Google's new 'Aluminium OS' project brings Android to PC
androidauthority.com
androidauthority.com
What's that going to be like? Will developers have to beg to have control over devices they own? Will we be locked down on the store and have to manually install "unverified" software? Will I be able to take screenshots at will on MY computer, or get a black screen because Google decides so?
The list can go on and on ad nauseam. Given what Google has done on the mobile space I have zero interest in having the same autocratic experience to be replicated on the last type of devices (PCs and laptops) where we can really have true open choices and alternatives. Screw them.
It rather looks like Aluminium OS is the intended solution.
I don't see any problem with it being "locked down", in the sense that it doesn't sound any worse than Chrome OS or Android.
The open question is whether any open source release will happen worth a damn.
I think the problem is that it further normalizes computers where users don't have the final say. The more normarized systems like that are, the more likely app developers (and even websites, if something like web environment integrity were to be normalized) are to lock out users on systems that aren't so restricted.
I wish I didn't have to care what kind of computers most people use, but in reality, it matters what's popular.
Android Otoh let's vendors get away with shipping binaries that work once on one Android version, making upgrades pain. And thus Android devices are generally stuck with the build they released with.
The Google decision to drop ChromeOS in favour of Android is going is going to be a huge disaster for Linux ecosystem.
It's not Google, it's the application vendor that decides so. And as annoying as I find it when I want to screenshot something from my bank app, the reasons behind that feature being available are pretty good.
> Given what Google has done on the mobile space
You seem to be missing the nuance that as annoying as some of those Google provided Android hoops are, they are necessary for the wider security posture of the average user (and there are more average users than techies that need to install random .apks) and, very very importantly, Google allow you to skip most of them if you know what you're doing. Considering the competition in the mobile space, it really isn't even close in terms of openness.
who's security will be raped as soon as another app is installed (hello Meta).
Even while neglecting how silly it is to judge two entire generations as incompetent, I assure you that 'they' here aren't your zoomer brother and SIL or your boomer parents. If you think that someone is benevolently locking all these devices and platforms down to protect your kin from themselves, you are painfully behind in your understanding of capitalism. Please find a new dead horse to beat instead of this thoroughly refuted justification. I don't understand why people fail to recognize these patterns of exploitation and do something about it, despite the repeated abuse they endure. Is it Stockholm syndrome?
This is the utterly predictable path it's going to go down, if the consumers continue to behave like this. Yet, some people are very uncomfortable when this is mentioned. I wonder who's so excited about yet another walled platform.
If you want a mainstream open source desktop OS, it will be Android.
- PC (Windows, Linux, macOS) - Mobile (to simplify, this includes phones, watches and ongoing AR / AI progress based around Android and iOS with some Meta)
Mobile already "broke" the rules, and we have locked down devices with simplified "app stores" and more complex off-the-market OSes since each device is a unique SoC combination many times with closed-sourced blobs.
Web did a major change for desktop (which I guess part of the assumption for ChromeOS). but there are still some scenarios where native APIs are needed.
On the other hand, current Desktop OS market is a mess, Windows is focusing on intrusive features and enforcing user account, Apple is all about "notarizing" and making desktop similar to mobile, and Linux is diverged with multiple variants.
I really hope for opinionated Linux distribution promoted by a big player (I've always hoped Adobe or someone in the right size will understand the need and their ability to get enough common products to it).
Having said that, Linux did great advancement over the years. Many companies including closed source already have some support and also gaming made great advancement.
Anyway, Making a "locked os" won't do much. So unless Google plans to shoot their own leg, they'll need to make it open enough.
> ChromeOS and Aluminium Operating System (ALOS) Commercial devices across all form factors (e.g. laptops, detachables, tablets, and boxes) and tiers (e.g., Chromebook, Chromebook Plus, AL Entry, AL Mass Premium, and AL Premium) that meets the needs of users and the business.
Sounds like ChromeOS is Android for entry/thin and similar PC's and Aluminum is more upmarket/premium.
Also, to be honest, this doesn't seem like "a new OS" to me, but rather a shift in Android's roadmap and an associated rebrand to try to push ChromeOS/Android upmarket to try and expand their "Devices with Gemini/Google AI as a first-class service/product" footprint beyond cell phones.
Given the push for arm in the consumer PC space, I can kinda see why google is renewing efforts here even if you set the AI stuff aside.
(Replying to my own comment instead of editing it as this is tangential to the topic at hand)
They seem particularly focused on the Linux compatibility layer (starnix) as far as I can tell.
I’d say they are most likely going to end up becoming the thing that Android sits on top of. There is already public indications of some variant of it called “microfuchsia” coming to Android. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that this is all part of the same launch that they are working towards here.
I can't wait to play Windows PC games on a Linux compatibility layer (Proton) on a Fuschia compatibility layer (Starnix) and still have them inexplicably run smoother than on the system they were originally developed for.
It is resting ...
https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/how-... https://windowsforum.com/threads/how-to-disable-annoying-ads... https://www.howtogeek.com/windows-11-wont-show-any-ads-if-yo...
I never see nags about Edge. Basically you can avoid those by never opening Edge.
OneDrive can be fully uninstalled (this wasn’t always the case). It legit doesn’t even show up when I search for it anymore.
The start menu cluster, I mean, it’s not the best interface on the planet, but the annoying recommendations can be easily removed…or you can just replace it entirely.
I know this is a user choice and therefore way less egregious than being forced to endure it on the Microsoft side, but perhaps it’s even worth pointing out that running Steam on Linux as a respite from commercialization and ads of Windows is…not really accomplishing that goal. And you don’t really avoid the browser wars by switching to Linux either, as many of the top distributions have Firefox+Google Search as their default configuration.
Do you have an enterprise install managed on a Windows domain where your admin has disabled all this stuff by any chance?
The start menu shows sponsored articles in it IIRC, although this was something I turned off as soon as I could. It also pushes apps like Candy Crush.
The lock screen has ads literally "dotted" around, again pushing cloud services etc.
I keep being prompted to turn on Copilot, and essentially the only options are "Yes" or "Not yet". Opt-outs aren't respected.
I don't use Edge but the OS keeps advertising Edge, keeps telling me in various places and at various times that Edge is better and that Chrome is dangerous.
These are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head, but it's truly pervasive throughout the whole product. Even just looking through Settings it's not hard to find upsells.
But local-only Windows 11 still works with minimal interference. The most common ways are creating the install medium with Rufus (which has an option to create a local-only installation medium), or by manually dropping into the Windows Command Prompt during setup and running a single command ("ms-cxh:localonly")
Internet Explorer (MSHTML) also still lives on in Windows 11 because older software depends on it to embed browsers in their UI. It'll probably stay there for a long time to preserve backwards compatibility.
This is all I see and everything I disabled/uninstalled was done from the Windows settings UI (Windows 11 Pro).
> Even just looking through Settings it's not hard to find upsells.
I guess I see this too? Just a little box saying to get Microsoft 365 or install OneDrive on the home page of the settings UI. There's basically nothing of value there though so it's easily missed.
And regarding Windows, first I want to tell that I'm not a fan of recent MS trends too. Second - I personally never had a single ad on my Win10 and current Win11, so I wouldn't know how to remove those :) . And third - to remove bloatware just uninstall it from the Programs and Features, like OneDrive or Office. LLM can be disabled in Settings. Some bloatware will remain due to deep integration, but that's the same issue as with Google or Apple. For instance I may not want to see Stocks app on iOS, but that's not my choice to make apparently :) .
Windows is so bad, that I've lost any hope for it to recover.
MacOS is not that bad, but it's tied to Apple hardware and I don't like it. Also it's not getting better either, new releases bring more bloat and features I didn't ask for.
Linux is what I use, but I also lost hope for it to ever become polished experience. Just recent months they introduced another bug to GNOME which probably will not be resolved in years. No big company wants to invest in desktop Linux and without investments it's just not good. I can navigate Linux bugs and workarounds, but I'd prefer not to.
Expecting some new unknown operating system to appear and be ready is foolish, it won't happen.
So Android is the only operating system that could realistically be ready in the foreseeable future. Linux have good support for desktop hardware. Android have good polished stack for applications. Developers know how to write apps for android. Security story for Android is miles ahead that of desktop Linux. So I totally see that Android Desktop could actually be a good thing, with Google sponsoring its development. And if Google will put too much bloat in it, its open source nature would allow for volunteers to build better distributions of it.
Also I don't like that KDE does not have its native launcher. I need to install some SDDE stuff which works under Xorg or something like that and looks ugly. Pretty weird stuff all that. GNOME just have GDM which just works.
My ideal environment would be Windows 95-like WM with zero configuration options which just works out of the box the way I want. It doesn't exist, unfortunately. May be I should try to write is, as I complain about it so much. Just have no idea about scale of such a project.
There are no other 10 DE environments. GNOME and KDE are the only two mature ones. Rest are either obsolete, especially with Wayland conquering Linux desktop, or for weird use-cases, like tiling WMs. I'm used to traditional windows managers, I don't want tiling WMs.
Every now and then I distro hop and ended up on LMDE (linux mint debian edition, the real linux mint) which only has a cinnamon offering out of the box. Much to my surprise its actually good. It still has random bugs triggered by stuff I've tried adding to the panel, but that's par for the course with gnome, XFCE, and MATE lately anyway. Over all it's a solid DE now even if the stock start/menu is underwhelming everything is fixable.
I just want to type D, enter and open Documents/, how hard can it be. It's been almost a decade since they removed it, and I still can't use vanilla Nautilus.
I always end up with Nemo or a patched Nautilus.
rant aside, the rest of gnome seems fine. Don't love it, but also don't hate it. I can add my own shortcuts with rofi/dmenu.
But afaik it still defaults to search.
Why would we have any reason to believe that there would ever be a super-opinionated desktop environment that would be good? The examples we have -- which notably DO NOT include Windows 95, which had a zillion tiny knobs, many in the UI, but others requiring dropping to the registry (which is no different from screwing with confirmation files)... and, frankly, doesn't even include macOS, the system with some of the best customization of key bindings and the most universal automation -- are mostly bad. Put in the day or two of effort to make something that isn't opinionated work the way you want, and then reap the rewards for the following few decades of your productive career.
> I don't want extensible software. KDE is terrible in that regards. They have miriads of options, that's too much for me.
Why not use the default provided then and take the defaults as opinionated? That's what I do actually. I might change very few options, but I generally use the defaults. It's not that you have to configure kde before it becomes usable, the defaults are pretty ok.
In something as complex as a display stack this is an important tradeoff.
Have you ever tried Icewm?
Is the problem that you don't want choices as long as the maintainers always makes the same choice you would have when taking options away?
It's pretty openly in bad faith to assign malice to open-source developers.
I just reinstalled and can confirm that I don't see anything in the System Settings as you say.
[1] https://github.com/xournalpp/xournalpp/releases/tag/v1.2.8
This bug manifests both for vscode and Idea. I configured these apps to run under native wayland, but they're not ready and other bugs manifest (e.g. no border around vscode window), which are less annoying, but annoying nonetheless.
MacOS is bad because it has opinions about what hardware you should use.
Linux is bad because it doesn't have opinions.
It's a feature, not a bug.
Security isn't just about technical features but also about trust, while I trust my Linux desktop, I don't trust my Android phone with the Play Store running as high privilege, advertising id in the OS and unknown manufacturer additions.
Meanwhile something close to GrapheneOS running on desktop sounds fantastic.
Android's sandboxes are weaker and AFAIK rely on closed, non-auditable hardware (which is owned by Google in, e.g., GrapheneOS). Qubes protects you more reliably and doesn't require to abandon root privileges or a possibility to take screenshots.
Also, you don't have to run every app in a dedicated VM on Qubes: Instead you group them into security domains, which allowed me to organize my digital life like never before [3].
In addition, Qubes can protect you from supply-chain attacks by isolating VMs from the network and using different OSes side by side. I dream of using Qubes on mobile.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45017028
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45017028
[2] https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/latest/user/how-to-guides/how-to...
Classic straw man: a single GNOME bug doesn’t mean all of desktop Linux isn’t worth investing in.
Developers have been writing Linux desktop apps successfully for decades. Moreover, who cares about polished desktop apps when most apps are just web apps that look the same on all platforms?
For the record, I despise web apps.
Ready for what ? Working with files on Android is ... interesting. Real app support on Android (shells, compilers, CAD/CAE) is ... interesting and the UX is... total crap.
Most Android applications are free. Furthermore, Google allow you to install a separate store where you can buy from, allowing you to not have to pay those 30%, or to pay them to someone else other than Google.
And if anyone is trying to normalise 30% rent seeking on desktops, it's the incumbents already directing you towards their store (Microsoft, Apple).
I won't be using Aluminum OS.
The value is what then? Promotion for the tech lead that convinced a bunch of other googlers that they should contribute to this OS project?
And keyboard and the like will also get a chance to get fixed if more people are interested in the platform.
That's an extrapolation on my part, of course, but it's not inconsistent with how other leaks or disclosures have occurred. Can't speak to Android Authority's practices here.
It's not just about touch vs mouse/keyboard, it's the whole interaction design philosophy.
And it's not as if you can say that getting the Android developer experience on desktop is going to entice developers. Compose is decent, but the actual Android system APIs make Win32 look brilliant. At least Win32 is stable.
For this to be viable, there has to be a bigger strategy than just "Android apps and APIs on a desktop" -- because neither of those are appealing.
Users and developers will just stick with the web.
I assume we're in the same situation with Samsung's Dex ?
It worked decently well, the main issues were unrelated to the handling in itself (the Bluetooth stack was dead for android apps, trying the smart appliance stuff was just a fool's errand)
Imagine the experience of trying to write a paper in Android Google Docs, vs firing up the web version.
Games perhaps being a big exception.
When in phone view a lot of the options are hard to find, but in tablet/desktop mode (yes, that's a thing already) it's really close to what you get on the web. The main different is the menu layout, where most advanced functionalities go to an extended menu instead of the standard File/Edit/View/Insert... menus at the top of the page.
Otherwise there seem to be most of what's needed, including extensions apparently. Perhaps media management could be tougher, it's supported by on don't how much of a PITA it could be, I haven't pushed that far on the android version.
Rather than full desktops, I suspect that Desktop Android will be popular for 2-in-1 style devices like the Surface Pro.
I've always thought that the Surface Pro was a good idea, just with the wrong operating system. Newer iPad Pros kind of accomplish the same, but are still too locked down by Apple to be a true computer replacement.
Android has the potential to be the perfect middle ground: touch-centric UI paradigm, can work well with keyboard/mice, and open/flexible enough to be an actual computer replacement.
Google has been working on adding extensions to Chrome on Android, already has apk sideloading, and has work-in-progress Linux VM support. That's likely "good enough" to replace computers for the vast majority of people.
Chromebooks were awesome because they were impossible to screw up. Then the advertising department rammed itself in there.
Yes, I know about waydroid and similar, but it is very slow and requires you to have relatively powerful machine.
Of course, ideally, a Proton like layer would be best
Maybe Osmium is/will-be an OS for their cloud clustering in future. IE something more heavyweight...
Desktop and laptop are the last standing bastions of user modifiability and general purpose computing. The situation on smartphones is so desparate that I type this message on a half-crippled Android installation, hopelessly wishing that it was Linux in here instead. I don't mind sacrifing some convenience and functionality for a while while the devs figure out how to iron out the shortfalls of Linux on smartphones. I absolutely don't want to concede that same ground on desktops and laptops. We deserve at least some devices that we can experiment and modify to our liking.
I know that if the trillion dollar corporation is out for it, they will force it down the throats of naive people or those who don't know any better. Soon afterwards, the rest of us will have two options - a dwindling supply of heavily modified and refurbished used configurable systems, or locked down, dumbed down machines with arbitrary restrictions like everyone else. At least until then, I believe that it's well worth resisting the invasion of freedoms for as long as we can.
I'd love to have Android (well, GrapheneOS) style sand-boxing for every app, I'd love to have it's granular permissions for every service. I'd love to have the battery management, the unified settings UI, the effortless disk encryption UX, ect. Who's using power, who's using data, who accessed the microphone 10 minutes ago?
Could this all be re-implemented in a Linux distribution? Sure, SE Linux is there. But it would take a long time to get to the same level of UX, and almost certainly fracture across different desktop environments.
What the fuck happened to this community?
Also an OS built around an "AI core" sounds like a privacy nightmare.
There is a robust mobile gaming market worth hundreds of billions in USA alone.
I can only assume the Aluminium OS would aim to do the same
The point about online banking is a bit dubious, but all my banks have decided that the Android app may conduct online banking alone, and it may verify a desktop session; but not the other way around.
Oh, maybe the browser, so we are back to ChromeOS.
Chrome OS was already supporting windowed android apps, I'm typing this on the experimental desktop mode for Pixel phones, and it's not ready for prime time but it's usable enough. I could totally see a refined version of it.
What Google will do with the linux subsystem that was available on ChromeOS is the more interesting part IMHO. Do they just ignore that part or do we get something equivalent.
The point is that almost any windows/linux/Mac desktop application handles it much better than Android apps, which is what the question was asking.
Social apps, messaging apps, parking/dedicated payment apps also tend to have miserable web support.
Yea! Finally an answer to the big brother Windows 11!
But isn't Google just as bad at spying on us? It's just trading one big brother for an another.
Oh yeah... didn't think of that.
Hey haven't you ever just ever considered using Linux?There are many apps that don't need to be apps but are. I want to run them in a controlled/isolated VM. For a long time (still?) Signal wouldn't run unless you have an android/iphone app installed first for example.
Android laptops are already a thing. A lot of the hate Windows 11 is getting is because it is trying to compete with Android. And they're both placating to consumers' desires.
I want full control, and by that I don't mean the ability to customize the color of my UI, but the ability to run whatever software I choose on the device that I supposedly own.
Sure, I may be able to technically be able to run Linux on a PC and retain my free choice for a while, but that is only until Google and Apple has finished selling their remote attestation security snake oil to governments, banks and service providers so that people like me will just be excluded from the digital society altogether.
I have hope in open OS such as Linux and the BSDs that they also survive the upcoming hardware lockdowns. Just look how they reverse engineered the MacBook chips. Took a long time but worked out. It remains a constant fight against big tech.
Or are you saying more conventional Linux is superior? Gnu/Linux is a good term for that.
What GNU software is actually being removed from any distro?
Game devs working in Linux is always a lagging indicator. Once there's a market share, they'll go there. Once it's the preferred os for people, you'll be able to develop on it. Games is already an incredibly risky market sector.
Instead, I encourage you to look at blender. It's gone through a "cute hobbyist/prosumer tool" phase and is now in the mega million dollar movies and games use it as their primary tool. Desktop Linux is on a similar curve thanks to Valve. If enough people start using it at home, industry will flip over.
Blender was a commercial product that became FOSS, with an existing customer base.
You've developed a "No true Scotsman" definition for desktop Linux that seems far from the common understanding that "if you use Linux as your OS on your desktop, you are a desktop Linux user".
If you feel your definition of purity tested "only Linux binaries or it doesn't count as a Linux desktop" is better, I'm not going to tell you you are wrong, just expect that you have a definition significantly out of the norm and will have a challenging uphill battle in getting others to adopt it.
It would be great, however it died alongside netbooks.
I can imagine also because Asus' distro was pretty terrible, it probably gave some backlash against Linux. I think the only reason they made it was to make it work on that tiny screen.
I spent ages at the time trying to make macOS work. I had it booting but due to the CPU being below 1 Ghz the timing screwed up and timing related actions happened in slow motion (this was a timing divider issue not sure to the slowness itself). I even messed with the kernel code trying to get it to work.
On a later Acer netbook I got it running perfectly though.
It was rather limited though, in the amount of applications running simultaneously, around four if not mistaken, without going into press archeology.
GrapheneOS-style sand-boxing for every app is long overdue in Linux. I'd love to have it's granular permissions for every single service. I'd love to have the battery management, the unified settings UI, the effortless disk encryption UX and key management.
Could you build it with SE Linux and a lot of glue? Yes, but nobody has. And doing it well, everywhere, would take a lot of hours.
You will never have a UI capable of encompassing all the settings available in Linux. You will only have a UI capable of configuring your desktop experience, which is just a small subset of the full Linux experience.
It's all in one place - I can't think of a single thing I would want to configure that isn't found in that one dialog. It doesn't always make sense, but it's searchable, and the search works.
make menuconfigAndroid is very good at exposing things like
* "which service may know the device location?"
* "which app accessed the microphone 2 minutes ago?"
* "which apps burn the most battery?"
All of those make sense on ChormeBooks, and all of those are difficult with Linux.
Unfortunately, not even close to being as comfortable to use as GrapheneOS, and still significantly less secure than it - even if we completely disregard the sad situation of hardware security on x86 (but can't blame QubesOS for that one).
Seems like a big downgrade compared to current ChromeOS where Google is in charge of all updates, or even Windows where Microsoft delivers the same updates to everyone.
Windows 7 supported every piece of hardware on it. If Microsoft can make an operating system that supports third party computers - even those that were never meant to run it - without relying on the manufacturer, why can’t Google?
Installing Windows did not require Boot Camp from Apple.
I was excited about another alternative to The Big Three os's.
edit: for all the iOS/MacOS whataboutists, i don't own any Apple devices for the same reasons, so not sure what point you are trying to make.
edit: or an iPadOS Pro, for those who feel the need to highlight they spent the most.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24838816
And this one got cancelled after a huge public outcry: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28309202. Also, Apple never said that it's fully cancelled.
The sales prove there is enough happy people, even with the complaints regarding some of its limitations.
And I'm not just talking about the extra I...
In my model my Linux pc is a lot more secure as there's no adversary having direct access and more control than me.
We shouldn't be happy with the state of security on Linux, while simultaneously enjoying its privacy benefits.
If a company has access to my data without my -completely voluntary- consent, that's a security breach.
As a 20 year old linux user, I do often use ChromeOS or ChromeOSflex. Just works. Beautiful UI. No more pain with webcam or wifi drivers - Yes, these have improved by still one has the pain of dropped packets (realtek wifi) etc. guaranteed 10 hour battery life.
With ChromeOS I just get 4 or 5 second - update - immutable OS. Fedora Silverblue is coming up but still not there.
But in practical terms there is a lot of trusting of someone/their-code going on. Unless you are reading/understanding it all.
I trust linux more than windows. But I've never read a line of it...
Not "the code is readable therefore trustable".
More "the code is readable, therefore I trust multiple someones, somewhere will read it or has read it and if they have a concern they will voice it".
Is it the greatest thing to trust? No, but like a lot of things in life, it's the best of the practical options.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/06/xz-uti...
That’s just one we know about it.
Microsoft/Apple have similarly secure set ups for their operating systems. Bitlocker by default (although there is a convenient backdoor for high-paying customers to protect against data loss and for law enforcement forensics) and Apple's Secure Enclave (only broken into by a certain five countries intelligence agencies and for older versions streaming pirates) should protect the average user pretty well.
Is there anything special about Android phones (especially budget ones) that makes them more secure? That's not what I've seen.
Meanwhile per-app isolation is a pain. You download a picture in a browser, crop it in a photo editor and attach it to an email. All three apps need access to the same picture. Your backup app needs access to everything. Your password manager is filling in fields in other apps.
You do want to be able to isolate something questionable, but the usual way to do this for sophisticated users is virtual machines or containers. Maybe that could use a coat of paint to make it easier for unsophisticated users to use it, but maybe unsophisticated users should just stick to the system package manager anyway.
On Android, each of those three apps would ask you for file system permissions on first launch. Your choices are "full access to user files", "limited access" (usually one directory and all its sub-directories), "full access, but only this time", and "no access".
Both the "save file as" and the "open file" dialog only show directories the app can access, and have a button at the top that reads something like "change storage scope" or "allow more access".
The system even has options where apps can request access to e.g. all photo/video/media directories - the photo editor would probably request only those to begin with.
Also, apps can pretty much never access each others config/keys/etc files - which they never should. If they need to communicate with each other, they're supposed to use interfaces like the Content Provider, Intents or Bound Services.
I think it's pretty well designed.
Which isn't completely useless, but in most cases the only thing you really want is "full access" or "I don't actually trust this thing" -- and most users aren't going to comprehend the difference between more fine-grained alternatives anyway -- and then you're basically looking at the distinction between normal trusted apps and something you run in a container.
> Also, apps can pretty much never access each others config/keys/etc files - which they never should.
And that's the problem, because the backup app is supposed to be able to back up everything, a malware scanner can't have potentially malicious apps hiding something from it, etc.
Malicious actors will certainly take advantage of this as well.
I also don't think it's ersatz anything. It's what you use if you build large, stiff objects that aren't supposed to rust. It's certainly less ersatz than steel, with a less martial character.
So I don't agree. I think it can signify something clean, light, unburdened by heavy and unnecessary things. I don't intend to use it though, for reasons everybody else gives, app-stores etc.
“Aluminium was difficult to refine and thus uncommon in actual use. Soon after its discovery, the price of aluminium exceeded that of gold. It was reduced only after the initiation of the first industrial production by French chemist Henri Étienne Sainte-Claire Deville in 1856.”