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Comment by Roark66 | Hacker News Reader

It's a trap. We can already run almost all Linux apps via other solutions like termux, qpython and others. They want to kill all of it, but they can't just do it without a pr hit.

So they just "pretend" to bring in crappy Linux support while removing what people actually use. You want terminal apps on that Linux? (99% of what I use) You need to connect a USB keyboard. Oh, you want X11 apps? They need to ve rebuilt with our "library" (that will probably require significant redevelopment). And so on.

No, I don't trust Google neither other monopolies.

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> They want to kill all of it, but they can't just do it without a pr hit.

Gogle can do whatever they want to qpython and termux, 99% of the population will not care at all

Sounds like this "99%" segment of the population are not relevant to a discussion of this topic: corporate-controlled operating systems.

I see this kind of sentiment on HN a lot and it's weird to me. Like, what's the issue with discussing on a hacker forum ways that Google is making Android worse for hackers? Especially considering the alternative is iOS and it's much worse in that regard.

Add several more 9s to that.

Termux is no longer available via Play store as they refuse to acknowledge the way is via Java user space for specific official APIs.

They're working on it: https://github.com/termux-play-store

Android dropped a lot of native APIs, though, so it may take a while for the Play Store version to be feature complete again (and even then they will still need to continuously convince their AI reviewers that they do in fact need all of those permissions).

Google decided that it's not acceptable to execute downloaded binaries, which is a fair requirement for most non-malicious apps, but a program for Termux. Termux can work around it, but I'm fully expecting them to get kicked out of the Play Store not long after their work is complete for circumventing these protections.

> they refuse to acknowledge the way is via Java user space

I don't think that has much to do with it. Google's problem with Termux is that it downloads and executes native code. Also, you're phrasing that like refusing to acknowledge a megacorporation's version of the truth is a bad thing.

Termux is available via the Play store right now, on Android at least.

A "crippled" (in capabilities) version of Termux is on GooglePlay - that which targets the latest SDK instead of the last before forbidding execution of binaries outside the APK.

See https://github.com/termux-play-store/

Thanks. That was very clear and informative. Props to them for producing excellent documentation of what's going on.

By the way, I'm using the Play store version and don't have any issues but all I do for now is read man pages and use ssh.

it's a really old version. the latest version is available on GitHub.

>No, I don't trust Google neither other monopolies.

If it's any conciliation neither does the US government. We are in for a ma-bel shakeup of the market. You know, the one that let internet running to your house happen.

I'm wondering if any of the antitrust cases will be pursued as vigorously in the next administration. Neither presidential candidate seems to be a fan of Lina Khan. She has done excellent work in bringing antitrust enforcement back into attention.

Corporations, however, hate antitrust law with a passion and unfortunately they now decide a lot of policy via their financial muscle thanks to Citizens United.

Genuine question from a non US citizen, did breaking up a telecom in the USA lead to personal internet connections?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler

>Prior to its breakup in 1984, Bell System's legal monopoly over telephony in the United States allowed the company to impose strict rules on how consumers could access their network. Customers were prohibited from connecting equipment not made or sold by Bell to the network. The same set-up was operative in nearly all countries, where the telephone companies were nationally owned. In many households, telephones were hard-wired to wall terminals before connectors like RJ11 and BS 6312 became standardized.

Ahh, those halcyon days before opaque consumer routers with zero-days, botnets, and gray-market residential proxy services.

You make it sound a little like this isn't timing and ma bell would have developed securer edge nodes, but everything on their network sophisticated enough to attack was powned by bored children.

Inband signaling for the win! Having the overhead of a separate control channel was more expensive than just doing the signaling in band.

Sure, phreakers could attack the central office equipment, and get free calls, disrupt the network some, but they couldn't make some other customer's phone explode, or melt into slag, or ring 1,000,000 numbers at once, from 5,000 miles away.

At 1200 baud, yes.

I would imagine the break up of AT&T and the monopoly that formed around phone connections certainly inspired Americans working on the early algorithms of the internet. We still use telephone numbers today, even though mobile internet has made them fully obsolete

You would imagine wrong. The internet had settled just about all the major protocol decision by 1984 it was all about the hardware you could connect to the network.

Breaking up Google but not breaking up Microsoft is a complete sham. If there's any company that needs to be broken up first, it's Microsoft.

Microsoft made contracts with its clients to automatically create M$ accts, for example, my .edu email acct was self hosted years ago, then magically I had a tightly integrated (oauth at first bla bla) M$ acct. Since I didnt ask for it, and I dont want it, I couldnt care less of I run afoul of them. Heck, please revoke it, atleast that would break their contract. AFICT my credentials for journals etc still rest with my .edu (its a problem that credentials are necessary at all). Skynet on the other hand is hell bent on using its monopoly to force me to make an acct:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41773781

That's cap. Google is so much more pervasive

Is this really still true? This isn’t meant to be a defence of Google by any means, but to me it seems Microsoft has adopted a lot of pervasive practices in recent years. To the point where they would actively add things like Minecraft installers in my personal windows machine with whatever tiny version of windows comes with a prebuilt PC used like a game console.

I guess it’s not privacy invasive to add a Minecraft commercial directly into my OS, but they seem to be doing more and more of that stuff as well through their “telemetry”. Though I suppose much of it is targeting enterprise rather than our personal privacy.

MS are doing shitty stuff but they are hardly the monopoly they were in the 90s. You can ignore and avoid Microsoft completely if you want these days. The same is harder for Google - most people at least will want to watch something on YouTube at some point.

This is going to depend on the market. If you consider enterprise I'd argue Microsoft are very much still a monopoly. A client of mine is in the process of removing their existing telephony solution, which has many more features than teams, for teams, because teams is bundled with the necessary Microsoft 365 to get all the Azure controls needed for regulatory compliance.

Most enterprise organisations killed off their different chat clients and phones and switched to teams in my area of the world. Not necessarily tech companies, but everyone else didn’t want the additional cost when Teams came “for free”.

Teams phone system is a significant additional licensing expense, it's definitely not free.

It's also not standards compliant, despite speaking a malformed version of SIP, so you can't just plug it into standard SIP Infrastructure and have it send and receive invites for calls, or send and receive SIP simple messages for texting.

Not being standards compliant does not surprise me at all.

I've never looked at the cost, but I was told switching to teams is being done to save money. So perhaps not as much money as hoped...

Crowdstrike outage has shown that isn't even remotely true in comparison - Microsofts failure took out a lot of critical infrastructure. Killing Google search wouldn't come close.

Google != Google search. I can imagine a scenario like Crowdstrike hitting Android which runs on significantly more devices.

And the effect of an Android outage would still be significantly smaller than outage of industrial machines powered by Windows.

Aren't there a lot of IoT/industrial applications of android?

Microsoft had extreme dominance in the some markets:

- LinkedIn

- GitHub

- O365 dominance is not extreme, but present.

> We can already run almost all Linux apps via other solutions

with Rooting.

"Docker on Android "

https://gist.github.com/FreddieOliveira/efe850df7ff3951cb62d...

No, there underneath is a migration plan being implemented...legacy Android will run sand boxed Linux apps to match Fuchsia offerings....first OEM Fuchsia device is 2028.

Isn't fuchsia dead?

I'm inclined to suggest walking directly into their trap, gradually developing all the missing apps of a mobile-linux phone and then introducing a wine-like layer that emulates their trap on Linux mobile..

>They need to ve rebuilt with our "library"

Doesn't termux already require all its packages to be compiled against android NDKs?

Yes, to link against Android libc.

no you are not running Linux with those, if so, people would not be so excited about pKVM, or Samsung's Linux on DEX

You're not wrong, if Google adds proper input methods support to Wayland (like on ChromeOS) apps will have to adapt. Or stick to the main toolkits (GTK and qt6) where Google provides IME modules.

IME on Wayland sucks right now outside of ChromeOS.

I just put Ubuntu 24.10 onto a box yesterday where Wayland is the new default and so far I must say everything has been smooth sailing including a few games on Steam that I tried so far.

this is based on pKVM, and should bring rootful VMs on unrooted devices

what does rootful mean here? I can't run wireshark on crostini (linux in chromeOS) for example.

is that not because it's a VM rather than lack of privileges? you would see the virtual network interface

"should" We shall see.

bro is paranoid

it's not paranoia when they're out to get you. these companies have made it clear time and time again, control and profits are the only things they care about - not the effort that you put in to produce something useful to others. they will break it at every opportunity to make a quick buck.

Rightfully so.

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