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

Keep Android Open

f-droid.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 764 posts

Re: Keep Android Open

#221

Post by echelon »

good8675309 wrote: post #175
fermigier wrote: post #62

It is a disgrace how Google has managed this situation. To recap the storyline, as far as I understand it: last August, Google announced plans to heavily restrict sideloading. Following community pushback, they promised an "advanced flow" for power users. The media widely reported this as a walk-back, leading users to assume the open ecosystem was safe. But this promised feature hasn't appeared in any Android 16 or 1…

Personally I'm excited about the death of Android, now resources can be put toward mainstreaming and maturing the Linux Phone ecosystem Hopefully 2026 or 2027 will be the year of the Linux Phone

> death of Android

death of personal computing freedom, sovereign compute, and probably soon our ability to meaningfully contribute to the field as ICs?

A lot of really bad things are happening to our field, and Google is one of the agents responsible for much of it.

Re: Keep Android Open

#222

Post by anonzzzies »

microtonal wrote: post #81
paxys wrote: post #73

The fundamental problem is that we are relying on the good graces of Google to keep Android open, despite the fact that it often runs run contrary to their goals as a $4T for-profit behemoth. This may have worked in the past, but the "don't be evil" days are very far behind us. I don't see a real future for Andrioid as an open platform unless the community comes together and does a hard fork. Google can continue to d…

A hard fork is not needed. Non-Google Android do not have to enforce this requirement. It's more important to get as many people on alternatives like GrapheneOS as possible. And fund them by donating to them. If every ~0.5 million GrapheneOS users donated 10 Euro per month, they would be very well-funded.

Get a large phone vendor to get a flagship phone with Graphene or so on the market. Otherwise nothing will happen. Even starting with the smaller ones like Blackview would do something. But almost no one will do that because users are said to want android; like my parents care... But they will care of course when their banking app stops working... That is the real issue imho.

Re: Keep Android Open

#223

Post by siddled »

shevy-java wrote: post #210
codethief wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong disagree. Linux, its permission system and its (barely existent) application isolation are lightyears away from the security guarantees that Android brings.

This assumes that the mentioned systems are the only security considerations on a Linux system. Clearly this is not the case so I am unsure why you omit other security-related aspects of Linux here.

Android, being based upon the Linux kernel, has all those and its own app permission system built on top. Linux on its own comes nowhere close to this.

Re: Keep Android Open

#224

Post by eldaisfish »

chrneu wrote: post #216
spacebuffer wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me as a desktop linux poweruser, I find this potential transition pretty intimidating, I've never flashed a phone with a custom rom let alone switch to a completely different OS, and I am not sure if the phone can even be reset to its original OS, if things go south.

It's relatively easy. It's basically a command for each step you want to do and it tends to fail gracefully nowadays. If you can install a linux distro you can flash a custom rom on a well-supported phone. If it were more mainstream I could see GUI apps to manage all this for people, if they don't already exist. Idk I just use adb.

That describes relatively easy for you, but not for the average person who can’t even be bothered to change the default ringtone.

Re: Keep Android Open

#225

Post by cosmic_cheese »

codethief wrote: post #204
good8675309 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'm excited about the death of Android, now resources can be put toward mainstreaming and maturing the Linux Phone ecosystem Hopefully 2026 or 2027 will be the year of the Linux Phone

Strong disagree. Linux, its permission system and its (barely existent) application isolation are lightyears away from the security guarantees that Android brings.

Desktop OSes and their derivatives are woefully behind in this regard, and unfortunately the will to bring them up to par is incredibly weak. Of those in mass use (Qubes OS is neat but its user base isn’t even a rounding error), macOS probably does the most, but it’s still lagging behind iOS and what’s been implemented has come with much consternation from the technically inclined peanut gallery.

I understand some amount of reticence with commercial OSes, but there’s no justification for being against it on open Linux based desktops and mobile OSes. We really need to get past the 90s-minded paradigm of everything having access to everything else all the time with the only (scantly) meaningful safeguards coming in the form of *nix user permissions.

Re: Keep Android Open

#229

Post by Joe_Cool »

iugtmkbdfil834 wrote: post #203
good8675309 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'm excited about the death of Android, now resources can be put toward mainstreaming and maturing the Linux Phone ecosystem Hopefully 2026 or 2027 will be the year of the Linux Phone

I.. don't think it will happen. For several reasons too. It is not that I don't think Android will change substantially, but the following constraints suggest a different trajectory: - AI boom or bust will affect hardware availability - there is a push on its way to revamp phones into 'what comes next' -- see various versions of the same product that listens to you ( earing, ring, necklace ) - small LLMs allow for mi…

I think adoption will hinge on whether existing Android apps will just run on it with something like waydroid/anbox or not.

Gaming on Linux took off with Proton. Linux on phones might go the same path.

Re: Keep Android Open

#230

Post by shafyy »

post-it wrote: post #201
retired wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing restricting side-loading isn't legal in the European Union! Not a problem here. Apple had to enable side-loading on their EU-based phones and so will Google if they restrict it.

Yes it is, and no they didn't. Apple has to allow (heavily restricted) alternative app stores, and I'm not clear on whether any actually exist right now.

My understanding is that how Apple is restricting the alternative app stores is also illegal in EU, so I don't thinkt this is the end of this story.
Post reply on HN