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Comment by rickcarlino | Hacker News Reader

Linux is one of the last strong defenses for the idea that people should control the computers they own. On desktops and servers, root access is normal, and attempts to take it away do not work because software freedom is well established. On phones, that never happened. There is no real, mainstream “Linux for mobile,” and the result is a world of locked-down platforms where things like “sideloading” are treated as scary security risks instead of basic user rights. This makes it much easier for lawmakers to argue for removing root access on mobile devices, even though the same idea would be unrealistic on desktop systems.

A great deal of gratitude is owed to all the people who volunteer their free time to create the stable desktop environment we have free access to on Linux in 2026.

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If you're interested in this aspect of user agency, you might like the "trustworthy technology" site a few friends and I are working on: https://aol.codeberg.page/eci/

"There is no real, mainstream “Linux for mobile,”"

Probably need to clarify since Android is Linux. Assume you're referring to community run distros. Unfortunately the issue is usually proprietary hardware that has to be reverse engineered and nobody willing to pay engineers full time to do that.

What I don't understand is why it is so much effort to use linux on a phone. Surely these 8 core ARM monsters these days should be more than enough to handle a full kernel. Hopefully it's not a driver issue where manufacturers only contribute the necessary drivers to the android kernel, not the linux one.

Battery/sleeping is the main challenge I believe, not processing power. Linux laptops still struggle a lot with sleep. And Windows laptop too btw.

Android is running on Linux. It's not the kernel that's the problem, it's the application layer.

Android is Linux. There could easily be a secure-boot desktop Linux too if companies cared to target that platform with things like banking apps.

Not really, it makes use of Linux kernel, cages it on pseudo-microkernel architecture since Treble and Mainline refactorings, uses a Java userspace, and the NDK has a quite clear list of what APIs are allowed to be called.

That's still on the Linux kernel. The userspace differences aren't what make it possible to lock down. Someone could just as easily make a locked down desktop Linux, which maybe ChromeOS is already.

The ultimate question is "Would you give up the right of owning your machine to have access to services", and with the decline of rooting scene on Android, the answer is pretty clear.

>Linux is one of the last strong defenses for the idea that people should control the computers they own.

Please run Kate/Kwrite as root and then we will talk on the topic. Or pipe password to ssh

You dont have to use that software. Who even would? You're an adult, presumably, so use vim.

ed is the standard text editor.

That's the good thing with open source. You can theoretically fork it and remove what prevents you from using Kate as root.

Sure. But the malaise of smug people taking decisions that are outside of the scope of the software is creeping into linux too. It is up to me decide what is secure, not them.

It's smug people telling other people what to do all the way down!

Kate/Kwrite will ask to escalate to root if permissions are not sufficient. If it's not available to you, that's because your distro patched it out.

For ssh - sshpass.

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