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Linux phones are more important now than ever

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Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#421

Post by tim333 »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #330
3036e4 wrote: post #308

My next phone will almost certainly be two phones. One cheap and super standard Android phone to just run banking apps and similar that insists on Google Play etc. Locked down and boring, turned off most of the time. Then a second phone for everything else (terminal with sshd, emacs, emulators, media players ... the stuff that allows a phone to be the general purpose computer it should be). Looks increasingly unlikel…

Yeah, you second phone sounds like a laptop. I have a boring phone that I don't care about with basically factory settings and perhaps 3 apps. MyGov, Dropbox and something else I can't even remember right now. And I also carry a super cool small laptop that can tether to the phone and actually do stuff with. One is an appliance, the other is a computer.

I was going to say that. I carry a laptop and an iphone 13 mini. The iphone is nice in a locked down way and the laptop you can code on etc. I'm not sure I see the attraction of the non locked down phone compared to the laptop for most use cases. I guess I could location spoof pokemon go so there'd be that.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#422

Post by fsflover »

butz wrote: post #420

Forget Linux phones for a moment, let's start with Linux PDA. As telephony part is probably the hardest to solve due to proprietary drivers and regulations, how about building tiny PDA device that does everything else except "phone stuff" - get a dumbphone for calls and SMS, maybe some will have wifi tether. And after this PDA projects grows traction, it will be time to push for telephony support.

What are you talking about? The telephony part has been solved in Librem 5 and Pinephone. Also, this question has already been asked here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45257448

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#424

Post by stronglikedan »

hypeatei wrote: post #62
jeffparsons wrote: post #17

My Android phone prevents me from taking screenshots if an app author doesn't want me to. My Android phone prevents me from recording phone calls at the request of my carrier, even though it's totally legal for me to do so in my jurisdiction. I'm not loving where this is all going.

> prevents me from taking screenshots if an app author doesn't want me to The most frustrating part about this "feature" is that you don't know it's enabled until the screenshot is taken and you're left with a picture of nothing. That and some app authors thinking they're protecting you with this (referring to banking apps in particular)

> The most frustrating part about this "feature" is that you don't know it's enabled until the screenshot is taken and you're left with a picture of nothing.

That's doesn't sound right. On mine, a message is displayed saying that the app does not allow screenshots, and no image is written to the device.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#425

Post by stronglikedan »

masfoobar wrote: post #324
3036e4 wrote: post #308

My next phone will almost certainly be two phones. One cheap and super standard Android phone to just run banking apps and similar that insists on Google Play etc. Locked down and boring, turned off most of the time. Then a second phone for everything else (terminal with sshd, emacs, emulators, media players ... the stuff that allows a phone to be the general purpose computer it should be). Looks increasingly unlikel…

After just submitting my recent post --- I do like your suggestion. Maybe 2 phones are the way forward. Maybe a PAYG phone which stays at home on my network for particular needs like banking. Then a standard phone which is essentially a GNU/Linux distro.... mmm... Emacs on my phone sounds lovely!

> Maybe a PAYG phone which stays at home on my network for particular needs like banking.

If you're only doing banking at home, why would you do it on such a tiny little device?

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#426

Post by j45 »

SahAssar wrote: post #254
j45 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market doesn't care what it's coded in, its just about end user convenience and usability. Android is Linux based, and so is iOS. They focused on the UX and what it took. It leaves it possible for linux to do it again.

Android does not use what we normally call a linux userspace. iOS is not at all linux based, although it is UNIX-like.

I went to go check my memory :)

Android is based off, and runs off a linux kernel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system). Android being modified in places including userspace is a fair point, but it's linux derived.

MacOS reminded me of it's BSD intermixings. Although the BSDs are separate from Linux, both were Unix alternatives. MacOS was downported to iOS. While iOS is not Linux at it's core, it's definitely based on an alternative to unix, similar to linux.

BSD references: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Ma...

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#427

Post by liendolucas »

deivid wrote: post #285
liendolucas wrote: post #197

I tried the fantastic DroidVNC-NG (KUDOS to the author) app because I wanted to see if I could stream a whole Android phone left at home at all times. The idea was attempting to switch to PostmarketOS, so if I ever needed to use a banking app I could do it through this phone via a VNC client. You can't. Banking apps black the login screen. Even if that is ok for 99.9% of users, I know what I'm doing and I do not abso…

Have you tried scrcpy? https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy I ran this with a custom fork to expose the device screen as a VNC server for years, no problems

Thanks for reminding me about scrcpy. I knew it but I've completely forgot about it. Will give it a shot. Why the custom fork? You added the VNC support to scrpy?

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#428

Post by dzikimarian »

GuB-42 wrote: post #391
hypeatei wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> prevents me from taking screenshots if an app author doesn't want me to The most frustrating part about this "feature" is that you don't know it's enabled until the screenshot is taken and you're left with a picture of nothing. That and some app authors thinking they're protecting you with this (referring to banking apps in particular)

It is not for preventing you from taking screenshots, if you insist, you can do it with another camera. It is to prevent malware and "helpful" AI tools from doing it for you and then uploading the picture to who knows where. Signal does this too, though I think it is optional. Beyond preventing screenshots, it blacks out the window content in the task switcher, which is useful if someone is looking over your shoulder…

It's really stupid idea, that results in photos of sensitive information displayed on my device on other devices that I don't control and sensitive information wrote on paper in random places.

Password fields are inputs. Screens are bi-directional.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#429

Post by mcv »

preisschild wrote: post #256
szszrk wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to debug a google pay issue with a Bank once: - Bank told me to go to Google. - Google support told me to go to the Bank. - (... few emails later...) - Google support told me to make screenshots of the banking app and google pay. So have a second phone ready, or stop complaining :) A few years later and 3 phones later... it works again!

Google Pay requires SafetyNet verification, which means it only works with a Google-approved hard & software combination, so not with GrapheneOS for example... I hate that banks use this proprietary "standard" for NFC payments

Netherland used to have its own system for NFC payments, and it worked perfectly. Last year, all banks suddenly abandoned it and forced people to use Google Wallet instead. Of course I refused, because I don't want to share my financial transactions with an advertising company, so no NFC payments for me.

It's ridiculous the EU allows this.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#430

Post by sailmates »

Shameless plug for our association.

We focus on helping end users adopting "alternative mobile OS", we compiled a list of those alternatives on our website: https://sailmates.net/actors/

we also provide phones at-cost (aka without making benefits) for users interested in those alternatives but without the technical knowledge to flash one

https://sailmates.net/get_your_phone/

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