[HN Gopher] Will Linux phones stay around this time?
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Will Linux phones stay around this time?
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 319 points
Date : 2021-05-01 22:43 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (linmob.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (linmob.net)
| electricant wrote:
| 2022 is the year of the linux phone!
| robolange wrote:
| Openmoko failed for so much more than financial reasons. It's
| been a while since I've thought of that fiasco, but my memories:
|
| * The leadership was terrible. They had no clue what it took to
| make a mass market product. They just assumed that they would
| sell hardware and a community would provide a working operating
| system and apps magically.
|
| * The hardware was buggy. There was one issue that if you let the
| battery drain fully, you could not get the phone to recharge it
| and had to use an external charger. Another issue was that the
| GPS receiver was accidentally surrounded by metal, so barely
| functioned. There were all kinds of problems with the radios in
| the early days. Oh, and that touchscreen -- I guess it was
| typical of pre-capacative touchscreens, but it was hard to use
| without a stylus and impossible to hit widgets near the edge of
| the screen.
|
| * The hardware was massively underpowered (compared to
| competitors) by the time the Freerunner actually shipped. Weak
| CPU, little RAM, 2G cellular radio in an era when 3G had become
| standard, so like 5kbps max data transfer.
|
| *Because of the failure of Openmoko leadership, the community
| fragmented a hundred ways. This meant that there were a dozen or
| more "distributions" of an OS for the phone, and none could do
| more than one or two of the things a typical user wanted in a
| phone at that time. Then there was finally a big bloated
| distribution (SHR if memory serves) that packed in enough
| libraries to make a more or less "usable" device, but doing so
| maxed out the phone's meager storage and RAM, making it nearly
| impossible to do anything "smart" with it.
|
| * Once again, in absence of strong UX leadership, the community
| resorted to dumping X11 apps without modification on the tiny
| screen. Think impossible to read fonts and dialog boxes that ran
| off the screen with no scroll capability. The vast majority of
| devs seemed to only use it by hooking it up to a computer via USB
| networking and SSHing into it.
|
| As a technical user, I could live with this. Kinda. Sorta. Using
| it was an exercise in masochism. I was embarassed ... no ...
| humiliated when a nontechnical person compared their iPhone with
| the OpenMoko that I had talked up so much (before receiving it).
|
| I had planned to destroy the phone in some fantastic fashion
| (e.g., melting it with a laser) as soon as I got a real phone.
| But by the time I could afford an Android, I was so done with it
| that I just dropped it in the trash (after wiping it, of course).
| fsflover wrote:
| > They just assumed that they would sell hardware and a
| community would provide a working operating system and apps
| magically.
|
| This is exactly how it works with Pinephone now, and it works
| really well.
| serf wrote:
| >I was so done with it that I just dropped it in the trash
| (after wiping it, of course).
|
| next time you have an urge to throw a battery-equipped device
| into the trash(!?), consider donation.
|
| you may not like the device but someone out there may be
| thrilled at the chance to de-solder some useful components.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| Or at least send all electronics for recycling. Those
| precious metals don't belong in landfills.
| cocoa19 wrote:
| It might also be illegal to throw away lithium batteries in
| the trash, depending on where you live.
| robolange wrote:
| Most of the hardware I've ever owned I still have, either in
| working order or as component boards decorating my walls. I
| recall my emotion when disposing of the Freerunner was that
| it didn't deserve an epic funeral (the laser) or even the
| honor of being properly disassembled.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| The problem with throwing any kind of device that includes
| a lithium-ion battery in the trash is that lithium-ion
| batteries tend to catch fire when crushed. Like, say, in a
| trash truck's compactor.
|
| Everyone: please do not do this. Dispose of your battery-
| powered devices somewhere that's equipped to handle them.
|
| (Now, the Openmoko phones had a removable battery, so it's
| possible you didn't toss that out with it. Then it's "just"
| e-waste rather than explody e-waste.)
| robotbikes wrote:
| Yeah I had one and I donated it to a university computer
| science department in South America. I'm not sure if the
| students ever got much use out of it but I was happy to pass
| it on to someone who might have fun tinkering with it.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| From the same era, I had Nokia's N770, N810 and N900. All three
| were based on Linux, and they were great.
|
| I also had the Palm Pre and Pre 2, both of which were based on
| Linux (and apps were made with HTML, CSS, and JS in 2009!), and
| those were also great.
| h4waii wrote:
| Man I miss those days.
|
| I've still got an N770, N810, 3x N900s and an N950 developer
| device that I run battery maintenance on every 4 or 5 months.
|
| Had a Pre 2, and still have an HP Veer. Making modifications
| to the system to customize or change things was so easy and
| straight forward, I really miss this; though building
| LineageOS / AOSP for supported devices kinda fills this niche
| for me now.
| wjertyj wrote:
| Not only were the Maemo/Meego devices based on Linux, but
| they embraced a lot of desktop standards. Telephony/messaging
| all went through Telepathy, UI was GTK under Maemo, then QT
| under Meego. The app store was just an apt/dpkg frontend.
| robolange wrote:
| After getting rid of my Freerunner, I had one of the the
| first Android phones (HTC?) briefly, then got a Nokia N900. I
| liked the OS, although it's my memory that it wasn't as fully
| open sourced as the OpenMoko. I did enjoy it, even though the
| device always felt too thick to be comfortable in my pocket,
| and the touchscreen cracked badly after a minor impact. I
| ended up using a cheap Nokia candybar phone for a year or so,
| before eventually getting another Android phone.
|
| I wish Nokia had continued developing the Maemo OS.
| pabs3 wrote:
| Maemo Leste continues to develop Maemo:
|
| https://maemo-leste.github.io/
| moepstar wrote:
| I recall that, even if only with disgust.
|
| I've also had a Freerunner, in theory the ideal pocket computer
| with Linux on it.
|
| Practically, you could barely have a phone call with all the
| echo going on and navigation-wise it took _ages_ to find its
| GPS fix (no AGPS iirc) - the shielded antenna, mentioned down-
| thread, probably didn't help.
|
| And yeah, whatever you had on screen was probably way too small
| to be read or interacted with :(
|
| I think i got rid of it on eBay after a few weeks...
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| > They just assumed that they would sell hardware and a
| community would provide a working operating system and apps
| magically.
|
| No, not really. They had an exact opposite problem - they made
| several iterations of the default operating system, starting
| almost from scratch at each iteration, which burned quite a lot
| of energy and willpower of the community, which in turn focused
| their efforts on alternative distros like SHR or QtMoko.
|
| > had to use an external charger.
|
| Fortunately, you could use a standard Nokia BL-5C battery with
| the Freerunner. You didn't even need to have an external
| charger, just a charged spare battery would suffice. Also, IIRC
| this was an issue only with the first batch (so a small
| minority of produced phones).
|
| > Another issue was that the GPS receiver was accidentally
| surrounded by metal, so barely functioned
|
| Not really. The GPS problem was because of microSD clock
| interference. You could solder a resistor on microSD slot pins
| or use a software workaround that clocked the reader down
| enough to not interfere.
|
| > it was hard to use without a stylus
|
| I have programmed quite a lot on that touchscreen with OSK
| without using a stylus. It worked fine, but yeah, it would be
| much better if the screen weren't recessed (N900 did that well,
| that touchscreen was excellent).
|
| > so like 5kbps max data transfer.
|
| More like 100kbps.
|
| > Then there was finally a big bloated distribution (SHR if
| memory serves) that packed in enough libraries to make a more
| or less "usable" device, but doing so maxed out the phone's
| meager storage and RAM, making it nearly impossible to do
| anything "smart" with it.
|
| Uhm, no? SHR was a light OpenEmbedded-based distro with
| E17-based window manager. It was one of the snappiest and most
| reliable distros for that device, I used it for a few years as
| a power user and was very happy with it. And maxing storage
| wouldn't be an issue anyway since you could boot from an SD
| card.
|
| Eventually I've switched to a N900 because of the Freerunner's
| slowness. If Glamo wasn't so slow I guess I would use it for a
| few years more before switching. I still have it and it still
| works, although I don't really use it anymore.
| robolange wrote:
| Whoops, good call, that should have been 5kBps. GPRS had
| something like 85kbps theoretical maximum transfer speed, but
| the fastest I ever got anything to transfer over cellular was
| about 5kBps. Still, even in that era, that was absurdly slow,
| and unusable for anything web-related.
|
| > SHR was a light OpenEmbedded-based distro
|
| I might have been thinking of a different distribution. There
| was one that brought in all of the GTK, Qtopia, and
| Enlightenment libraries, so you could run pretty much
| anything that could compile on the Freerunner, but it was
| quite slow and consumed most of my SD card (which at the time
| was probably only something like 1GB).
|
| I guess if you were a hard-core hardware and systems hacker,
| the OpenMoko was an acceptable platform. For anyone else, it
| was a terrible product and the company that made it was
| obviously doomed to fail.
|
| Maybe if it had come out at least 2 years earlier, it might
| have had some hope of carving out a sustainable niche, but by
| the time it did come out, the expectations set by iPhone and
| Android made it impossible to find a product-market fit, even
| among open source lovers like me. Maemo, while if memory
| serves not fully open sourced, was far closer to something
| sustainable, but then Nokia voluntarily imploded :-(
| ericlewis wrote:
| GPS receiver being surrounded by metal without some sort of
| antenna just seems like some sort of crazy bad design skill
| that even software engineers may know is awful... so, how on
| earth would this thing have ever shipped at all? Weird to call
| that an accident?
| marcodiego wrote:
| Being good enough is enough. Linux on the desktop could be
| better, but for more than a decade it has been good enough. If
| linux phones became as usable as linux on the desktop, that would
| be good enough.
| leshow wrote:
| Depends what you're looking for I guess. Linux desktops can be
| highly configurable and give you an environment that's not
| attainable on any other OS. Think like tiling wms &
| polybar/rofi/customized terminals.
|
| Unless you mean "how well is Linux able to create an experience
| like windows." Which isn't a metric I particularly care about,
| but probably means more to non-technical users.
| sto_hristo wrote:
| Linux desktop is nowhere due to the thousands of distributions
| and disparity in development effort. A linux phone is simply
| unthinkable. Biggest strength in android/ios is the centralized
| leadership and vision. This enables consumers to make an easy
| choice, which attracts developers, who all seek predictability
| and maximum exposure.
|
| But even if the linux community centralizes around a singularity,
| it will still be no-compete, since android/ios have superior
| momentum. You can't race against Bolt when you have a late start
| and Bolt is already 5 meters from the finishing line.
|
| What it would take is a paradigm shift. Apple sunk Nokia (and the
| whole mobile world) by innovating.
|
| Android/ios are locked down ad platforms running on superior
| hardware that the user merely "rents" from the supplier. A device
| that features an unlocked OS that doesn't limit itself to its
| form factor is going to drown everything else. Android already
| has begun to do half of that - it has initial desktop mode
| support. Some manufacturers like motorola and samsung have their
| own awesome-looking take on desktop mode. It's only a matter of
| time consumers embrace this and throw their useless laptops.
| Current phones have as much or more ram than my last office PC,
| so think of just this: hook an usbc cable to a random monitor,
| presto - desktop computer in your pocket you can do work on.
|
| Just take a look at this demo
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIh07q_9Ib0
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > Linux desktop is nowhere
|
| this is as untrue as "Year $YEAR will be year of Linux on
| desktop" was so far (posting from laptop running Linux)
|
| > A linux phone is simply unthinkable
|
| Linux phones exist already
|
| > You can't race
|
| It is not always necessary to win completely and crush
| competition to reach goal
| konart wrote:
| >this is as untrue as "Year $YEAR will be year of Linux on
| desktop" was so far (posting from laptop running Linux)
|
| This will be untrue when linux will have noticeable* share of
| installs. Not just you and some other tech guys who amount to
| grand total of 2-3% of desktop systems.
|
| [*] - at least 10-15%.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| Who cares if its marketshare is above some arbitrary number
| so long as there's enough interest to keep development
| going? It doesn't matter to me what other people are using,
| I find Linux desktops to be the most comfortable thing for
| me, so I use them!
|
| If other people are satisfied with Windows and everything
| that goes along with it (forced auto-updates, ads, etc) -
| fine! You do you. I'm happy with what I have though.
| konart wrote:
| I haven't touched windows as a software developer since
| around 2008, so I don't know what's going on in there
| really. So long as I can launch games in my steam lib I'm
| fine.
|
| My main working OS was Ubuntu (~2006-2010) and
| Arch(20010-2013). Then I got tired of my Android phone
| and switched to iPhone and mac book. (if that matters
| somehow)
|
| As for you question - you were saying, quote:
|
| >this is as untrue as "Year $YEAR will be year of Linux
| on desktop" was so far (posting from laptop running
| Linux)
|
| when answering to
|
| > Linux desktop is nowhere
|
| I was merely pointing out that your preferences has
| nothing to do with general situation. And the general
| situation is that Linux is almost nonexistent on desktop.
| Hence no 'Year $YEAR will be year of Linux on desktop"'
| being not true so far. The phrase was and is about linux
| taking some meaningfull portion of market for itself, not
| about a you using it. Obviously linux was on desktop
| since 90s
|
| You do you, nobody is trying to take it away from you.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| > you were saying, quote
|
| I mean, you're not quoting me there, but... :)
|
| > Hence no 'Year $YEAR will be year of Linux on desktop"'
| being not true so far. The phrase was and is about linux
| taking some meaningfull portion of market for itself, not
| about a you using it.
|
| Eh, the phrase has always been ill-defined. It could be
| interpreted as talking about marketshare - but it could
| also be interpreted as the point where Linux is
| technically as or more capable than its competitors as a
| desktop OS. That point has come and gone.
|
| (And really, the phrase tends to be used more as a
| potshot at Linux users than anything actually
| meaningful.)
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > And the general situation is that Linux is almost
| nonexistent on desktop.
|
| It is not the same as "Linux desktop is nowhere"
|
| 2% in total population is tiny but not "nowhere".
|
| And in some populations (like programmers) use is much
| higher, 25% according to SO survey.
|
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operatin
| g_syste...
| sto_hristo wrote:
| Well i'm also posting from a PC running linux desktop. But i
| can deal with it. The vast majority of consumers can't and
| will not. Also, if i had to create a desktop application, i'd
| target windows/macos primarily, as most other developers do.
|
| And even though those pure linux phones exist, they're hardly
| usable. Sure, it's just the beginning, given time it will
| evolve. But the problem of effort disparity will inevitably
| manifest itself again, and you'll get 1000s of distros to
| choose from and none will stand up to to that single android
| device.
|
| > It is not always necessary to win completely and crush
| competition to reach goal
|
| I agree. I like to run for the fun of it and don't care for
| racing. But if you're going to compete directly against
| android phone or a windows desktop, you have to play to win.
| watwut wrote:
| Linux phone exists, but they are super niche product bought
| basically only by people who want Linux on phone
| specifically.
|
| They are not competitive in general market.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| Oh I agree. I was responding to "A linux phone is simply
| unthinkable" that is ridiculous and blatantly untrue.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| > hook an usbc cable to a random monitor, presto - desktop
| computer in your pocket you can do work on.
|
| That's exactly what "Linux phones" already do pretty well.
|
| Just take a look at this demo
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qB_5g2ZJYk ;)
| sto_hristo wrote:
| While i haven't seen this particular demo, i've seen others.
| It is indeed awesome and the way to go.
|
| I just hope effort this time around centralizes around a
| single os (distro), otherwise the linux desktop situation is
| going to repeat itself.
| Const-me wrote:
| > Just take a look at this demo
|
| Consumers didn't care about that. Windows had it in 2015:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyVHCFsiq8c
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| Windows' failure means that consumers don't care about
| running a desktop without all the software that they have.
|
| Windows software doesn't typically provide desktop builds on
| ARM, whereas on Linux, there's very little software that you
| can't take from AMD64 to ARM, especially if all you need is
| in the distribution's repository.
| [deleted]
| chovybizzass wrote:
| not without apple/google maps.
| slver wrote:
| What consumer issue is solved here?
| megous wrote:
| Which consumer?
| slver wrote:
| Anyone at all, as long as there are millions of them and they
| want to actually buy those phones, not just rant about
| Android and Apple online.
| megous wrote:
| What consumer problems this solves depends on who the
| consumer is. For me as a dev/consumer and a long time Linux
| user it solves a lot of usability issues. For people used
| to Android, who don't want to develop anything, or don't
| care about software licenses, or being able to debug and
| control their devices when issues happen, it solves little,
| compared to a random locked down Android phone. For people
| who just want to phone people/send receive SMS, it solves
| nothing either, because they can just use a dumbphone.
|
| So the answer depends on who the consumer is.
| [deleted]
| slver wrote:
| You've defined your market, it seems, as enthusiast
| developers who want Linux. But stock Android (without the
| Google services) is that already. It's FOSS, it uses the
| Linux kernel, and it comes with the infrastructure to run
| mobile apps. Even better, it's compatible with many
| Android apps (as long as they don't need Google
| Services).
|
| So what problem would another Linux mobile OS solve?
| megous wrote:
| To me GNU/Linux is the simpler more familiar ecosystem.
| Android is big and complicated, with different tooling,
| different APIs, different everything.
|
| On GNU/Linux phone I can write apps in regular electron
| if I like (not some cordova mess), I can access any Linux
| API and don't need to split my knowledge between mobile
| and desktop. I can write my phone apps with LAMP or node
| stack if I want and it would not be some limited kludge
| or some custom runtime. I can run any of the many apps
| I've already made over the years there, with miniscule
| porting effort. I can run postgresql on my phone to store
| data locally, and not invent some special data backend
| just for the phone.
|
| I don't need to package anything, just copy a file and
| run it.
|
| I can probably do all that with Android too, but it just
| seems like it would be a horrible kludge.
| slver wrote:
| So you don't just want Linux on the phone. You want
| basically the desktop Linux ecosystem on the phone.
| That's a no go from the start. Even Apple didn't do that
| when they made iOS.
|
| And the problem we solve with this is so you don't have
| to learn something new. That's honestly a poor problem to
| have.
| megous wrote:
| Funny. :) I've learned much more using pinephone than I
| ever did using Androids or iPhones I had been lent for
| testing from a companies I did jobs for. Here's what I've
| learned for example:
| https://xnux.eu/devices/pine64-pinephone.html
|
| I just don't want to learn something that will be
| completely useless to me, because I'm _not interested_ in
| commercial mobile apps development for Android, and that
| 's about anything that learning android development will
| gain me, other than hobby points.
|
| Learning general Linux programming and system design has
| cross-over effects into pretty much everything I do as a
| hobby or for my clients.
|
| With pinephone (or any other GNU/Linux phone, for that
| matter), pretty much anything I wrote is portable to all
| other devices I have use for, incl. my desktop and I re-
| use code very often. Devices like e-book reader I've
| reverse engineered, which is not based on Android, or
| other weird little devices I have and like to mess around
| with that don't run Android.
|
| I can learn some obscure Android API abstraction that
| works only on Android, or I can learn lower level Linux
| API (that it's using under the wraps anyway), that is
| fixed in stone, and usable everywhere Linux runs. I just
| choose what to learn based on what I can use more widely
| and will stay around longer.
|
| If anything it's people who will not consider anything
| else but Android, and just handwavily reject anything
| else like many posters in the comments under this
| article, who seem resistant to learning something new.
| fsflover wrote:
| https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque...
| gorgoiler wrote:
| I hope they do. I _crave_ a high speed pocket web browser that
| truly belongs to me.
|
| I hate Apple so much for the abusive relationship they have
| trapped me in. Their phones are amazing but it's morally corrupt
| not having access to the source code. We consumers, collectively,
| have a right to know what these things are doing.
|
| I'm addicted to my phone and it contains my whole life. I believe
| that in the future we will look back in these times with horror
| at the thought that the vendor didn't give us access to the whole
| stack.
|
| (My current solution is to ween off Apple. I've just sold my 2016
| MBP -- the one with both the keyboard defect and the _stagelight_
| display defect. I'm 100% Google free though, so what do I do for
| a phone?)
| mch82 wrote:
| What other devices in your life do you feel this way about
| (car, home appliances, television, ...)? Or are those in a
| different category because they aren't managing your data?
| rbanffy wrote:
| Am I missing something? Every Android phone is running Linux.
| reeealloc wrote:
| But a good portion of them are riddled with google
| InvertedRhodium wrote:
| Android is not Linux any more than Chrome or Firefox is Linux
| just because it runs on top of it.
| sergeykish wrote:
| ChromeOS and FirefoxOS -- yep, Linux.
| dandongus wrote:
| Android 'is linux' is the same way any linux distro 'is
| linux'.
| danielheath wrote:
| I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're refering
| to as Linux, is in fact, Android/Linux, or as I've recently
| taken to calling it, Android plus Linux. Linux is not an
| operating system unto itself, but rather another free
| component of a fully functioning Android system made useful
| by the Android corelibs, shell utilities and vital system
| components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Android runs Linux. Android is not GNU/Linux.
| danielheath wrote:
| Ahh, I missed one or two substitutions. Fixed now.
| kjeetgill wrote:
| In that vein, should Google replace POSIX here? And maybe
| that cuts to the heart of the matter more then you meant
| to, haha.
| pjmlp wrote:
| They already replaced it with Java APIs, POSIX isn't a
| public API on Android.
|
| https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis
| cuillevel3 wrote:
| Wow. So normally we say: Linux is the kernel and GNU is
| the userland. (Remember GNU/Hurd?)
|
| So, what is Android? Does Linux run the Android
| userspace, or does Android run the Linux kernel...
| teddyh wrote:
| > _Linux is the kernel and GNU is the userland_
|
| No, "GNU" is the operating system project, which includes
| the userland components, the kernel, and everything else.
| Just like "Windows" is not ntkrnl.dll, nor is "Windows"
| the sum of explorer.exe, cmd.exe, etc. - "Windows" is the
| overarching project name. "GNU" is the same.
|
| People who think of "GNU" as userland components likely
| are influenced by the accident of 1990's history that was
| the prevalence of SunOS (etc.) systems with added GNU
| command utilities. But the GNU command line utilities
| were originally meant to be for a (yet to be written)
| complete GNU operating system, including a GNU kernel,
| Hurd. But since the GNU operating system was to be
| compatible with Unix, and the command line utilities were
| good, people liked to run the command line utilities on
| proprietary Unix variants, and later the same happened
| when a Linux-based Unix system was cobbled together; the
| GNU utilities were there for the taking, and they were
| very useful in creating a complete Unix-based system,
| based on Linux. This probably created the confusion that
| GNU = userland utilities and Linux = operating system,
| even though almost the opposite being true.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I _think_ you 're joking, but unironically yes;
| Android/Linux is Linux, just like GNU/Linux and
| busybox/Linux (or however you want to call Alpine).
| Qub3d wrote:
| the parent comment is riffing on a copy/paste meme based
| on a rant attributed (likely falsely) to RMS:
| https://wiki.installgentoo.com/index.php/Interjection
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Yes, which is why I assume it's joking, in spite of it
| actually having some merit here.
| akiselev wrote:
| The core parts of Android that make it usable on mobile devices
| like power management and scheduling [1] aren't in the mainline
| Linux kernel last I checked. This is about getting Linux to the
| point where you can choose between an Arch, Ubuntu, debian,
| etc. distro for your phone.
|
| [1] https://lwn.net/Articles/706374/
| techrat wrote:
| > This is about getting Linux to the point where you can
| choose between an Arch, Ubuntu, debian, etc. distro for your
| phone.
|
| Does Termux count? It may be containered within an
| application package, but it's running off the host kernel and
| it uses the debian package manager.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/WIT2VjW.png
|
| I find that, when it comes to Android, people try _really_
| hard to make exceptions for what qualifies as "Linux" that
| do not exist as goalposts for other distributions or forms of
| Linux that are generally accepted under the Linux umbrella.
|
| I'd say it's as much as Linux as anything else that uses the
| base kernel and is reduced (for space reasons) or modified
| (for hardware support)... DDWRT comes to mind.
|
| When you have a base kernel for a device, running a "proper"
| distribution isn't much further behind. I was able to install
| Ubuntu on top of the stock kernel of one of my oldest
| Chromebook devices, the Acer C710. That's how I started using
| Linux full time. Does that not count? Because you can do that
| on Android devices, too.
|
| It's Linux. Carving out exceptions and drawing arbitrary
| lines and qualifiers doesn't really get anyone anywhere. In
| the end it's a very specialized Linux kernel for that
| hardware running often proprietary blobs, but when it comes
| down to it:
|
| Yes, you an install distros on top of the kernel on the
| device[1],
|
| And yes, I'd argue Android itself is a distro.
|
| The only thing Android really lacks is a universal installer.
| IMHO, we can thank Qualcomm for that situation we're in.
|
| [1] https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-linux-on-android/
| pjmlp wrote:
| Termux is on the death bed, because they refuse to
| ackowledge Android isn't Linux and make use of Java APIs
| for their purposes.
|
| So given that from Google's point of view POSIX and Linux
| syscalls aren't public APIs on Android, termux no longer
| works on latest Android versions and it will get worse, as
| NDK APIs keep being locked down as sandbox improvements.
| techrat wrote:
| I'd argue that if you were set on using something like
| Termux, you're already in the class of users who are most
| likely to be running custom Roms (eg, LineageOS) or
| having a modified stock image (Magisk, Root, etc)
|
| One of the workarounds for those affected calls for
| making SELinux permissive.
|
| SELinux, of course, only works on a Linux kernel.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-Enhanced_Linux
|
| https://source.android.com/security/selinux
|
| But, apparently, Android isn't Linux..................
|
| Just another example of how people try too hard to create
| goalposts to say Android isn't Linux when those goalposts
| don't exist for anything else.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Please provide the Android documentation how to access
| LinuxSE on non-rooted devices, you know those that
| regular consumers actually buy and app developers get
| their income from.
|
| Just another example on how Linux die hards try to make
| juice out of lemons, to pivot Linux dominance on consumer
| devices.
| techrat wrote:
| Look, the goalposts are moving again. I wonder how that
| keeps happening...
|
| I can't see what replying with "how to access LinuxSE on
| non-rooted devices" has ANYTHING to do with my comment
| that you previously replied to unless you're just trying
| to be disingenuous. I specifically mentioned that a
| typical use case of someone affected by the changes
| breaking Termux are users * _most likely to be the type
| that will run a custom rom or root mode.*_
|
| "Regular consumers" don't give a flying fuck if Android
| is Linux or whether or not they can run Termux.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Whatever dude, enjoy your rooted device.
| megous wrote:
| Yes, it's it is. PM is normal part of Linux since at least a
| decade ago, probably longer. Pinephone now has standby of
| around 7 days, and runtime power management is also quite
| good, with automatic powering off of CPU cores, when idle,
| and downclocking of memory controller in my 5.12 kernel
| branch, that many pinephone distros will migrate to soon.
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| They're barely working on desktop and you want to bring them
| to phones?
| ekianjo wrote:
| Linux is a kernel. Obviously this article is talking about a
| different user space than Android.
| rbanffy wrote:
| So, what is a Linux phone? Does it need to use glibc or
| another libc still qualifies? Does it need to present a POSIX
| interface? Does it needs to run an X server or something
| compatible?
| fsflover wrote:
| By "Linux phones" people nowadays understand GNU/Linux
| phones. I wonder why the OP can't just say that.
| dspillett wrote:
| Depends what is being meant by Linux. Yes they run a variant of
| the Linux kernel, and there is some commonality in parts of the
| common libraries, but there are significant differences atop
| that which makes it quite different to your average desktop
| Linux.
|
| The overall Android environment isn't Debian, Ubuntu, RedHat,
| ..., or other GNU/Linux environment.
|
| (the downvotes you currently have there given the graying text
| are a bit misguided IMO, your misconception is a very common
| one, one that people in some circles even seen to encourage)
| [deleted]
| rbanffy wrote:
| Android is running Linux as much as my router is. Or my TV.
| Or all those docker containers with a thin image and a Go
| application.
|
| It's not a desktop Linux OS, of course. But it's still Linux.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The Android kernel has some changes that weren't
| upstreamed, has features that Linux doesn't, and is missing
| some features, as well. For example, SysV IPC isn't
| supported on Android's Linux kernel[1].
|
| Often, for specific devices, the kernels they run are forks
| with changes that aren't upstreamed. Some of those changes
| can be significant enough that porting those changes to an
| updated kernel snapshot is nearly impossible, so it never
| happens, despite the kernel fork's source being available
| under the GPLv2.
|
| [1] https://android.googlesource.com/platform/ndk/+/4e159d9
| 5ebf2...
| augusto-moura wrote:
| Yes, my router is Linux, and my TV is also linux
| (containers not quite, because they don't emulate the
| kernel, except for Windows and macOS machines, that NEED to
| emulate at least one kernel instance, but whatever). And is
| pretty clear to me those limitations. More than my router,
| or my TV, or any embedded system for that matter, Android
| does try to follow other systems specifications, it has a
| own libc implementation, you can still utilize most of
| linux that we are used of: filesystems, syscalls,
| networking, even containerization (all of them limited and
| various levels, of course).
|
| That is what makes a linux distribution too me in my
| opinion, in the same way I can run a linux with musl libc,
| and busybox, I can run Android
| m4rtink wrote:
| Android could be called Android/Linux as Google replaced most
| of the GNU GPL licensed stuff with BSD licensed alternatives,
| often self developed (bionic, surface finger, binder,
| stagefright, etc.) so that they (and vendors) are not bound
| by GPL obligations and can sit on one changes for ever if
| they want to.
|
| Kernel is the major thing under GPL left and while there are
| some theories they might want to replace it with the Fucsia
| micro kernel I don't think they have a chance in hell given
| the ministered and number of parties involved in cooperative
| Linux kernel development.
| literallyWTF wrote:
| No
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| One of my main issues with for example the Ubuntu Touch system is
| that it didn't offer disk encryption. I hope that has changed by
| now, or will soon...
|
| The main reason I'd consider switching to a FOSS-ish phone (I
| don't care about the kernel, more about the rest of the
| software), is to discard all the privacy-nightmare and security
| risks. Not having full disk encryption sort of defeats the
| purpose.
| jaegerpicker wrote:
| So I'm an app developer, native iOS and Android. It's my passion,
| enough that I've decided to work in server side and data
| engineering instead of app dev in my day job after being a mobile
| dev for 7+ years. I watch all the WWDC sessions and I deeply care
| and believe that the mobile computing platform is the core future
| of computing. My only question as an App developer is why!? Why
| would I write apps for Linux while iOS and Android exist.
| f6v wrote:
| Anyone who thinks Linux can gain a momentum on mobile should look
| at Samsung and Huawei efforts to get off Google. It seems almost
| impossible even if you already have a foothold in mobile
| industry.
| rolandog wrote:
| I didn't know they were trying to de-Google. Would that have
| anything to do with user concerns about privacy?
| f6v wrote:
| Samsung announced Bada in 2010, back then not everyone new
| what Android is. Then there was Tizen. And Chinese had that
| tech export ban going on.
| criddell wrote:
| If anything, it's because they want access to all the data
| Google collects. None of them care about user privacy.
| bregma wrote:
| I spent years working on the Ubuntu phone. It was a fully
| convergent device: by default it would present a phone UI, but
| plugin an a keyboard and screen and it presents a full desktop
| UI. The UI was designed by a team of brilliant professional
| designers and it was a technical success.
|
| Why isn't it around any more?
|
| (1) The carriers. Many people get a free or heavily subsidized
| phone from their carrier, who makes money from the data charges.
| Carriers were just not interested in phones from smaller
| manufacturers, and it's not entirely clear that there is no
| backflow of cash involved at higher levels. There is also the
| issue of controlling access to user metadata, always a profitable
| exercise.
|
| (2) The manufacturers: why would they put a third-party OS on
| their phone when they control the entire stack from the silicon
| to the end-user's metadata through their in-house Android fork?
| They can sell hardware at a negative margin if they can profit
| from selling access to metadata, or possibly data.
|
| (3) The apps. Developers want to target the biggest, most
| lucrative markets so they target Android and iPhone which already
| have a critical mass. You could provide a container to run
| Android apps on Ubuntu, but then you end up with no
| differentiating factor except your Android apps look like crap in
| desktop mode. Running in a container can also restrict the kind
| of data collection many apps rely on for monetization.
|
| Another problem with apps is that many web services check to see
| whether the device is iPhone or Android and respond accordingly.
| Like the browser checks of yore ("you need at least IE 6 to use
| this site, try updating to a newer browser!") this gives a less
| satisfactory experience to end users.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Many people get a free or heavily subsidized phone from their
| carrier
|
| Is this really the case anymore? Why would you buy a phone from
| a third party like that?
|
| Most people I know buy their phone direct from Apple or an
| Android device from Amazon retail.
| wjertyj wrote:
| Most people you know are wealthy then.
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| That's an unreasonably low standard for wealth. I do that
| and I'm below the median salary for my country (western
| Europe).
| [deleted]
| chrisseaton wrote:
| The phones are the same price, you know. The carriers don't
| literally 'subsidise' or give you a 'free' phone - it's
| built into the contract price. It's nothing to do with how
| wealthy you are because it's the same price!
| dudul wrote:
| It absolutely has to do with being wealthy. Where a
| wealthy person can afford to spend $500 on a phone,
| someone not as financially comfortable has no other
| options than to go the "financing" route. Yes, the price
| ends up being similar, but it is much more possible for
| modest people to spend $20/mo for 2 years than $500 on
| the first day.
|
| This is a well studied phenomenon that wealthy people who
| can afford to pay everything on day 1, buy in bulk and
| all end up paying _less_ than poorer people.
| nondeveloper wrote:
| $500? Top of the line devices in the last few years have
| crept above $1,000 USD. Not trying to nitpick but the
| difference there is a sizable chunk of the average
| person's annual income.
| leesalminen wrote:
| Nobody over the age of ~20 I know in low income brackets
| even think about buying a flagship phone. It's barely on
| their radar.
| sunshineforever wrote:
| Chiming in as a low-income person, yes these Flagship
| phones have been off of our radar for a very very long
| time. If I wanted to, I could go into Walmart and buy a
| perfectly capable locked simple mobile phone for $20 or
| maybe a bit more than that. There is no possible way that
| I consider spending multiple weeks worth of paycheck on
| something that could be broken or stolen easily. If I was
| going to treat myself to a nicer phone there are tons of
| great options for me to choose in the 100 or $200 range.
| wjertyj wrote:
| Yes, and wealthy people are in the position to plunk down
| that money up front. People who are less privileged
| frequently have to take advantage of that form of
| "financing" offered by the carrier.
|
| Remember, by being wealthy, we frequently have to pay a
| lot less than people who get by month to month. There
| should be no shock here.
| nondeveloper wrote:
| Yes, to your point I was at T Mobile a month or so ago
| waiting to buy a SIM card in line behind someone who was
| evaluating their "free" (i.e., carrier-financed) options.
| They had a choice of a number of Android handsets I'd
| never heard of.
|
| On the other end of the scale, though, are the subsidies
| carriers pay to anyone who switches and trades in a
| quality device. When my partner joined my plan T Mobile
| paid a $700+ subsidy for his iPhone 11 in exchange for an
| iPhone 8.
|
| So customers across the entire income scale finance. It's
| just a matter of how lucrative that financing is for the
| customer. At the higher end of the scale where the
| customer has more choice it's usually a much better deal.
| sunshineforever wrote:
| You can buy a nice unlocked octo-core on Amazon for like
| $70.
| sajithdilshan wrote:
| I think Apple is already on its way for a convergent device
| with the Apple silicone. They've already unveiled an iPad with
| an M1 chip and in the near future we would get iPhones with
| powerful chips which is able to act as a fully functional
| MacBook once the phone is connected to an external monitor/TV,
| of course with a bluetooth keyboard and a mouse.
| Forbo wrote:
| > browser checks of yore
|
| The same shit is happening today, except it's Chrome instead of
| IE6. We have an entire generation of webdevs who learned fuck-
| all from the previous round of the browser wars.
| matthew_kuiash wrote:
| TBF 1/2 of them weren't even born...
| belval wrote:
| Not sure why your comment is being downvoted, most of my
| friends think I am paranoid when I say we shouldn't only
| support chrome. To them it's the browser that always works
| whereas the others are a PITA to support.
| username90 wrote:
| Which is why the current situation is stable and the IE6
| situation got fixed. Nobody liked developing for IE6, it
| was a pain in the ass since it was so shit. But people
| are perfectly happy developing for chrome.
| username90 wrote:
| IE6 was far behind the curve on features, Chrome is way
| ahead. The situation isn't comparable at all.
| strictfp wrote:
| That's not the whole story. IE was innovative (albeit
| through embrace and extend) until they won and stagnated.
| username90 wrote:
| IE could stagnate since they bundled it with their OS,
| meaning people on an old OS used the old IE meaning IE6
| lived on for over a decade. Chrome is dominant since
| people download it and people receive free updates, so
| the situation isn't comparable there either.
|
| The situation when every webdev was forced to support IE6
| would be like if developers today had to support Chrome
| from 2011.
| brunno wrote:
| Chrome is bundled with Android (billions of devices) and
| when you install a lot of software on Windows like
| antivirus they bundle Chrome unless you opt-out.
|
| Not the same but pretty close.
| moksly wrote:
| > Carriers were just not interested in phones from smaller
| manufacturers, and it's not entirely clear that there is no
| backflow of cash involved at higher levels.
|
| I really doubt it's something sinister in enterprise sized
| logistics. Mainly because the big guys don't need to be al
| 90'ies Microsoft about it in the modern world of leaned up
| Enterprise. The service the big global brands come with do save
| the carriers a lot of money, but it's done perfectly legal.
|
| First there is the logistics. As a smaller carrier, you won't
| really have to worry about doing BI on sales projections and
| what not, because Apple, Samsung and so on will simply tell you
| how many phones you can expect to sell, which is basically how
| many they've already produced for your region. They'll handle
| everything from warehousing to shipping to your local stores
| pretty much without you having to do anything but sign the
| extremely "take it or leave it" sort of B2B contract, that also
| includes the big companies not charging you for products that
| don't sell. What this translates to is that you can basically
| run your company without a logistics department or any BI
| related to the actual phone hardware. This saves you money both
| on manpower but also on not having too much inventory.
|
| Then there the support side of things. By carrying big well
| known brands with a very low degree of user freedom for
| modifications you cut the non-carrier related support you need
| to offer to almost nothing. You could probably offer good money
| to get carriers to sell, even a well known brand like the
| fairphone, and they'd still turn you down because it would cost
| them too much money to do so.
| dm319 wrote:
| I do feel if canonical were to attempt another crowd-funding
| attempt at an Ubuntu phone, they might well be successful this
| time. That phone was a terrific concept. I feel the market has
| changed since then, with carriers accepting less control over
| our phones, and the fad of installing every random app has
| somewhat distilled itself to a smaller number that is widely
| used.
| windthrown wrote:
| Development does continue as a community effort, so hopefully
| it can break through!: https://ubports.com/
| pabs3 wrote:
| Is the UBPorts community continuing the Ubuntu Phone
| convergence vision, or did the code get thrown away?
| [deleted]
| ryukafalz wrote:
| From my limited perspective as a former user who still keeps
| up with some of it: they seem to be continuing down that
| path, just slower as they don't have Canonical's paid dev
| team to work on it.
| m4rtink wrote:
| AFAIK PostMarketOS seems to be working on something similar -
| my PostMarketOS edition PinePhone even shipped with a
| convergence hub:
|
| https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/07/buy-pinephone-
| postmarket...
|
| BTW, I think the convergence concept is totally valid and
| actually available now (although in a proprietary form) as
| Dex on Samsung Galaxy series devices.
|
| Just plug the thing into a USB-C HDMI dongle and it shows a
| desktop interface on the display & has decent mouse and
| keyboard support.
|
| Really nice for simple stuff like looking at photos you just
| took outside but on a big screen. And also a killer combo
| with the Wacom One pen display as you have your Clip Studio
| or Krita files all available on the big Wacom One screen yet
| can work on them on the regular device screen while on the
| go. :)
|
| So now we just need that, but open source. :)
|
| It could be a separate wayland session outputting to the
| external display with app GUI getting data from a backend via
| DBus. That way you could run the same up on both device and
| external screen at the same time while keeping the data model
| consistent. :)
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| > So now we just need that, but open source. :)
|
| That's the whole idea behind Librem 5 and PureOS and it
| already works well. All the phone apps there are just
| regular desktop apps made convergent to fit and work well
| on the phone.
|
| See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onxBw5Pd45w and
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qB_5g2ZJYk
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Smartphones = bunch of untrusted apps = security requirements
|
| Is there an app store + readily available sandboxing solution
| that allows people to install some random guy's game on their
| phone without getting their credit card stolen?
| dannyw wrote:
| Yeah, hate it if you want, but Ubuntu Snaps.
| hpoe wrote:
| Anyone know of any good Linux phones. Mine is going to be dead
| soon and for a while I liked Pixel because it didn't have all the
| Samsung or Motorola or anytime else bloatware, but with what
| Google has been doing I'd prefer a full Linux phone.
|
| I've looked a Librem but $1500 is kind of hard to justify when I
| have all my other expenses that come with a young family.
|
| Anyone have any suggestions?
| m4rtink wrote:
| I have been using the officially supported Sailfis OS on Sony
| Xperia devices for years as my main device:
|
| https://jolla.com/sailfishx/
|
| The idea is you buy one of the supported Xperia phones, buy a
| Sailfish OS license and flash it on the phone. The license you
| bought pays for continued software updates (new features &
| security fixes) as well some external software they integrate
| (predictive typing support & android app emulation support).
| Yeah, if the native Sailfish OS apps are not sufficient for
| you, it can also run most Android apps via an emulation layer.
|
| So while Sailfish OS is not fully open source unfortunatelly,
| it's at the moment IMHO the best mobile Linux distro available
| on easy to get modern hardware.
|
| Ideally over time fully open source distros and more open
| hardware take over but till then Sailfis OS can serve as a good
| "bridge", AZ it has since the Jolla company taking care of it
| was started by the ex N900/Maemo/MeeGO crew.
| mempko wrote:
| I am using Sailfish OS with Sony XA2. It's my daily driver
| and has been for years. Jolla still releases updates with new
| features and UI fixes. They also have been upgrading their
| Android support and most of the apps I care about work well.
|
| Going to buy the Sony 10 II once they release support for it.
| stiray wrote:
| Same here. Sony Xperia 10 plus and sailfish os. Daily driver,
| used all the time. I also have Cosmo Communicator in a drawer
| - it could be useful but not having camera on phone in linux
| is a no go.
|
| I am trying to get linux on my phone since HTC Blueangel
| (Angstrom linux was the first booting from SD card) and it
| was always barely usable.
|
| Sailfish works so great that it was no brainer to pay those
| 50 euros for license. Fingerprint reader, camera, bluetooth
| (as common painpoints for linux on phone) are all working
| flawlessly. I had to reverse 1 android application that I
| really need (banking app) and remove safetynet checks but
| beside that, zero issues. And I dont any other application
| from android ecosystem that I dont have here as native (and
| far less battery draining) version.
|
| I hope that Jolla will continue its great work and I really
| hope they start supporting some other phones like Huawei. I
| am sick of google and its toxic, spyware driven ecosystem.
|
| I dont have issue paying for useful application or operating
| system. But having operating system that is preinstalled with
| google spyware and than 99% of applications you try to
| install try to steal your data (not to mention that they all
| ignore GDPR) is not acceptable.
| skvark wrote:
| I have currently Sony XA2 with Sailfish OS. Just ordered
| Xperia 10 II so I have it ready when they publish the
| official version for it. I have been using Sailfish as my
| daily driver since the original Jolla phone was released in
| 2013.
|
| The only issue that I might see as a blocker for some users
| is that the Android layer is not perfect. It does not support
| Bluetooth properly so pretty much any Android app that
| connects to some external peripheral like smart watch will
| not work. Additionally, you might need to install for example
| microG to run some apps via the Android layer.
| loosescrews wrote:
| Also note that Sailfish is fairly inexpensive. My current
| Sailfish phone (Xperia 10) cost me ~$200 USD new including
| the license from Jolla.
| foolmeonce wrote:
| I would suggest an Android One or econo-level Google Phone
| using adb to delete google bloatware, choosing a qualcomm or
| something that looks not totally encumbered so it might be
| possible to transition to Linux when the 3 years are up.
| ekianjo wrote:
| The Pinephone is a nice phone, but still in beta and
| underpowered to say the least.
| Krisjohn wrote:
| It's so cheap, just get one.
| ziml77 wrote:
| The environmental impact of buying something they'll toy
| around with for 5 minutes and never touch again isn't
| cheap.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| But it is $200 haha but yeah agreed on poor performance
|
| Though it was cool installing/running VS Code on it
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| I'm a Moto G-Series guy... still running my G7.
| Lev1a wrote:
| > Motorola [...] bloatware
|
| What do you mean? I've had a couple Motorola phones from the G
| series (G1 and G4 and currently an AndroidOne) and AFAICT it's
| been pretty much stock Android apart from:
|
| - an app for support enquiries (with diagnostic functionality
| for the screen, sensors etc.) which I've actually used before,
|
| - one app you _could_ opt-in to to get something like product
| newsletters from Motorola (I don 't care for spam)
|
| - and since the AndroidOne an app for audio EQ (which I don't
| really need/use).
|
| All of these don't even use 80 MB of the internal storage (64
| GB) so I don't really know where you get the "bloatware" from.
| ericlewis wrote:
| It's bloat because those don't need to be there.
| esperent wrote:
| It just seems strange for you to single out Motorola which
| is one of the companies with the least bloatware unstalled.
| Lev1a wrote:
| Those apps stay out of your way if you don't wanna use them
| and they barely use 0.1% of the internal storage.
|
| I'd hardly call that bloat given the "Samsung Experience" I
| once had on one of those GalaxyNote 10.1 tablets. It was
| slow (basically everything in any app lagged), the OS was a
| non-upgradable Android 4.3 or 4.4 with heaps of Samsung BS
| constantly running and replacing standard apps (e.g. the
| browser). Also that tablet one day just would not charge
| anymore after ~1.5-2 years of fairly light use (reading,
| some video streaming, things like that).
| domano wrote:
| For your use case i would recommend getting an android phone
| that has good support for a custom rom of your choice. IMHO all
| the straight-up linux phones are not capable of replacing a
| smartphone for everyday use.
| derekp7 wrote:
| Only options I know of are a couple crowd funding ones, and
| Linux is a secondary option on them (they are Android
| primarily). The ones from Planet Computers can run sailfish,
| and I've read that FXtec is coming out with a new model that
| supports ubuntu touch as a first class citizen.
| fsflover wrote:
| > I've looked a Librem but $1500
|
| It costs $800, not $1500.
| LukeShu wrote:
| _> I 've looked a Librem but $1500 is kind of hard to justify_
|
| Huh, did you accidentally look at the price of a Librem laptop?
| The Librem 5 phone USD$800. (But $800 is still kind of hard to
| justify, especially with "wait more than a year").
| drewzero1 wrote:
| Maybe they're thinking of the Librem 5 USA? Priced at $2k,
| also pretty hard to justify even if I do kind of admire what
| they're trying to do with it.
| tedchs wrote:
| Stories about "Linux as the underdog" have confused me for
| several years. The truth is, Linux has won, and it's OK to
| recognize that.
|
| The majority of phones sold are "Linux phones" -- it's the kernel
| for Android!
|
| The top selling laptops for years provide "Linux on the desktop"
| -- Chromebooks run ChromeOS, which is Linux!
|
| Nearly all host servers, at nearly every cloud provider, run
| Linux. The vast majority of cloud VMs run Linux.
|
| The vast majority of set-top boxes, IP cameras, IoT controllers,
| and other embedded devices are Linux based.
|
| Linux is even powering an autonomous helicopter on MARS, that has
| been wildly successful in its mission.
|
| The narrative of "poor underrated Linux gets no love" was
| plausible until maybe around the mid-2000s. But it's long past
| time to drop this idea as a community.
|
| Now, I think it IS fair to say that several forms of userspace
| ecosystems, based on the Linux kernel, have failed to get
| traction over the years. Maybe we can say "Ubuntu Touch" failed
| to get adoption, but that has little to do with some
| characteristic of Linux itself.
| teddyh wrote:
| Google is absolutely _itching_ to replace the last GPL
| component of Android - Linux - with their own software,
| Fuchsia. Google will then control the whole stack, with no
| obligation to anyone. This has been coming for a long time;
| IIUC, Android started with many components from the larger GNU
| /Linux ecosystem, but today only Linux itself remains.
| Siira wrote:
| The kernel isn't useful alone. I am 90% happy with my macOS.
| Its kernel is not as good as Linux, but it runs all my unix
| apps. I can use free, mature software solutions for most of my
| needs; E.g., I use mpv and a WiFi-connected HDD to listen to
| music. (With a much more pleasant playlist creation UI thanks
| to ugrep and fzf.)
| david-cako wrote:
| Linux is pervasive because it's free (gratis) and flexible, but
| customers aren't necessarily seeing the core benefits of the
| Linux philosophy in terms of liberty and privacy. These
| examples of Linux succeeding are where some sort of application
| stack is very non-libre and often non-gratis, but maybe that's
| just one example of how to commercialize Linux. It's a
| generalized and well supported base for commercial products and
| services that is less restrictive and costly than other OSs,
| which is why we saw it replace server Unix distributions and
| even Windows Server in some cases. Many companies are embracing
| open source and extensibility more and more, though, which is
| definitely a good thing.
|
| I'm interested to see a stronger focus on privacy and liberty
| in consumer Linux products like smart devices and IoT. Somehow
| iOS/MacOS, a markedly closed system, is the only one that
| really seems to be going in that direction right now.
| jrm4 wrote:
| I'm hoping that when we have this conversation, we understand
| that the business of Linux Phones is a much tougher business to
| be in than average, and not do the thing where we nitpick e.g.
| particular usability features, as if that were the thing
| preventing Linux Phones from being popular.
|
| The real force against them is, of course, the most well funded
| businesses (perhaps monopolies) who have a vested interest (or at
| least, strongly believe so) in not allowing the level of freedom
| on your machines that a Linux Phone would provide.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| I don't think they will stay around for the same reason Linux
| desktop isn't really staying around (that much). Everything
| that's wrong or annoying about Linux on the desktop is more
| pronounced on a phone (needs a good UI, can't be hacky-fixed
| while riding the subway, always runs on battery)
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| Headlines ending in a question mark can be answered "no".
| jchw wrote:
| I enjoy the Pinephone, but it certainly has its issues. I'd kill
| for better performance; it's very close to usability. I also have
| some issues with the hardware (it seems my battery has stopped
| working entirely, recently.)
|
| On the other hand, there is one confounding software issue that I
| think makes it the hardest as a full replacement for a modern
| smartphone: push notifications. An equivalent for APNS or FCM
| that allows for relatively low power consumption, low latency
| push notifications would need to be devised, financed and
| actually adopted. It's nice to imagine a world where apps on
| phones are like how apps on desktop are and just keep, for
| example, active WebSocket connections at all times, but this
| doesn't appear to be something practical with current technology.
|
| Maybe federated, E2EE push notifications could come into
| existence? A sort of ActivityPub of pushes... It's a pipe dream,
| but one can hope.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Conversations.im does jabber on Android without push
| notifications. It just leaves an idle TCP socket. I haven't
| noticed latency issues with that, but I'm not a heavy user
| snazz wrote:
| Having each app run in the background and manage its own
| notifications can work, but also causes battery life issues
| with more apps.
| rubatuga wrote:
| I mean, if you just have a select() command blocking, I
| don't see why having a 100 sockets open would be any
| different than 1 socket.
| detaro wrote:
| You need to keep the connection alive, which means
| regular traffic, which means regularly sending data,
| which needs energy. More connections mean a) more traffic
| and b) unless you add some coordination mechanism, waking
| up the modem more often at random times, which is energy-
| intensive in itself.
| rubatuga wrote:
| I see, we need some coordination mechanism, and at that
| point, why not just use a central server to manage
| notifications :)
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > unless you add some coordination mechanism, waking up
| the modem more often at random times, which is energy-
| intensive in itself.
|
| You just need to coalesce timer wakeups, which Linux
| supports already at the kernel level AFAICT.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| Part of the problem is that Linux desktop apps typically
| aren't designed to conserve on network usage and/or don't
| have mechanisms to do so without a push server.
|
| For example, Matrix clients on Android/iOS will stay
| suspended entirely, then will wake up when you receive a
| push notification. Desktop clients, on the other hand,
| will stay running and receive _every_ message, even if
| they 're not messages that you necessarily care
| about/that would notify.
|
| The protocol could in theory have an in-band way to tell
| the server "hey, I really only care about notifications
| now, could you only send me those?" but currently it
| doesn't. By contrast, most Android/iOS apps can rely on
| push notifications and suspend completely when they're
| not in the foreground - meaning they're not receiving
| anything but what's important enough to notify about.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > For example, Matrix clients on Android/iOS will stay
| suspended entirely, then will wake up when you receive a
| push notification.
|
| Doesn't the protocol already need to do _something_ to
| support that? Presumably it 's an out-of-band
| notification, and they needed to add support for that. If
| they already added FCM an APNS, they'll have to add
| _something_ to support a 3rd OS. It could be in-band or
| out-of-band, but either way sending a message on a TCP
| connection is really all that is needed.
|
| As a side note, Jabber _did_ add an in-band way as you
| suggest, but then also had to add OOB signalling because
| Apple disallows open sockets for background apps.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| > Doesn't the protocol already need to do something to
| support that? Presumably it's an out-of-band
| notification, and they needed to add support for that.
|
| Yep, it does, so you could do this; the problem for the
| Linux desktop is just that there isn't a standardized
| out-of-band push notification system yet. (I saw another
| commenter mention UnifiedPush, which sounds interesting -
| in any case it's not widely supported yet.)
|
| > As a side note, Jabber did add an in-band way as you
| suggest
|
| It's been a while since I looked into this in detail, but
| IIRC Jabber generally doesn't have a server-side way to
| determine which messages should notify? As I recall, the
| protocol was designed with smart clients and dumb servers
| in mind, though I'm sure some of that has changed over
| time - but that design decision doesn't lend itself as
| well to clients on battery-constrained devices.
|
| Although with that said, the fact that you aren't
| required to be in the same set of MUCs on every device
| helps in battery-constrained devices; for example I only
| stay joined to the rooms that my friends are in from my
| phone, unless I need to join another one temporarily.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Re: jabber
|
| https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0352.html
| ryukafalz wrote:
| Client state indication helps for things like suppressing
| presence updates, but it doesn't go as far as to e.g. let
| you only be notified for messages that would highlight
| you in a large MUC, right? So either you're joined to the
| MUC and receive all messages in it, or you leave the MUC
| and don't get notified about any of them.
|
| Although now that I read the spec again, it seems general
| enough that maybe it could be used to implement behavior
| like that? I don't think I've seen any servers that do,
| though.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| The radio is a massive battery draw, so you want it to be
| off as much as possible. The built-in push notification
| service will batch low priority packets and send them all
| alongside the next high priority one it receives.
| Krisjohn wrote:
| Telegram is pretty good at going ding when there's a new
| message.
| reitanuki wrote:
| UnifiedPush is something that's looking to address this.
| m463 wrote:
| I have a librem 5 and it seems quite a bit smoother than the
| pine videos I've seen.
|
| In some pine videos I've seen people swiping multiple times
| before the touch is detected or an action is taken.
|
| I don't know if purism has tighter driver integration, or if
| the hardware is just faster.
|
| I haven't figured out how to get good apps though.
|
| I found this ubuntu touch video on another type of phone (?)
| and it looks like stuff is out there:
|
| https://youtu.be/Nf_DnsZHwdE
| jchw wrote:
| Someone at Purism once said the issue was related to memory
| IIRC. So it's possible that is a piece of the puzzle.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| RAM is almost 3 times faster indeed, but it's not the only
| thing that matters (CPU clock and double the L2 cache, much
| more powerful GPU, faster eMMC, better thermals). That's
| not "tighter integration", that hardware is simply more
| powerful.
| wjertyj wrote:
| The lack of a self-hosted push notification system is a
| _massive_ hole in the user privacy story for users of all
| phones.
|
| I dream of being able to configure my phone (be it android,
| linux, or ios) to proxy all communication with push services
| through a host _I_ control.
|
| At the nitty-gritty implementation level, I kind of hope the
| LinuxPhone world adopts Matrix as a standardish notification
| transport.
| 3np wrote:
| MQTT seems way more suitable for push. Maybe some system/os
| level integration needed to make it efficient?
| ryukafalz wrote:
| > A sort of ActivityPub of pushes...
|
| Now that you mention it, ActivityPub itself wouldn't be bad for
| this!
| oneplane wrote:
| Without mass-market and the scale that comes with it (including
| returning income from existing users) it's near impossible to
| provide the same nice UX as an iPhone or a Google-riddled
| Android phone.
|
| That's the whole problem with most projects and why they
| neither produce acceptable usability nor a an acceptable price
| point. It's not that it's not technically possible, it's just
| infeasible without becoming yet another android vendor.
|
| Even just having an 'alternative OS' on existing hardware is a
| non-existent market, and those projects try very very hard.
| Adding the hardware problem in to the mix makes it harder, not
| easier.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| I keep wondering why nobody just supersets Android. Even just
| having an Android phone which is designed to be repairable
| and have drivers in the kernel tree so it isn't tied to a
| specific kernel version, people would pay for that.
|
| And then on top of it you can add all of your Google-
| alternative libraries and services, which need not be perfect
| immediately to get people to use it because they can start
| off running Android apps and buying it for the open hardware.
| But as you get more users, the software improves too.
| cuu508 wrote:
| The mass market does not care about repairable hardware or
| open drivers.
|
| Using niche open SoC will make the device slower and/or
| more expensive. The mass market cares about price and
| performance.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > The mass market does not care about repairable hardware
| or open drivers.
|
| The evidence for this is that people didn't refuse to buy
| the first generation of unrepairable devices. Because
| nobody told them they were unrepairable until they broke,
| and by then they already owned it. And by then the
| unrepairable devices were all you could get.
|
| How many people would buy a phone if you could honestly
| market it as lasting for ten years instead of three and
| having a lower repair cost when you drop it on the
| concrete?
|
| > Using niche open SoC will make the device slower and/or
| more expensive. The mass market cares about price and
| performance.
|
| The mass market doesn't care about performance on mobile
| devices. They can't even tell the difference. It's all
| marketing. Even the phones that are actually faster on
| paper aren't faster in practice when the "slower" one
| still does everything instantaneously.
| cerved wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| Even on the deskstop, linux arguably has a less stable GUI.
| At least on the desktop you can drop into a CLI and fix
| things. Even if you don't know what you're doing, you can
| google your way to a script and copy + paste.
|
| Mobile and touch is 100% GUI dependent.
| jchw wrote:
| I'm not very concerned with it competing per se; they managed
| to put out a fairly compelling package and sell through 30k
| units. Yeah, they won't be fabbing custom ARM cores any time
| soon, but it ain't nothing.
|
| Open source software is a slow burn. It takes time, but
| projects can grow for a very long time even when things seem
| dormant, and then suddenly seemingly out of nowhere things
| are actually pretty good. I certainly was impressed with how
| well they were able to bring GNOME onto phones so far.
|
| It'll always work best if people don't consider them to be on
| the same level as commercial software; it has a different
| appeal, but one that should not be discounted. Just as there
| have been so many "year of the Linux desktops," so to have
| there been many incorrect calls about the death of it.
| swiley wrote:
| Mozilla has mobile style push notifications for Firefox and you
| can just leave eg a mail client running in the background using
| the IMAP IDLE feature for mail. As long as you restrict that
| sort of thing to just a couple apps it's fine.
|
| More than push notifications the WiFi firmware needs a feature
| to whitelist IPs that can wake the phone from sleep so you get
| instant notifications from services.
| squarefoot wrote:
| > But let's start by making a short list of main reasons of
| failure per effort, starting with the companies involved:
|
| > ...
|
| > Nokia (Maemo/Meego): Change in corporate strategy (new CEO),
|
| > ...
|
| Nokia Linux based phones didn't fail simply because of a new CEO,
| but because of a partnership with Microsoft that brought a CEO
| and a deal with Windows Mobile on Nokia phones in exchange for
| phasing out of Linux and Symbian devices. If it wasn't for
| Microsoft, Linux on Nokia phones would have succeeded.
|
| Remember this every time you work with WSL thinking that
| Microsoft loves Linux and the Open Source model; they don't. They
| simply aim at controlling it, this time also from the inside (see
| Linux Foundation Platinum membership).
| dagw wrote:
| _If it wasn 't for Microsoft, Linux on Nokia phones would have
| succeeded._
|
| That seems wildly optimistic.
|
| I owned an N900 and used an N9 for a while, and while I loved
| them for all their nerdy glory, they where not ready for prime
| time. Why do you think Nokia would have done better with Meego
| than they did with WP?
| squarefoot wrote:
| I can't be 100% sure, of course, however both Purism and
| Pine64 phones are slowly but steadily getting better every
| month. I can only imagine that Nokia could have allocated a
| lot more resources on making their Linux phone.
| dagw wrote:
| Nokia + Microsoft poured more resources into Windows Phone
| than Nokia would ever have poured into Meego. And they
| failed, despite both WP 8 and 10 both offering a really
| great mobile OS experience.
| tovej wrote:
| The windows phone experience was terrible, don't kid
| yourself.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| I'd pay good money for a phone with an updated version of
| Windows Phone.
| dagw wrote:
| I had a Nokia Windows Phone. The core user experience of
| WP10 is the best I've ever experienced on any phone. What
| mainly let it down was first and foremost the lack of
| quality third party apps (and as time went on lack of
| support of the first party apps).
| siliconunit wrote:
| my only trouble is the HW specs, I don't want a mid-low device, I
| am willing to spend the same I spend for a mid-high Android
| phone, as long as they manage to keep the basics working , ie
| solid browser, capable GPS navigation, port/wrap most used IM
| platforms. I used a Flame phone for a while, no major problems,
| until most IMs stopped working... people want to stay connected
| to everyone else... that's what 99% of users do.
| bullen wrote:
| Pine would be great if the GPU supported OpenGL ES 3.
|
| Purism is too expensive and clunky.
|
| Eventually everything will become linux, but I think it needs
| Samsung to make it happen.
|
| Linux on DeX was cancelled so they obviously are not listening.
|
| I think Google should allow Android apps to run on vanilla linux
| if that is possible?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Android phones are Linux phones. The fact that Android marketing
| gets away with misrepresenting this fact is highly annoying, and
| it is one of the more ugly cases of the open source engine
| underneath each Android phone being used by what is essentially
| to all intents and purposes a closed source device.
|
| This is precisely what the FOSS community has been advocating
| against and in my opinion isn't any worse or better than various
| router and other appliance manufacturers that appropriate open
| source tech for 98% of their usecases and then lock it up with a
| thin closed source sauce and some service that is grafted on to
| guarantee lock in and their business model.
| orf wrote:
| In android's case the use of Linux is an implementation detail
| though.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Without Linux Android wouldn't have gotten off the ground.
| orf wrote:
| Cool, but not relevant to the point being made.
|
| Without Linux Facebook wouldn't have got off the ground
| either. That doesn't mean Facebook is a Linux service,
| their use of Linux (like Android) is entirely an
| implementation detail.
| jacquesm wrote:
| At their scale today it could have worked, but the
| question is if they would have gotten there in the first
| place.
|
| All these companies making untold billions off the back
| of FOSS could at least be kind enough to acknowledge that
| fact, rather than to bury it.
| orf wrote:
| They all do, through kernel patches, funding, open-source
| releases, talks and a lot more. Google especially has
| done a lot.
|
| But that doesn't change the fact that the operating
| system Facebook, Google or Android uses is an
| implementation detail of the main service they offer.
| jacquesm wrote:
| If Google or Facebook would have had to pay the full
| license fees for one of the major Unix distributions they
| would have simply never gotten off the ground in the
| first place. One of those 'uncomfortable truths' I guess
| that people simply don't want to acknowledge.
| orf wrote:
| I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make. For
| lack of a better word you seem salty about something but
| it's really not clear exactly what. Do you want a 90's
| era "powered by Linux" image on the Google or Facebook
| homepage?
|
| However the fact remains: Facebook's use of PHP is an
| implementation detail, as is it's use of Linux.
| dagw wrote:
| Without Google, Android would never have gotten off the
| ground.
|
| Imagine an alternate history where Google bought QNX
| instead of Android Inc. back in 2005, do you think Android
| would still dominate the Mobile OS market today, or do you
| think Google QNX would be the dominant mobile OS.
| sergeykish wrote:
| Windows Phone.
| rjsw wrote:
| Or where Google bought Danger Inc. instead of Microsoft
| and carried on using NetBSD as a mobile OS.
| jacquesm wrote:
| What with QnX being a _much_ better OS for mobile than
| Linux it would have been a smart move, but because
| Android used FOSS as a base rather than to pay a license
| fee to QnX they stood a better chance of taking off as a
| relatively small entity. So Linux really did enable
| Android.
| mastrsushi wrote:
| If you convince consumers to switch over to FOSS for ethical
| reasons like surveillance and avoiding influential algorithms
| then you have something compelling. But at the moment the world
| is glued to proprietary social media.
|
| I'd love if users would flee Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and
| Twitter. They are such simple concepts that can obviously be
| replicated, but those established companies already have the
| users at their control.
|
| There needs to be focus on convincing users to move away from
| these services. There also needs to be more funding for social
| media alternatives. Rather than FOSS developer attention going
| into reimplementing Android apps from 2011 or God knows what
| these people in the Linux phone community are thinking.
|
| Those are some pretty big steps before we even think of Linux for
| phones, assuming ethical reasons are the interest.
|
| I don't understand this interest in Linux on phones. It doesn't
| make a difference for anyone outside of the tech hobbyist realm.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Of course. The cost of developing phones has been coming down,
| and the number of people who want strong privacy on their phones
| is increasing (and/or they are willing to pay more for it). Those
| numbers have finally crossed, and unless something changes, I
| think Linux phones will always have a niche market.
| f6v wrote:
| > The cost of developing phones has been coming down
|
| To the point where you can't make money on hardware alone?
|
| > I think Linux phones will always have a niche market.
|
| If the enthusiasts are willing to pay a hefty price.
| j-james wrote:
| I don't understand the desire for a Linux phone as so described
| in the article as a daily driver.
|
| The Android platform represents an enormous amount of work that
| encompasses a more secure base kernel, an unparalleled selection
| of applications designed for mobile usage and written in a
| memory-safe language, fantastic sandboxing and user privacy
| features leagues ahead of any desktop operating system, and great
| diversity in the hardware market.
|
| While it's apparent that Android has significant downsides - de
| facto proprietary drivers, an environment of mostly closed-source
| applications, some Big G integration, and a general lack of long-
| term updates occasionally countering the work put into security
| (thanks, chip manufacturers:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26593274), these are
| problems that can be solved. It doesn't make sense to throw the
| baby out with the bathwater.
|
| Closed-source applications are more a moral problem than a
| security one thanks to Android's sandboxing, and a vibrant
| ecosystem of high-quality free-and-open-source Android
| applications (https://f-droid.org - Amaze, Notally, QKSMS, and
| Tasks are some of my favorites) makes them all but optional.
| Google's presence in the AOSP codebase is rather limited (mostly
| around notifications) and taken out altogether by custom ROMs
| like Lineage and GrapheneOS. Proprietary drivers remain as
| Android's biggest problem, perhaps alongside the manufacturers
| that ship locked-down phones with bloatware (looking at you,
| Samsung).
|
| Why go the desktop-Linux-to-mobile route when you could fork
| Android, write drivers for the Pinephone / Librem 5, punch a hole
| to the base system for privileged applications, and have the best
| of both worlds with an order of magnitude less effort?
| sergeykish wrote:
| Same argument applies to Windows vs Linux. Same story.
|
| Synergy opens amazing smartphone hardware to Linux -- DCI-P3
| color space, high refresh rates, variable refresh rates.
| Sandboxing, user privacy features, we need this on desktop too.
| jhasse wrote:
| No? You can't fork Windows.
| sergeykish wrote:
| "Just use existing Windows kernel and drivers, there are a
| lot of Open Source applications" etc etc.
|
| There is nothing special about Linux distribution, same
| could be done on top of NT kernel. But it is not. React OS
| reimplements kernel and userspace, in theory userspace
| could be used on top of Windows. There are a lot of Windows
| users yet no such thing.
|
| Somehow Linux experience is much richer and safe. Xmonad
| and pacman.
| jcelerier wrote:
| > The Android platform represents an enormous amount of work
| that encompasses a more secure base kernel, an unparalleled
| selection of applications designed for mobile usage and written
| in a memory-safe language, fantastic sandboxing and user
| privacy features leagues ahead of any desktop operating system,
| and great diversity in the hardware market.
|
| but it's so freaking slow. I own a oneplus 8 pro and compared
| to my old Jolla it's an exercise in frustration, nothing in the
| UI is smooth.
|
| > an unparalleled selection of applications
|
| 78% of which are competing chat apps (no kidding, I have to
| have ~8 different chat apps installed)
|
| > designed for mobile usage and written in a memory-safe
| language, fantastic sandboxing and user privacy features
| leagues ahead of any desktop operating system,
|
| I'll be honest I'd trade all that for "less lag" without even
| thinking twice about it
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| There's either something really wrong with your OnePlus or
| your eyes, if it is slow.
| opan wrote:
| He compared it to a Jolla phone, which I assume runs
| Sailfish. If you're comparing Android to Android, you are
| missing the point. Slowness is from the software here.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > I don't understand the desire for a Linux phone as so
| described in the article as a daily driver.
|
| So you are fine throwing your phone every 2 years or so once
| the manufacturer stops releasing updates?
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| Google and Samsung offer at least 4 years of support. This
| number will increase in the future as they decouple stuff
| from core OS.
| fsflover wrote:
| Drivers are still tied to an old non-upstreamed Linux
| kernel, aren't they?
| shmerl wrote:
| Android deviated from the rest of the Linux ecosystem for
| reasons that are irrelevant today and never tried to close the
| rift when it could. So no, I'm not thrilled about Android. Give
| me a system that uses Wayland, not SurfaceFlinger.
| fit2rule wrote:
| This. People seem to be overlooking the fact that Android is
| an utterly repugnant ecosystem to develop for, and we can do
| much, much better.
| smhost wrote:
| Personally, I just want it for completeness. With phone
| hardware getting powerful enough to run mid-to-high end games,
| I want to be able to carry around a phone that I can hook up
| peripherals to and use it just like I would use a desktop. The
| Android ecosystem is pretty good in its own way, but it's
| qualitatively different compared to the Linux ecosystem for my
| use case.
|
| Windows and several popular Linux distros are moving to ARM
| anyway, so I feel like this is the ideal time to attempt
| carving out a space for people like myself.
| j-james wrote:
| Out of curiosity, if you could set up Android so that it
| launches Linux in a virtual machine when a monitor / keyboard
| is plugged in, would that meet your use case? Or are you
| looking for greater integration between mobile and the
| desktop?
| smhost wrote:
| Potentially, but you'd have to convince me that the
| performance hit and the added instability was worth it.
|
| I actually use the opposite setup at the moment
| (virtualized Android apps on a Linux desktop). So I think
| Android would have to convince me that it's a worthy
| general purpose computing environment that I can supplement
| using the Linux ecosystem, but for the moment it's looking
| like the opposite is the case.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| >Personally, I just want it for completeness.
|
| You know, that's an interesting point. There's a lot to be
| said for using one as a desktop. I've got a Motorola Droid
| laptop thingie around here somewhere that turned a phone into
| a pc-like device and it was actually pretty cool. A few
| generations of speed improvements and it would be fine for
| most uses. It's nice to have a single non-cloud state for
| your stuff.
|
| My main need is for a phone to do the following: be as
| private as possible, make calls, send messages, occasional
| browser use, hotspot. I'm tired of being dragged along with
| everyone else in terms of complexity.
| smhost wrote:
| That might be a generational thing. I can't remember the
| last time I ever used my phone as a phone.
|
| Also, what you're calling complexity, I see as simplicity.
| In my ideal world, I wouldn't need to install three
| different versions of a web browser across three devices in
| order to get through my day.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| > That might be a generational thing.
|
| I'm sure you're right. I pre-date cell phones and video
| games and never got interested in either one aside from
| the technology. A phone seems like a poor substitute to a
| fast workstation with multiple screens and a keyboard (to
| me), but I can see the cost in mobile connectivity.
| Luckily, we can all choose our poison, although my own
| old man phone needs are not as well supported.
|
| The interesting thing is to consider how your personal
| technology stack reprograms your thinking.
| KozmoNau7 wrote:
| Exactly, I would love a smartphone-size universal computing
| device, to use on the go or plug into desktop/laptop docking
| devices when needed.
|
| The individual parts are all there. Phones are powerful
| enough, we have USB-C with displayport for docking, KDE/qt
| has (or used to have?) an alternate small/touch GUI setup,
| phones can throttle their CPUs up when placed in a dock with
| active cooling, every individual part of the puzzle is
| available today in some form.
|
| Microsoft tried it and Samsung tried it, but both were too
| tied to their own proprietary ecosystems. I think it could
| work with a det of open and freely available standards.
| patentatt wrote:
| > Microsoft tried it and Samsung tried it, but both were
| too tied to their own proprietary ecosystems. I think it
| could work with a det of open and freely available
| standards.
|
| Sorry, but in what world has a new UI paradigm or physical
| form factor reached mass adoption via an open source
| project? Not knocking open source in general, it's just
| that these are not the open source communities' strengths
| in general. Meanwhile, single platform monolithic companies
| with end-to-end control and lots of financial resources
| tend to do much better here. Added to the fact that this
| was the basic thrust of the Ubuntu phone and (iirc) the
| Mozilla phone projects as well, and I just don't see it.
| Maybe Apple will popularize the idea with an M1 (or M2, M3,
| etc) based iPhone (15?) that is truly powerful enough to
| pull it off and can run iOS and Mac OS side by side.
| KozmoNau7 wrote:
| The problem with Microsoft's and Samsung's approaches is
| that they were too closed off, you didn't have the
| ability to install any software you wanted, unlike on a
| PC.
|
| If you want to unseat laptops, you have to provide what
| laptops do, a universal platform for software, not a
| walled garden.
| fsflover wrote:
| > I would love a smartphone-size universal computing
| device, to use on the go or plug into desktop/laptop
| docking devices when needed.
|
| Are you aware that it's a thing already?
| https://puri.sm/products/librem-5
| KozmoNau7 wrote:
| I know, however it also costs $800 for middling
| performance at best and is backordered probably until
| early 2022.
|
| It's close and getting closer, though.
| fsflover wrote:
| > for middling performance at best
|
| I am curious, what do you need in terms of performance?
| It can play 3D games and show videos on a big screen.
|
| > backordered probably until early 2022
|
| This is indeed a problem. Pinephone (with a worse
| performance) also has convergence and should be more
| available.
| KozmoNau7 wrote:
| > "I am curious, what do you need in terms of
| performance? It can play 3D games and show videos on a
| big screen."
|
| Better real-world performance than my X220i, so at least
| able to play some games from my Steam library, play
| 1080p60 videos, multitasking, that sort of thing. I
| assume the Librem 5 can _probably_ do all of this,
| although I 'm highly skeptical of running the desktop
| version of Firefox on just 3GB RAM. As a do-it-all mobile
| device, I would also need better battery life than my
| current smartphone, so 1-2 days of normal usage.
|
| As an aside, that X220i cost me ~$370 in 2018 and is a
| 2012 vintage machine, so not even close to current laptop
| performance. I appreciate what Purism are trying to do,
| but you'll certainly pay a price for being an early
| adopter.
| curioussavage wrote:
| One plus 6 support is looking pretty good. Give a few
| months and it may be a viable choice with decent specs.
| marto1 wrote:
| No GNU userland and a waterfall of IP issues !? Enough of a
| reason for me to be honest.
| realusername wrote:
| Because Android is Google's own property, it's not like a
| standard Linux distribution by any stretch of imagination.
|
| I'm not even against proprietary apps (just against proprietary
| drivers of course), it's just that transforming Android to make
| it behave normally is just more and more work every year.
|
| Some people (including myself) would prefer to have the same
| system they have on their desktop on their phone, with the
| added bonus of having convergence.
|
| Shielding Android from the rest of the system as a
| "compatibility layer" just to run some apps or drivers makes
| tons of sens.
| jokoon wrote:
| You mean Google always has dominant expertise when it comes
| to android, but it's still open source.
|
| I would still rather prefer using learn that reinventing a
| whole mobile OS.
|
| Hard to say if Google tries to complexify android to avoid
| rivals.
|
| I often say google has the same situation of microsoft when
| it comes to drivers.
| fsflover wrote:
| > but it's still open source
|
| Tell that to Termux:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25644964.
|
| > reinventing a whole mobile OS
|
| There is no reason to reinvent an OS. You can use desktop
| GNU/Linux on modern phones. You only need to tweak the UI
| (see Phosh). You will also have full computer in your
| pocket and ability to connect it to a screen and use all
| Linux apps.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| A compatibility layer for Android apps would really make it
| viable. I just don't want to fight my OS to be recognized and
| treated as its owner.
|
| In that respect I really like how I can run Windows games on
| Linux via Proton and Steam; an otherwise good game can ship
| with all kinds of crap (like having their own launchers stuck
| in the system tray), but when I'm done the whole Wine-sandbox
| collapses and I'm back in a Linux desktop that does what I
| want. Something like that for the host of proprietary apps
| you are nowadays hard-pressed to avoid (I manage now, but it
| is not a tenable position) would be welcome. Ideally you
| could do all sorts of privacy preserving stuff at the sandbox
| layer.
| ShinyRice wrote:
| Sure, the stuff in the tray goes away, but Wine is not a
| sandbox. Software can still look into your filesystem and
| processes. You need Flatpak for proper sandboxing.
| tnzm wrote:
| Flatpak, of all things?
|
| https://flatkill.org/
| pydry wrote:
| >A compatibility layer for Android apps would really make
| it viable. I just don't want to fight my OS to be
| recognized and treated as its owner.
|
| This is the real reason we need this. Without competition
| from free alternatives our phones will get locked down "for
| our benefit" harder and harder and it won't be done for our
| benefit.
|
| More tracking, more of our data sold, more DRM, etc.
| rini17 wrote:
| You haven't experienced the Nokia N900, have you?
| gspr wrote:
| > The Android platform represents an enormous amount of work
| that encompasses a more secure base kernel, an unparalleled
| selection of applications designed for mobile usage and written
| in a memory-safe language, fantastic sandboxing and user
| privacy features leagues ahead of any desktop operating system,
| and great diversity in the hardware market.
|
| It's also all Google's. At any time, for any reason, Google can
| arbitrarily decide that they don't want you to run software X,
| Y or Z. On _your_ device. The situation is, frankly, untenable.
|
| (Yes, you can often work around Google's arbitrary decision at
| the cost of inconvenience on your part. That still doesn't cut
| it. My device, my rules! Just like with my PC.)
| swiley wrote:
| Android is:
|
| Incredibly heavy and slow
|
| Very hard to hack on
|
| A pretty mediocre OS (lots of functionality is just missing or
| poorly implemented.)
|
| Uses a driver model that encourages closed drivers (this means
| it never gets updates after Qualcomm stops releasing updates to
| their BSP)
|
| A tool used by Google to force computing to be the way they
| want.
|
| Really the only nice things about Android is the sandbox (which
| you don't need often on Linux because all the software is
| community maintained anyway) and the sleep features (doze,
| which takes a very small amount of work to re-implement at
| least on OpenRC and push notifications but Firefox already has
| that anyway.)
| colordrops wrote:
| Yes, Android is mature and secure, but it's not _private_. No
| one seems to talk about this much, but there are a few Android
| "features" that had to be designed by sociopaths.
|
| The main one for me is the complete lack of control of network
| traffic. Other than a VPN loopback app, which is pretty janky,
| there is no way to disable network traffic per app. Even with a
| VPN loopback, there is no way to only allow network traffic
| when then app is in the foreground. There is no way to set
| network traffic to block by default and ask the user for
| permission when network access is needed. These restrictions
| are ABSOLUTELY DEADLY for user privacy and I don't understand
| why everyone isn't screaming at the top of their lungs from
| rooftops about these problems.
|
| It's quite obvious with a 2 seconds of thought that these
| deficiencies were intentional to maintain Google's advertising
| monopoly, but I don't want a crippled OS to support Google's
| abhorrent business model.
|
| It's absolutely mind boggling. It almost makes me want to join
| the LineageOS project to close these loopholes.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Per app restrictions only make sense with a strong sandbox
| (like Android). You can otherwise trivially get around
| something like little snitch by asking a trusted application
| to do something for you.
|
| Edit: Say you're playing around in Python repl. You enable it
| in your firewall. Now I just have to shell out to "python -c
| 'import requests; requests.post('my-innocent-
| app.herokuapp.com', ...)'". With a little more work I could
| do something like LD_PRELOAD.
| ex_amazon_sde wrote:
| > Android is mature and secure, but it's not private
|
| Nitpick: you cannot have security-but-not-privacy.
|
| If a system does not protect the confidentiality of your data
| from the eyes of the manufacturer it is breaching security.
|
| Security is much more than being protected from attacks. A
| torch application that reads your contact list and location
| fits squarely into the definition of trojan/spyware/malware.
| livre wrote:
| > there is no way to disable network traffic per app.
|
| Latest LineageOS can do that in the same place you can
| restrict background data, it has options for restricting
| mobile, WiFi and VPN data per app.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| By the way, my colleague has some crappy Huawei phone, which
| previously killed background apps [1], but this week received
| an update that changed the behaviour to simply disabling them
| from accessing the internet.
|
| [1]: https://dontkillmyapp.com
| zibzab wrote:
| This is a simple but wonderful idea!
|
| Hope more vendors follow. Google changing permission model
| to allow any app internet access was the stupidest decision
| made by a company in this millennium
| izacus wrote:
| Is there ANY OS out there that doesn't allow apps to the
| internet by default?
|
| Seriously, you throw around things like "sociopaths" for
| a pretty standard and expected user behaviour in all OSes
| out there?
| zibzab wrote:
| Wait, why is this a controversial stand?
|
| Is it really that bad to not wanting a random torch app
| to not use all your monthly data on God knows what?
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| Because you're throwing jabs at Android while literally
| every other OS in existence behaves the same way
| regarding network access.
| colordrops wrote:
| This thread is in response to why we need a Linux OS,
| which is because they are _all_ bad.
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| Android is infinitely better than anything you can come
| up with Linux OS on mobile. It is much easier to "fix"
| Android's "issues".
| fsflover wrote:
| > than anything you can come up with Linux OS on mobile
|
| I don't understand how you can generalize this far. Using
| a full desktop OS on mobile with all desktop apps is
| undoubtedly better.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| It is an idiotic idea because it makes my xmpp client
| unusable. It should be up to a user to decide what should
| work on a device and how, not forcing some undocumented
| behaviour upon a user 'for his own good'
| colordrops wrote:
| Hmm, maybe it's time for a huawei. I have a oneplus and had
| the hardest time unlocking my Tesla for a while because
| OnePlus's OxygenOS kept killing the Tesla app in the
| background. Really stupid.
| aflag wrote:
| Is it possible to run Android apps in the Linux phone? If I could
| run WhatsApp and my bank's app (which I need to in order to get
| into my account) I would definitely switch.
| fsflover wrote:
| Yes, with Anbox.
| mch82 wrote:
| Does your bank require the app, or is using a website an
| option?
| aflag wrote:
| It requires the app for two factor authentication. Even when
| using the website I need the app in order to perform certain
| operations.
| sunsipples wrote:
| All I want is a proper modular phone that can run linux. I dont
| need camera, happy with a fat phone for battery space, etc.
| please let it happen one day.
| fsflover wrote:
| https://puri.sm/products/librem-5.
| mpol wrote:
| And yet I am using a Linux Phone since 2014 as a daily driver :)
| And no, it is not for everyone, just like the Linux desktop. It
| would need a company like Nokia to put its weight behind it to
| bring it that far.
|
| But if a smaller company like Jolla can do it, it can be
| sustainable. If there are users and enough money coming in, all
| it needs to do is exist. And maybe some day there will be a
| company like Nokia putting its weight behind it and it can gain
| marketshare in big numbers. But even without it, it is a viable
| platform, just with some drawbacks.
|
| So yes, for the near future I keep on using my Sony Xperia with
| Sailfish OS. I also keep an eye on the Pinephone and Librem 5,
| but today they are not ready to be a daily driver for me.
| swilliamsio wrote:
| How are you finding app availability and system stability?
|
| About four or five years ago, I had a BQ Aquaris E4.5 which ran
| Ubuntu Touch and used it as my daily driver. I really struggled
| with the lack of app support - no Messenger, no Snapchat, no
| Instagram, no WhatsApp. There were also lots of little bugs
| that really showed the operating system hadn't had the massive
| amount of testing a mainstream OS would get. So I dumped it and
| got another Android.
| mpol wrote:
| App availability is good for my needs. For Android apps I
| only use Whatsapp and Firefox (as backup browser). I am not
| someone wanting to use apps for everything, I never used a
| banking app for example, and have no desire to use one. I am
| quite happy with Whisperfish as a third-party Signal client
| that is now in beta, though it needs a few more things to be
| more useful to me. I use an OSM app for maps, mpd client for
| remote music, and some default Jolla apps are quite okay.
|
| System stability overall is really good, I hardly ever get
| into a situation that a reboot is required. Some years ago on
| my Jolla 1 this did happen more, often when the network would
| not come back. There are some issues, like power drain on 4G
| and other small bits. The development team is small, it's not
| a billion dollar company, I think it's all relative.
|
| I have never used Ubuntu Touch and I cannot really comment on
| it. If you would be interested in trying that again, I think
| Axolotl is a Signal client for UT that is also in
| development. For Android apps, there is Anbox, but that is a
| very slow moving target with some rather big issues
| currently, from what I hear.
| barry27 wrote:
| no
| apatheticonion wrote:
| I want a phone that's Android in the hand but when I plug it into
| a usb-c hub, it projects full a fat linux distro on my external
| monitor(s).
|
| Though I love Linux, it's not because it's Linux - I just want to
| live the one device life. If IPhones could run MacOS on external
| monitors, I'd buy an iPhone.
|
| Alternatively, a web-based OS (with desktop linux on a hub) would
| be awesome if all my apps were available as web apps - but they
| are not so I'd still need a mobile OS and a desktop OS for the
| usbc hub life.
| izacus wrote:
| Samsung implemented exactly what you want under the name
| Samsung DeX - https://beebom.com/install-linux-on-dex
|
| However it seemed to not been interesting to the users because
| noone really used it and they cancelled the project.
|
| Their phones (the Galaxy series) still do support projecting a
| desktop mode when you plug the phone into a USB-C monitor. They
| now run "just" Android apps though.
| ajot wrote:
| There is (was?) MaruOS, an Android ROM with a Debian LXC
| container.
|
| https://maruos.com/
|
| https://github.com/maruos/maruos
| cookiengineer wrote:
| This is kind of anecdotal to Meego, WebOS, FirefoxOS and all the
| other forms of them that happened in the past.
|
| I don't think that people will use the phone solely because it's
| Linux. They'll use it if it can solve their tasks at hand.
|
| Personally I think that Linux will never take off if we won't
| create financial incentives to make and deploy apps, additionally
| to fix the mess that's user rights/permission management in GTK
| and QT.
|
| Currently there are no working native alternatives on Linux,
| libhandy is still a joke for simple tasks like a fading sidebar
| (or even swipe gestures!) and QT can't be used for anything
| serious due to their license.
|
| My hope for servo, FirefoxOS and WebOS was that there will be
| some day an alternative to Electron that's focussed on
| permissions and sandboxing, and that allows to be externally
| configured and is more modular on the environment (VM) level.
| Basically like a settings app on Android that can toggle GPS,
| toggle Networking access, toggle Camera access etc.
|
| Layouting-wise CSS has won the masses. Everyone that tries to
| reinvent it for their own opinionated views has failed and given
| up (including me who spent over 6 years developing an isomorphic
| App Engine full-time). It's time to let go. The web has won and
| there's no point in denying it.
|
| React has won most of the developer crowd because of React Native
| and convenience of staying in the same language and more
| importantly, being able to reuse the same code architecture.
|
| I think in order for Linux to succeed there has to be a compile
| pipeline (and runtime?) that allows to deploy those apps easily.
| If that's not possible (due to whatever reasons) the platform
| will never really take off.
|
| Privacy and Security and Openness is just no argument for the
| average user that doesn't care and just wants to get their tasks
| done.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "I don't think that people will use the phone solely because
| it's Linux. "
|
| Of course they will. It is just that hardcore linux people are
| not enough, to bring enough money in.
|
| " Privacy and Security and Openness is just no argument for the
| average"
|
| And it actually is a argument for average users, it is just
| that their priorities to get their tasks done are higher, which
| is rational.
|
| And since their tasks usually involve whatsapp and co. they
| won't be able to use a Linux phone.
| ldiracdelta wrote:
| What is this idea that Qt can't be used? You can license with
| the community license under LGPL. If Qt can't be used with an
| open source license, then nothing LGPL can use open source
| commercially, but the point of LGPL is to not scare away
| businesses with viral copy-left code. Yes, you have to deliver
| your object files and a Makefile, et c. Also, you have to open
| source your Qt library edits, but who needs to do that for
| business reasons? Are Qt library edits the industrial secret of
| your business? Probably not. Since when is letting other people
| run the linking stage on your code tantamount to giving them
| the keys to your business?
| mch82 wrote:
| I think you're right. I don't understand why more UI toolkits
| aren't adopting CSS for layout, especially the newer CSS grid.
| It's so much simpler than alternatives like TKinter.
|
| I get the memory/performance issues with Electron. Those can be
| solved. I'm able to open large XML files in VSCode that simply
| crush other apps like Notepad and XMLSpy.
| megous wrote:
| Who cares? Just keep trying. :)
|
| If you have Linux desktop, having a GNU/Linux phone is nice too.
| Not having to search for apps for every stupid little thing on
| some cesspool of an appstore would be great too, if you can just
| write a little script or whatever to scratch your itch, and be
| able to trust it wholly.
| ArcMex wrote:
| Linux phones are fancy flash drives with a touch interface.
| nix23 wrote:
| I was thinking about Plan9 lately, and Mobile is THE platform for
| it...i think. Since you are ~always online, how cool would it be
| when your phone is just the terminal, the
| CPU/File/Authentication-Servers sitting in the DC, is that the
| future?
| mch82 wrote:
| Just read about Plan9 the other day. It's just been donated as
| open source.
|
| Edit:
|
| Wikipedia overview,
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs
|
| MIT licensed as of March 23,
| https://marc.info/?l=9fans&m=161650489113326
| mattl wrote:
| Of course not. Nobody wants to run that on their phone except a
| tiny few. Android isn't the same, but even then nobody knowingly
| wants to run Android.
| techrat wrote:
| > but even then nobody knowingly wants to run Android.
|
| Nobody, eh? Not one person?
| matkoniecz wrote:
| I knowingly want to run Android - or something else Android
| compatible, because programs that I use on my phone are
| requiring it.
| mattl wrote:
| To be clear: I don't think anyone who is interested in Linux on
| a phone wants to run Android.
|
| It is Linux but not in any real way. It could just as easily be
| not-Linux.
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| > Android isn't the same, but even then nobody knowingly wants
| to run Android.
|
| What are you smoking? Android is the most popular OS in the
| world. It has millions of applications in PlayStore and outside
| of it. It has millions of developers creating software for it,
| huge companies contributing to it and best in the class
| development tools.
| officeplant wrote:
| I've tried and tinkered with all but the newest pinephone
| release. I sucks vs a similarly priced android phone but its
| working way more than I ever expected it to work this early on.
|
| Hopefully we can get some solid modern hardware support in a
| linux handheld eventually. It would be nice if Qualcomm could
| open up a few things and make it easier for open source phone
| hobbyists to get things going.
|
| The Pine64 community has been steadily growing and at least gives
| me confidence in what they can do with the older hardware the
| pinephone is working with.
| f6v wrote:
| > It would be nice if Qualcomm could open up a few things and
| make it easier for open source phone hobbyists to get things
| going.
|
| Is there any incentive for them to do so?
| coretx wrote:
| No because: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybris_(software)
| jorgenveisdal wrote:
| Nop.
| theiz wrote:
| He forgot montavista on the Motorola back in the days. Must say
| that was a hack of a good system for that time.
| dehrmann wrote:
| What's the benefit to a true Linux phone over running LineageOS?
| LineageOS at least is essentially Android, so the ecosystem is
| there.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Android apps are becoming more and more dependent on the closed
| source blobs that Google ships with Android devices, so some
| apps might not work without them. Although microG exists, it
| isn't perfect and some apps still won't run with it.
|
| A Linux phone can forgo Google's userspace libraries for
| Android, and if they're really needed, Android can just run in
| a container like with Anbox. Instead, it can ship with the
| typical GNU, busybox or ulibc userland that most Linux users
| are familiar with.
|
| Also, you can use pretty much any language or runtime to write
| apps for Linux, while you're stuck with the Android Runtime,
| Android NDK and Java compatible languages and runtimes on
| Android.
| yosito wrote:
| Your comment doesn't describe any benefit for users. Maybe a
| benefit for some developers who consider ideological
| technology choices a benefit. But users gain nothing.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Your comment doesn 't describe any benefit for users_
|
| Read the question that was asked and then look at the
| address bar to see where it was asked. Most people on HN
| are familiar with Linux or are developers themselves.
|
| But either way, I disagree entirely. On a platform like
| webOS or Maemo, users benefited greatly from running
| traditional Linux userlands. There were millions of users
| who got to enjoy a plethora of apps and the benefits of
| extensible, hackable hardware and systems.
|
| Preware, for example, had thousands of apps, extensions,
| and scripts available to millions of users. Users were able
| to take full advantage of what their hardware and systems
| were capable of, instead of being limited to whatever Apple
| or Google allowed them to do with their APIs.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| balp wrote:
| You can write most of your app in any language, it's only
| some UI and startup code that needs to be in the javalike
| languages.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| It's still a nightmare to use say, Python, to write Android
| apps.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Even LineageOS hardcodes calls to Google servers (location,
| network portal detection). To get around that you can install
| LineageOS with MicroG, or use a true Linux phone.
| m4rtink wrote:
| As LineageOS is just a rebuild of the Android open source bits
| it's still Google that dictates the overall direction.
|
| Sure, LineageOS can patch things out, but keeping the patches
| working over time as Google churns out new Android versions is
| far from simple.
| karlicoss wrote:
| The platfom gets more and more siloed/hostile to
| interoperability
| kgwxd wrote:
| I can't think of an Android app I'd prefer over a Linux
| alternative.
|
| Edit: Maybe Google Maps, but that's it.
| lostmsu wrote:
| What would you like for Email on your phone from the Linux
| world?
|
| A web browser?
|
| Contacts app?
|
| These are essentials for the phone.
|
| What about an RSS client?
| ryukafalz wrote:
| > What would you like for Email on your phone from the
| Linux world?
|
| There seems to be an adaptive version of Geary now, which
| looks nice though I haven't used it yet.
|
| > A web browser?
|
| GNOME Web works pretty well in my experience, though it
| could be faster and it's still missing WebRTC support.
|
| > Contacts app?
|
| GNOME Contacts seems to work well enough on my Librem 5 -
| synced straight away with my Nextcloud instance, vs. on
| Android where I had to find a third-party app to do that.
| sliken wrote:
| I greatly prefer firefox to chrome on android. Especially
| reader mode.
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| If only there was a Firefox for Android.
| sliken wrote:
| Not sure if that's sarcastic, but yes there is.
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| It is sarcastic.
|
| Person who advocates for Firefox on Android doesn't even
| know that it is already there.
| kgwxd wrote:
| You misread the comment.
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| Yep, apologies to OP. I thought I was replying to
| different comment.
| trystero wrote:
| There are lots of very good open source alternatives (K9
| Mail, OsmAnd, Element/Matrix, Firefox of course, etc.).
| Take a look at f-droid.org.
| lostmsu wrote:
| The parent was saying he wants Linux (as in desktop) apps
| on his phone. My point exactly is that they are much
| worse than Android ones in mobile scenarios.
|
| Many would need UI to be rewritten from scratch.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > What would you like for Email on your phone from the
| Linux world?
|
| I actually run mutt on Android already (yay termux), so
| should be fine.
|
| > A web browser?
|
| What's wrong with Firefox or chromium?
| fuzxi wrote:
| >What would you like for Email on your phone from the Linux
| world?
|
| Thunderbird
|
| >A web browser?
|
| Firefox/Chromium
|
| >Contacts app?
|
| kAddressBook
| lostmsu wrote:
| > Thunderbird, kAddressBook
|
| Interface totally unacceptable on mobile.
|
| > Firefox/Chromium
|
| Android has both
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I'd be shocked if it took off. The FOSS development paradigm
| seems to be allergic to good UI design, and this is far more
| important for people on mobile than desktop.
| strictfp wrote:
| It's not like the competitors are any better, in the desktop
| space at least.
|
| The problem in my eyes is plateauing. Once a project moves past
| the first couple of iterations, it rarely interests the
| original authors enough to make incremental improvements. And
| since there is no financial incentive to continue, the project
| usually cools down to eventually be replaced by the following
| iteration. This means that you rarely get mature software.
| sergeykish wrote:
| You judge from subjective view. Should we all? I do not like
| macOS and Windows experience. It is full of distractions.
|
| http://sergeykish.com/side-by-side-no-decorations.png
| chovybizzass wrote:
| MacOS is usable. Windows isn't. I like KDE because its not
| either and its themeable.
| slver wrote:
| The macOS/Windows term for those distractions is
| "applications".
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| > It is full of distractions
|
| Define distraction in terms of computing first.
| herbst wrote:
| Popups, weird confirmation dialogs nobody reads,
| configurations hidden in X different uis without console
| interface, the amount of screen space wasted for whatever
| reasons and the possibility that the wasted space contains
| text and icons that suddenly start to blink and move
| (attention seeking apps), ....
|
| I feel distracted working on Windows or Mac. As if someone
| is putting stones everywhere and i have to mangle inbetween
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| I don't see how any of this happens all the time. If I
| were to maximize terminal and IDE/Browser I won't see
| those things either.
| sergeykish wrote:
| You've just described it, you need intermediate step of
| maximizing. You can get away from distraction for a
| while.
| herbst wrote:
| You are likely more used to it than i am. Thing is even
| if i maximize my terminal on windows or mac, how much can
| i actually do without switching context to get some
| things done. Switching between software is also not what
| i consider distructing. Its the how, the discovery of
| files and software, the switching between windows,
| switching between possibly dozens of windows of the same
| kind. How many key strokes are some actions away? (Given
| mac is a lot better in this degree than windows).
|
| Some approaches on linux, be it gnome or kde or tiled
| solutions are just so much more efficient
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Funny, absolutely everything you said applied to Ubuntu
| last time I tried it.
| sergeykish wrote:
| There are so many groups in Linux. Ubuntu was oriented
| towards Windows users. Check out Arch Linux pkgstats [1]:
|
| * gnome-shell is GNOME
|
| * plasma-workspace is KDE
|
| * i3-wm and sway -- tiling WM and its Wayland successor
|
| * xmonad -- WM building framework
|
| Note: these are _installed_ packages among those who
| _opted in_ , does not strictly reflects usage. Some fun
| statistics [2].
|
| [1] https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/compare/packages#packag
| es=gnom...
|
| [2] https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/fun
| herbst wrote:
| Ubuntu is a horrible example for well one UX or even a
| stable linux system. Times change, and i totally agree
| thats its hard to see trough as average user.
| sergeykish wrote:
| Everything that's not related to my current task. For
| example Windows UI constantly reminds me of
|
| * application name
|
| * ability to max, min, move
|
| * list of running applications
|
| * ability to run other applications
|
| * content length and my progress
|
| * actions on content
|
| I don't need any of these. Like Amazon Echo users probably
| don't require ever present poster of available actions.
| Instead I have places -- several of work places, generic
| browsing, messaging, media controls, services.
| zepto wrote:
| I'm not sure why this got downvoted - it's a very clear
| expression of a real issue, and it's definitely easier to
| solve it on Linux.
|
| I choose to use Mac OS, and I celebrate each time they
| take a step in solving these problems - e.g. making the
| menu bar hidable, but I am fully aware that if I want
| something better in these ways I will need to use Linux
| and customize it to my tastes.
| qayxc wrote:
| > You judge from subjective view. Should we all? I do not
| like macOS and Windows experience. It is full of
| distractions.
|
| You judge from a subjective view. There's no discoverability
| in the screenshot you shared.
|
| It's all subjective and a product for the mass market looks
| different from a product that serves a very specific niche.
| sergeykish wrote:
| Absolutely. I've mimicked subjective view of parent
| comment. I trade discoverability for immersion and space.
| Apple is famous of its discoverability issues.
|
| Nowhere article stated it's going to be year of Linux
| userland on the smartphone. It states hope for existence of
| a niche.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| If it worked well enough, and was stable enough, I think a lot
| of tech enthusiasts might make the switch. Same we we put up
| with Linux distros.
|
| A friend has a pine phone and it's just not good enough as a
| daily driver. Forget UI. It needs a reboot regularly.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| I have a pinephone; it is not good enough. Very unstable;
| everything (apps/wm) just keep crashing randomly; I send in
| crash reports. And I try the latest images every month.
|
| But yes, I think it would work. I would be happy with a phone
| that can run Linux desktop software with HDMI. It would need
| to be powerful enough (which the pinephone is very much not
| at all), not eat so much battery when the USB dock is plugged
| in with HDMI and, most importantly as you say, be stable as
| Linux. The pinephone feels very far removed from any of this.
|
| Personally, I don't really care about the size of the phone;
| I gladly give up weight for more battery life (I will have to
| carry a battery anyway otherwise so why not inside the
| phone). I guess I would rather the (6.5inch) phone have an
| eInk display but plug into a screen for a full Linux desktop.
| But sure, there is no real money in that for phone makers as
| only people like me would buy them. With Android they are
| next to useless for me though, which is annoying as there are
| nice Android (eInk) phones out there if they would run Linux.
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| wow - now that you mention it. a smartphone with an eInk
| display. that would be rad!
| tluyben2 wrote:
| You can buy them today [0]. No linux though :)
|
| [0] https://www.e-ink-info.com/e-ink-devices/mobile-
| phones
| fpoling wrote:
| Modern UI on the phones makes discovering features really hard.
| One often ends up with searching obscure forums just to know
| very useful feature like IPhone trick with holding the space
| bar to move cursor.
|
| I can understand that on 4" inch phones there were no space for
| extra buttons, but with 6" screens this became ridiculous. So
| much for "good" design.
| herbst wrote:
| Not sure if apple really can be considered modern in a space
| developing as fast as that. From my pov apples ui is still
| the dated sister everyone is trying to copy from
| zepto wrote:
| What is more modern?
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Apples UI has been copied since as long as I've been alive
| bpicolo wrote:
| I agree with you, but I think discoverability for me is a lot
| more critical for software I use infrequently versus
| something I'm glued to several hours a day.
| fpoling wrote:
| I learned about the space bar trick after 2 years of using
| iPhone after my son showed me a post on a forum. This made
| fixing typos much more quicker.
| ghaff wrote:
| I discovered that about a year ago. I'm sure there are
| some other obvious things I don't know. In general, most
| of us who have been using smartphones for 10 years or so
| are probably able to adapt to new features fairly easily
| (assuming we learn about them). But it's probably easy to
| overlook how overwhelming they might be to someone who
| has never touched one before.
| rkagerer wrote:
| I really miss Palm's zen. Great sweet spot of discoverability
| with a clutter-free design that didn't sacrifice
| functionality. I could even make the buttons do useful things
| instead of just opening a Bixby TOS I've declined a dozen
| times.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| I have the Bixby button set to play/pause, and a long-press
| to turn on the flashlight. It works great.
| awiesenhofer wrote:
| Which you can only do if you agree to the tos...
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| I use an app called bxAxtions, and I'm pretty sure I
| didn't need to set up Bixby at all or agree to any terms
| of service (I can't remember for sure). I had to run some
| ADB commands to grant it extra permissions, and I think
| Bixby doesn't run at all.
| setum wrote:
| thank-you, I didn't know of this feature. And I am using
| iPhone for over a year now. It was such a pain to get cursor
| to correct spot up until now. Please share if know of any
| catalog of such tricks.
| kaba0 wrote:
| One hidden feature I quite like is the scroll up. Move a
| page a bit so that the scroll bar is visible and tap the
| clock.
| wallacoloo wrote:
| I do this one on accident frequently (e.g. when trying to
| pull the top bar down to respond to a notification). I'm
| glad I know exactly what triggers it now so that maybe I
| can learn to quit triggering it all the time.
| myself248 wrote:
| Swipe left and right on an SMS to reveal the timestamp and
| other stuff.
|
| Blew my mind after tearing my hair out that this
| information was just gone. It's not gone, just hidden in a
| place you'd never think to look for it.
| patentatt wrote:
| Me too. Long time IOS user, have been continually
| frustrated by the somewhat recent cursor redesign (what was
| it, IOS 13?). Knowing this is a game changer for a lot of
| phone use, and it was completely unknown to me: a motivated
| tech-literate IOS fan. There really is something wrong with
| UI discovery here.
| strzibny wrote:
| We have GNOME 40 now which is beautiful.
|
| I can imagine it would be beautiful on mobile pretty soon as
| well.
| underscore_ku wrote:
| if you thing gnome4 is good design then linux phone is dead
| herbst wrote:
| What desktop approach do you consider to be modern? Or do
| you like to stick to the "win95" approach of desktops?
| [deleted]
| curt15 wrote:
| I sometimes find it hard to understand the GNOME's design
| rationale. When GNOME 40 moved the dock from the left side to
| the bottom of the screen, it created an ergonomic problem for
| mouse users, who now need two large mouse gestures to switch
| apps -- first to the upper left corner to reveal the dock,
| then all the way to the bottom. And in the issue thread[1],
| Gnome's designers seem to be carefully avoiding the obvious
| solution of a hot bottom edge, proposed by several
| commenters, which is how Mac OS has always handled an auto-
| hiding dock.
|
| https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Design/os-mockups/-/issues/68
| kaba0 wrote:
| Of course it depends on the person, but I have never really
| used the dock for anything. I usually use the overview, or
| start typing the name of the app I want, or even more often
| just apt tab to it.
| lower wrote:
| I don't really understand the rationale either, but it's
| easy to add a hot bottom edge with this extension:
|
| https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4222/hot-edge/
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| > We have GNOME 40 now which is beautiful.
|
| Don't know about that, chief. Looks like a same old Gnome.
| konart wrote:
| I hope you are joking. I have Fedora 34 with Gnome 40 right
| now on my gaming PC as a second system and I can barely find
| two windows (not even apps, just two windows) that can be
| defined as "nicely done". Everything else is terrible. Even
| worse once you start looking for apps on he net. Everything
| that is not Electron-base is simply ugly, constructed without
| any thought about UX.
| [deleted]
| mch82 wrote:
| You might have hit on a solution here: Electron, or,
| ideally, a really nice mobile-first web browser with access
| to APIs provided by the underlying Linux OS.
|
| I'm essentially imagining a phone OS that decouples the
| front-end and backend design. Implement the apps as APIs.
| Implement the UI using HTML5 so more designers can use
| their existing skills to contribute & the GUI layer can be
| replaced more easily. The experience would be a refinement
| of pulling a Docker image and opening a browser to use it
| on localhost.
|
| Edit: a mobile OS also needs a really nice mobile-first
| shell app. People do so much with text messaging now that I
| think they might be open to it...
| konart wrote:
| Flutter or something similar + your backend of choice.
| dasyatidprime wrote:
| There's a prior attempt in the form of Firefox OS, which
| tried to push the "Web technology as driver of local UI"
| thing. Some cursory looking around suggests that webOS
| may also have done this, but I'm not as sure (it would
| make sense from the name).
| wjertyj wrote:
| You're basically describing WebOS and FirefoxOS.
|
| WebOS lives on as LuneOS (and runs on the pinephone), but
| FirefoxOS effectively went closed source and became
| KaiOS.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > I'd be shocked if it took off.
|
| Its not about taking off - it's about having an alternative
| that is available even if it's just for 0.01% of users.
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| > just for 0.01% of users
|
| Who will develop it, why and most importantly what will it
| provide compared to alternatives?
| ekianjo wrote:
| It won't provide more features, but the one I want is
| definitely less tracking of everything through my phone,
| which is built-in with current vendors.
| herbst wrote:
| Gnome 3 is by far one of the most modern approaches to desktops
| and personally i dig the look.
|
| Imo these days where foss ment ugly gui are slowly over
| II2II wrote:
| Yes, bad UI design exists. On the other hand, good UI design is
| largely a matter of what people are familiar with. This is true
| of both open source and commercial software. If we see bad UI
| design in open source software more, it is likely a product of
| open source software being more accessible. (People are more
| likely to try something they can download for free than
| something they have to pay $1000, $100, or even $10 for.)
| gorgoiler wrote:
| I "just" need a browser.
| opan wrote:
| Do you have specific thoughts on phosh, plamo, or lomiri?
| forinti wrote:
| I'd much rather use any Linux than Windows 10.
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| Why?
| pyrale wrote:
| Not parent poster, but the interface works as a plaster
| that obfuscates the stuff I need. Add to it the many mobile
| imports pushed onto the user (don't care about cloud? Well,
| W10 cares, and it will push it at every turn) and you get a
| product that's built to push how Microsoft thinks you
| should use your computer.
|
| My aging father has used Microsoft OSes since dos, and W10
| is the first product he's having real trouble moving to.
| The reason for that is that he's always been a pc user, and
| W10 is pushing mobile ux, with a very hard opt-out.
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| Original question was regarding UI. What's wrong with W10
| UI?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Neither of the parents' posters, but my gripes with
| Windows 10 come down to these:
|
| - Unreliability of UI elements (mixed responsiveness,
| difficult to see what are buttons and what are labels)
|
| - Too much wasted space in their current design language,
| and related to that
|
| - Too much distraction by visual eye candy (background
| images behind buttons in the email client, for example)
|
| - Somehow, despite having every advantage in manufacturer
| driver support, still laggy animations
|
| - After years, search is still bad and unpredictable, to
| the point I have to type "updat" to go to Windows Update
| because "update" will take me to Bing to tell me about
| how to update my PC.
|
| - Inconsistencies. Many of those are because of the
| decades of backwards compatibility, which I can forgive,
| but even the modern Windows 10 apps have inconsistent
| designs[1]. Icons from four Windows versions that can all
| be seen on the same screen if you navigate deep enough
| through the seconds, even though Windows uses a unified
| resource loading mechanism for most system resources.
|
| None of the alternatives are perfect, of course, but some
| are just _less worse_ in my opinion. Compared to the W10
| shell, Gnome feels much snappier to me. Also, after
| finally fixing the bug that made the Windows 10 start
| menu break, a new start menu bug has been introduced to
| my system that makes it impossible to use the search bar
| in the start menu when it's opened start button on my
| left screen, breaking "winkey > program name > enter"
| _again_.
|
| On Linux, audio sometimes breaks, or external monitors
| only work after an update. When nothing breaks, the
| system works great. On Windows, everything always kind of
| works, but not completely. Whatever I'm trying to do,
| _something_ is broken in a way that 's not bad enough to
| invest time into fixing, but still annoys me to no end.
| On macOS, you need to buy the expensive Apple hardware or
| it won't work at all. I have no need for expertly-graded
| colour-accurate screens sporting extreme resolutions, but
| you don't get any other options if you want to experience
| the macOS UI. I can't say much about the most recent
| macOS UI because I can't even run it, which makes it
| impossible to compare.
|
| Of these three, I've settled with Linux, especially
| Gnome, as the "least broken" UI.
|
| In the mid to late years of Windows 7, the Windows UI
| greatly outperformed most alternatives. With Windows 8,
| the system got very usable after the 8.1 update came out.
| After Windows 10, with the introduction of "operating
| system as a service", the UI seems to be in a perpetual
| state of "nearly finished, just needs a few more updates"
| because of the constant addition of more features and
| integrations.
|
| [1]: Although it's been improving, I still notice stuff
| like this every now and then: https://www.reddit.com/r/Wi
| ndows10/comments/7aw5ps/i_just_no...
| [deleted]
| curioussavage wrote:
| The idea it has to "take off" is silly. It could certainly be
| something similar to raspberry pi. Small market but really
| popular. It's already on its way there.
| swiley wrote:
| Two things:
|
| 1) The GNU utilities have pretty good _CLI UI_ design and there
| are plenty of us who are perfectly happy with just that and a
| decent WM like FVWM even on a phone
|
| 2) It's not like closed mobile stuff has a great UI either. My
| favorite example is Apple's camera app. Did you know you can do
| manual focus with it? It's absolutely impossible to discover
| but I think it involves a "reverse three finger pinch." I've
| even had it explained twice to me (and used it) and forgotten
| how to do it after. I can never remember how when I need it.
| This garbage makes the TAR UI look like it was designed by an
| artist.
| slver wrote:
| The Apple Camera app has _no_ manual focus. It has autofocus,
| tap to focus and it has focus lock if you tap and hold.
|
| How come your "favorite example" isn't even a real example...
| swiley wrote:
| It turns out I was thinking of the exposure/brightness
| controll.
|
| Sorry I don't use iOS very often (and very rarely use the
| camera app.)
|
| I think my point still stands though. The UI is not at all
| discoverable (and not all that ergonomic either which is
| why most people might tolerate some lack of
| discoverability.)
| slver wrote:
| The exposure/brightness control is not it either.
|
| When you tap on your screen, the camera focuses on the
| point you tapped. It also adjusts the exposure to the
| point you tapped. And right next to where you tapped, a
| simple slider with a SUN ICON appears, and you can drag
| that slider to adjust the exposure.
|
| The fact you don't use iOS and the Camera app, I'm fine
| with that. But you're telling everyone how bad the iPhone
| UI is without using it and misleading people about how it
| works. Not quite fair.
|
| In any case, it's easy to pile on Apple, until you try to
| do it yourself. Let's see this Android OS match something
| at least half as usable as what the iPhone UI is. It took
| Android a decade to get there.
| [deleted]
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| > plenty of us
|
| Which is a soooo tiny minority that it won't even show up on
| charts.
|
| > It's absolutely impossible to discover but I think it
| involves a "reverse three finger pinch."
|
| That's a shitty UX, not UI.
| dudeman13 wrote:
| Can't have bad UI if there is no visible UI _taps head_
| slver wrote:
| There is no three finger manual focus gesture on iPhone.
| Not sure where he got that from.
| II2II wrote:
| User interfaces are how you interact with a computer.
| That includes visual and non-visual elements. Widgets you
| tap on the screen, gestures you make with your fingers,
| hotkeys, and commands entered are all components of the
| UI. If you pinched your fingers together on a touch
| screen and the view started zooming in it would be just
| as bad as clicking on a magnifying glass with a '-'
| symbol and it zooming in, even though the former is not
| visible.
| mod50ack wrote:
| I mean, you say "plenty", but it's going to be only a
| fraction of the number of people who are perfectly happy with
| that sort of thing on the desktop, which already isn't very
| many people (even if you assumed all *nix users sans Macheads
| were like this, which they're not).
|
| And while you're right to say that mobile UI design can be
| bad, is the solution to that really throwing out mobile UI as
| a concept altogether in favor of ... a window manager
| designed for a mouse and ketboard, running text terminals on
| a tiny touchscreen?
| fsflover wrote:
| Did you actually see the design of Phosh? It was developed by
| actual paid designers, not by programmers.
| diminish wrote:
| On the other hand, I think designers aren't that into
| contributing to FOSS - traditionally designers have been more
| on "paid" side of computation.
| f6v wrote:
| I think the absolute majority of developers aren't
| contributing to FOSS either.
| 1_player wrote:
| Not sure about that, I just think that "design" has a lower
| barrier to entry.
|
| A pure designer cannot one day find themselves writing code
| for a major piece of opensource software.
|
| A pure programmer can find themselves arranging some UI and
| designing a logo on Inkscape, that won't look and feel great.
|
| Put the two together and something magical can happen, though
| not always, as design is so easy the programmer can be
| overcome with hubris and discard or ignore the designer
| advice and do the designing himself, with obvious results.
| codeflo wrote:
| It's even worse, I think. Good UX design looks deceptively
| easy, but is actually incredibly hard. So hard that a lot
| of programmers don't even recognize how terrible they are
| at it, or how high the skill ceiling actually is. They
| think UI design is pretty colors and rounded buttons.
|
| In a functioning software company, the managers recognize
| this skill difference and simply order the developers to
| implement what the designers suggest. They grumpily do.
| (It's obviously not always so stereotypical. I'm
| exaggerating to make a point.)
|
| In a typical OSS project, no one can give orders. The
| programmers ignore any good design suggestions because they
| don't recognize those, and implement their own crappy ideas
| instead. Sometimes while arrogantly dunking on the designer
| who tried to make a contribution. Consequently, UX quality
| is abysmal, and anyone who could fix that is driven away. I
| don't see a solution to this.
| tpxl wrote:
| > They think UI design is pretty colors and rounded
| buttons.
|
| Most people, let alone programmers, don't realize there's
| more to "design" than pictures.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > I don't see a solution to this.
|
| User testing. Making user feedback the key driver of UI
| related decisions.
| zxzax wrote:
| >In a typical OSS project, no one can give orders. The
| programmers ignore any good design suggestions because
| they don't recognize those, and implement their own
| crappy ideas instead. Sometimes while arrogantly dunking
| on the designer who tried to make a contribution.
| Consequently, UX quality is abysmal, and anyone who could
| fix that is driven away. I don't see a solution to this.
|
| Generally, going into an open source project as a
| stranger and suggesting to make architectural changes
| without expectation of pushback is not a good idea. Any
| change there is going to trample on someone else's
| workflow. You have to build up trust first before people
| see you as an authority, that is the solution and it's
| often the only one. It's worked for some projects such as
| the recent post about Audacity, even though it's a bit of
| an extreme example because the person was already
| established as a well-known designer:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26995610
|
| I don't blame the programmer for dismissing suggestions
| they don't understand but it's also not cool if you were
| "dunked on" so I'm sorry if that was your experience.
| Keep in mind that's still better than some, a lot of
| projects will just ignore suggestions completely if they
| figure you're just not part of their target audience, and
| they don't have the budget to expand that audience.
| codeflo wrote:
| No need to be sorry, I'm not the designer in this story
| -- I'm the grumpy sofware engineer, and nowadays
| sometimes the manager. I'm also a desktop Linux user who
| is regularly annoyed by the sad and confusing state of
| opensource UX. What makes me so pessimistic is that I
| know the social dynamics that typically cause this, and
| have seen them play out in lots and lots of mailing list
| discussions.
|
| Of course that's not a logical inevitability, things can
| change with more understanding. Your link actually makes
| me very happy, I hadn't seen this. Let's hope that this
| works out, and becomes a model that more OSS project can
| follow.
| cinquemb wrote:
| > I don't see a solution to this.
|
| Brain computer interfaces... UI's as they exist today are
| merely an abstraction layer for getting the brain to
| engage with and process information.
| ath92 wrote:
| I think part of the problem is also that it's sometimes
| more difficult to implement a nice and usable design.
| Instead, it may be easier to write code that does
| everything it needs to, but forces the user to jump
| through hoops to get what they want.
|
| Sometimes making software more user-friendly may even
| cause the code to get more "ugly", because instead of a
| nice and elegant piece of software that only solves the
| core problem, you now have to deal with all the
| weirdnesses of how people perceive the problem as well.
| Taking away complexity on the user's side almost always
| adds complexity to the code. And if you're the developer,
| it's very easy to think that the tool you created is
| perfectly usable, because you understand everything about
| the mental model that went into it.
| mch82 wrote:
| As a product design lead, your comment and the comment
| you're replying to reflect my experiences both with open
| source and with commercial development. For me, part of
| the solution has been learning how to communicate with
| developers. I've also found it helpful to broaden the
| scope of UX I consider to include the developer
| experience, data processing workflows, and the design of
| CLI and API interfaces.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Programming a complex system can be achieved from the
| bottom up: Volunteers keep adding and sharing stuff. Old
| stuff becomes obsolete. The system marches on.
|
| UI design in contrast is a top-down effort. You can't
| just mix and match various works from people. It's about
| information flow and consistency. A unified interface has
| to be agreed upon, and then implemented across the board.
| And any part of the system that fails to meet that
| standard, essentially breaks the UI.
| amelius wrote:
| Or perhaps there are too many designers? Or overconfident
| programmers who think they can do the design work?
| rjzzleep wrote:
| I'd say it's neither. Demoscene is a good example of when
| designers and programmers were working well together.
|
| Deviantart was a huge platform where people would share art
| and designs/skins. To some extent that still exists for iOS
| views.
|
| I think one thing that's different about the deviantart
| model was that back then apps used to have skinning
| interfaces. And then designers could focus on just
| skinning. You could argue that gnome themes are like that.
| I would disagree, but also skinning isn't quite the same as
| doing ux.
|
| UI/UX on Mac is a lot easier than UI/UX on gtk applications
| or QT applications.
|
| On top of that, I don't think most designers understand
| OSS. It's basically a different universe and these two
| world don't often interact.
| deadelvis wrote:
| This totally proves the point above of programmers not
| having the first clue about UX design, why it's hard and
| makes a the whole difference. It is everything BUT
| "skinning".
|
| It's about the users and their ability to understand how
| to work with your software to address their needs and
| expectations... not about your code, the designer or the
| manager. Those people are the product, NOT the user.
|
| If I had a dollar for every programmer and manager that
| thought they knew better and stubbornly cooked up a
| crappy MVP nobody wanted, I would be able to fund your
| OSS.
| amelius wrote:
| To be fair, GP said "but also skinning isn't quite the
| same as doing ux."
| alexanderdmitri wrote:
| If there's an OSS funded by developers cooking up crappy
| unwanted MVPs, I want in.
|
| Right now I have ten crappy MVPs to donate and can put
| down $20 to sponsor others. I could probably have another
| 5 MVPs out within the next week if work is slow.
| Valmar wrote:
| It's a case of developer UI. Has nothing to being "allergic" to
| "good UI design".
|
| Being able to design something friendly to the average user,
| yet powerful enough to be friendly to power users, is a very
| difficult task to accomplish.
|
| Developers understand the latter quite well, I think, as they
| themselves are power user-types. The former... well, that
| requires having dedicated designers who know how the average
| user thinks, as well as perhaps guinea pigs in the form of the
| average user. And that might require a lot more funding,
| perhaps.
| slver wrote:
| Often it feels like "developer UI" is just "slap some buttons
| around and hook them to the handlers, call it a day". At
| least that's how Gimp feels to this day.
| tomxor wrote:
| It depends on what you mean by design.
|
| Modern proprietary OS (mobile and desktop) certainly have more
| polish, aesthetic taste and cohesion - that last one being the
| most valuable when compared to much of FOSS. But in terms of
| usability I'm not convinced they are any better unless we are
| going back a good 20 years. They have improved looks at the
| cost of performance and significant ambiguity and thus mental
| overhead in learning and general operation.
| slver wrote:
| It's easy to make a light OS when no one uses it.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I think that Linux UI is good. I'm using Windows because I need
| iCloud, otherwise Linux is better.
| gspr wrote:
| > The FOSS development paradigm seems to be allergic to good UI
| design
|
| I'm having a hard time understanding what it is about the
| _development paradigm_ that 's allergic to good UI design. In
| good faith I'll assume you meant that "FOSS projects seem to
| lack good UI design". This I'll agree with, if we're talking
| about _G_ UI design (others have pointed out that the CLI
| interfaces are usually great). I really don't think the lacking
| GUI design is necessarily inherent in FOSS, but I too wonder
| why more people with design skills aren't attracted to working
| on FOSS stuff.
| drums8787 wrote:
| Also don't know about the paradigm per se, but I suspect a
| lot of FOSS developers are CLI first type users. Secondly,
| they are mostly not working in environments where GUI UX
| designers are part of the process. Thirdly, good UX design
| doesn't happen by committee. Pure speculation on the first
| two.
| myself248 wrote:
| Case-sensitive filesystems. Quod erat demonstratum.
| yoz-y wrote:
| Good UI design usually comes from one person knowing what
| they are doing and the programmers willing to follow. In OSS
| people are often motivated by full control.
| gspr wrote:
| Really? In many-person collaborative OSS projects, there
| seems to be a decent amount of belief that others can do
| better work than oneself.
| username90 wrote:
| You need to redesign your code architecture to fit the UI
| or you wont get a world class UI. That isn't what happens
| though, instead they hook in UI interactions so it looks
| like the designs but doesn't really work as well as you'd
| wish. I've never seen a developer who gladly did the
| architectural redesigns needed to make UI truly great.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| It seems to me that the root cause is that OSS is often
| developed by people already using it. They are used to weird
| interface and not benefiting from it being usable by newbies.
|
| So there is much smaller motivation to improve it.
|
| And even if someone new joins project they will be often also
| used to weird interface once they contribute.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I think it's simpler than that. Unpaid developers
| overwhelmingly prefer to work on the intellectually "sexy"
| problems such as encryption or compilers, to the detriment of
| the boring-yet-important stuff like UI improvements and
| hardware compatibility (let alone proper QA).
| pvorb wrote:
| Yes. And good UI design requires a look of work and effort
| to get it right. You need many skills, or a good team to do
| it and that's rare in FOSS.
| young_unixer wrote:
| I think developers and most users simply don't even notice
| the problems.
|
| When I say "I can't use program X because the UI/UX sucks,
| is there any alternative?" people come out and say "I see
| no problem with program X, I use it everyday and it rocks"
| sergeykish wrote:
| Vim rocks, yet a lot of people can't use it. Once you
| state "X sucks", someone would object.
|
| You've got strange conclusion out of it.
| Beldin wrote:
| It's even simpler than that. Who wants to work on changing
| a UI that they themselves are comfortable with? It's work
| with - best case - no benefit in the eyes of the developer.
| Worse, you likely will break workflows - including your
| own. Sexyness doesn't need to factor in at all.
|
| And do note the nice uncanny valley of no change: in order
| to improve the UI, you need to understand the program well.
| In order for that to happen, you need to be proficient with
| it. In which case, you know how to use the UI and are more
| likely blind to its downsides.
| hasmanean wrote:
| One more thing: some people have no eye for aesthetics.
| I've seen (smart) people defend a piece of code, and when
| I show them a refactored version, they say "that's
| literally the exact same thing I wrote."
|
| No it's not, and yes it is, in the sense that's a^2 + 2ab
| + c^2 is not the same thing as (a+b)^2, but they (should
| and ideally must) evaluate to the same thing. I say
| ideally because only in the case of using infinite
| precision arithmetic can you guarantee this for all
| values of a,b,c.
|
| People blind to these patterns cannot see how to simplify
| things, whether math or code or UIs.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Was the use of c^2 intentional?
| allenu wrote:
| In my opinion, improving user experience isn't something
| that is easily done piecemeal. It's one of those things
| that can require architectural changes to get right, and so
| it's difficult to improve on existing projects. Fixing bugs
| and making things faster is "easier" in a sense because the
| end goal is obvious and you can target specific portions of
| code to make immediate improvements. Improving UX can mean
| making many architectural changes before being able to reap
| any fruit from your labor. I say this as someone who has
| worked on a lot of apps. I can't imagine the difficulty of
| making several pull requests and getting them accepted
| without any clear output in the product itself.
| zxzax wrote:
| If you're suggesting that this is done out of selfishness
| or intellectual fervor then I don't think that's true. I
| wouldn't say they "prefer" it but it's certainly easier and
| more economical for a skilled person to contribute to those
| tools because the developers and the users are the same
| group of people.
|
| Once you decide you need to do user testing and hardware
| testing, the cost shoots up. You need to start procuring
| hardware and finding a place for it to live so automated
| tests can run on it all the time. That costs money. You
| need to bring in a lot more testers which requires project
| management and/or volunteer coordinators. Usually that
| costs money too. Everything you do needs to go through more
| stages of design review which also requires extra
| coordination and project management. These are real things
| you can have but someone's got to foot the bill.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > Once you decide you need to do user testing and
| hardware testing, the cost shoots up.
|
| It is not so bad.
|
| Take three people who never used given software, ask them
| to do the most basic tasks. And fix the most common
| problems.
|
| Your (and mine) software is much harder to use than you
| expect.
|
| You do not need UI/UX people, massive scale testing to
| fix low hanging fruit.
| zxzax wrote:
| Just my experience, three people is not a big enough
| sample size for most projects. You will get very biased
| opinions if you go with that. That may be ok if you have
| a very niche project and you only ask some people in that
| niche.
| bmn__ wrote:
| > You will get very biased opinions [with 3 testers]
|
| Your anecdote is atypical.
|
| https://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-you-only-need-to-
| test-w...
| matkoniecz wrote:
| Or when you have obvious problems!
|
| Take it with pile of salt, I am not some big expert. I
| just did it with some projects. But it seems to me that
| in nearly all cases there are glaring issues that would
| be detected with any amount of testing at all.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| A Linux smartphone is like a Linux car. If Linux is the important
| part to you, your priorities might be a bit off
| noisy_boy wrote:
| I think the analogy is a bit off. I don't expect to mess around
| with my car the same way I do with my phone. A messed up
| software setup in a car can actually kill me instead of just
| having to restore from recovery in a phone. Purpose of phones
| have expanded greatly from just making calls and receiving
| messages to being in the center of our digital activities which
| means my expectations there have greatly grown and Linux fills
| the gap of freedom/flexibility. However, irrespective of the
| software, a car's overarching purpose is still getting one from
| point A to B; sure, great if I can also ssh into it but that is
| way lower down the usual list of things you expect to do with
| your car.
| esperent wrote:
| Why would it have to be someone's "most important priority"?
| That's such needlessly superlative phrasing.
|
| I would choose a Linux phone because I want a platform that's
| not controlled by a single profit-drive company which is so
| huge they are essentially unaccountable for any harm they do to
| their users, developers, or even society at large. It's not the
| "most important priority" in my life or anything, it's just
| something I'd like.
| barry27 wrote:
| It sure is needlessly superlative phrasing, @esperent. And in
| fact if you look closely you'll see that that phrasing was
| not actually used in the comment you replied to. I know it
| can be hard to see down to everyone else's level from on top
| of your high horse though.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Ok time to be honest, the "change in corporate strategy" is not
| the real reason why they failed
|
| They failed because they lacked focus and money
|
| I didn't like the whole Android idea of getting out of the
| OpenDesktop space, "java first" but they were right to cut the
| whole thing off and simplify everything.
|
| X doesn't belong on a phone. GTK doesn't belong neither (at least
| not how it's used by most apps)
|
| Linux is great but the userspace not so much, and integrating all
| vendor drivers, etc is a PITA as well. Google was right to be
| hyperfocused on shipping a phone, and not putting the libraries
| or tech first
| noisy_boy wrote:
| On the topic of Linux phones, I have expressed my desire for more
| powerful hardware in the past. However, when I think about it,
| starting with modest specs means that things would have to be
| made to work properly on those. That means eventually when we
| move to more powerful hardware, the performance would be that
| much more better. Atleast that is how I imagine the silver lining
| to be.
| permo-w wrote:
| Maybe I'm being stupid, but isn't Android based on Linux?
| perardi wrote:
| So how would a Linux phone possibly gain momentum?
|
| I have no idea how it solves any job to be done for almost
| anyone. Does it have the apps I want, including for my bank? Does
| it have a great camera? Does it have fantastic battery life?
| Right now, the answer to all of that is _definitely not_ , and it
| becomes a chicken and an egg problem, where you don't have the
| investment to build all that.
|
| And don't give me the obvious and trite answer of "privacy".
| Because we have been bombarded with "privacy" for years, and yet
| Google and Facebook keep raking in the cash and the users. I see
| no evidence the vast majority of people care at all. _(And even
| then: prove to a user, or me for that matter, that a cobbled
| together Linux stack is in fact more secure than iOS. Or, explain
| how Linux magically protects me from all the ad trackers on the
| web.)_
| benatkin wrote:
| You may have a point, but Android and Apple phones are also,
| quite frankly, garbage. I open the maps app on my Android
| phone, and I get a bunch of ads littered around, for places
| like 7/11, even for locations that are closed! I have a 64gb
| phone and the map for the city I'm in could be quite easily
| downloaded, but nope, it must contain Google's malware.
| toastal wrote:
| This is why I love the offline ad-free maps of OpenStreetMap.
| In underdevelop areas I may need to refer to Google to find a
| location, and when I get there, I upload the location with
| finer-grained details and now I can find the place again and
| help others.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| I recommend Osmand and Mapy.cz as OpenStreetMap-based
| alternatives.
|
| No competition for car navigation (live traffic data), likely
| worse for shop data, but clearly superior for basically
| anything else. Especially cycling/hiking.
|
| There is also plenty of other OSM-powered navigation apps.
| sgc wrote:
| You can download maps in the maps app. I download a pretty
| large area because I drive a lot. Not that it takes away from
| your point, but at least there is that.
| ndiddy wrote:
| There's a bunch of offline maps apps for Android, I use
| maps.me for example.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > And don't give me the obvious and trite answer of "privacy".
|
| Note that small pool of people actually caring may be enough.
| See whoever buys Pinephone and Purism-Librem.
| f6v wrote:
| > Note that small pool of people actually caring may be
| enough.
|
| Everyone heard about Facebook's data leaks, everyone knows
| Google collects tons of data. Their revenue show people don't
| care.
| lewiscollard wrote:
| Exactly this. There are many predictable comments in this
| thread about why they think _mass adoption_ of Linux phones
| won 't happen. I even agree with them, but they are missing
| what I think is the point. I don't care if they take over the
| world; I want a means by which those of us that _do_ care
| about privacy and openness and control can opt out.
| vincnetas wrote:
| Interesting situation here. Whats the name for oposite chicken-
| egg problem. You mention that linux phones do not support
| banking apps and google even being antonym for privacy, has
| still increasing user base. But we are in situation where you
| must use google to be able to use banking apps. Vicious cycle?
|
| For banking aps to work you must install them from play store.
| To be able to use play store you must agree with google TOS. If
| google dicides your evil, you will not be able to use banking
| app anymore :(
| f6v wrote:
| > If google dicides your evil, you will not be able to use
| banking app anymore :(
|
| It's like driving a car: there's a tiny probability to get
| killed, but everyone is driving nonetheless.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| The difference is that when driving a car, the risk is from
| the fallibility of yourself and your fellow drivers, not
| from a single giant megacorp that can decide to reach down
| and mess with you.
|
| (But by the way, we shouldn't accept car fatalities as
| inevitable either! They're far more likely still than they
| should be. Street design and infrastructure priorities can
| slow traffic down and encourage people to use safer forms
| of transportation when feasible. Just look at the
| Netherlands.)
| adultSwim wrote:
| Signal doesn't currently support them or allow third party
| clients to connect to its servers
| yosito wrote:
| This is false. They don't allow using the Signal name in third
| party client names. But third party clients are absolutely
| possible. The first one that comes to mind is Pidgin on the
| Punkt phone.
| ognarb wrote:
| There is work ongoing to write a sailfishos/plasma mobile
| signal client in rust+qt:
| https://gitlab.com/whisperfish/whisperfish
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