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by drnick1 1 hour ago
> /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.

3 comments

> 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.

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.

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.