[ux266478]

/etc configuration instead of the insanely bad system properties crap, glibc instead of bionic (which has even worse POSIX compliance than Windows), ld instead of linker, FHS, not having a batshit insane No-Sockets rule, not needing to port software that already compiles and runs on GNU/Linux, X11/Wayland/Arcan, system services aren't entangled with Java, normal IPC mechanisms instead whatever the fuck binder is. The list goes on.

Android (and by extension GrapheneOS) uses Linux as a kernel, but it lives in its own world and is completely unrecognizable. I'd say it's even more alien than macOS. For most users, the differences don't matter. If you're a programmer or a sysadmin with reasonable expectations, you feel like a fish out of water very fast. And I cannot honestly the changes are for the better.

[drnick1]

> /etc configuration instead of the insanely bad system properties crap, glibc instead of bionic [...]

The practical downside, however, is that this phone does not natively run Android apps, while GrapheneOS runs all Android apps bar those that require Play Integrity. Desktop GNU/Linux programs are either unusable or a terrible experience on a mobile device with a small screen and no mouse.

[seba_dos1]

> Desktop GNU/Linux programs are either unusable or a terrible experience on a mobile device with a small screen and no mouse.

Is this an assumption or coming from your experience? Because I'm typing this on a GNU/Linux phone in a desktop browser and use a bunch of desktop applications daily and haven't noticed.

Of course if you run GIMP or something like that it won't fit unless you plug an external screen and a mouse in, but all the applications I use daily are perfectly usable. There's a lot of Kirigami and libadwaita programs these days that just work well on a phone, and if I need to launch my bank's application there's always Waydroid.

[gf000]

Well, can you take a picture that looks better than what I made 20 years ago on a flip phone?

I have a pinephone and try it out year after year.. Well, let's just say that there is so many areas of improvement to make "GNU/linux" run on a mobile device (that sorta includes laptops as well, even though I have done so for years) that we might as well start over from statch.

For example one can't just let everything run whenever it wants, wasting battery life. Android's "more complicated" system and binder was criticized in this thread, but that's exactly what ties together the whole thing to be able to run on a device that fits in your hand, with centrally managed "let's pause this app now" etc

[megous]

OV5640 will not get better just by aging. You should adjust your expectations.

[VortexLain]

Could you please elaborate, which software is usable on mobile Linux except for Firefox? I've seen multiple people using mobile Linux, and they were using Firefox and webapps for everything, no exceptions.

[seba_dos1]

Checking Flathub should give you some idea: https://flathub.org/en/apps/collection/mobile/1

There are more, not every application that works fine has metadata filled up (and not everything is on Flathub either).

I do use some webapps, but with Epiphany rather than Firefox.

[fsflover]

I can use most native GNU/Linux apps on my Librem 5 like gnome-calculator, gnome-calender, gnome-weather etc. I can run Android apps via Waydroid. F-Droid works fine, too. Its default app store (https://software.pureos.net/categories) provides things like music players, OTP app, and games. Flatpak works, too.

See also: https://linuxphoneapps.org/

[megous]

To add to others. You can tell Kimi or whatever these days to write you a GTK4 mobile apps for a lot of pet use cases and it will. The result will also be a few C files and a meson build file, that will build on the phone itself with just gcc/binutils (I run arch linux, so no separate dev packages for deps like gtk, etc. that I need to install). You can install opencode or whatnot on the phone itself, and tell the phone to build you an app, and it will. If you need it changed, you can just ask for the changes on the phone itself and agent will update the app's code and re-build it on the phone itself. It will not need the 30+ GiB monstrosity of whatever Adroid needs to just build a hello world app and a separate computer.

The app will also build and run on your desktop without any/many changes, if you need that.

I got a fairly nice linphone GTK4 phone frontend app this way. So it's not just for toy apps. FOSS/Linux phones are well positioned for this self-building/self-updating prompt based software development, because you don't need separate computer and shitton of SDKs to build the apps, and while phone UI is shit for manual programming, it's not at all shit for writing prompts.

[ux266478]

That's true, but is contingent on you running those Android apps for it to be meaningful. I have a very small number of interactive things I do with my phone. For me what matters is that writing software isn't a pain in the ass, my usual expectations on storage (eg remote filesystems) works and works well, maintaining my system works, my non-interactive system scripts work, etc. Almost all of this is broken on Android, and it doesn't really make up for it by breaking it to make it better. I find much of the design choices of the operating system to be completely tasteless.

If you say, rely on google maps, banking apps, apps for your IoT appliances, etc. it's certainly relevant. I don't have any of that though.

For me the most and truest pressing issue is that cell modems are very, very tightly coupled with Android. It's still true for the Jolla Phone that it simply is a worse phone because the modem drivers are buggy. This is a complicated issue that isn't getting better, and is mostly to do with legislation legally mandating the tivoization of cell modems, a weird line in the sand on what responsibilities fall to the hardware or to what software, as well as the modem manufacturers themselves not really caring.

[microtonal]

For me the most and truest pressing issue is that cell modems are very, very tightly coupled with Android. It's still true for the Jolla Phone that it simply is a worse phone because the modem drivers are buggy.

My impression (also for Ubuntu Touch, etc.) is that all these systems use the upstream vendors' Linux kernels trees and firmware blobs for Android.

Unfortunately, since we are not talking about Samsung or Google, but just some random Chinese ODMs, it's usually years old Linux versions and ancient firmware blobs full of known holes (e.g. the C2 is running a Linux tree from October 2022). It's only thanks to the tireless work of postmarketOS etc. that some devices boot on modern kernels.

[microtonal]

Also Play Integrity (if you run sandboxed Google Play Services), but it only passes at the basic level, which is enough for most apps that use Play Integrity.

[WhyNotHugo]

SailfishOS (from Jolla) runs Android applications via Alien Dalvik.

[IshKebab]

I think he was asking about advantages, not "how is it similar to a Unix system from the 80s?"

[ux266478]

The irony you fail to realize, the differences listed in fact would be typical of a random Unix system in the 80s, where it's just a mountain of bad and random opinions stapled on top of a Unix system. Some random and half-baked libc? You got it! Some bizarre and overly convoluted greenfield filesystem structure? It's right there! Completely different and frustrating custom linker behavior? Yep!

Everything I listed was an advantage. Now see, I don't think Unix is the be-all end-all of operating systems design. I don't particularly care for Linux, the BSDs, macOS, etc. But Android is a definite regression in the strongest terms. Give me a PIMOS or Genera or Squeak phone that works well. I'll be happier than I would with a Linux phone.

[gf000]

Which system has better security from an end-user perspective?

Only iOS comes anywhere close.