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Google's new 'Aluminium OS' project brings Android to PC

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Re: Google's new 'Aluminium OS' project brings Android to PC

#171

Post by thiht »

matejdro wrote: post #165
liendolucas wrote: post #158

No one tech-savvy wants this. We are already sick of Google's Android lockdowns on mobile phones, and now coming after laptops and desktops? What's that going to be like? Will developers have to beg to have control over devices they own? Will we be locked down on the store and have to manually install "unverified" software? Will I be able to take screenshots at will on MY computer, or get a black screen because Googl…

I guess this is more meant as an replacement for Chrome OS? That one is already pretty locked down, so switching to Android does not change much.

I always assumed Chrome OS was some kind of Android build anyway, but apparently not

Re: Google's new 'Aluminium OS' project brings Android to PC

#172

Post by Muromec »

gf000 wrote: post #132
devinprater wrote: post #65

Android accessibility is so not ready for PC. Navigate with keyboard and TalkBack and you'll hear "selected" everywhere which is redundant, since if TalkBack is speaking a UI element, it is selecting it for action. Apps aren't ready for keyboard either. They really, really aren't ready for a launch next year. But I'm sure they will. And few blind people will care because (almost) every blind person uses windows or an…

I don't really get your point. The accessibility story can surely be improved, but it's absolutely 100% better on Android, than what we have on GNU/Linux today, so at the end of the day it's just one more choice for end-users. And keyboard and the like will also get a chance to get fixed if more people are interested in the platform.

Accessibility is not the additional feature that can be improved later. If it's not there when you sell the product, you can be fined.

Re: Google's new 'Aluminium OS' project brings Android to PC

#173

Post by pbmonster »

dlt713705 wrote: post #169
pbmonster wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can conceive a couple of ways. GrapheneOS-style sand-boxing for every app is long overdue in Linux. I'd love to have it's granular permissions for every single service. I'd love to have the battery management, the unified settings UI, the effortless disk encryption UX and key management. Could you build it with SE Linux and a lot of glue? Yes, but nobody has. And doing it well, everywhere, would take a lot of hours…

> the unified settings UI You will never have a UI capable of encompassing all the settings available in Linux. You will only have a UI capable of configuring your desktop experience, which is just a small subset of the full Linux experience.

Is it unreasonable to ask "why not"? I like the state of Android's (as packaged by GrapheneOS) settings UI much better than any other settings system, period.

It's all in one place - I can't think of a single thing I would want to configure that isn't found in that one dialog. It doesn't always make sense, but it's searchable, and the search works.

Re: Google's new 'Aluminium OS' project brings Android to PC

#174

Post by exasperaited »

thiht wrote: post #171
matejdro wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this is more meant as an replacement for Chrome OS? That one is already pretty locked down, so switching to Android does not change much.

I always assumed Chrome OS was some kind of Android build anyway, but apparently not

ChromeOS has been converging on Android for a while but never quite gets there. They are asymptotic ;-)

It rather looks like Aluminium OS is the intended solution.

I don't see any problem with it being "locked down", in the sense that it doesn't sound any worse than Chrome OS or Android.

The open question is whether any open source release will happen worth a damn.

Re: Google's new 'Aluminium OS' project brings Android to PC

#175

Post by pjmlp »

wiseowise wrote: post #162
pjmlp wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, that is the Year of Windows Gaming, running on Proton.

Semantics.

Those semantics hide that game studios keep using Windows workstations, developing Windows games, creating kernel drivers, targeting Windows users as customers, and it is up to Valve to make those games run on SteamOS.

Re: Google's new 'Aluminium OS' project brings Android to PC

#176

Post by carlosjobim »

liendolucas wrote: post #158

No one tech-savvy wants this. We are already sick of Google's Android lockdowns on mobile phones, and now coming after laptops and desktops? What's that going to be like? Will developers have to beg to have control over devices they own? Will we be locked down on the store and have to manually install "unverified" software? Will I be able to take screenshots at will on MY computer, or get a black screen because Googl…

[flagged]

Re: Google's new 'Aluminium OS' project brings Android to PC

#177

Post by jfoster »

carlosjobim wrote: post #176
liendolucas wrote: post #158

No one tech-savvy wants this. We are already sick of Google's Android lockdowns on mobile phones, and now coming after laptops and desktops? What's that going to be like? Will developers have to beg to have control over devices they own? Will we be locked down on the store and have to manually install "unverified" software? Will I be able to take screenshots at will on MY computer, or get a black screen because Googl…

[flagged]

The market for operating systems naturally falls into oligopolies.

It's usually not financially feasible for third-party applications to support more than a few of them.

Users tend to have strong preferences toward operating systems that have lots of applications built for them.

Re: Google's new 'Aluminium OS' project brings Android to PC

#178

Post by wkat4242 »

pjmlp wrote: post #33
wkat4242 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only the first netbook came with Linux. The Asus EEEPC 701. This was mainly because it was so underpowered it couldn't run windows (and some nonresizable dialogue boxes didn't even fit on screen). But they dropped it with later models.

As owner of an Asus 1215B, that lasted from 2009 until last year, having gotten disk and memory upgrades during its lifetime, going through all Ubuntu LTS upgrades, bought with it pre-installed, that is certainly not true.

Ah ok, here they were all windows in the shops after the first one.

I can imagine also because Asus' distro was pretty terrible, it probably gave some backlash against Linux. I think the only reason they made it was to make it work on that tiny screen.

I spent ages at the time trying to make macOS work. I had it booting but due to the CPU being below 1 Ghz the timing screwed up and timing related actions happened in slow motion (this was a timing divider issue not sure to the slowness itself). I even messed with the kernel code trying to get it to work.

On a later Acer netbook I got it running perfectly though.

Re: Google's new 'Aluminium OS' project brings Android to PC

#179

Post by wkat4242 »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #50
wkat4242 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only the first netbook came with Linux. The Asus EEEPC 701. This was mainly because it was so underpowered it couldn't run windows (and some nonresizable dialogue boxes didn't even fit on screen). But they dropped it with later models.

The 701 did run XP, even came pre installed with it on some models in later 2007!

Really? Also something I didn't see where I lived. But XP was really bad on it because the screen didn't fit many fixed-size windows.

Re: Google's new 'Aluminium OS' project brings Android to PC

#180

Post by carlosjobim »

jfoster wrote: post #177
carlosjobim wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The market for operating systems naturally falls into oligopolies. It's usually not financially feasible for third-party applications to support more than a few of them. Users tend to have strong preferences toward operating systems that have lots of applications built for them.

But here we're talking about developers. They will have other platforms they can use.

And I don't believe for a moment that Google will have any success with this new project. They simply aren't capable anymore of making projects such as these work. MacOS, Windows and Linux will stick around long after this project is abandoned.

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