I've been patiently waiting for advancements in true Linux phones for years. I feel like a hypocrite when using android. Anyone know if pinephone is nearing a new release?
Eh, it depends how you define Linux. Android uses a modified Linux kernel, but most of what's above that is different. By the point you're at the application layer they're basically completely incompatible.
Is it technically Linux? Yeah but it's so different from a user's perspective it's best to treat them as separate imo.
User land is incompatible even between traditional Linux distros and they all do kernel mods to suit their needs, so yeah, Android is as much of a Linux as Ubuntu is.
Android introduces far more incompatibilities, and the kernel mods are more impactful than the vast majority of other systems. Userspace incompatibilities are basically negligable for most distros.
It's differences are substantial enough that I think it makes sense to treat it as a separate os.
Not true at all. Many distros like Alpine are not using GNU userland, yet you would consider them a proper Linux, right? And kernel changes in distros... Don't even get me started. Suffice to say that no one ships vanilla for decades.
Android and ChromeOS are more Linux than MacOS and iOS are a FreeBSD. Apple closed the source quite a while ago and they have their own fork which I bet is very far away from the original now.
FreeBSD is licenced under BSD licence, they don't have to do shit and they don't. Windows is also using a lot of BSD code and you'll never see the sources.
You can say the same about every distro. There's literally no difference between Android and Ubuntu from this perspective. Also that's how a lot of code feeds back into the kernel - it gets tested in the wild and if it's good and useful it gets PRd and merged back.
The way I see it is Android users are Linux users the same way fans of games who have only played the spin-off games are to people who have played the mainline games. They're just a different kind of fan.
Free software. Try to use apt on Android, or run software that you can use on a desktop. And no ads in every app.
Root access, that is, being admim of your own device.
Being able to access the file system and support for different types. For example Android doesn't support NTFS and needs FAT. Plugging a simple USB drive has mixed results.
This is from the top of my head. I use both but I really don't like how Android is locked down and so limited, even for power users. I really wish I could have a real "pocket computer" instead of this thing that feeds me ads.
Don't use apps with ads then? Or set up an ad blocker.
Root access, that is, being admim of your own device.
That's just how most Android versions are shipped. It's still technically possible to get root access, and really enjoy every privilege of Linux. Not all devices allow using a custom OS though, sadly
Setting up an ad blocker for a whole device often requires root. I gave up with my new phone and just have ublock origin on Firefox but that's the point. I can't easily install something that will modify the DNS because I have no admin access on my phone.
That's why I also do give up on certain apps. For example I don't like the ads in Boost so I stopped using it. Sometimes I pay for the version of an app without ads. This doesn't happen on Linux.
Also being heavily pushed towards apps for websites like YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook... Lemmy, Mastodon... They are all "best experienced" in apps, and most of them will probably try to push you ads or make you pay.
Again, I'm relatively tech savvy so I can find other ways, but it's still annoying and disappointing to have to constantly find ways around the system. It doesn't happen in Linux.
Also being heavily pushed towards apps for websites like YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook… Lemmy, Mastodon… They are all “best experienced” in apps, and most of them will probably try to push you ads or make you pay.
That has nothing to do with the operating system. Just use Firefox, set it to show you the desktop version of the websites, and you'll have the same experience as on a desktop PC.
Except with a smaller screen size.
I just use the AdGuard app. It runs all my Internet traffic through an on-device VPN server (The VPN is the phone itself.), and it uses that to filter out all the ads.
Like ability to install different desktop enviroment?
I have a phone with PostmarketOS installed and, besides being immature for now, the difference in possibilities are night and day.
Almost all apps store settings in easy to backup .config folder. I can really script things using cron jobs and plain bash. Develop apps with any programming language without stupid SDK. Carry portable Minecraft of Factorio server for LAN parties. Use literally the exact same apps on both phone and desktop without ports and having their data synced. I can talk for hours.
Like ability to install different desktop enviroment?
Technically, with root access, yeah. It's just that Android's UI isn't a DE/WM in the desktop Linux sense
Almost all apps store settings in easy to backup .config folder.
And same for Android app data with root access. /data contains, well, data of apps and the general system. Sure, it's not the same as on desktop Linux, but it's still possible to modify, copy, delete with root access. Every app is a different Linux user on Android, and that's also just different from desktop Linux.
To me, you're just pointing out differences due to the software architecture of both OSes.
Like ability to install different desktop enviroment?
Technically, with root access, yeah. It's just that Android's UI isn't a DE/WM in the desktop Linux sense
You can also just install different apps that change the home screen. Android calls them "launchers". You can install one from the Google Play Store or elsewhere like any other app. Then just set it up. Once it's setup, the phone simply loads that app's launcher instead of the phone's default launcher (which is usually also an app).
Yeah but for e.g. the notification and quick panel, you need to modify the System UI app. It's like everything below the top panel in GNOME is replaceable lol
You think compiling a binary with a different toolchain and system paths is the same as exploiting a made up security vulnerability linked to a game for some reason. I'm done wasting my time here. /system/bin/uname -s prints Linux, that's enough.
Being able to practially develop anything without running Google's proprietary build of Android SDK can be enough for devs to see the difference.
It might be very similar on the surface, for casual person installing app from appstore. But the whole ecosystem above the Linux kernel and below app interface is barely comparable. No Flatpak, Wayland, SystemD, glibc, PipeWire, etc.
The way apps are build, most of the times does not matter what kernel is at the bottom. What matters are toolings and the ecosystem.
Android could be build on Windows NT and most won't notice (remember Windows Phone? Not looking at UI/UX design, it felt really similar), yet we wouldn't call Android as being the same as Windows.
Consider how dead-easy it is to write a bash script or c program in Linux, and then enable it (have it run on boot) using SystemD daemons. A total noob could do it after reading a 5 minute tutorial.
Is it even possible to do the same on an android phone? I have no idea, but willing to bet not.
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Android, is in fact, GNU/Android, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Android. :D
Wouldn't it be more like Android/Linux (or Android plus Linux) because it only has a small fraction of the GNU software / libraries but still uses the Linux kernel?
I would say the biggest thing that makes it not have the benefits of running Linux by choice is your lack of control (by default). You don't have root access and you aren't allowed to do much with it. The experience is much different than running Linux by choice yourself, even if the kernel is the same.
lol no, it's alpine based. basing something on Manjaro would be pretty dumb anyways, might as well go straight off Arch (especially dumb since neither have official ARM support which phones need)
The biggest upside is that Alpine is small. The base installation is about 5 MB! Thanks to that, our development/installation tool pmbootstrap is able to abstract everything in chroots and therefore keep the development environment consistent, no matter which Linux distribution your host runs on. And if you messed up (or we have a bug), you can simply run pmbootstrap zap and the chroot will be set up again in seconds.
Another benefit of the tininess of Alpine - many older devices don't have much storage space to spare, so small system images can be anything ranging from useful to required.
I used it on my laptop a little while back and it works pretty great. Although the stable software repositories are kind of small (doesn't even have tcc) which is the reason I switched back to Void. Still, it's great to see GNU as an operating system component isn't needed that much anymore in Linux.
I feel like GNU and the GPL are the best things that have happened in the tech space in a long time. I wish more people understood the significance of this and the FSF
I was talking to a friend the other about about this. He said he loves the Android OS. He said imagining putting Linux on it and I couldn't help but laugh. His eyes widened when I told him what Android really was
