@justsoup Mobile Openwashing

@justsoup Mobile-Linuxwashing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#/media/File:LinuxWasch3.jpg

@justsoup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#/media/File:LinuxWasch3.jpg

@justsoup LibreFaux

@justsoup What do you mean by "just Android phones?" The phone itself is not bound to a specific operating system, unless it is locked down by the manufacturer. That is typical for some Android phones, but manufacturers who don't want to ship Android are usually not interested in locking their phones down, so you should be free to run any operating system you want on them. Do you know of any examples where this is not the case?

yeah, every Jolla product, every furi labs project, etc. the only exceptions are the pine64 devices and the librem 5. everything else is just a pre-existing device bought predesigned from a manufacturing partner company, and they're all designed to run vintage android.

CC: @justsoup@mstdn.social

@khm @justsoup You can blame the companies selling pre-existing designs for false advertising or not investing development time, but my point was that they aren't intentionally forcing you to use Android. Companies like Jolla who replace a significant part of userspace impose fewer restrictions (e.g. locked bootloader) on installing a custom OS. And you don't always need new dedicated hardware for FOSS - a device sold with an Android kernel now can get good mainline kernel support in the future.

and in practice that never happens and the thing becomes e-waste when the last remaining developer stops giving a shit about it. for every android thing that develops upstream kernel support there are hundreds that never do, and betting on any one device to achieve that goal is a sucker's game. even devices that were commercially sold running linux are subject to this; just ask the Aquaris M10.

CC: @justsoup@mstdn.social

@justsoup "vendors too lazy to actually upstream drivers" : I think you should look at how Android manages its hardware abstraction layer. Most drivers are not in the kernel anymore, they run in their own daemons and communicate with other components through the binder IPC (for wich the kernel driver is open source). Android turned Linux into a micro-kernel.

@justsoup you need to complain to the SoC vendors, not to the phone builders.

@justsoup I'm not a fan of Halium either, but at least that makes it possible to build the user space. And even at that level, the "linux mobile" stack is very much lacking. I'm biaised of course - I think the web is the only viable alternative, but both can be worked on in parallel, and blaming the phone vendors is not very fair. They do the legwork of putting phones in people's hands.