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Comment by salawat | Hacker News Reader

Just rebuild what you're missing, and share. In the journey to do so you will discover some of the most interesting primitives out there, and everyone gains, instead of a few unrepentant Gatekeepers.

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This is missing a very important part of how certain software became de facto standards: by achieving dominating market share, which, in turn, was achieved by shipping working software with passable UX, ruthless business practices, making governments use the software, and making schools teach the software.

I'm writing this because the software is already there. There are decent alternatives to most things, sometimes multiple. What isn't there is government adoption, and commercial adoption.

I agree and the fact the governments prefer commercial and costly software instead of adopting open source solutions and hire local companies for support and custom development is very disturbing : they spend the taxpayers money to make rich a bunch of already disgusting rich companies. And when this company is a foreign company the damage for the state money balance (and citizens of course) is double.

That's exactly right and I think it's no much "preferring", rather than getting different deals from these companies like Microsoft. MS has already been caught specifically, but also I think that this phenomenon is hardly exclusive to software, it's just part of how the government, or rather the individuals in government, go about their business. In the third world it's practically an open secret, and I don't have doubt that basically every government works like this.

Also, large companies offer quite robust support, deals to implement specific features, compliance with different regulations, etc. I know from experience that one thing I like about dealing with large entities is that they have many corner cases already figured out.

i would prefer not to

You can, of course, pick your level of engagement, and make adjustments over time. An Android phone can provide all the engagement you need, and there are lots of distributions that focus on providing different experience. I'm using a stock Android phone and Linux everywhere else. My current phone isn't rootable, (I bought it to replace a lost iPhone and didn't have time to do research) so I'm stuck with stock, but my next phone will be. I'm still way happier on Android than I ever was on iOS.

If you really want to have your foot in both worlds, you can always live the two-phone lifestyle. Might go that way myself eventually.

I've been happily living on android for maybe 5 years now after iOS for maybe 10 before that. I don't really miss it at all, but the tier system is hard to ignore. besides the infamous "green text" phenomenon, iOS tends to get the apps for applications that only support one, or in my car, android auto only takes up the top half of the screen whereas car play uses the full display. and of course, the software ecosystem for the Subaru infotainment is completely proprietary and non-user-serviceable so I can do nothing about it.

but that's just how it is, choosing free, ethical software is choosing a life of austerity and alienation.

Alienation I can see, but austerity? One of the things I plan on doing is building custom UIs for all the apps I usually use. Termux on stock Android is hobbled by unremappable key bindings that make using the Super key almost impossible, but when I can finally actually control the computer I carry around in my pocket all day, a blank canvas I can mold and shape is infinitely better.

I bet your Subaru is probably hackable, all these things run Linux under the hood, wouldn't be surprised if there were already a group of people on Reddit that have already done it. Lonely, this lifestyle does not have to be.

> your Subaru is probably hackable, all these things run Linux under the hood,

Years ago I would have said “much more likely to be QNX since a car always has a RTOS.” These days it’s likely Android Automotive, which has a massive share now. Note: despite the name it has nothing to do with “Android Auto.”

Overall, hacking on a car, even infotainment, seems very difficult. They really don’t want you to have any control over it.

I live that two phones lifestyle. One is being iPhones SE 1st Gen., the smallest one; another is being Google Nexus 6P ¹

While in theory that works, in practice I bear just iPhone all the time. With Android on the shelf most of its time. I even started to turn off its Wi-Fi so it keeps being alive after a week of being untouched.

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1 — I’m the lucky one who hadn’t been bootlooped, so I’m not on Pixel yet. Both phones are enough for me, performance wise.

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