Earlier quoted context omitted.
- optional proprietary firmware on the type-C controller - firmware in the touch controller No closed source drivers in the kernel or userspace though.
What does the optional proprietary firmware on the type-c Controller get you? Just wondering.. I have the convergence mobian edition from ~January that seems to work well out of the box with the included usb-c hub. Does the convergence edition possibly come with that proprietary firmware?
PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder
291–300 of 308 posts
Re: PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah but it's $800!
And a Sony Xperia with Sailfish OS? Or is it not FOSS enough? That might be. I bought mine second hand and spent the same amount as a Pinephone would be.
Re: PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah but it's $800!
I guess you cannot expect from such a niche phone to compete with mass market products on price. That said, it's obviously a very individual decision if there's even a practical need for it.
How Samsung was thinking when they removed that project is impossible for me to grasp. They should have extended it to make linux run on the standalone S9 and they would have kicked Apple/Google in the nuts big time!
Re: PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's only if you get the Convergence package, which comes with a $25 docking station but is $50 more expensive.
Right, so $25 for the docking station and $25 for doubling the EMMC size and adding 1 GB of RAM. Not the worst deal I've heard of.
Re: PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder
#295I personally think that the effort to create open source phones is the single most important technology project going on out there. We have open source browsers, we have open source social apps, but we definitely do not have open source phones. Phones that can be truly owned and controlled by users will reshape the privacy discourse, from one of complaining and legal coercion, to one of choices and markets.
Last month they even managed to fully open parts of the modem, and do calls without the closed blob for the firmware! https://twitter.com/biktorgj/status/1357217053745250304 (edit: caveat: they might not be able to actually ship the firmware since laws on this are very strict basically everywhere) The app store(s) is a bit of a problem, but in time it might be solved. Not a big problem for me.... But I'd also like to…
It's nice that you can boycott them and use those that don't impose arbitrary technological restrictions on you, right?
Re: PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
In terms of raw profits, sure, Apple makes more off of its app ecosystem than Google does off of Android, but in terms of health of the app ecosystem itself, the Google Play app store accounted for 20 billion out of the combined total of 28.4 billion app downloads in 2018 ( https://www.techaheadcorp.com/blog/android-vs-ios/ ). I'd hardly call that failing, more like 'utterly dominating'
If that’s true, it means almost nobody pays for any software on Android. The fact a lot of people download free apps is pretty much meaningless. You may as well say a lot of people visit websites on Android.
By the same logic, you could argue that Linux is failing relative to both OS X and Windows in the server market because it's not making as much money.
Re: PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
If that’s true, it means almost nobody pays for any software on Android. The fact a lot of people download free apps is pretty much meaningless. You may as well say a lot of people visit websites on Android.
So, in your mind, the world's most active software ecosystem is failing because it doesn't extract as much capital as a system set up as a premium product ecosystem targeted at the world's elites? Interesting take. By the same logic, you could argue that Linux is failing relative to both OS X and Windows in the server market because it's not making as much money.
It’s not the world’s most active software ecosystem. The web is.
> is failing because it doesn't extract as much capital
It is failing as a business.
> as a system set up as a premium product ecosystem targeted at the world's elites?
If you consider most American teenagers to be ‘the world’s elites’, then ok.
> By the same logic, you could argue that Linux is failing relative to both OS X and Windows in the server market because it's not making as much money.
Only if it were true, but it isn’t.
Re: PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do not see OP stating that "useful" and "profitable" are mutually exclusive. I think it is widely understood that there is "usefulness" that is not satisfied by profit driven organisations, that is why we have non-profits and public institutions.
Call me cynical, but most non-profits seem to be more interested in paying salaries and fundraising than in the actual thing they're supposed to be "about". And public institutions may serve a useful function, but again seem to be mostly about civil service powerbroking and providing extremely safe employment.
There are certainly (often larger) nonprofits with a tendency of overpaying their leadership and/or pushing policies favored by their corporate funders. I would in this context however not conflate "most visible" (ie largest advertising budgets) with "most". Most nonprofits I have worked with are ran and operated by hardworking people on minimal budgets.
Re: PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure - there's a lot that can be done there; but that will also make it faster on L5 :)
Some of this is lima specific, so not really.
Re: PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The plain truth of the matter is that commercial app stores are malware distributors, and community repositories are not. Citation needed. > The commercial app store model does not work, at least not for the user. The hundred of millions of Google Play users would like to have a word with you. (rampant ad-tech and freeware model are a function of the "race to the bottom" in app pricing, conditioning users to trade…
>Citation needed. https://play.google.com/store/search?q=flashlight Click through some of these and see what permissions they ask for. Full network access, run at startup, view network connections, GPS location, read contacts, read the SD card, ads, microtransactions, the list of offenses goes on and on. All to do exactly one thing: call this function: https://developer.android.com/reference/androidx/camera/core... T…
Malware has been distributed through open-source repositories multiple times before, so by your convoluted definition of "malware distributors", open-source repositories are those, too.
> Only a shmuck or an abuser thinks that it's okay to exploit user's ignorance of the alternatives
As stated elsewhere in this thread[1], not all users use these commercial stores out of ignorance of alternatives. In addition to being a logically poor argument, it's empirically false. Moreover, the word "exploit" is divorced from reality and not applicable to the situation - giving users the choice to have commercial app stores available is clearly not exploitation from any sane viewpoint. I'm calling you out - you're using logical fallacies and emotionally-laden weasel words to try to sneak a bad argument in.
> to monetize their every waking breath and steal as much information about them as possible through deceit and propaganda.
Snuck premise: "commercial app stores all monetize and surveil their users to the maximum extent possible". There's absolutely nothing intrinsic to a commercial app store that causes any of that to happen. But go ahead, prove me wrong - show me that every commercial app store has to do this. I suggest starting with Steam, and showing me the massive amount of data-collection that you clearly think they do on their users.
> Prohibiting the exploitation of the public is not authoritarian, even if it means you don't make as much money.
Same snuck premise - show me exactly how the nature of a proprietary app store makes "exploitation" necessary - after defining "exploitation". And independent of that, your argument is still false. Trying to claim that you're "prohibiting the exploitation of the public" attempts to cover over the fact that your proposed "solution" is authoritarian (the motive has absolutely nothing to do with that categorization).