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The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

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Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#201

Post by dTal »

new_realist wrote: post #151
znpy wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Linux will always be behind commercial/proprietary platforms. the dumb thing of this whole situation is that 50% of the "commercial/proprietary platforms" in this market are android phones, still using Linux as kernel.

That's because the kernel is a commodity. Whether it's Linux or Mach, the user can't tell the difference. It's just plumbing.

It's not a "commodity", it's nearly 30 years of engineering that would take a multi-billion dollar investment to even come close to replicating. If it's so replaceable, why does everyone (except Apple) use Linux? When was the last time you bought an IOT device that ran, say, QNX?

All software is "just plumbing". The shiny-shiny on top is the mere tip of the iceberg and not what makes everything, you know, actually work.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#202

Post by zepto »

fsflover wrote: post #187
zepto wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is actually needed is manufacturers who remain responsible and responsive when it comes to the quality of their drivers. They need to support them much longer than they currently do, and they need to release security fixes promptly. That requires a level of investment in engineering competence that they aren’t doing because there is little incentive. How would you suggest changing that?

When the support ends, drivers must be open-sourced.

That’s just a wish.

How do you create the incentive for it?

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#203

Post by anshumankmr »

I don't think mobile phones are the best place to go with Linux. I feel tablets are better. I would be happy to pay a tonne of money if someone could install Ubuntu or some other Linux based OS on my iPad as I still feel the hardware is great but the software is still pulling it back. A full desktop experience still isn't there though what the experience on the iPad is,I enjoy quite a bit.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#204

Post by jascii »

squarefoot wrote: post #55

One point that should be repeated ad infinitum for those reading about the Pinephone for the 1st time: it's all about the freedom, not performance. One doesn't buy the Pinephone to brag about its technical achievements with friends, but rather to contribute building an ecosystem, even just by spreading the word, of people who put freedom and privacy above everything. I also should be repeated ad infinitum why its har…

In all fairness, My personal PinePhone running SXMO is a lot snappier and performant then my Android work phone with all its bloatware...

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#205

Post by muyuu »

suby wrote: post #25
pinkybanana wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want a performant Linux phone, put some skin in the game. The reality is that this ain't going to happen. There will be never enough volunteer-based work to enable the level of effort that it requires to develop consumer devices like smartphones. Commercial actors have so much money and power, and people have bills to pay. This is something where full open source model just doesn't work.

Why is Linux Desktop viable (I'm certainly very happy with it at least) but phones are too much work?

it wasn't really viable for most people when the desktop hardware/firmware environment moved fast - for better or worse it's remarkably stagnant now

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#206

Post by fsflover »

zepto wrote: post #202
fsflover wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the support ends, drivers must be open-sourced.

That’s just a wish. How do you create the incentive for it?

I think that just must be a law. I see no other possibility.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#207

Post by cptskippy »

m463 wrote: post #191
cptskippy wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However the reason this came into existence was by microsoft's design to commoditize the hardware to drive software sales of its (closed) operating system. Couldn't get past your rewriting of history just to paint MS in bad light because you don't like them.

I was not putting down microsoft, I think they did the world a favor by bringing us commodity hardware. fun article: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/

Microsoft didn't set out to commoditize computer hardware, IBM did. IBM literally wrote the manual for IBM AT (later ISA) and then shared it with the world with the intent of commoditizing add-in cards for their PC. IBM however thought that by controlling the BIOS, they would retain control of the PC. COMPAQ reversed engineered the BIOS a year later and essentially dropped control of the PC market into the lap of the owner of DOS, Microsoft.

I think Joel is taking some liberties to push his narrative. Either that or he's regurgitating some nonsense barfed in his ear during his time at Microsoft in the 90s about how it was their plan all along. Microsoft wasn't being savvy with the way it licensed DOS to IBM, they didn't seen the coming reverse engineering of the BIOS. Quite simply, they didn't license DOS exclusively to IBM because they couldn't.

After licensing BASIC, IBM later approached Microsoft to source an OS in part because they had a deadline and because their failure to license CP/M was by virtue of the fact that they were IBM. Gary Kildall heard "IBM" and basically told them to get fucked. Microsoft became their Trojan horse to prevent another Kildall situation.

There's a lot of different stories about the origins of QDOS from Microsoft paying SCP to reverse engineer CP/M to QDOS containing CP/M source code. Regardless, Microsoft didn't have an exclusive license to QDOS when it re-licensed it to IBM. It wasn't a tactical move, Microsoft didn't provide IBM with an exclusive license of QDOS because at the time it simply wasn't there's to give. They managed to acquire ownership of QDOS from SCP prior to the PC launch but again that wasn't with the intent to commoditize computer hardware.

Post PC launch and COMPAQ clone, Microsoft wasn't fully at the helm either. IBM saw the error of their ways and sought to rectify it with PS/2 and MCA. If Microsoft had assumed control then IBM probably wouldn't have teamed up with them to build OS/2. Microsoft did however understand what OS/2 meant for their own bottom line and sought to subvert IBM. I would argue that up until the mid to late 90s, Microsoft was largely protecting it's own interest from IBM who was trying to wrangle back control of the PC market.

Again, Microsoft didn't design this. It wasn't their intent from the onset, the market fell into their lap and they fought off everyone else's attempts to take it away.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#208

Post by cptskippy »

ghaff wrote: post #146
cptskippy wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However the reason this came into existence was by microsoft's design to commoditize the hardware to drive software sales of its (closed) operating system. Couldn't get past your rewriting of history just to paint MS in bad light because you don't like them.

What rewriting of history? The PC (and then volume server) era very much saw previous vertical silos tiled into a horizontal structure with x86 at the processor layer and Windows at the operating system layer. In the 1990s, a lot of computer companies were ready to concede the OS crown to Windows. (To the degree I'd argue with the statement, it's that it was as much Intel's doing as Microsoft's; Andy Grove even dedic…

Microsoft didn't design or intend the commoditization of PC hardware. It fell into their lap by happenstance and they fought to retain it.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#209

Post by tetrisgm »

fsflover wrote: post #190
tetrisgm wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I just stated that I cared about performance. Your opinion may differ.

Which performance exactly? Both phones can play video and provide smooth scrolling in Firefox. They support not too heavy desktop applications (convergence). Are you going to run GPT3 on them?

I wanna run music players, docker images, a bunch of browser tabs, password manager, play HD video, various messengers. Without compromise.

Re: The PinePhone could bring the Linux mobile ecosystem to life

#210

Post by ocdtrekkie »

jokoon wrote: post #186
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the problem is that Android is open source in concept and name only, not in practice: Code is developed in the dark, and then published later, it's not a collaborative environment. And the important part is that Google fully controls what direction Android development moves in. So they're going to design it to advantage themselves and disadvantage others. So the first problem with that is that the work to remove…

> So they're going to design it to advantage themselves and disadvantage others. How so? > you can't really "just fork it" without losing the main perk of running Android: Running Android apps. > As it is, most Android apps won't work on a device without Google Play Services Most, so you mean it's still possible to not depend on google play services. Although of course, app developers will always prefer the play stor…

> What do you mean? All phone have GPS chips, they don't depend on google for that.

So, basically, an app has to import the location functionality it wants to use: android.location is such an API, and when Android first came out, most apps used it to get location information. However, most apps on Android now import Google Location Services instead from com.google.android.gms:play-services-location which only works on a Google-flavored Android device signed into a Google account.

If an app is written for the latter, it won't be able to work on a forked Android device, because the dependency it uses to get location information is missing, regardless of the presence of the physical GPS chip.

As an example, back when I had Android, I found I couldn't use Skype without having Play Services on the device. Even Microsoft, Google's direct competitor, didn't ship Android apps that would work without Google's proprietary components.

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