Android is Linux.
No? PMOS isn’t the only thing people refer to by “Linux phone”, often its something like Ubuntu touch, which absolutely is GNU.
Linux people tend to forget, that people want something that just works, why I love Linux, I have a mac and later bought an Iphone, the UX difference of using and airpod pro with an Android phone and an Iphone is just miles apart, I can literally have it in my ears, click on a video on my mac and the sound transfers, then as I go out for a walk with my dog and start a podcast, the airpods switch back to my phone without any hassle.
Before that I would have to disconnect and reconnect bluetooth multiple times to switch between the android phone and the macbook.
Granted I maybe care a lot more about good UX than normal people, but good UX like that just makes me hard.
between the android phone and the macbook.
Apple intentionally doesn’t play well with others in order to trap you into their ecosystem.
Yeah, thanks for that info, couldn’t think about that myself, Except I have used non apple bluetooth earbuds with android phones for years before and it was just as shit of an experience, so I dont know, guess again?
If you have the right earbuds it does just work. I’ve used a few different types of earbuds that can seamlessly switch between a MacBook and an android phone, none of which were airpods
Yeah, Linux phones are cool and stuff but is there any benefits compared to using GrapheneOS? Sure, you can have more freedom on the OS level, but is it really a big benefit compared to just using GrapheneOS?
The killswitches on the phone seem nice, but I do wonder if they’re using any proprietary firmware or something to make it switch on or off?
Sure, you can have more freedom on the OS level, but is it really a big benefit compared to just using GrapheneOS?
With more freedom comes more privacy and security. I don’t think GrapheneOS is entirely free software, but correct me if I’m wrong.
The killswitches on the phone seem nice, but I do wonder if they’re using any proprietary firmware or something to make it switch on or off?
I think they just electrically disconnect the modem (so that you don’t have to trust its proprietary firmware to turn it off) or the microphone or whatever from power.
Wait till bro finds out what android is
Who’s gonna tell him Android is based on Linux ?
Nobody because everybody knows this. Android is still not what people mean when they say linux
Uhhh it definitely is. I literally have a Linux terminal running on my Android phone.
No you’re using Termux with bash. Unless you’re actually interfacing with the kernel directly in which case ignore me and carry on.
Anyways this is a great example of why “Linux” as the name of the OS is stupid. GNU/Linux is better (for GNU-based, obviously, don’t go wheeling out the Alpine copypasta because I’m not talking about that).
You’ve missed the point I’m afraid.
While people know that Android is based on Linux, a fact that isn’t in question, when people say a “Linux” phone, they’re not discounting that Android exists or that it runs Linux, they mean to infer that they’re discussing non-Android Linux phones. If they meant Android as a Linux phone, they would have said Android.
While android is in the set of “Linux”, not all things that are in the set of Linux are Android.
Since we have a specific word for GNU/Linux - Android devices, but almost all Linux based alternatives to Android for mobile devices is basically referred to simply as a “Linux phone”, it can be, and should be, assumed that the speaker is referring to Linux phones which are not Android.
It’s a nuance of language and technically not wrong to say that “Android is Linux” but that’s not what most of the readers understood to be the speakers intention.
That was the correction that the previous poster tried to portray.
Simply put, most Linux enthusiasts and community, doesn’t really consider android to be “one of them” since, though it’s Linux at its core/kernel, almost everything built on top of it from there is some bastardized/closed source software, or relies on something closed source. Most of the things people want to run on their phone (browsers, camera software, even the dialer), is almost entirely written, controlled and closed source by Google. While some of the “guts” of the OS might be open source/GNU versions, the interfaces are largely all closed source software that Google has published to run on top of Android specifically. This doesn’t fit with the philosophy of GNU/Linux, and therefore Android is largely not included when speaking about Linux, at least for Linux enthusiasts.
Yessir
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Android is Linux, they literally use the Linux kernel. They replace most other stuff, but Linux it is.
They even work towards mainline kernel support, making updates easier for longer times.
Android is a good example, why “Linux” is not a good term for “Desktop Gnu+Linux”.
I think they use some very old and heavily modified version of the Linux kernel, so it’s not the same Linux kernel we use on desktop. Then each phone manufacturer adds custom patches on top to support their hardware. GNU/Linux phones also require a custom kernel, but the community is working on upstreaming those patches, so that they can run mainline kernel some day (PinePhone Pro and Librem 5 probably already can now, but some stuff might not work).
Yeah, using the name Linux for both the kernel and the operating system makes no sense and it’s super confusing. When people say Linux when talking about the operating system, they almost always mean GNU/Linux (like Linux Mint, Arch Linux, etc). But then there is Alpine Linux, which isn’t GNU/Linux and that makes things even more confusing. If I didn’t know what Alpine Linux or Arch Linux was (and had no knowledge of distro names), based on their name I would assume they are some kind of fork of the Linux kernel. Arch Linux should have really been called Arch GNU/Linux and Alpine Linux should have just been called Alpine OS.
They use the current LTS kernel that exists when the phone exists. If your phone has an outdated kernel (mine had one too, and I thought the same) it is simply really outdated.
Yeah the problem lies in the many Distros I think. The BSDs are all different bundles, not like Linux+Gnu+Systemd+pipewire+wayland+glibc and some minor differences. FreeBSD is actually different from OpenBSD for example. Then Android is also a single project, just like this “modern desktop linux bundle”.
I feel like people that unironically tout Linux phones as stable enough are the same people that think we can ditch Xorg, not true even though I obviously would like it to be.
Oh, come on. Wayland is shipped by default by a lot of distros now because it’s perfectly stable and usable in the vast majority of use cases and hardware. For every story about wayland falling down, I can come up with a dozen “stupid shit X11 does now because it’s unmaintained and dev X tries to do something new with his app” stories. I do silly things like run 6 monitors on 2 GPUs on a Core 2Duo, and it runs like a top. If there’s a problem, it’s always something dumb i’ve done like knocked a cable than it is that Wayland has shit the bed. And it’s been working like that for 2 years.
I ran a Pinephone for a year as a DD back in the early days, it was a pain in the ass but it was possible if you were stubborn enough. But it was no Android. But then again, it wasn’t Android.
I totally see what you mean with the GNU-like Linux phones. But what issue could you have with Wayland in the year 2024?
I feel like I might’ve exaggerated the chasm between ditching Xorg and adopting Linux phones, Waylands only problems are really VR (just seems to be dead end outside of SteamVR) and Nvidia feature parity though that’s less to do with Wayland and more to do with Nvidia dragging their feet on Linux, theres also the odd edge case like unrecognised inputs.
GNU-like Linux
PinePhone and Librem 5 actually run GNU/Linux. Same software that you can run on desktop. Only Ubuntu Touch uses Android kernel I think.
