The duopoly between Google and Apple needs a disruption. The problem is they control over 99% of the market. Any competitor into the space will likely lose money for several years before they can even make a dent in that market share. There aren't many people or companies that can do this. nostr:nprofile1qqsd0hut8c2pveuk4zkcws9sdap8465am9dh9cp8d2530yssuflcracpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhszrnhwden5te0dehhxtnvdakz7qghwaehxw309aex2mrp0yh8qunfd4skctnwv46z75nhtuk 👀
Discussion
Would PWAs solve this? Of course, you still depend on the device supporting proper PWA capabilities…
I was at Mozilla when we were doing that, employing many nerds spending millions on OpenSource telephony and APIs that could make Gecko embeddable and operate like a phone.
It was a failure before it even started. The entrenchment of Android and iOS is pretty much set. Maybe someone like Musk could compete, but not after spending a few billion on R&D
The web did benefit through many new APIs, but that was all after years and many hundreds of millions spent
And literally no one bought FirefoxOS devices. I think more devices were given away free
GrapheneOS has a less known but stronger brand around privacy and security
Not a brand, a software project almost nobody knows about or uses
It's a brand. We need to start somewhere, all alternatives are worse
I don’t want to shit on the devs but FirefoxOS was mostly Android based if I remember correctly, andGraphene is “just Android without gapps”.
Credit where it’s due, but you can’t claim to be a competitor when you’re just a fork running with a few patches on top.
SailfishOS, Ubuntu Phone (rip) and (more recently) postmarketOS are some of the “very real linux running on your phone”, which IMO have the proper “technical sovereignty” to be considered competition.
The problem is that linux on mobile has shitty security, while android (even better on grapheneos) and ios are really secure devices, which needs to be a priority on the mobile space.
It's just a downside of using a more native linux os, it's very difficult to have proper containerization, verified boot and all those neat features that we can have with grapheneos (which is why they only support pixel devices by the way)
I know privacy is the ultimate goal, but without security, there is no privacy.
I mean yes but actually no.
There’s nothing inherently insecure about Linux on mobile but I believe the problem you’re describing relates more to the lack of fine grained permission granting knobs and underdeveloped UX overall.
None of which can’t be fixed, and to some extent you are probably safer running android apps within the sandboxed android simulator running on top of sailfish than “natively”.
Yeah it's all about how you configure the system (for example a lot of linux distros are insecure by default, how many of them have secure boot support, selinux/apparmor, ACLs out of the box?), but still the base was not designed with security in mind years ago, so the best would always be to design something new (just think about xorg vs wayland), but it's a huge task and really difficult to have something like that be developed in a complete foss manner (I mean in the linux spece there is red hat that is mainly pushing new security standards, selinux and the likes), I am not saying those are the best, but still they are something, but it all feels like a patch on top of something with a lot of holes 😅.
But yeah, android on top of linux could be better than native linux apps, bur at what cost? Batter, performance... It's a difficult world.
I mean if the Linux “foundation” was insecure wouldn’t that also mean the Android foundation is just as insecure? Android is a Linux distro with an extremely specialized userspace but still linux beneath (I remember when Samsung used to brag about setting SELinux to enforcing before every other OEM and stuff like that).
And then performance of Android on top of “real” linux shouldn’t be different, we’re not running any sort of emulator or virtual machine, but even if we did use VMs, hardware assisted virtualization and paravirtualization should make the performance close enough to native that you could go as far as pulling a qubes style distro for mobile, but I don’t know if anybody is that much paranoid.
Fuck I misread the whole point on performance.
No, that’s not the case I’m making here, my point is that Graphene (and any custom android rom for that matter) is not an Android “hardfork”, nor can it ever be, meaning that they can’t compete with android and build anything on top without playing the cat and mouse game of trying to keep up with the AOSP.
Sure you lose on the established ecosystem but that’s part of the cost in being a proper alternative.
If we keep reskinning Android it’s going to end up the same way as the browser market, where webkit only survives because apple pushes safari down iOS users throats, gecko from firefox is dying and every other browser is chrome with some patches on top.
I hope this makes sense.
Yeah you make valid points and I basically have the same concerns.
I don't really like the "let's go with linux native on mobile", but also the "let's fork android" seems limited.
Not every mobile Linux is created equal. I mean, android itself was once “let’s go with linux on mobile”.
PostmarketOS with plasma mobile is a whole different beast compared to SailfishOS (which inherits from Nokia maemo/meego etc).
Aren't there some shitcoin oses out there or was this also fake?
This is the time all the ROM developers and other Android anarchists should jump on board with something like plasma mobile or another Linux phone os. They don’t grow because no one builds for them. But there is a market there once custom ROMs and sideloading are completely dead.
We need nostr:nprofile1qqs9g69ua6m5ec6ukstnmnyewj7a4j0gjjn5hu75f7w23d64gczunmgpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43q4gnztg to close more agreements with OEMs, at the very least
That would be sweet. But let's be honest. They would all be garbage hardware.
I don't know, they probably have pretty strict requirements
I mean that larger OEMs like Google and Apple and Samsung get great pricing for buying in bulk.
On the contrary, GrapheneOS only works with Pixels due to their strict security requirements. Graphene's work with an OEM supplier is to get the same level of hardware security
The answer is - and always has been - open source. Particularly, linux mobile.
It’s in its infancy, but that’s due to interest.
Work is underway to make existing apps responsive. There are new frameworks and even desktop environments being built from the ground up with this in mind.
The more this gets pushed, the more momentum that will build.
People cite linux desktop adoption being around 5%-6% as a sign that this won’t work. But the rules change on mobile. In fact, pushing mobile will end up boosting desktop adoption.
Windows, Apple, and Google are doing their part by making all of their software more Orwellian by the day. It’s time for us to push the change.
Any good linux mobile devices yet? I've seen Ubuntu Touch floated around but not sure on compatible HW 🤔
I love the idea of this project and remember checking themnout a year ago. But there's no way a $1000 (post tax) device is going to solve the issue. $600 max if we want any notable addoption rate and considering we have less than a year this needs to alreadg exist, not something still in development. The big sell for linux on desktop is you can run it on pretty much any old devise to cost barrier to entry is super low.
#Flx1 from FuriLabs is $550.
Now we are talking! We just need like a 1000 of these projects 😅
DawnDrums also underway in Tunisia!
Love the web design! Still in development but this looks cool!
Yes (potentially) depending on your use case. Good enough for me to daily drive.
Also cool, but price is a non-starter at 2k
Yes, freedom has a high price : ) usually paid in sweat, tears and blood!
I'm very welll aware. In this case though I'm not convinced this is a viable path to freedom. There's a lot of development that needs to catch up and spread fast in limited time. We don't have several years for these freedom tech companies to loose money while their tool adoption rates increase. Especially when most people don't even seem to want freedom.
For folks already familiar with #desktopLinux, I believe #postmarketOS on a #LibertyPhone would be usable.
If you want to go less mainline but have proprietary drivers, #Flx1 is another option.
Both can run #FOSS Android apps using #Waydroid.
If this can be achieved by tiny companies with meagre resources, I don't see why larger companies can't take it all the way to mainstream adoption.
In any case, #LinuxMobile is the only long-term strategy for freedom and privacy.
#mobileLinux #Mobian #PureOS #FuriOS #DawnOS #Purism #FuriLabs #Pinephone #Pine64 #phosh #parchLinux #dawnDrums
i still don't consider them a good competitor, unless they become as secure as android at least
A new player has to come along AND offer a superior developer experience, otherwise there's no incentive for them to leave Apple or Google.
Sure, the freedom tech devs obviously hate the ID thing, but do most normie developers give a crap? I'm assuming not, esp if that's where their income stream is coming from.
The way to destroy the duopoly is probably to give developers somewhere where they don't have to pay fees for IAP.
Imagine, if you can, a digital currency that doesn't require a middleman. Hmm
The unfortunate reality is that most people will simply not be willing to pay the price. People who care enough about freedom and privacy will need to subsidise the development cost for the rest.
Microsoft tried and they pumped a lot of money and time and energy into that and it failed so I'm not very optimistic
they did, but it was a failure from the start. their os was terrible.
We need a Bitcoin phone!
Wasn't it Cramer that said Bitcoin is useless, you can't even make a phone call with it?
Let's prove him wrong, let's bring back Palm OS by Vibe coding.
Or everything becomes a PWA app?
PWAs suck. No one wants them. We use them as a crutch.
Agreed.
mostly agree
the promise of PWAs is amazing until you realize there are only two browsers.
Another good argument for GrapheneOS