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Android 17 is the first since 3.x to add new APIs without releasing to the AOSP (grapheneos.social)
submitted 6 days ago by to c/linux@lemmy.world
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[–] 40 points 6 days ago (16 children)

Yet, the GrapheneOS devs will continue to insist that Linux isn't viable because of "security". Well, how useful is AOSP going to continue being with Google holding it hostage?? It sure seems to me that spending effort to make mobile Linux more secure and usable would be a much better long-term strategy than to keep developing for a dying, hostile ecosystem.

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  • [–] 22 points 6 days ago (12 children)

    The way i understand it, what Google did in Android is no joke, and definitely very hard to implement on a small team that basically works on just fine tuning your existing code. Birthing all this onto Linux is quite an undertaking, and it would need hardware partnership agreements.

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  • [–] 11 points 6 days ago (11 children)

    what Google did in Android

    Like almost everything Google has done, android was bought by Google. Admittedly, it's been quite a while since then and I couldn't tell you how much can be attributed to the original team vs Google's input.

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  • [–] 10 points 5 days ago (7 children)

    Yes, and the biggest thing Android has going for it in terms of security is the fact that everything runs with under a strict sandbox and permission model.

    You could absolutely build a cohesive, secure Linux system using Flatpak to acheive something similar. It will still have rough edges and holes, but if GOS devs put in the same amount of effort into making Linux secure as they have with AOSP, we could get it to where it needs to be.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago (3 children)

    Yes. But for usability, the biggest thing Android has going for it is nothing technical, it's a ridiculous amount of apps to do literally anything you want and billions of existing users, which means more bugs are found and fixed. The mainline kernel Linux phone ecosystem does not have this and it's a bit of a hurdle.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

    Yes, and that's why we should put effort into making mobile Linux have those things. A team of talented developers like the ones that GOS has could go a long way toward that.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    I wish it was as easy, but remember, Microsoft, despite having an actually decent mobile operating system (the people I know who had Windows phones generally liked the UI), could not compete because they were too late to the market.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

    Sure, but that was an entirely different world. 2011 was pre-Snowden leaks and before people ever considered what the modern era's tech giants would be doing. Google's motto was still Don't be evil and very few but the most privacy-conscious people disbelieved them. People had more skepticism of Microslop, but this was before the public had Windows 8, 10, or 11 pushed on them. There wasn't really a market for privacy-friendly mobile OS because the modern, smart mobile OSes had only existed for a few years at that point and the general public had not yet been majorly betrayed by Google, Apple, or M$ at that point.

    The modern era of tech has been so terrible that even politically uninvolved and privacy unaware folks are frothing at their mouths about datacenters & surveillance cameras and showing up to city council meetings to actually do something about it.

    Still, I don't expect mobile Linux to dominate, even when it's ready. But there are plenty of people who are asking for it, beyond those that you would assume.

    Another key difference between Windows Phone failing and the hypothetical chance for mobile Linux to succeed is that Linux has the largest pool of software developers to pull from and an unfathomable amount of software that won't even need to be manually ported to work on phones (some will, but most modern software use portable graphics libraries like GTK, Qt, etc.,).

    Contrast that with Windows Phone being a bespoke, locked-down ecosystem with Linux having developer tools that more open, easy to integrate, and better documented than any proprietary walled-garden ever did.

    Getting apps for mobile Linux won't be an issue like it was for Windows Phone except for cases like banks and other draconian companies. And those are important exceptions, but those can be overcome just as Linux gaming has. If those companies refuse to build for us, then we will build for ourselves, and they will be forced to cooperate when we become undeniable.

    And even if you don't share my optimism for what future mobile Linux adoption might look like, I think we can agree that regardless of mobile Linux's "market success", people are going to build it anyway because people will always build cool stuff just for the love of the game. I just wish large teams like Graphene would consider divesting from AOSP and start putting some effort into mobile Linux in the long term.

    Edit:

    Sorry if that sounded goofy. I had drugs for the first time. They do really interesting stuff to your cognition! It may affect the way I write 🙃

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  • [–] 2 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    Again, agreed, but hindsight is 20/20. I'm not sure if when they started in 2016, they would've believed that by this time, things would be going so badly. That said, I suppose we all really should have assumed they'd be enshittified as soon as google removed "Don't be evil" from their policy in 2018.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 child)

    For me, it's been pretty obvious that Android was going this direction for almost a decade, but any time people bring up mobile Linux, the GOS devs still bend over backwards to defend building for the dying AOSP ecosystem and speak ill of the security of Linux.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    Yes, corporations buy up small businesses and startups. In this case all they got seems to be the Android name and an idea to make a phone OS? AFAICT the project was neither open source or based on the Linux kernel until Google took over.

    I'm not trying to whitewash Google here, they did that pretty well themselves in open sourcing Android development. That's given them a 20+ years alibi to be complete arseholes in pretty much any other part of their business — and now they're clamping down on Android, too.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 days ago* (1 child)

    Android is not the problem here. In fact I love Android very much. What I don't like is Google.

    AOSP and Google need to be seperated. While Linux mobile would be nice, phones work differently than PCs and I don't think Linux will just "work" like it does on desktop. There's a reason why it's so far behind. Popularity and viability. I just don't think it's worth it.

    Android is amazing. It's secure, great, snappy and it's still very open. However I do NOT trust Google that they will not fuck up the freedom aspect of it in the near future.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago*

    Okay, as I'm sure you know, Android is built on Linux, so saying something like Linux wouldn't work on phones is quite an odd statement. And Linux on PC's wasn't always "it just work". It's taken a long time and hard work to get it to where it is. And it's "just" code, there's no reason whatsoever that with a lot of sweat and elbow grease it can be a good user experience (see Sailfish OS). The desire and need for a non-Android OS has been quite low until recently.

    I do agree that moving AOSP stewardship to someone else would be for the best and the easiest option for everyone involved (except Google I guess).

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  • [–] 3 points 5 days ago

    Agreed. It's time to have a truly open source OS. I didn't know that they had that opinion, but it doesn't surprise me. They seem extremely... determined is probably the nicest way I can put it.

    I used to be enthusiastic about graphene, but between this and a few other things, I'm not sure pursuing using graphene is really worthy of my time, if only because of the devs' attitudes, or at least the attitude of whoever is doing their communications.

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