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

LineageOS will be a continuation of what CyanogenMod was

lineageos.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 118 posts

Re: LineageOS will be a continuation of what CyanogenMod was

#71

Post by djsumdog »

syshum wrote: post #63
TylerE wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely the answer to Android's woes isn't more platform fragmentation.

I have never understood the desire to have 1 Homogeneous Platform with no variety, no customization, no personality. To have a large corporate overlord dictating how I use the device I "bought" I see these same statements in the Linux Desktop world where everyone bitches about how All the Distro's are different, and how the Arch way is different from the Debian Way, and different from Red Hat, Canonical etc. That is…

It'd be nice if you could just customize Android on ARM and have lots of different spin-offs in the same way you have various x86/64 and PPC Linux distros. I wrote about this:

http://penguindreams.org/blog/android-fragmentation/

The problem is with all these ARM boards. As other comments have pointed out, vendors have tons of binary blobs and shim layers that link them to the kernel. Nvidia/AMD do this too with their video drivers, as well as Intel/Broadcom/Atheros with their Wi-Fi/BT chips. The difference on the PC platform is that it's standardized enough that you can run any kernel/distro on almost any x86/64 board and it will boot and give you a console.

Android vendor kernels are patched to hell, duct tape, just enough crap to get to production style software. They don't submit patches upstream because their code is often junk. ARM SoC are also all incredibly different.

You can download x86/64 versions of Debian, Gentoo, Void, Slackware, whatever and it will at a minimum boot on any PC hardware made in the past few years (probably even a Pentium if you use a 32-bit distro). Not all your hardware will work, but it will at least boot. ARM makes no similar guarantees. Cellphones don't support device trees, and even if they did the whole device tree system is a mess of its own.

Google has ultimate control over all vendors with the OHA. They can mandate standard kernels and drivers across devices. They won't though. There's simply too much money in requiring people to replace devices every two years.

Re: LineageOS will be a continuation of what CyanogenMod was

#72

Post by djsumdog »

tonyplee wrote: post #53
swiley wrote: post #23

If google wants Android to survive as a platform, they should be directly giving money to projects like this, they are what make it bearable.

Maybe make it a law that company needs to maintain certain level device security via software update for N years for internet connected devices. Or they are required to release those device's source code to (and pay for) the "communities" for the maintain the security updates. If they don't do it, they are responsible to damage caused by those devices because of security issue or the customer's loss of data/privacy d…

It's really though to legislate anti planned obsolescent legislation without people screaming socialism. This is essentially what is needed.

Re: LineageOS will be a continuation of what CyanogenMod was

#73

Post by italiancheese »

unethical_ban wrote: post #68
Qub3d wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

google offered to buy Cyanogen. ( http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/10/google-reportedly-tri... ) Also, recall that Cyanogen (the company, not the mod) said that they were going to "put a bullet in Google's head". I bet Google has tried to offer support to them and Cyanogen turned it down.

I can't fathom why Google would buy them. Why not make a version of AOSP that people can actually use, like Cyanogenmod?

My guess is doing that will not be in their best interest.

Re: LineageOS will be a continuation of what CyanogenMod was

#74

Post by BuuQu9hu »

kelnos wrote: post #64
BuuQu9hu wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only solution seems to be reverse engineering the blobs and mainlining Linux kernel drivers, without both of those security updates get much much harder to impossible. I've no idea how to achieve that on volunteer time, maybe a crowdfunded reverse engineering and mainlining org could work?

One problem is that RE is time consuming (regardless of whether or not someone is paid to do it), and the useful life of phones tend to be much shorter than other kinds of devices, so digging apart a blob on one phone is likely to have a limited useful lifetime. And for phones that the manufacturer actively supports, often a new version (especially if it's a new Android version) means new blobs to RE. When you consid…

The alternative; devices with no updates and no support outside their original OS, doesn't seem very attractive either.

Maybe we can create incentives for manufacturers to do this work themselves, but I doubt that will ever happen, unless maybe we start getting obnoxious viruses like there were on the PC at one point?

Re: LineageOS will be a continuation of what CyanogenMod was

#75

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

gsnedders wrote: post #3

Who's going to make sure LineageOS users get security updates in a timely manner? Is anyone going to be paid to work on it? Any large OSS distribution is going to have a fairly continuous stream of security fixes to ship to their users, and that takes a fair amount of time, and I'm always concerned about whether any new project (okay—it's not quite new, but they have a fraction of the number of developers they did tw…

Something I've wondered about: why does Android require you flash a ROM to update the system?

When you buy a windows laptop you'll usually get a bunch of vendor-specific crap, but after doing a clean install you can just pick up the drivers on their website and it'll all work fine. Why isn't this an option with Android?

Re: LineageOS will be a continuation of what CyanogenMod was

#76

Post by sangnoir »

quadrangle wrote: post #69
jacob019 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developer time is not a finite resource. People contribute to projects that they are passionate about. Fragmentation can encourage engagement. It's not like unpaid xfce and kde developers would start kernel hacking if everyone converged on gnome, even if it would benefit the ecosystem. Many would pursue other hobbies.

Developer time is finite. Fact. There's no basis to question this. There's limited numbers of people on the planet and they have limited time. Sure, the number of contributors can grow (we haven't reached peak-developer numbers), but it actually grows more with success than with failure. Fragmentation is fine if there's actually enough resources for at least one project to really succeed. In most cases, and probably…

Volunteer open source developers are not interchangeable cogs ('resources') to be redeployed across projects at will by anyone except themselves - they are volunteers and work on stuff they are passionate about.

The F/OSS 'community' has some of the most entitled folk on this blue planet - I'm yet to hear anyone suggest pet shelter volunteers work together on a mega-shelter instead of "wasting effort on duplicate roles".

Re: LineageOS will be a continuation of what CyanogenMod was

#77

Post by sangnoir »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #43
swiley wrote: post #23

If google wants Android to survive as a platform, they should be directly giving money to projects like this, they are what make it bearable.

as has been discussed elsewhere, the ability to avoid using google services is a serious disincentive for google to support cyanogenmod.

> as has been discussed elsewhere, the ability to avoid using google services is a serious disincentive for google to support cyanogenmod.

The same argument applies to AOSP (cyanogenmod's upstream), but that hasn't stopped Google from supporting it.

Re: LineageOS will be a continuation of what CyanogenMod was

#78

Post by meddlepal »

syshum wrote: post #63
TylerE wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely the answer to Android's woes isn't more platform fragmentation.

I have never understood the desire to have 1 Homogeneous Platform with no variety, no customization, no personality. To have a large corporate overlord dictating how I use the device I "bought" I see these same statements in the Linux Desktop world where everyone bitches about how All the Distro's are different, and how the Arch way is different from the Debian Way, and different from Red Hat, Canonical etc. That is…

You're not the target audience.

Re: LineageOS will be a continuation of what CyanogenMod was

#79

Post by frik »

gsnedders wrote: post #3

Who's going to make sure LineageOS users get security updates in a timely manner? Is anyone going to be paid to work on it? Any large OSS distribution is going to have a fairly continuous stream of security fixes to ship to their users, and that takes a fair amount of time, and I'm always concerned about whether any new project (okay—it's not quite new, but they have a fraction of the number of developers they did tw…

I want to read the full story, including how Microsoft was involved with Cyanogen(Inc/Mod).

(yes, it was involved, use Google to search for previous news.

For example at one point CyanogenInc partnered with MSFT so they have a Microsoft sponsored Android flavour with several Microsoft apps preinstalled. https://cyngn.com/press/cyanogen-announces-strategic-partner... http://www.businessinsider.de/why-microsoft-cuddled-up-to-cy... Now it smells like the "embrace, extend and extinguish" strategy that MSFT is using with great success for decades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish

So I hope at one point we will get the full story.)

Re: LineageOS will be a continuation of what CyanogenMod was

#80

Post by XorNot »

sangnoir wrote: post #76
quadrangle wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developer time is finite. Fact. There's no basis to question this. There's limited numbers of people on the planet and they have limited time. Sure, the number of contributors can grow (we haven't reached peak-developer numbers), but it actually grows more with success than with failure. Fragmentation is fine if there's actually enough resources for at least one project to really succeed. In most cases, and probably…

Volunteer open source developers are not interchangeable cogs ('resources') to be redeployed across projects at will by anyone except themselves - they are volunteers and work on stuff they are passionate about. The F/OSS 'community' has some of the most entitled folk on this blue planet - I'm yet to hear anyone suggest pet shelter volunteers work together on a mega-shelter instead of "wasting effort on duplicate rol…

That's a false equivalency. No one suggests IT staff deploying hardware are B duplicating effort because there's a physical correlation between results and resources.

But 10 different desktop environments are each solving the same problem 10 different ways, consuming 10 developers time, when a collaborative project would be able to reduce that by a huge factor and benefit everyone.

I would also suggest it's naive to think charity's don't have opinions about the duplication of effort. 10 storage animal shelters might very well waste funding and resources which could otherwise support 2 or 3 better equipped ones.

Post reply on HN