Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

androidauthority.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 321 posts

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

#221

Post by bryanlarsen »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #51
bryanlarsen wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Chrome and Aluminium are Linux, so which are you trying to say is better? Or are you saying more conventional Linux is superior? Gnu/Linux is a good term for that.

When someone says "Linux" in isolation, they mean a conventional Linux distribution. Only extreme pedants and Richard Stallman call it "GNU/Linux".

They didn't say Linux in isolation, they said it on a comment on a story that mentions two Linux non-conventional distributions and has no mention of conventional Linux. Therefore the presumption is that they're referring to the Linuxes in the article.

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

#222

Post by alnwlsn »

zacharyvoase wrote: post #17

AluminIum you say?

My dad always pronounced it a-luna-min, so my whole life I thought that there were 3 pronunciations, and the fact that there are only two correct ones feels strange to me. Not sure where he got that from, maybe he had special metal from the moon.

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

#223

Post by jxdxbx »

vbezhenar wrote: post #91
KetoManx64 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty openly known that GNOME is hostile to its own userbase and their preferences,, why continue to use it instead of KDE or any of the other 10 DE environments?

I don't want extensible software. KDE is terrible in that regards. They have miriads of options, that's too much for me. I want opinionated software. I don't like GNOME, but it's the lesser evil and I learned to deal with its issues. Also I don't like that KDE does not have its native launcher. I need to install some SDDE stuff which works under Xorg or something like that and looks ugly. Pretty weird stuff all that.…

Cosmic.

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

#225

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#228

Post by pbmonster »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #164
lmz wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per app isolation vs single user account.

There isn't that much demand for that on Linux because the apps aren't adversarial. If you install Facebook on your phone, you want it locked in a jail where it can't suck up everything on your device and send it to Meta. If you install the Signal desktop app on Linux, it's open source and doesn't do that. And to the extent that you use the likes of Facebook it's the web version. Meanwhile per-app isolation is a pain…

> You download a picture in a browser, crop it in a photo editor and attach it to an email. All three apps need access to the same picture. Your backup app needs access to everything.

On Android, each of those three apps would ask you for file system permissions on first launch. Your choices are "full access to user files", "limited access" (usually one directory and all its sub-directories), "full access, but only this time", and "no access".

Both the "save file as" and the "open file" dialog only show directories the app can access, and have a button at the top that reads something like "change storage scope" or "allow more access".

The system even has options where apps can request access to e.g. all photo/video/media directories - the photo editor would probably request only those to begin with.

Also, apps can pretty much never access each others config/keys/etc files - which they never should. If they need to communicate with each other, they're supposed to use interfaces like the Content Provider, Intents or Bound Services.

I think it's pretty well designed.

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

#229

Post by marginalia_nu »

exabrial wrote: post #227

An operating system ran by an advertiser is the worse thing you could ever run. Chromebooks were awesome because they were impossible to screw up. Then the advertising department rammed itself in there.

To be fair, we're like an inch from verification cans on Windows 11 already.

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

#230

Post by rjknight »

sofixa wrote: post #219
kasabali wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it's application vendors who hanged the users, google just gave them the rope" isn't the good excuse you think it is

Are we really comparing bank applications forbidding screenshots and controls of their apps to lower the risk of certain types of exploits/attacks with hanging people ?

No, we are using this thing called a metaphor. What's being compared is the relationship between the hangman and the ropemaker, and the relationship between the app developer and the OS vendor. There is no comparison between taking screenshots and hanging people.
Post reply on HN