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Comment by Ciantic | Hacker News Reader

> "GNU/Linux" touch version that has a serious ecosystem

That is a very hard problem, unless someone with serious name recognition like Linus Torvalds starts to lead that kind of effort, or a big company like Microsoft suddenly decides that putting 1 billion towards GNU/Linux would be in their interest. With small efforts, it will remain scattered.

Crowdfunding has a lot of power if there is name recognition behind the effort. Star Citizen has already gathered $800 million with mostly enthusiasm and a good start. Who is there to lead the effort for GNU/Linux phone development?

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A GNU/Linux phone is dead on arrival unless it provides features that the masses consider a benefit. It's been attempted countless times, and every time it fails to gain adoption because the benefits rarely outweigh the downsides (yes, I know I will get at least one free software maximalist disagree, but in general, adoption rates support my point: these phones are used by such a small minority they're effectively a measurement error in the data).

If anyone wants to give it a shot again, don't start with a GNU/Linux phone, start with something the masses actually will care about. Reverse-engineered, adversarially-interoperable social media apps for all the mainstream networks with no ads/dark patterns? Cool. Adblocking by default? Sure thing. Built-in support for a wide range of cloud providers (including standard protocols such as SFTP/S3/etc). And so on.

Address actual pain points that people have. "GNU/Linux" by itself does not address anything. The non-technical majority don't even know what that is or means, and even for technical people it isn't a perk by itself - sure, you can run whatever software you want... but you (or someone else) still need to write said software to begin with... or you could just trade a bit of money and "freedom" and buy an iPhone which doesn't have any of those problems.

There were crowdfunding efforts like: Purism Librem, Liberux NEXX, /e/ foundation, eelo, Ubuntu Edge, Jolla phone. But none were really successful. The closest was probably Mozilla with Firefox OS, now Kai OS. I still own an Alcatel OT Fire phone, it's HTML5 all the way!

But I think Sailfish OS has a mature ecosystem, they are well recognized in the EU and based on GNU/Linux. I use it daily, after moving from UBports, and it serves me well. Hopefully SfOS gains more popularity.

> But none were really successful.

By which criterion? I'm happily using Librem 5 as a daily driver; wrote this reply from it.

By general adoption. It's great that Librem serves you well, just like SfOS for me, but sadly we're a tiny minority. I think KaiOS has the third place in popularity.

GNU/Linux is also not successful by such definition. It doesn't make it worse than Windows.

Linux is succesful, it is a base for Android and billions of network devices.

Did you notice I had written GNU/Linux?

I've been using a Librem 5 as a daily driver for years and before that I used a PinePhone for several years. It can work if you're willing to adjust to live with it's constraints (but then also enjoy the benefits).

You highlighted the problem I was stating: Effort is scattered among small players. I would love for SailfishOS to win, but crowdfunding is hard with random Thingamabob companies; it needs name recognition behind it.

For the new ecosystem to win, it needs to have its own user base for companies building apps to recognize it. Even with SailfishOS, the banking apps still require Android compatibility layer, which is slowly eroded with Play Services and Play integrity check disabling those one by one in the coming years.

Weren't Jolla (Sailfish OS), Canonical (Ubuntu Touch), HP/LG (webOS), Mozilla (Firefox OS), Samsung (Tizen) recognized companies? Yet they failed to break the duopoly. Even Facebook failed with their phone. Who would fight with Andoid/iOS then?

I have no answer, I'm asking the same question. Who can raise serious funds like 1 billion to do it? I'm guessing for FOSS/Linux crowd to get fully behind, it can't be a company, but a person like Linus Torvalds. Given that browsers are becoming a platform themselves for major apps, maybe it can lower the bar in the future for smaller vendors to create a feasible market.

I'm hoping that Linus "pulls a git" and suddenly announces that he got fed up with Android last week and created a new OS that solves everyone's problems.

A person can dream.

> created a new OS that solves everyone's problems.

Created a hobby OS, just a hobby, won't be big

Even Linus wouldn't be enough. If anybody could, it would be China and its conglomerates like Huawei, Xiaomi, Alibaba, Tencent.

All of those ran really slow compared to Android versions at the time, or their dev tooling sucked. The only one I really enjoyed using was Sailfish, and even they had to implement an APK compatibility layer. So for the average consumer, what’s the benefit to using that over straight Android?

Privacy.

Okay, so how would you market that to someone that's non tech savvy? What's the sales pitch?

They are all impressive tech, but not actual stuff you can sell or distribute until you can answer those questions.

> "banking apps still require Android compatibility layer"

I would say that this is really not the OS's problem, but the bank's problem. I find it absolutely intolerable that there are banks that force me to use a OS from one (or two) specific vendors.

Same goes for public transportation services (German Bahn Card is now only available in their app) or post mail services (German Post "Mobile Stamp" is only available in their official app).

> German Bahn Card is now only available in their app

Technically not as long as the fallback PDF version remains available.

"For the new ecosystem to win, it needs to have its own user base for companies building apps to recognize it."

…And strong and effective antitrust legislation in place to stop current monopolies like Google from crushing small startups.

Trouble is, despite governments paying lip service to wanting competition in this arena they really don't want competition at all, especially so from small startups.

Look at it this way, controlling and handling a few big companies is much easier for governments than having to deal with a plethora especially so when many are small startups; and second, it's also easier for them to extract user data from Big Tech's operations (as Big Tech is predictable and they've been doing so for a long time)—than it it would be from many small startups, especially so when the products they're planning to manufacture are aimed at improving privacy and adding encryption.

Think of the current UK and Apple debacle and governments' motives for not being proactive become abundantly clear.

> [...] someone with serious name recognition like Linus Torvalds starts to lead that kind of effort [...]

Linus is a kernel hacker, and already busy tending to his own project.

"GNU/Linux" is effectively a committee of communities, with sometimes conflicting goals. It took Canonical and Valve to put things into shape on the desktop, and that's mostly because desktop was becoming less relevant.

I see two ways for things to change here:

- A massive, for-profit corporation, someone willing and able to challenge Google and Apple on an even ground, is hell-bent on making a Linux-based phone (Microsoft failed even after acquiring Nokia);

- Another platform shift happens, making smartphones irrelevant in comparison (think: when smartphones displaced desktops).

Microsoft was stupid, in EU they were slowly reaching 10% when they decided to kill WP, it was getting momentum as the alternative for those that didn't want Android and weren't going to spend Apple money for a phone device.

And actually the development experience was much better than Android to this day.

But that isn't coming back, especially after they killed all developer good will on Windows OS for everyone that invested into WinRT as platform.

How much of that 10% was them basically paying OEM's and consumers to use Windows, which is what the Nokia deal amounted to? It wasn't sustainable.

Whatever benefit we'd have from a Windows Phone today, it's laughable to think that Microsoft wouldn't be doubling down on exactly the sort of locked-down devices Apple (and now Google) have or are moving towards.

Their only vaguely "open" platform (Windows) is like that because of legacy compatibility and customers, but for anything new Microsoft always wanted to sell you an Xbox that could make phonecalls. Try writing and deploying an app on that without a developer account.

I really would like to have been payed to use Windows phones, especially as former Nokia employee.

I was in Espoo, the week following the burning platforms memo.

However it represented a third option, to a percentage no Linux phone distribution has ever achieved since Open Moko.

Maybe Maemo could have been it, had not been for Nokia's board decision to bring in Elop.

    > I really would like to have been payed
    > to use Windows phones

I meant paid in the indirect sense of being the beneficiary of a loss leader for Microsoft.

I.e. I'm poking holes in your (somewhat unstated) premise that they'd already reached around 10% of marketshare, and could have just organically grown from there. As reporting at the time shows[1] the average selling price of these phones was €72.4.

So Microsoft (Nokia, but we all know who was really running/paying for the show) were spending a lot of money to buy themselves into the market, and just barely holding on to double digit market share for a bit there by subsidizing entry level phones.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/01/microsoft...

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