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Comment by p0w3n3d | Hacker News Reader

what about an android fork? just take images of android for given phones and remove the app store requirements? I wonder how will they do it? on kernel level?

Of course they can block root access I guess...

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I'm not an expert here so please take what I say with a grain of salt.

It's my understanding that what's included in open source Android (AOSP) is FAR from a complete product and there is quite a bit of Google closed source/proprietary software that goes into the mix before it's shipped as Android (think Google Services.)

So, while you could fork AOSP and try to use that as a basis for and alternative mobile OS, it would require quite a bit of work on top of the AOSP code. This is what's done by custom ROMs like GrapheneOS (ironically Pixel devices only) or LineageOS for example.

So it wouldn't require a lot of work because LineageOS has already done the work and is open-source.

Although it wouldn't require a lot of work to allow side-loading apps on LineageOS and similar, LOS users would still be profoundly impacted by the death of the FOSS ecosystem.

LOS/AOSP/whatever users are a VANISHINGLY small minority of users, so "an app that only works on them" is an app that only works for a tiny minority of people. This would disincentivize developing FOSS apps altogether. A lot of projects will likely eventually die, and a lot that could have started will not.

Those are called custom ROM's and they are unaffected by this new restriction because it's a Google service which custom ROM's don't ship with. Same for older versions of HarmonyOS that run AOSP. Bigger issue there is that many major OEMs either block bootloader unlocking or make it extremely difficult. Samsung's OneUI 8 update for example turns off bootloader unlocking for all devices. There have been reports of people getting around that though. But still restricted to Exynos devices.

Other companies like Motorola require you to phone home to unlock the bootloader and we saw how well that worked out for LG where once they shut down that effectively preventing devices from running custom ROMs and having root access. The biggest hurdle is that the overwhelming majority of users don't sideload software. So they aren't concerned about this at all. So all Google has to do is hold against some power users and hope there isn't a mass exodus to LineageOS or GrapheneOS. Which is highly unlikely.

Most people install GApps even on top of custom ROMs like Lineage and Graphene. I use to use Lineage+microG, but a few years back I switched to pure Lineage with no microG and just F-droid. I have a tiny bit stuff applications from the Auora store (sideloads Play apks).

The trouble is, I'm like a 5% of 1%. Most people don't run their own e-mail/calendar/contact servers. We're a tiny breed and there are very few Linux phone alternatives (e.g. PostmarketOS, PinePhone Pro .. Purism is a scam company that hasn't refunded hundreds of thousands of dollars and can go die in a fire; fucking scumbags!).

The Ubuntu Edge failed to get funding back in the early 2010s and very few devices run Ubuntu Touch.

The SoC/ARM model (no standard architecture, some DeviceTrees if companies fell like it, random pins soldered to random chips) makes it very difficult to get Linux adoption on mobile devices like what was possible on PCs.

It's a mess. The US failed by not forcing Alphabet to split Chrome or Android. The anti-trust suit results were a joke.

Without having in-depth knowledge of what would be required as far as baseband drivers, the corresponding network requirements, etc. I think a mobile Linux distro is a better bet. It's been done by Fairphone, PinePhone, etc. and there's no reason _why_ it can't work -- the demand just hasn't been great enough.

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