Re: What happened to running what you wanted on your own machine?
#4I was there, 3000 years ago, when we started ringing the bell about “trusted computing”. Honestly it’s not as bad as I expected
Re: What happened to running what you wanted on your own machine?
#5> Sadly, over the years, Android has been steadily walking back that openness. The justifications are always reasonable on their face. Security updates need to be mandatory because users are terrible at remembering to update. Sideloading apps need to come with warnings because users will absolutely install malware if you let them just click a button. Root access is too dangerous because it puts the security of the wh…
The security argument is the best one to shove all this monopoly practices, but I doubt there are real proof of that somewhere. These days, I think I have most trust in a small app developed by a folk in a garage than something produces by Meta or Google
Re: What happened to running what you wanted on your own machine?
#6Real world parallels to this abound. You cannot build whatever house you want on your own property, for example; it must meet strict building codes and be verifiably structurally sound. What ever happened to building what you wanted on your own land?
Re: What happened to running what you wanted on your own machine?
#7Will LineageOS and other similar ROMs have this limitation as well, or will it be baked into the hardware?
Re: What happened to running what you wanted on your own machine?
#8> Sadly, over the years, Android has been steadily walking back that openness. The justifications are always reasonable on their face. Security updates need to be mandatory because users are terrible at remembering to update. Sideloading apps need to come with warnings because users will absolutely install malware if you let them just click a button. Root access is too dangerous because it puts the security of the wh…
Exactly: smartphones and tablets are designated safe spaces for 'normies'. If you want to do serious computing, serious machines (laptops, desktops, servers) are still available.
Re: What happened to running what you wanted on your own machine?
#9The one word answer to this? Linux.
As long as common PCs can boot an iso we should be good to go.
Re: What happened to running what you wanted on your own machine?
#10> Sadly, over the years, Android has been steadily walking back that openness. The justifications are always reasonable on their face. Security updates need to be mandatory because users are terrible at remembering to update. Sideloading apps need to come with warnings because users will absolutely install malware if you let them just click a button. Root access is too dangerous because it puts the security of the wh…
It's particularly hard to swallow these justifications when advanced by Google considering how much malware there is on the Play Store. I have never once had an issue with malware installed via F-Droid but have had multiple issues with apps from the Play Store. But apparently it's F-Droid I need to be protected from. (Granted, the Play Store malware I experienced was in the nature of "pop up ads on your phone randomly", not stealing your bank credentials, but it shows how little actual vetting goes on.)
I do understand the broader point. I know a few elderly people in particular who are walking targets for cybercrime. But I wish we had more differentiation. Locked down, easy to use phones for those who want or need that, and more open phones that act similar to laptops for those who know what they're doing (or, in any case, are willing and able to bear the risk).