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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

#491

Post by croon »

amelius wrote: post #378
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.

> My Android phone prevents me from taking screenshots if an app author doesn't want me to. It's worse. An app author can even be notified if a screenshot was taken.

The Amazon app does this: "Amazon Shopping detected this screenshot."

I'm assuming (hoping) it's Android letting me know and not the app passive aggressively side eyeing me.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#492

Post by fsflover »

masfoobar wrote: post #490
fsflover wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run Andoid apps on my Librem 5 using Waydroid.

Is Librem 5 you main or only phone? Interested in your opinions -- good and bad.

It's my only phone. I gets hard when somebody tries to force an Android app on me. Waydroid works but takes a lot of disk space and is not very convenient (Purism promised usability updates though); the battery life is only enough for a day with light usage (but you can replace the battery without tools); js-heavy websites are slow (but NoScript fixes that). Calls, texts, taking pictures and video recording work. I never tried MMS, but some people made it work, too.

I'm very happy with the desktop Firefox (with Ublock Origin!), full terminal, all Debian packages and the full desktop mode. Also with lifetime updates and independence from the megacorps.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#493

Post by fsflover »

jovial_cavalier wrote: post #488
fsflover wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> npm packages This has nothing to do with what I said. npm is not a trusted or a FLOSS repository. > we don't live in fairyland When did you see a malware in Debian's repositories last time?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor

It never came to Debian and was a work of a tremendous effort. This almost never happens, and when it does, practically nothing can protect you.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#495

Post by phendrenad2 »

codethief wrote: post #315

While I share the concerns about Android, it feels silly to me to go back to Linux's (nonexistent) security model and bad mobile UI/UX. Why not try to fork AOSP or GOS (for broader device compatibility, even if it means giving up some its sexy security properties)? Note that this could include packaging Linux GUI applications as Android APKs (with some additional glue code and Wayland/DBus integration of course), so…

What nonexistent security model? Isn't Android just stock Linux with an interface layer on top?

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#496

Post by Hackbraten »

globular-toast wrote: post #250
Hackbraten wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also think just not using a phone as much is a viable solution. Most European banks force you to use your phone for 2FA if you want to pay your bills, no matter if you're sending the transaction from your computer or your phone.

Yeah the point of this subthread is having a shitty device just for that crap. I don't need to pay my bills at a moment's notice from anywhere in the world. In fact, I refuse to.

This is not about being able to pay your bills at a moment's notice from anywhere in the world.

This is about being able to pay your bills at all.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#497

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

throw83834948 wrote: post #165
ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My government (Denmark) refusing to let me use their digital identity app because I don't want to accept Google's or Apple's TOS, and Google helping them enforce that via remote attestation services. Luckily there are alternatives in the form of code displays and NFC chips. However, next year I won't be able to watch porn unless I verify my age using a smartphone, no alternatives are planned. Or rather, I have the "f…

During covid I was not allowed to leave house. Permits were only issued to local SIMs, which I did not had! If I respected the rules, I would starve to death!

>If I respected the rules, I would starve to death!

respecting rules is more important that saving your life. /s

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#498

Post by Arch-TK »

fossman wrote: post #472
Arch-TK wrote: post #412

But like, it won't matter how many viable Linux phones there are if the government tells you that if you want to pay your taxes you must first buy a piece of hardware blessed by an american corporation and running blessed software which doesn't let you control the device in order to access the tax payment portal. Because if you don't pay your taxes, the government will insist that you go to prison. The problem isn't…

I agree. Is there any country that requires an app to file your taxes?

Maybe, who knows. It was an example. All I know is countries like Denmark and maybe soon all of Europe seem completely carefree with regard to making citizenship depend on device ownership so...

Quite a few banks in the UK now require an app, and that's a liability for me as who knows when they'll arbitrarily decide to lock me out of my account because I am not running stock google android.

The bank I'm with uses a hardware token which I can tolerate because, while it does require a codependence on hardware, at least the hardware is provided for free by the bank. I can also manage my account over the phone without the hardware.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#499

Post by codethief »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #495
codethief wrote: post #315

While I share the concerns about Android, it feels silly to me to go back to Linux's (nonexistent) security model and bad mobile UI/UX. Why not try to fork AOSP or GOS (for broader device compatibility, even if it means giving up some its sexy security properties)? Note that this could include packaging Linux GUI applications as Android APKs (with some additional glue code and Wayland/DBus integration of course), so…

What nonexistent security model? Isn't Android just stock Linux with an interface layer on top?

Uhh no? One of the biggest differences probably is that Android applications are heavily sandboxed:

> Applications are security principals. The main difference to traditional operating systems that run apps in the context of the logged-in user account is that Android apps are not considered to be fully authorized agents for user actions. In the traditional model typically implemented by server and desktop OS, there is often no need to even exploit the security boundary, because running malicious code with the full permissions of the main user is sufficient for abuse.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3448609

And then there's also:

- No root access (by default)

- Verified Boot

- Hardware-backed key store and hardware attestation

- User profiles are encrypted independently of each other

- …

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#500

Post by fragmede »

jbstack wrote: post #479
fragmede wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you just need capital The capital itself isn't going to do anything sitting in the bank. It's used to procure a team of PhDs, an team of SWEs, DevOps, business people, HR, marketing, access to a GPU supercomputer (renting a couple of 5090s off Vast.ai ain't gonna cut it). For, say, $50 million, you could get the blueprints to an Android phone and port your choice of Linux userland and get drivers working, and then…

That's not the point I was making. Both operations need capital. But capital isn't the only barrier to entry. With a LLM, you can spend the money to develop the model, then spend some money marketing it, and if you get enough paying customers to cover your costs and a bit more then you're done. Done in the sense that you're now competing on the same level (roughly) as other LLM providers. Even if it's at a smaller sc…

You make a valid point, that there are some key apps that are necessary for a new smartphone OS to be viable as a daily driver for the unwashed masses. But that's also just a matter of money. If you roll up to each of the major app's companies with a big enough pile of money, and ask the right person there to port it to your new OS, I bet you could make it happen. (If you don't know the right person, capital also lets your get access to them as well.)

As far as being an "also ran", I mean, that's going to be true for any LLM as well. Your second rate LLM is also always going to be seen as inferior just because it isn't ChatGPT, regardless of any other actual merits. Human psychology is fascinating because they aren't rational. Every time I get fooled into buying some stupid piece of crap because there was an advertisement that tickled my brain in the exact right way, I see just how irrational everybody is, given just the right set of words. Why do I bring this up? We could waste countless hours arguing over the infeasibility of a phone OS vs the infeasibility of an LLM, it's all in our heads, but doing so wouldn't get us closer to the goal, which is dominated by the singular question: can you virtualize enough, and pass through enough of android, to get banking apps to run in a VM on some real hardware, so that dom0 can be debian?

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