Hacker News Reader

Comment by dehrmann | Hacker News Reader

What's the benefit to a true Linux phone over running LineageOS? LineageOS at least is essentially Android, so the ecosystem is there.

View on HN

Android apps are becoming more and more dependent on the closed source blobs that Google ships with Android devices, so some apps might not work without them. Although microG exists, it isn't perfect and some apps still won't run with it.

A Linux phone can forgo Google's userspace libraries for Android, and if they're really needed, Android can just run in a container like with Anbox. Instead, it can ship with the typical GNU, busybox or ulibc userland that most Linux users are familiar with.

Also, you can use pretty much any language or runtime to write apps for Linux, while you're stuck with the Android Runtime, Android NDK and Java compatible languages and runtimes on Android.

Your comment doesn't describe any benefit for users. Maybe a benefit for some developers who consider ideological technology choices a benefit. But users gain nothing.

> Your comment doesn't describe any benefit for users

Read the question that was asked and then look at the address bar to see where it was asked. Most people on HN are familiar with Linux or are developers themselves.

But either way, I disagree entirely. On a platform like webOS or Maemo, users benefited greatly from running traditional Linux userlands. There were millions of users who got to enjoy a plethora of apps and the benefits of extensible, hackable hardware and systems.

Preware, for example, had thousands of apps, extensions, and scripts available to millions of users. Users were able to take full advantage of what their hardware and systems were capable of, instead of being limited to whatever Apple or Google allowed them to do with their APIs.

You can write most of your app in any language, it's only some UI and startup code that needs to be in the javalike languages.

It's still a nightmare to use say, Python, to write Android apps.

The platfom gets more and more siloed/hostile to interoperability

As LineageOS is just a rebuild of the Android open source bits it's still Google that dictates the overall direction.

Sure, LineageOS can patch things out, but keeping the patches working over time as Google churns out new Android versions is far from simple.

Even LineageOS hardcodes calls to Google servers (location, network portal detection). To get around that you can install LineageOS with MicroG, or use a true Linux phone.

I can't think of an Android app I'd prefer over a Linux alternative.

Edit: Maybe Google Maps, but that's it.

What would you like for Email on your phone from the Linux world?

A web browser?

Contacts app?

These are essentials for the phone.

What about an RSS client?

> What would you like for Email on your phone from the Linux world?

There seems to be an adaptive version of Geary now, which looks nice though I haven't used it yet.

> A web browser?

GNOME Web works pretty well in my experience, though it could be faster and it's still missing WebRTC support.

> Contacts app?

GNOME Contacts seems to work well enough on my Librem 5 - synced straight away with my Nextcloud instance, vs. on Android where I had to find a third-party app to do that.

> What would you like for Email on your phone from the Linux world?

I actually run mutt on Android already (yay termux), so should be fine.

> A web browser?

What's wrong with Firefox or chromium?

There are lots of very good open source alternatives (K9 Mail, OsmAnd, Element/Matrix, Firefox of course, etc.). Take a look at f-droid.org.

The parent was saying he wants Linux (as in desktop) apps on his phone. My point exactly is that they are much worse than Android ones in mobile scenarios.

Many would need UI to be rewritten from scratch.

I greatly prefer firefox to chrome on android. Especially reader mode.

If only there was a Firefox for Android.

Not sure if that's sarcastic, but yes there is.

It is sarcastic.

Person who advocates for Firefox on Android doesn't even know that it is already there.

You misread the comment.

Yep, apologies to OP. I thought I was replying to different comment.

>What would you like for Email on your phone from the Linux world?

Thunderbird

>A web browser?

Firefox/Chromium

>Contacts app?

kAddressBook

> Thunderbird, kAddressBook

Interface totally unacceptable on mobile.

> Firefox/Chromium

Android has both

Reply on news.ycombinator.com