Wake-up call

[walter1950]

Hello,

just a Reminder:

LINUX Mobile is DEAD (and it's never coming back)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIVqKQwEwu0
What do you believe?

Ciao
Walter

[zetabeta]

Hello,

just a Reminder:

LINUX Mobile is DEAD (and it's never coming back)

( link removed )
What do you believe?

Ciao
Walter

i going to put some points now, longer arguments maybe later.

most users are low skilled users, maybe 75 %. by low skilled users, i mean they can use google play but not f-droid.org , even f-droid is too complicated to them. that means, most users are stuck to big tech apps and services. this re-enforces monopoly power to many big tech companies. (my apologies for my partial arrogance, but i wish people would do more to counter big tech.)

early days of android, roughly 2010, i though android was actually linux. i mean bringing that open source idea into mobile. in that time, companies weren't too invasive, they were partially trustful. even facebook was not super bad. later i learned that android has too much google's control and closed source stuff, essentially closed system. 

older days windows was dominant over linux. argument was like, open source vs closed source, security and maybe stability. privacy wasn't a case for older windows. but these days windows have become own kind of privacy nightmare and even windows users have started to want some control. now i have a feeling that windows is losing users, not because users want to fine tune every bit, because users want to escape from windows' invasiveness and lack of privacy.

my guess is, that something similar will happen to ios and android in some day. users start to be too sick of corporate control, data collection and lack of privacy, so users start to seriously looking alternatives. unfortunately it takes time.

[jakfish]

FWIW, there's a big push from various Linux desktop flavors, trying to get Win10 EOLers to switch over. Their biggest pitch is "We've made our flavor look like Windows."

Fair enough, the more Linux the better, and in NO way am I suggesting that PinePhone encourage the development of Windows-type desktops.

Continental organizations far richer than Linux's city states have tried and failed at phones/OS as well--MS, Nokia, and so on.

And I totally agree with @zetabeta that something's gotta give w/ all the privacy invasion, but unfortunately, that breaking point would prolly be with older users who would struggle w/ Linux in the first place. Poll after poll show that younger folks don't give a damn about privacy, and if a younger person actually did, s/he would prolly fool themselves into thinking that a switch to Apple would be the safe move.

[Zebulon Walton]

And I totally agree with @zetabeta that something's gotta give w/ all the privacy invasion, but unfortunately, that breaking point would prolly be with older users who would struggle w/ Linux in the first place. Poll after poll show that younger folks don't give a damn about privacy, and if a younger person actually did, s/he would prolly fool themselves into thinking that a switch to Apple would be the safe move.

This "older user" doesn't struggle with Linux, though that may be because I've been working with Unix and Unix-like systems since the early 1980s - back when dinosaurs ruled the earth and emoticons were made with and remained in ASCII.

I have set up Linux systems for other older folks who mainly use it for email, web browsing, and youtube videos. They don't have any issues, they just point 'n click as they would in Windows. However that's with desktop and laptop systems. Unfortunately although I use the Pinephone (running Mobian) as my daily driver, for most people young or old it's just not going to cut it. There are just too many limitations and rough edges.

[Kevin Kofler]

I believe that that YouTube video is both a blatant troll and has very valid points.

The thing is, it is unrealistic to expect mobile GNU(-like)/Linux(*) to ever become mainstream as on servers. The reasons are actually pointed out pretty well by the video. But I doubt anyone has that expectation to begin with. A more realistic goal is to become a growing niche as on desktops, increasing slowly to 1%, then 2% marketshare.

And no, we are not going to get major app developers on board that way. We will have to continue relying on unofficial native reimplementations where possible (e.g., Flare (either with FLARE_ENABLE_PRIMARY_DEVICE or paired with signal-cli) instead of Signal) and on compatibility layers such as Waydroid or Android Translation Layer, or to do without the affected apps altogether.

Where I have an issue with the video is the aggressive clickbait wording (starting from the subject) and the absolute statements that are just false. (E.g., "we are all using Android or iOS" – well, no, I am not. Maybe >99% of smartphone users are (though there are still people using only dumb cellphones or none at all, too, who are not even counted there), but that is still not all.) Just because something is not commercially viable for mainstream companies does not mean it will necessarily cease to exist, because both companies such as PINE64 serving niche markets and old mainstream hardware getting repurposed by projects such as postmarketOS are a thing.

In addition, the video also has some outright wrong numbers, such as claiming that the smartphone duopoly companies make more money than the GDP of Luxemburg, which the comments on YouTube point out is just mathematically wrong.

So, will mobile GNU(-like)/Linux(*) become mainstream any time soon? No way. Ever? Unlikely, but we cannot know. But is it dead or about to die? No way either!

(*) With "GNU(-like)/Linux", I mean anything that works like a GNU/Linux distribution, even if it uses musl rather than glibc, as postmarketOS does. But in particular not anything Android/AOSP-based.

[walter1950]

Hello,

just a Reminder:

LINUX Mobile is DEAD (and it's never coming back)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIVqKQwEwu0
What do you believe?

Ciao
Walter

There is a certain irony in this fact:
"The T1 Phone, an Android smartphone, will be available in August 2025 for $499..."
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/2025/...225938007/

Ciao
Walter

[Kevin Kofler]

WTF, a Trump phone! No thanks!

And is that thing also made in China like all the MAGA swag? (I do not have a problem with things being made in China per se, but when those things have prints on them claiming they "make America great again", that is just hypocrisy.)

EDIT: According to https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/06/...smartphone – yes, that thing is (unsurprisingly) made in China. "Make China great again", LOL!

[zetabeta]

Hello,

just a Reminder:

LINUX Mobile is DEAD (and it's never coming back)

( link removed )
What do you believe?

Ciao
Walter

There is a certain irony in this fact:
"The T1 Phone, an Android smartphone, will be available in August 2025 for $499..."

( link removed )

Ciao
Walter

start to smell like an ad.

yes, it is an android device.

but this is not particularly new thing. there was (is) freedomphone. which was basically cheap android with some apps and modification. trump was NOT part of it, but device was targeted to maga trumpists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umidigi_A9#Freedom_Phone

[Kevin Kofler]

The only smartphone that I know of that is actually assembled in the USA (but even that has parts that are made in China) is the Purism Liberty Phone, see https://www.404media.co/how-a-2-000-made...ufactured/ . But I guess a GNU/Linux phone is too "leftwing" for Trump.