[HN Gopher] Is there hope for Linux on smartphones? [video] ___________________________________________________________________ Is there hope for Linux on smartphones? [video] Author : McSinyx Score : 64 points Date : 2022-08-23 17:53 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (media.ccc.de) (TXT) w3m dump (media.ccc.de) | NuSkooler wrote: | It's mentioned already, but: Android. | | Discounting Android as "Not Linux" enough is a mind boggle to me. | Perhaps not "GNU" enough, but certainly the spirit of Linux -- | customized for the particular needs, stable, fast, works on a | plethora of hardware, etc. | nivenkos wrote: | When I think of a Linux phone, I really want something that | supports a full GNU/Linux desktop as convergence. | | The Steam Deck does this perfectly! | Teever wrote: | Damn, you got me thinking now, that Valve of all people could | probably put out a Linux phone. | | The Steam Phone could be a game changer. | Bilal_io wrote: | I would buy a Steam Phone, and I'd want a big Valve logo on | its back, and an easter egg that says "half-life 3 is not | coming" | hrbf wrote: | For a niche market, possibly. However, I just don't see | Valve as a company being interested in becoming a phone | manufacturer. What would realistically be in for them? It's | strategically mostly irrelevant to their core business, | with the sole exception of the Steam Store. But to create, | develop and support a whole phone platform (hard- and | software) just to sell mobile games? I don't see it. | jnwatson wrote: | You underestimate the size of the opportunity. The mobile | game market was $119 billion in 2021. | hrbf wrote: | Given the complexities involved in such an endeavor, I'm | still confident in my assessment, especially when | confronted with a one-liner just throwing a large number | against the wall. If Microsoft couldn't get a mobile OS | off the ground, despite trying, I don't see what the | opportunity size has anything to do with it. Focusing on | (even casual) gamers with specialized hardware works for | a gaming-focused company, whereas a general-purpose | device would not. Compare Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck. | Strictly speaking this is part of mobile gaming, with | significantly higher margins. | nivenkos wrote: | Yeah, I think the main issue is getting support for | WhatsApp and banking and ID services (that usually block | even just rooted Android phones). | | I'm literally writing this comment from my Steam Deck. | coffee_beqn wrote: | I don't believe that can happen. The steam deck kind of | works because they pack in a bunch of peripherals that | won't fit into a phone. The touchscreen experience on it is | miserable. 99% of steam games with touchscreen controls | would be totally a sad experience. | | What it is is a laptop in a funny case. | saidinesh5 wrote: | You may actually be onto something here! | | Especially if the smaller steam deck clones like Aya neo | Air Pro ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw-0ngNgGC0 ) can | support voice calls and a decent camera (the only other | things my "mobile gamer" friends care about in a phone), I | think there will be a niche market around it. Nokia N-Gage | reborn! | | We already have decent enough android apps support on linux | using anbox / waydroid. For the edge case android apps. | notmyaccountt wrote: | Google created an Android userspace that requires Google | services to do anything meaningful. This violates everything | Linux stands for. | colordrops wrote: | Not great, agreed, but they did at least architect the OS so | that they are decoupled and you can build without them very | easily. In fact the largest custom ROM doesn't bundle with | them by default (LineageOS). What do you need Google services | for? | est31 wrote: | I think it's better to come up with replacements for those | Google services and apps instead of rewriting the entire | operating system. You need to solve the same problems on a | linux smartphone as well, so Android gave you a lot of time | savings, and I doubt the app sandboxing is even remotely as | good on those non-Android linuxes. For Google Play for | example there is F-droid, for push messages/FCM there is | UnifiedPush, for Google Maps there is Osmand. | cma wrote: | When mapping shared memory or checking for the right broadcast | subnet requires calling into Java code... it isn't Linux on the | user side so much anymore. | humanwhosits wrote: | fuchsia (+starnix for legacy) might make android much less | linux-y over the long term | OJFord wrote: | I suppose it depends what you mean/want by 'Linux'? In a | nutshell I suppose I want systemd & config files. | kitsunesoba wrote: | Vanilla Android or AOSP might kinda have "Linux Spirit" but I'm | not sure what gets shipped on most consumer devices does... | lots of random things locked down (including boot loader, | sometimes), crapware all over the place, drivers and kernel | changes that aren't upstreamed making it difficult to install | anything but carrier/manufacturer-flavored Android, etc. | | I think most people rooting for "smartphone Linux" are looking | to be able to swap and customize OSes on their phones and | tablets as easily as they do on their x86 PCs without futzing | around with device specific ROMs and the like. | colordrops wrote: | Android has something called GSIs (Generic System Images) | that will run on any device that supports Android 9 and | above. They don't always support custom hardware, but this | isn't really any different from pure Linux. Instead of | building a mobile ecosystem from scratch, why not build a | community around submitting drivers to a build based on GSI? | zozbot234 wrote: | Even AOSP is running something quite far from a mainline | kernel, although they've been gradually reducing the delta | with Linux proper. It really is a fork. | azinman2 wrote: | But why is a fork still not Linux? Every major distributor | runs a fork. | calvinmorrison wrote: | My pixel broke (was running CalyxOS, lineage before that), | and I had to get a quick burner phone to make work calls. Got | a $200 dollar used samsung. I didn't realize what utter trash | nonsense is loaded onto normal phones. It's absolutely | bonkers what Samsung did to destroy Android with no value | add. | sleepymoose wrote: | >including boot loader, sometimes | | Perhaps in the past, but it feels like more and more this is | shifting toward the expectation, rather than the exception. | water-your-self wrote: | The android operating system is not open soruce. | CharlesW wrote: | https://source.android.com/docs/setup/start/licenses | realusername wrote: | Unfortunately there's not a single device on earth that | runs AOSP to my knowledge, even the emulator does not. | colordrops wrote: | Are GSI images not built off of AOSP? | blendergeek wrote: | That is the license for the Android Open Source Project. | Unfortunately, Google has spent the last fifteen years | moving many parts of the stack and almost (if not) all the | core apps to Google Proprietary versions. Most apps in AOSP | no longer receive updates at all. | | The dream is here is not just that we would be running "an | open source stack" but that the active development would be | on the open source stack. Sure, there are new releases of | AOSP. But take a look at the core apps: Contacts, Calendar, | Camera, Email, Location services. These are _all_ | proprietary now. | | Android is open source in the same sort of way that MacOS | is open source. There are some open source bits in there. | colordrops wrote: | Who cares about the google user space apps? There are | viable open source alternatives for all of them. It's | like saying Linux is not open source because Redhat | bundles proprietary software with their distro. | bhedgeoser wrote: | What they're referring to as linux is actually gnu/linux, or as | I like to call it, gnu+linux. | lrvick wrote: | Android is Linux but it has nowhere close to the fully open | source freedom of a traditional Linux workstation. This is why | I carry a tiny linux laptop. | CharlesW wrote: | Phones are not PCs/general-purpose computers. Do you want | your TV to be a general purpose computer as well? (Having put | my family through a Media Center PC and TV remotes with | keyboards/trackpads for several years, I don't recommend it.) | realusername wrote: | > Phones are not PCs/general-purpose computers. | | That's just the opinion of the manufacturer, we don't have | to agree. | | Phones have banking and government apps, they are general | purpose computers from their usage alread | bitwize wrote: | Bankers and governments don't _want_ your phone to be a | general purpose computer. That 's why you can't run your | banking app on a rooted phone. From a security | standpoint, "general purpose computing" is really just | "arbitrary code execution" -- generally a _bad_ thing. | | We are approaching the sunset of general purpose | computing in the consumer space. There's nothing you can | do. Accept it and move on. | kube-system wrote: | "General purpose computing" does not imply any particular | security model, it refers to a device with a variety of | end user purposes. | | It is in contrast to a special purpose computer, which | smartphones clearly are not. | megous wrote: | You missed quite a lot of history then. Smartphones are | general purpose computers for the last 12 years or so. | cma wrote: | I run termux on mine and wish termux wasn't so restricted | by google/android. | nivenkos wrote: | What do you use a small laptop? Seems there's nothing | ultralight and small like the Asus Eee and Acer Aspire One | these days (even though you'd think it'd be easier with ARM | now). | zozbot234 wrote: | > What do you use a small laptop? Seems there's nothing | ultralight and small like the Asus Eee and Acer Aspire One | these days | | They're called "Ultrabooks" now. Buy an older one on the | used market if you don't care about top performance. | nfriedly wrote: | Not the OP, but you should take a look at | https://www.gpd.hk/ they have a handful of small devices | targeted at different niches. | jcynix wrote: | I'm quite happy with Termux on Android. Allows me to rsync my | data for backup or imports, I can ssh into real Linux | machines, process images with ImageMagick, etc. Sharing | documents from inside other apps works too (you can set up | scripts in Termux as receivers). Sure, full control of a | device would be great, but I'm better off with Android after | I migrated from IOS. | not2b wrote: | Yes, articles like this illustrate that RMS had a point, as | annoying as he can be about it. Android is obviously Linux. | What's missing is all of the things GNU and BSD brought to the | party. | hrbf wrote: | Simple answer: no. Apart from Android that is. Non-specialized | Linux will never be supported by manufacturers because there's | simply no economic incentive to do so. | [deleted] | mayoi wrote: | Android works just fine on my smartphone. | yyyk wrote: | There isn't any hope for Linux on the smartphone, at least not | Linux as actually intended in the talk. | | A proper solution needs to run perfectly on users' existing | hardware or it won't be run at all. There are a lot of old | unupdated devices which should be ripe for the picking. The only | solution close to matching the OSS community's resources is the | Android kernel for all of its problems. The Linux smartphone | community is way too ideological (far more than even RMS was back | when OSS started) to do it - they won't use Android, and their | hardware would also be way behind for similar reasons. | | So irrelevance it is, unless some rich sugar daddy company | decides to make an entrance to the smartphone market, but I don't | see any plausible contenders. | orangepurple wrote: | Arch Linux ARM can be installed on Android with Termux | | I run scipy and numpy on my phone with it. A bit painful because | I can only see about six lines of code at a time but I wrote a | few thousand lines of ML code with vim on my cell phone in the | last two months. | | https://github.com/SDRausty/termux-archlinux/ | dredmorbius wrote: | Termux is a godsend on Android, and remains The Only App Which | Does Not Specifically and Precisely Suck (though EinkBro is | giving it a good run for its money). | | Termux _still_ has a host of limitations and weaknesses _which | are imposed by the Android environment itself_ , including | being capriciously killed by the OS, lack of multiple users, | blocked access to most of the filesystem, and a relatively | limited (though impressively growing, I have to admit) set of | utilities. At last check, this includes X11 utilities and at | least some of TeX, both quite formidable. | orangepurple wrote: | Termux is awesome but the native environment is suffocating. | I didn't even bother with Termux utilities after one hour of | messing around. I went straight for the Arch Linux ARM proot | environment and it contains ALL of the Arch Linux utilities. | For example you will never get scipy to compile in normal | Termux because you can't reasonably get a compatible Fortran | compiler built and configured. Arch Linux ARM is the best | "distro" within Termux and the installation script is | seamless and supports multiple users! | dredmorbius wrote: | Suffocating for lack of packages? | | I'll note that Termux has about 1/3 the package count of | RHEL / CentOS. It's not everything, but for a mobile | distro, it's quite good. | | That said: | | 1. Thanks for the Arch suggestion. I'll take a look at | that. Root required? | | 2. _Even with a full-fledged distro installed_ , if you're | running unrooted Android you're still grossly crippled by | the overarching (so to speak) Android system in terms of | filesystem and process management and interference. | MartijnBraam wrote: | I think this talk does a great job of explaining why AOSP is not | a solution | [deleted] | jqpabc123 wrote: | Hardware manufacturers have no incentive to support it. | rbanffy wrote: | Erm... Android is Linux. | JCWasmx86 wrote: | Just the kernel is Linux, but with the "Linux" that is meant | here, it has basically nothing in common, be it e.g. in the | userland or "the spirit". | | The Linux from "Linux Smartphones" e.g. fosters an open, | user-first ecosystem, as opposed to the often very closed and | locked Android Smartphones. Another examples are e.g. | Safetynet or the Google Play Integrity API. Those primarily | don't server the users. Or apps that either complain or even | stop working on rooted phones. We have admin/root on normal | PCs and nobody is complaining there. | 3836293648 wrote: | Just the kernel is linux, but isn't basically all of the | hardware support we need in the kernel? | | Sure, we're still out of luck with trying to run mainline | kernels, but what's stopping us from running normal GNU | userland on top of a working Android kernel? | mmsnberbar66 wrote: | > We have admin/root on normal PCs and nobody is | complaining there. | | That's true. | mulmen wrote: | Linux is _only_ a kernel. What most people mean when they | say "Linux" is actually "Linux _distribution_ " which is | the Linux kernel plus some userland like GNU or Android. | matrix12 wrote: | I think they conflate GNU with Linux kernel. | what-imright wrote: | Why is the title "Is there hope for linux on smartphones?"? | | If it said "Is there hope for GNU on smartphones?" the | answer would be a resounding no, because the community is | fractured and politicized to the degree the products are | uncompetitive. Pinephone is an example. Then there was the | Ubuntu effort. | | Android, being partly closed as the GPL2 allows for, is | proof that Linux can be highly successful without the GNU | crowd. And perhaps they should stop taking credit for | software they didn't write. They made the license. | | For all the complaining, the free software community hasn't | designed from the ground up and released one single | production class handset alternative at a time when the | culture consumes in the billions. That's says a lot. The | infighting and utopian idealistic virtue signaling is in | sharp contrast to the reality of the platforms the GNU | crowd has built. | tingletech wrote: | most of the user space tools originated from GNU (such as | gcc), linux really just brought the kernel. | what-imright wrote: | Just? It's 28 million lines of code, the world's largest | software project | neverrroot wrote: | Guess it depends on what your standards are. You can have it | everywhere from today to likely never. Want just basic stuff, no | apps store, no good camera, no good runtime on battery? Today, go | get one. Value security more than anything else? Available today. | Want a high end smart phone with proper open source | Linux/Software and apps store, great camera, fast and great | battery runtime? Likely never. Linux won't get the required | investment, nor will the hardware manufacturers provide the | required support (no incentives). Even the Linux Desktop | experience can't properly get there in 2022. | | But a proper Linux phone, say something like a PinePhone is great | as a second phone. | lynndotpy wrote: | I think it's time we take a descriptivist view of "Linux", | because there _is_ some hard-to-describe way that Android isn 't | "Linuxy". If a good mobile graphical BSD OS appeared from nowhere | , we might consider it "Linuxy-er" than Android. | | The presentation does a good job of explaining what is missing | for a good "Linux smartphone ". | elagost wrote: | If anyone actually watched the talk Guido addresses Android at | about 2 minutes in, and why it's not a actually what Linux users | want. | z3t4 wrote: | Nokia had Linux on their smartphone until Microsoft bought them | and stopped everything, they even shut down the app store. The OS | was called MeeGo. Part of the Nokia team however started their | own company called Jolla and still produce smartphones running | Linux, they call their OS Sailfish. (ignoring the fact that | Android also uses the Linux kernel). | | The problem with alternative phone OS:es is that in the country I | live you must have either an iPhone or and Android phone because | the ID monopoly and Payment monopoly refuse to support other | operating systems... | anthonyhn wrote: | >Nokia had Linux on their smartphone until Microsoft bought | them and stopped everything, they even shut down the app store. | The OS was called MeeGo. | | There is a fork called Maemo Leste [0][1] that is actually | still around and updated. I have it running on a droid 4, and | it works pretty well. The UI is still the same Hildon UI. | Definitely a fun OS and device to play around with, and | interesting in that it's the only mobile OS I'm aware of that | is running Devaun. | | [0] https://maemo-leste.github.io/ | | [1] Technically a fork of Maemo, the predecessor to MeeGo. | sgc wrote: | I could get by with only using banking websites in the browser. | But Why does Jolla not yet support any Pixel phones? I have | wanted to try it out for years, but not to the point of trying | to make things work on my own. | zamadatix wrote: | Even just unlocking an Android device causes most to stop | working. I can't even log into PayPal app, which I assume is | mostly just a WebView, because my phone is unlocked. At the | same time it is apparently fineI do the same thing from the | browser on my phone? | yosito wrote: | I used an Android phone with CalyxOS and microG for a year | and never had this problem. There were a few apps I had a | hard time getting APKs for without the Play Store, but even | those I found I could side load from other devices that had | the Play Store. | cloudymeatballs wrote: | rvz wrote: | > while we're picky about free software on our laptops, desktops | and servers lots of us have a truck load full of proprietary | software in their pocket every day. Does it have to be that way? | | It doesn't have to be like this, but it is also not 'early days' | anymore and we have given this idea lots of time to gain any | meaningful traction and it's very clear that there is almost no | interest from the wider industry. | | Thus, as demonstrated for many years of failed alternatives, | unfortunately buzzwords like 'privacy', 'non-free software' and | 'Linux' have little to no use to gaining traction and selling to | mass market in a comparable manner against the existing duopoly. | | And before you say 'Android', it is has tons of closed source | userland software and subsystems and will get even worse once it | moves over to Fuchsia OS. Therefore 'Android' as a free software | example is disqualified. | | We are talking about Linux distros designed to run on phones with | 'free software'. | usrusr wrote: | But how many man-months of development on the GPL subset of the | Android stack are funded by the mostly closed product, each | day? From _some_ angles, I 'd say that it's not a failure at | all (from others it certainly is), more like working as | intended. | jrockway wrote: | Is this the one time people should be calling it GNU/Linux? | matrix12 wrote: | Very fine point. GNU runs on many operating systems, and so | to conflate GNU and Linux seems absurd. | cassianoleal wrote: | GNU runs on many kernels. GNU is part of the operating | systems where it runs. | matrix12 wrote: | GNU is not a boolean value. One can use portions of it | without throwing away everything they use. | cassianoleal wrote: | Fair point, but I was responding to "GNU runs on many | OSs", saying that GNU is actually part of the OSs (and | not something that runs on top of it), regardless of how | much GNU there is in any particular OS. | amelius wrote: | Perhaps if someone makes WineHQ but for iOS apps instead of | Windows applications. | makz wrote: | Before answering that question I'd ask: why would we want that? | | My answer is no, it didn't work on the desktop, it won't work on | the smartphone, for more or less the same reasons. | | As much as I like Linux and FOSS, Linux is just a bad OS for the | average consumer. | | For hackers, makers, DYI enthusiasts, etc. Linux is wonderful, | however, what's the market size for a Linux smart phone for this | people? I bet it's tiny. | Bilal_io wrote: | Maybe we can do it backwards this time, take the Chrome | approach with Linux, build a UI launcher for mobile that is as | simple as possible and once it's complex and has a healthy | touch-friendly apps translate it to desktop. | | Look at Steam Deck and what they've done. They could use the | same approach to launch a Phone OS. | aquaduck wrote: | Didn't work on the desktop? I've been running Linux exclusively | on my desktops for 15 years. Desktop Linux is better today than | it's ever been. | | Why does every OS need to be suitable for average consumers? | Librem and Pine64 are doing great work in the mobile Linux | space on the hardware side, and projects like PostmarketOS are | doing great work on the software side. These are niche products | for motivated enthusiasts, as they should be. They'll never | grow to billions of users, nor should they. The tech industry's | "grow massive or the product is worthless" mindset is | pathological, in my opinion. | sgc wrote: | Why is it 'just bad'? I have installed Linux (either Debian or | Ubuntu) for several non-tech-savvy family members, and they | have used them for years without incident. I once talked to my | mom about Linux and she mentioned that her Windows worked great | for everything, she would never change. I told her to look at | the splash screen when she booted up ;)! She had been on Linux | for a good 10 years without noticing. | usrusrusrusr wrote: | ddevault wrote: | I'm typing this comment from a Poco F1 I set up with postmarketOS | and Phosh earlier this week and so far it's very promising. Will | write up a proper review next week. Much better than the | Pinephone so far. | nextos wrote: | This sounds very interesting. Can you elaborate a bit further? | saidinesh5 wrote: | Not the Op, but Poco F1 has Snapdragon 845, which is like the | flagship soc 3 years ago, and can boot mainline kernel: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtfTJbLiYfg . | | Iirc they even got Windows 10 booting on that phone. | asdfqwertzxcv wrote: | Looking forward to your review! | branon wrote: | This is interesting. Communities like postmarketOS put in a lot | of effort to adapt their distribution to hardware that would | otherwise be running Android. | | Perhaps targeting commodity hardware is a more viable strategy | than contending with newer platforms like Pinephone. Sure the | device is more open, but most of the software support falls on | the same community of developers. Lord knows they have enough | build targets to maintain already. | | I'm sure there will always be a place for custom hardware like | Pinephone, Librem 5, but repurposing a flagship Android device | is going to be a better value proposition for most people. | | I own a first-gen Pinephone and it seemed really promising for | a while. As things got fixed and the state of affairs improved, | I think everybody's expectations shifted whether they realized | it or not. Phone calls and SMS work perfectly, but after that | started working, now I want it to do GPS and navigation. Doing | this is possible, but pushes the poor Pinephone's hardware to | its limit. | | I think offloading progressively more tasks to a computer is | perfectly natural, but ultimately (for me at least) this killed | the Pinephone's viability. I wound up hitting a glass ceiling | way too soon for comfort. | | It's one thing if software support for specific tasks is | nonexistent - this is a solvable problem, the community marches | forward and fixes this as a matter of course. | | But what do you do when you have the software support, but it | just doesn't run on your Allwinner A64? | | Maybe things have improved yet more since the last time I | tried. I'll have to check out Pure Maps again. | linmob wrote: | Things keep improving, slowly but surely. BTW: Mepo is a | mapping app that performs great on the PinePhone: | https://sr.ht/~mil/Mepo/ | zozbot234 wrote: | > Perhaps targeting commodity hardware is a more viable | strategy than contending with newer platforms like Pinephone. | | It depends on the hardware. If it can be properly supported | on the mainline kernel, then sure. Otherwise, you're not | gaining all that much compared to just running a "cooked" | Android-based ROM. | [deleted] | Havoc wrote: | Inclined to say no - mainly because of the camera. The gap | between ability to mechanically take a pic and what the flagships | are doing with AI driven post processing seems not only big but | growing. | | Short of die hard linux/FOSS fans noticably worse pics is going | to be an absolute show stopper | mixmastamyk wrote: | Shoot raw then import into darktable. This seems like the | simplest way to get there until more infrastructure is | developed. | __d wrote: | If that's the simplest way to get a decent photo, then Linux | phones are going to have a _very_ limited audience. | zekica wrote: | Look at what Intel is doing with MIPI IPU6 webcams. The | solution already exists. | johndough wrote: | The problem is not AI - many of the best "AI" publications are | open source after all. The problem is that hardware vendors do | not provide access to their signal processing chip's internals. | It is damn near impossible to even make a phone call these days | without some obscure binary blob or magic chips that nobody | knows what they do but are able to control every aspect of a | phone. | michaelt wrote: | _> many of the best "AI" publications are open source after | all._ | | In my experience there's also very little _detailed_ | documentation about what cutting-edge phone cameras are | doing. | | You can get some vague descriptions (focus stacking? exposure | stacking? ISO stacking? ML bokeh? Special handling of faces | in multiracial groups? Shake compensation? Super-resolution?) | which is all very well shooting from a tripod - yet modern | phone cameras do their magic at 4k 60fps even while moving? | All while running on battery? | megous wrote: | Some do. Pinephone Pro's ISP has some public docs and | mainline Linux support. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-23 23:00 UTC)