this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
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Linux phones will need to run established Android apps to get users, devs won't move where there is no users, users won't move there if there aren't apps. It's almost cyclical
Right now we're working with people who are exceptions to this, users who want to experiment and devs who don't care about money.
Waydroid runs decently on the pinephone. On a phone with better specs, it might be downright usable for proprietary apps.
Potentially a proton-style layer could really ease transition, like on the steamdeck
BlackBerry 10 was actually a pretty slick OS that supported Android apps and you could even side-load Google Play services.
I worked in supporting those and I had an easier time helping people with windows phones. 🤢
Problems with BES?
What if the app also want's a locked bootloader, Play Integrity, and whatever else. Like a banking app or Google Pay?
Then you run far, far away from that app. Even on an Android phone I don't trust garbage apps that require locked bootloader and no root. There are plenty of banks out there and paying with your phone is not a necessity.
Hey, do you still plan on working on your RGB mod for PinePhone's keyboard? It looked really awesome, but it's probably a huge amount of work.
I went through probably 20 different iterations of keycaps and got close to one I liked, but haven't gotten back to finishing the project since I haven't been using my PinePhone much. I think the main remaining thing is to make an Enter key model and a Tab key model. I want to get back to that project eventually but haven't had time.
Wow, that sounds complicated. But I'm curious if your keycaps would work better for typing than the default ones.
Not really, it's been a hassle to get them consistent enough to match the default ones. The small scale makes printing them difficult even after I got a resin printer for the project. I settled on a two piece design that works pretty well but the resin material is not as smooth as the injection molded stock caps.
Interesting! I would love to see a progress update video some day, even if the project isn't finished.
I want to do a follow up eventually. I have some free time next week, might try to finish up the keycaps. I have the standard size cap that most of the keys use done and a spacebar that is the right shape and size, just needs attachment points for the stabilizer.
Cool!
LineageOS doesn't support Play Integrity either. Custom ROMs seem to be doing just fine.
There's the stories about "I have to have Windows because the school's exam proctor software requires Windows and doesn't work with Linux" but ultimately that's not the thing that stops the year of the linux desktop. And banking apps won't be what breaks the year of the linux phone.
Thats a fair point, i never tried banking on waydroid. Most of the stuff i would need on the go seemed fine though.
Although, as far as tap to pay goes, i could see that getting baked into linux properly. I dont believe apple pay and google pay tap pay are using a different protocol. I may very well be wrong though.
It's not about the protocols. It's about business. We can have all the tech we want but until someone is willing to establish relationships with and pay the 3-4 middlemen involved in every single card payment it ain't happening.
I can use both just fine with unlocked bootloader on an official lineage 21 rom
Burn it with fire
But if people still use proprietary software, then what's the point? Steam OS is a proprietary operating system. Is that really what we want?
Yes!
Progressive Web Apps. Web programs broke the need for Microsoft Windows.
But they're talking mainstream support and windows is much more popular.
We need proton for Android apps
We have Waydroid which is close enough. It needs some quality of life improvements for better integration with the native Linux ecosystem but it runs Android apps just fine on Linux phones.
That's just a Dalvik (Java) emulator, should be viable.
Agreed. Classic story that has been repeated several times over the years. Ecosystem is everything.
Microsoft's Windows phones were fantastic. They had super nice hardware, high refresh rate screens, better cameras on their flagship models than iPhones at the time.
They were sleek, fast, the Windows tile UI actually worked great on a phone touchscreen. But it didn't matter to most consumers because they didn't have apps. MS had their own business apps...and that was about it. Didn't matter that every other aspect of the phones were great, people couldn't do what they wanted to on the Windows phones, so they didn't buy them.
I would love to see something like Proton but for .apks instead of Windows executables. If it were as easy to install and run android apps on a mobile Linux OS as it is now to install and play Windows games on Linux, we would be in a great place to see a proper Linux phone.
GNU/Linux is not aimed at people who want the most features. It's made for people who value freedom above everything else.
You mean Waydroid? I've read that it works pretty well.
Depends, waydroid emulates a whole android system, whereas wine translates system calls.
You are right. But it seems to be just as easy to use.
Absolutely yes! I think this is what killed the reasonably good Windows Phones. I liked them anyway. They did what phones were supposed to do and were dirt cheap. But if you searched for any of the top 50 apps you'd find some fake BS. Like when I searched for Pandora you got an app that was nothing more than a 3-4 page summary about how Pandora was the planet in James Cameron's Avatar.
The goal of GNU/Linux is not to make it possible to run proprietary apps (but if you really need to run Android apps you can use Waydroid). It's to create a fully libre operating system that people can use.
The hell with android apps. In my last year with Droidian, I got better replacements for any single app I used on Android!
hot take: No.
Linux phones just need good linux software support. And then the linux user base will switch over, and everyone who isn't simply won't use it.
I actually genuinely do not want android developers on linux. I refuse to pay for a launcher. My entire workstation OS is developed by volunteers. Genuinely every single android app i have ever interacted with has pretty much exclusively disappointed me. It's just a bad ecosystem.
In the same way that the linux community doesn't need the developers of every application ever on it to thrive amongst itself, the linux phone doesnt need android developers to develop apps for it. It just needs better support for linux applications that already exist.
The only reason I will disagree: there's already a major FOSS ecosystem on Android. There are tons of high quality free apps that aren't FOSS
Linux isnt even that popular on desktop, my point is that people will not move if their pre established software use case is not avaliable. I won't. I know many people who won't.
And if there aren't users, there won't be people making quality software to cover wide variety of usecases and get support, if there isn't quality software that covers a wide variety of use cases and get support there won't be users. You need to start somewhere, it's why the windows phone failed. No devs, so no users, and because no users, no devs.
I still don't see your point. You're assuming that android users will want to use a linux phone in the first place. They don't and they wont. And that's fine.
The only market that the linux phone has to cater to in order to develop successfully is the existing linux desktop market. The vast majority of those people are likely to want and use a linux phone. Which will actually improve the phone. And possibly even in the future bring in android developers and apps.
I don't understand why you're fixing on it growing, it's just a hardware market, system76 already exists, pine already exists, linux users already exist. We exist as a bubble in a larger space and that's ok. That's the beauty of the unix/linux philosophy.
Realistically this is like releasing a 10,000 dollar workstation/server cpu and then having the general public complain about it being inaccessible, even though it literally wasn't meant for them.
There are tonnes of great foss android apps.
I'm sure there's a lot of good apps. I've used a few good ones, but it's objectively worse than software on linux.
File browsers have almost universally just been awful. Horrid, and almost completely unusable. I've tried more than should exist really.
There are other questionable apps, which exist, do what they claim to do perfectly well, but have no utility for anything particularly useful. Even stuff like jerboa is just generally lacking in features. That is also an experience on linux so not really a huge complaint, but i really genuinely don't see why people like android so much.