Android’s desktop interface leaks
9to5google.com
9to5google.com
This is what you lose when you take a team developing a desktop OS and move it under a team doing a mobile OS.
Samsung's task bar (when you enable the DeX integration on a tablet) also supports this and it makes for a fine user experience.
Edit: I've enabled "force desktop mode" on my Pixel 9 Pro and hooked it up to my laptop dock. The UI looks almost exactly the same already. Taskbar at the bottom, notification bar at the top.
It's clearly experimental; my ultrawide screen scales horribly, my keyboard app gets horribly confused, and interacting with the top bar triggers a full-screen tablet overlay that looks a bit weird.
However, Chrome opens multiple windows and browses just fine. There are right-click menus, mouse hover interactions, window resizing features (though some apps require the "force resizable activities" flag). Ethernet Just Works, audio/video just works, and I can operate my phone screen while working in dock mode (so apps that absolutely refuse to work can still be operated through the touch screen).
The dock would also better if it weren't stretched to the entire screen width by default but perhaps Google is planning to use that space for something. It's also possible they're going to remove the top bar at some point, that'd make the UI standard Windows-shaped.
The Gnome trick for the dock is to only show the dock when hitting the Super button which also brings up the virtual desktops and what macOS might call Launchpad (except not full screen by default). Ubuntu likes to force the dock on you the way macOS does, but you can disable that.
Designers in the remaining 80% of the computing world have to do with what is available.
Status bars on top don't make sense if you have tabs on top. Now your tabs are infinitely smaller, and aiming at them requires a lot more effort.
Mac's original design had the menubar on top, and its windows didn't have tabs, so it all worked fine together. That's not the case for browsers with tabs on top.
Along the way, it seems most designers have forgotten about Fitt's Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts's_law#Implications_for_U...
On my laptop's FHD screen it's even better.
> The use of this rule can be seen for example in MacOS, which always places the menu bar on the top left edge of the screen instead of the current program's windowframe.
I guess now that the browser is the one app you probably spend the most amount of time in, it might make a little less sense? Android's lack of a menu bar system makes it make very little sense there.
Since it only works well for maximised apps, the UX is much better if you just merge the menu into the title bar of apps.
Speaking from 20+ years of Windows use with a local menu bar and 7 years of Linux desktop where I switched to a global menu bar—-it was an instant improvement in quality of life.
I no longer have to hunt for a narrow menu bar strip, just throw the mouse all the way up, and hope to never hunt for it ever again.
I am surprised because somehow they get it on phones (hidden by default, needs a gesture to bring down). Real estate on a laptop is a just as precious, especially vertical real estate.
With many linux window managers you can move the statusbar to the bottom, hide the titlebar and configure chrome to use the (now hidden) system titlebar for the same effect.
Shout out to https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher for forcing this behavior even on Windows 11.
Smartphones are portrait screens and its clear that having only that much horizontal real estate is enough.
They did, however, get some of the interactions wrong (not to mention, handling of display resolution), so in the end, you can't exploit Fitt's Law in DeX either.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2011/03/the-motorola-atrix-4...
It's how I play Minecraft with my kids when they get the itch. Sometimes if I know I'm only gonna be zoning out on Youtube at night I'll use to to save a few watts too.
It can do 1440p at 120hz, all on a really affordable phone. It's nice.
Why are you confidently commenting if you didn't even attempt to read the article?
The leak screenshots are from the dev version of the app. It has not been confirmed to actually have extensions enabled in the prod version, which is what the parent poster was talking about. It would have been prudent to actually read the post I was replying to and the actual article, not just look at pictures.
I expect the eventual production version of this will have extensions if and only if the normal Android Chrome has extensions at that time.
You already need a phone to pay for parking, order at residents, identify yourself with the government, etc. Two companies should not dictate essential life function interaction.
The monopoly grip on this is so tight that it's almost impossible to compete.
Except that android phones with display output are mostly flagships with flagship prices.
But 50 Euros on the used market got me a retired corporate HP/Dell laptop with 1080p screen, intel 8th gen i5 quad core, 8GB RAM and 256GB NVME on which I put Linux. Way better for studying and productivity than my android phone hooked up to the TV.
It's a nice feature to have as a backup in case my laptop dies, but I wouldn't daily drive an android phone as a desktop computer for productivity.
And you easily add a mouse/keyboard just fine to it.
Sure but at around 300 bucks is still way over 50 bucks.
And even if you get a used Pixel 8, having separate phone and computer adds a priceless layer of redundancy and flexibility.
If someone steals my phone, I don't want to also loose my work PC with it.
That $50 PC can run linux with the latest kernel for the next 20 years (maybe longer).
I still think separating a phone for phone apps and a PC for productivity, is the best choice even if that PC is a 20 year old rustbucket from the dumpster, it will still do more tasks than a phone. You can't learn photoshop on a phone.
That's Android 16 on a 13 year old phone. It looks to be a little glitchy and it takes some work to install, but it's possible.
For my most recent personal example, go onto State Farm's website and try to create an account. Goes to a blank page. It only seems to work right on their mobile app.
I remember I was very confused when buying a Pixel 7 to replace my (then 3 year old) Huawei P30 Pro, and the inferior camera + lack of desktop mode made it feel like a net downgrade.
The latest Pixel models have DisplayPort, but their operating system only provides screen mirroring or app window mirroring on an external monitor. Unlike Pixel, the phones with a true desktop mode can display multiple windows on the monitor, and presumably they can have a selectable resolution for the monitor. I assume that for screen mirroring the monitor is used at the same resolution as the phone screen, i.e. either 1080 lines or only slightly more.
Moreover, while the help site states that DisplayPort exists in Pixel 8 and newer, Google does not bother to advertise the existence of this feature in its online shop, where there is no mention about this in the phone specifications.
That's not true. It's probably written that way, because this is still an experimental feature so it is indeed not "supported", but it does work, you just have to toggle a few settings inside developer options.
And in this desktop mode it could make use of my 2k desktop screen, though it is quite buggy (it is a pixel 8 device, for reference)
From this state of affairs I cannot be sure that if I bought a Google Pixel it would really be usable with a monitor, as such hidden features could be removed at any time.
Other smartphone vendors clearly specify for their phones whether e.g. they support DisplayPort 1.4, so that they can use a monitor at a decent resolution, and whether they have a desktop mode.
Yes I do, no need to patronize us with that since even in 3rd world countries people have access to old computers from ewaste imports at a reasonable price, we don't all live in straw mudhuts wearing loincloths swinging from branch to branch.
Now tell me which 50 euro phone ships with display output and is readily available. AFAIK Oneplus 7T I had is the cheapest with that feature but still over 50 and official SW goes to Android 12. Not sure if flashing lineage will still keep display output feature.
Then there's the issue of availability in 3rd world countries, where it might be easier to find some scrapped Dell optiplex with a core 2 duo, or a beat up Acer from the windows 7 era for cheap at your local market versus a cheap android with display output capabilities being more of a unicorn. Sure you'll find your Pixel 8s and or Samsung S24s too, but those imports don't come cheap there, compared to the masses of lesser known cheap chinese phones but those don't have display output and their software is shit.
Plus, if you go that route of Pixel 8 as a pc, you still need the budget for an external display, mouse and keyboard and your battery will wear out much faster. So then why not get a cheap laptop which has all the peripherals?
Plus 2, old phones age very poorly performance wise, they slow down a lot due to thermal paste and battery degradation and nobody makes quality OP 7T batteries anymore to do a swap and get back to out of the box performance. What you find on Aliexpress now are fakes or poor quality clones. While a laptop is much easier to repair and maintain as parts wear out or break.
1. In 3rd world countries everyone has a phone, usually android, no matter how poor the are. Irrespective of whether or not it has desktop capabilities. So any phone purchase is already part of their baseline expenses.
2. Any desktop/laptop purchase, even if it is $1, is an extra $1.
3. The screens/keyboards/mouse again will not likely be purchased by individuals themselves. They will have “Internet cafes”, libraries, schools, etc where those screens will be provided.
Only when you ignore the numbers.
>1. [...] So any phone purchase is already part of their baseline expenses.
Yeah but that base line expense can be 50$ or $300. Big difference. Not everyone in 3rd world countries has 300 for a Pixel 8. That's the biggest flaw in your argument. That, and the fact that walking around with an exotic 300$ Pixel 8 flags you as a potential target for mugging in the wrong neighbourhoods, verus a beat up 50$ Samsung or Huawei.
>2. Any desktop/laptop purchase, even if it is $1, is an extra $1.
Hence why a 50$ laptop and a 50$ android phone leaves you better off than blowing 300$ on just the phone alone. And if even 1$ is THAT critical to your daily survival, then you're not buying 300$ phones anyway to begin with. You're buying the cheapest you can get so that in case it gets stolen you don't lose 6 months of savings.
>3. The screens/keyboards/mouse again will not likely be purchased by individuals themselves. They will have “Internet cafes”, libraries, schools, etc where those screens will be provided.
You think in 3rd world countries people just have displays with USB-C docks, keyboards and mice everywhere in public and at home? I know it's getting difficult to tell them apart these days, but we're talking about 3rd world countries, not the bay area.
Nonetheless, I do agree with you that simply getting a used low-end laptop is cheaper, but being poor in a GDP/capita way is not the only kind of blocker. Being poor in a "my family can buy me a phone because it's a necessity, but we don't have a computer" is not uncommon, and many people end up developing on their phone, simply because that's what they have.
4. used electronics in 3rd world countries are much more expensive compared to developed ones (because not as much units were sold when they were new to begin with), so 50 euros will get you a 3rd gen in a poor condition at best (or some shit tier Celeron N-thousand something with a soldered 4GB RAM)
For one, PCs still make it there via ewaste shipments that then get repaired and sold for cheap, so you can have decent variety of old stuff.
And secondly, even a "3rd gen in a poor condition at best (or some shit tier Celeron N-thousand something with a soldered 4GB RAM)" as you call it, is better for learning marketable skills and making stuff, than whatever you can do on your phone, since office jobs will ask for skills with using a PC, not how skilled you are using a phone.
But hey, if you think you can pass through engineering school with only a phone and no computer, then all power to you.
No you can't. Unlike you, I'm talking from experience when I'm telling what €50 gets you in used marked in a non-developed country.
Btw, I also got a Celeron laptop you were talking about, I got it for free.
Because you seem to be in a word fight with very vague arguments and with someone else with very vague arguments and it's not even clear you're talking about same things.
So can you be clear on:
- Which counties you're talking about? - Why are those countries important to think about in this case? - Why doesn't this feature help people from regions that can afford a mid-to-top range smartphone?
Pick any you like, Income/GDP is more important metric rather than which specific country.
>- Why are those countries important to think about in this case?
Why are you asking me? Ask the people who brought up third world countries as the target user base for phones with display output. I'm the one not agreeing with this point since it's stupid.
>- Why doesn't this feature help people from regions that can afford a mid-to-top range smartphone?
I explained already below in detail why. But to reiterate in short, if your monthly income is in the ~200$ a month ballpark, you're not gonna be spending 300$ on a mid-to-top range smartphone just for the display output feature even if you managed to save up that money. Even in Europe some people skoff at paying 300 Euros for a phone but some here think people in nations with 10x less income are somehow the userbase for this feature because in their mind those people can't afford a 20$ dumpster PC, but somehow they can afford a 300$ pixel 8 and external monitor.
So, which one did you pick to talk about to make a counterpoint?
Any Android phone with a USB port can have a dock attached with ethernet, a keyboard, and a mouse. Connect a Chromecast to any HDMI display. Cast to that display.
Then install 1) a taskbar app (there are dozens on Google Play), 2) enable freeform windows in the device and 3) cast your phone to your Chromecast.
Alternatively, even the shitty phones with just USB 2 dongles can enable their desktop mode by using DisplayLink; no DP-Alt mode necessary. Worse on the battery, but works over USB micro if need be.
The biggest hurdle is software support. For getting the display to work, there are plenty of workarounds possible.
Are you joking?
One can get super good condition Dell latitudes with 8th gen Intel with 8GB RAM and 256GB NVMe with 1 year no-questions asked warranty (and original charger) for €100. Similar ones cost 2x or 3x in India. That is not reasonable.
> don't all live in straw mudhuts wearing loincloths
No. But not everyone is earning in Bengaluru campus. Look at the typical Rapido driver.
I got my moto g84 5G with 8/256 GB for about 170 euros new and it supports it (not wired). Seems to work fine.
For some reason, a lot of implementations (especially on the receiving end) suck at this. The latency seems to be terrible and TVs and displays seem to care more about reassembling old frames than about showing the latest good signal. However, it's not all that different from what Apple is doing.
Miracast over ethernet/via an access point is something different (something I've never really seen used myself).
The chances to find DisplayPort in what nowadays have become medium-price smartphones, i.e. $500 to $600, are about as good as finding DisplayPort in a "flagship".
AFAIK Samsung, Google and all major Chinese brands have display output on their flagships.
My Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE was like $80 in 2015 and had a mini HDMI. I expect nowadays most phones can output display over USB-C.
Maybe when desktop mode becomes more common there will be an incentive to fix the shitty USB situation.
Cheap phones probably won't really have the power to effectively multi-task so I imagine cheap models would rather disable the feature than leave the user with a bad UI.
Sometimes you're lucky to even have conformant USB-PD. For example, OnePlus for a while had "Warp charging" and the phones wouldn't accept high power over regular USB-C PD.
Some USB-C devices only use the port for charging for example. Others might only support USB 2.0.
Getting a display out from something with USB-C socket needs the device to support something called DP Alt Mode.
Note that cables matter too - you can have a DP alt mode enabled monitor and phone, but if you have the wrong cable it won’t work. Welcome to the future.
To mitigate the confusion, all simple charging cables should be universally labeled as such and all high speed cables should also have some markings that indicate the maximum speed of the cable or something similar.
labeling hurts profits.
Then use the money on a reputable second hand store to buy a used S20 5G 128GB for 150 euros, or a S22 128GB for 145, maybe an S21 Ultra 5G 256GB for 139, and you've got yourself a valiant workstation already (Samsung DeX works great out of the box, no need to wait for Google here). I can also find an S20+ 5G 128GB for 75 euros with display damage (but that doesn't matter when you hook it up to a monitor).
On another website I can find an S20+ 5G with cracks in the edges of the touch screen for 50 euros. That's 12GiB of RAM, 128GiB of storage, a 3200x1440p@120Hz screen and 5G connectivity built in. You're gonna need a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard (that's like what, 5 euros?) to hook it up to the TV but then you're good.
As for "can't be fixed or upgraded", ask any macOS user.
Meanwhile, the phone I bought a year ago is stuck on a 3 year old non-LTS kernel point release, and it will be forever.
You're going to need a phone anyway. Might as well save some money by not having to get a laptop for doing your taxes once a year.
Most normal people don't really care about Google's walled garden. That's a tech person thing. I wouldn't do it, but none of the people who don't have a favourite Linux distro care about any of this.
Most "normal people" don't use their phones hooked to their TVs as desktop computers. It's a very niche scenario.
They use their old laptop or tablet from school, university or hand-me-down from parent/relative for that task, since we're going with your assumption of living in a rich country where access to cheap hardware is abundant and 50 Euros is a very basic dinner for 2, so unlikely for people's livelihoods to be threatened by skimping 50 bucks once in their lifetime on some personal computing device besides their phone.
And in the specific case of living in a rich country, you might not even need to spend that 50, since I am yet to meet anyone who in case of need, can't just get a old computer for virtually free as hand-me-down from parent/friend/relative where it's collecting dust, if you just need a PC to do your taxes once a year. It's a lot more realistic scenario than people hooking up phones to TVs to do their taxes.
You're making up niche scenarios for the sake of winning an argument, but you don't daily drive, you don't dog-food yourself, they're only good as concepts on paper, but not in practice.
The market for people buying obsolete phones to connect to their TV as their daily driver workhorse computers is insanely small, even on quirky HN let alone outside this bubble. So who do you think you are convincing/converting with this?
Like the most popular Androids are Samsungs and Samsung has been shipping DEX on their flagships since for-ever, and how many of their users actually use it? Or how many buy them just for that feature alone? You haven't discovered an untapped market here that will replace PC/laptops for most average people.
Might well be that this becomes a lot more common on cheaper phones if it becomes a popular feature though. A display port output isn't currently that useful, so it's something it makes sense to cut from budget models. But if this desktop functionality becomes popular that calculus may change.
There are exceptions. For example, the Motorola Edge has DP Alt Mode.
https://uperfect.com/blogs/wikimonitor/list-of-smartphones-w...
It has a Snapdragon 870, 8gb RAM, 128gb storage, a microSD slot, headphones jack, and a big enough battery to last 2 days. It's a little chunky, and it's not waterproof, but beyond that it's just about everything I ever wanted in a phone.
Motorola, of course, has already abandoned it. But it still gets up-to-date Android via Lineage OS and other community made ROMs.
>but beyond that it's just about everything I ever wanted in a phone.
I get that, but none of this answers my question of why people should use that to a TV, instead of a PC, other than to flex? It really isn't more practical, nor saving you money and you're still limited to the apps of android ecosystem rather than the windows/linux one.
Oh, geez, I didn't realize they abandoned it so hard they even recycled the name! I was referring to the 2021 g100: https://m.gsmarena.com/motorola_moto_g100-10791.php - it looks like the 2025 recycle lacks video output :/ https://m.gsmarena.com/motorola_moto_g100_5g_(china)-14228.p...
As for why anyone should do it, I'm not really arguing that anyone should. I was just trying to point out that it's more affordable than you might think. (Although it can't beat the deal you got on your laptop.)
I think it might make sense if you already have a laptop dock with a screen and a keyboard at home and at school/work, and your needs were fairly lightweight, and you really valued portability. Or as you suggested, it could just serve as a backup device in case your main laptop gets broken or whatever.
I just want to get a new phone and be on my way. The last thing I want to do is download a community OS and/or roms on Day 1
My point was more that there are affordable options if you're inclined to do a bit of tinkering.
We’re going backwards by putting all of our compute back in the warehouse.
Windows Phone was on this path ages ago, and looking really good.
I eagerly await one of two dreams (or both):
1. A phone which can seamlessly function as a desktop for my work.
2. A new clamshell Android phone ala Nokia e90, which is good enough for work stuff on the go.
A cheap android phone and a cheap chinese laptop with 16GB of ram is about 300 EUR where I live, and you can use it wherever you want.
Playing gameas or what ? Working with files on Android is a PITA.
What year were you born? I ask not to lambast but because given infinite time, I doubt I would come to the same conclusion. To me (a 37-year old) that statement sounds like someone who grew up with Chromebooks in school
I think it's a good idea on Google's part. The trend of consumers using mobiles as their one and only computing experience is still strong. This will blend the experience consumers have between desktops and their primary computing platform.
I would love to be able to do more with my Google Pixel phone. Right now, the MacBook is my primary workstation, but the possibility of an even more "mobile" productivity setup is very enticing. Now if only I could get an Android tablet with the new "Terminal" feature in Android 15...
A fully capable iPad would mean less sales of MacBook Air and so on.
An iPhone with official docking Desktop UI also never going to happen. Same story.
https://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/1mn7mk1/your_jai...
Google is about to dip into that market, where desktop users are forced to use the Play Store to install any app. Apple would be foolish to leave that money on the table.
There's no official Mac app, but the Mac/iOS APIs that Unreal Engine needs are similar enough that you just need to change the packaging.
There’s no magic trick to it really from the developer side, Epic just ticked the opt-out to prevent it being available on the App Store.
For contrast, this UI is more my style: https://serenityos.org/screenshot-b36968c.png
The usage experience otherwise is quite good, it's perhaps my preferred way to sync data to and from my phone, I have it all stored on a NAS so I connect to my Type-C display (which has keyboard, mouse, and ethernet connected to its switch), fire up a terminal, type in my rsync commands, and my pictures & music are synced ~instantly at LAN speeds.
[1]: https://www.androidauthority.com/android-16-linux-terminal-d...
Best part is, I can make "apps" on the fly that I can use from my phone with termux integration.
Android is becoming more and more locked down like iOS. Even if it weren't, it's still always been more locked down than a standard desktop or laptop machine running an operating system of the user's choice.
With the advent of smartphones and tablets, already I see non- and semi-technical users often dropping their laptop or desktop and just using their phone or tablet. (I know people who don't even have a laptop/desktop anymore.)
Android having a full desktop interface will just add fuel to this fire, and further normalize running a locked-down OS and device that users don't truly own or control as their only computing platform.
The OG Motorola Droid, for example: While it clearly wasn't a design intent, there was really nothing of any gravity to stop people from using it in any way they wished.
Rooting was a simple matter of running a hacked su command, and voila: One becomes root. The bootloader wasn't locked at all. Custom kernels and userlands were normal. It was a great little pocket computer to goof around with for anyone who cared enough to give it a swing.
Just install the "missing" su binary and...done.
At the time, I felt that this was a perfectly acceptable way to keep it working reliably for regular folk.
What I want is to be able to properly install an alternative OS (just like I don't care about what Windows or macOS do, as long as I can install Linux), and that goes with the bootloader unlocking/locking.
This isn't just a made up situation: There are nations that have large teams of people who's job is to figure out how to get software installed on your device of their choice/make/design, allowing them to do whatever they want.
The fact that I can unlock and relock the bootloader is not a security issue or a risk. People who don't know what that means cannot possibly do it by mistake.
Now allowing root access to users on Android, that's a security risk because a user can be tricked into giving root access to some evil app. I don't have root access on my GrapheneOS, even though I chose to install it myself. Because it is more secure like this.
So it sounds like a fair compromise to me: they make Android the way they want, and if I don't like it I can install an alternative OS. Just like I can install Linux if I don't like Windows. What I don't like is that most Android manufacturers actively try to prevent me from doing that, and I don't like it.
The second sentence is false. Lots of people blindly follow things and don't understand consequences until they brick their devices. Those who don’t break something won’t notice if they’ve silently backdoored themselves.
People asking for support after getting themselves into some weird hole they never should have been in because some friend or online article said so is super common.
"Lots of people", how many though? Can that number be reduced? What number would be acceptable?
I feel like it _has_ to be possible to devise an unlocking procedure that dissuades most people from self-harm.
The problem is often treated as intractable, but intuitively this seems really unlikely to me. I don't think more than a tiny percentage of Xiaomi owners, for example, would go through the bootloader unlock process which often has a mandatory wait period attached to it without a reason more compelling than an impulse to randomly and blindly follow instructions on the internet.
I would like to see user studies with good methodology before other people decide to barter long-term freedoms away for insufficient benefit.
Why do I so rarely see people who are concerned about the security issues of bootloader unlocking calling for designing hassle and warning into the process. Instead, it's more common to hear that in the name of the average user, all escape hatches must be removed.
If you take a hammer and destroy your phone, I think you're responsible.
The security model of Android and iOS is vastly superior, and for "normal" users it is not so much of a problem if they don't have control they neither need nor want.
On the other hand, I obviously don't like it when I don't have control over my hardware. But what I hate the most is when the manufacturers prevent me from installing an alternative OS. I like being able to install something like GrapheneOS.
Also the fact that I'm forced (in practice) to use the Play Services is not really about the device being locked down.
Convincing a user to give their password will always be an issue, that's fundamental. But because phishing exists does not mean that security does not matter.
Without security, there is no need to phish, because the system does not protect anything. Once you have a good security, then the best attack is phishing because it's easier to trick the human than the system. This means that the security is good, not bad.
I you run GrapheneOS, it is an open source platform built on top of AOSP (the Android Open Source Project). Part of the security model is that you don't run as root. I am an advanced user and I don't want to run as root on my phone, I am happy with GrapheneOS as it is distributed.
Now if you want to be root, you can install an OS that allows you to be root. Just like I unlocked my bootloader, installed GrapheneOS and relocked my bootloader, you can do that and install whatever you please. I will keep using GrapheneOS because that is the most secure OS I can find for my phone.
The problem, IMO, is not that "some OS are opinionated and don't give you root access while other OSes do give you root access". The problem is that on many phones, you are not free to install the goddam OS you want (e.g. because you can't unlock or relock the bootloader).
The wiping is a security feature: if someone installs a new random system ("random" being defined as "not signed by the same entity"), then they can modify the system in order to attack it. The whole secure boot idea is worthless if you allow that.
Note that secure boot doesn't become worthless just because you can flash something different. The TPM should notice SB is turned off, and should refuse to decrypt, but there should be a way for the user to back up the key and use it to recover the data later.
Mobile platforms and developers solely supporting their attestation should allow other forms of self attestation that the users want. I don't think I'm confused about anything, and I don't need to muddy the definition of security or root to argue having control over my data and apps on platforms I want to use.
- "Please make the system less secure, so that the attackers don't have to attack the human because they can just compromise the system directly"
- "Please keep making the system secure, and keep removing rights from the users, because the users prove over and over again that they cannot be trusted with anything"
You see where I am going. If you only optimise for security, then you remove all the freedom. But we obviously want freedom. So it's a compromise.
Now this compromise is a choice, and different systems can make different compromises. The freedom I want is the freedom to choose my system. I want to be able to install GrapheneOS on my phone. Complaining about macOS not being Linux would be weird: if I want Linux, I use Linux. If I use macOS, well then I have to live with the design choices of Apple.
Malware developers just have their software signed by the gatekeepers your device is programmed to inherently trust, because the gatekeepers don't give a shit.
The App Store and Play Store are the largest vectors of malware out there, and every year they are responsible for letting their users get scammed to the tune of billions of dollars.
The thing with security is that it is a gradient. Too many people try to win arguments on security by saying a variant of "anyway you have to trust somebody, so it will never be secure". This is exactly what you are doing here.
Say I trust GrapheneOS, the security model guarantees what I said. Obviously I have to trust something, I won't audit every single line of code and assemble billions of transistors myself.
> every year they are responsible for letting their users get scammed
Second tactic for winning a security argument: "but the users get scammed anyway". Sure they do. Because they have to. If you have a system that popular with zero scam, it probably means that the attackers don't even need to attack the human because the system itself is insecure.
It completely solves the phishing-password-stealing problem.
Passkeys are great, and they do improve the situation. But they won't remove phishing as a concept.
As an example of mitigating another type of phishing, if the user only has the ability to log in to a web site from a particular device or country, an attacker tricking them into providing their password gets a much less useful win.
You could argue they have the "right to do" less in that situation. Sure, that's a reasonable perspective. I'm not passing moral judgement here. But I think that it is a factually true statement that it is indeed possible to mitigate (and even entirely prevent) phishing vulnerabilities by giving end users devices that have stronger security policies - with those policies being written by the device creator, and not edited by the end user themself.
I think this principle applies to every single type of social engineering attack. Limiting the context of permissions lessens the risk of a confused deputy.
Security is a gradient. At some point, adding security means reducing freedom. It is a societal choice where you stop. If you put all the humans in your country in a jail, each in a separate cell, never let them go out and just bring them food, then there will be no crime in your country. But nobody wants that.
> I think this principle applies to every single type of social engineering attack. Limiting the context of permissions lessens the risk of a confused deputy.
A confused deputy is a computer program. We're talking about phishing.
Now you are arguing that by restricting users' permissions it is possible to move along the security gradient, potentially to a point where phishing is not a viable threat.
I agree.
> potentially to a point where phishing is not a viable threat
You keep ignoring the parts that are inconvenient to you :-). I said that at some point, increasing security means decreasing the freedom. It's a compromise. And as long as people have some freedom, someone will be able to abuse it. Phishing will always exist. The only way to prevent phishing entirely is to remove all the rights of everybody. If I cannot do anything, then I cannot do anything wrong. As long as I can do something, I can do it wrong. Phishing fundamentally leverages that.
"This app requires access to all your files. OK [X] Close []"
Once 90% of all internet clients are iOS or Android the open internet is dead, and the concept of a general purpose computer on which you can run any computation you want is also inaccessible to the average person. From that point on, everything is a service that you rent from either Apple or Google.
It's just a slightly different showcase of the same UI shown in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzDO-GS-Bm8
That UI is available to test on any Pixel 10 (maybe even any Android 16 device?)
An interesting thing is that you can run apps X and Y on desktop screen while also run app X on mobile screen independently.
What went wrong was Google (the old 'do no evil' Google) bought the ad network DoubleClick. The acquired DoubleClick side then took over old Google from the inside out such that what we have today is Doubleclick calling itself "google", no more 'do no evil' old Google anywhere, and all the evil that exists on the advertising side infesting everything they do.
By the way, you forgot Android itself.
It makes sense for the tech savvy option to succeed, now that personal computing is disappearing. Average folks won’t use a windows/macbook, they’ll use phones and tablets.
My only concern is ending in a macOS+asahi situation where supporting a single device requires mountains of effort.
I've seen that written on here, Reddit, /., digg, hell even on usenet back in the day. . . .
- Windows 10 went EOL and triggered a wave of people moving to Linux to escape Windows 11 - DHH's adventures in Linux inspired a lot of people (including some popular coding streamers/YouTubers) to try Linux - Pewdiepie made multiple videos about switching to Linux and selfhosting - Bazzite reported serving 1 PB of downloads in one month - Zorin reported 1M downloads of ZorinOS 18 in one month and crossed the 2M threshold in under 3 months - I personally recall seeing a number of articles from various media outlets of writers trying Linux and being pretty impressed with how good it was - And don't forget Valve announced the Steam Machine and Steam Frame, which will both run Linux and have a ton of hype around them
In fact, I think that we will look back in 5 or 10 years and point at 2025 as the turning point for Linux on the desktop.
I’m seeing it now, and this is new.
Less fragmentation, more focus, OEM support on devices selling on regular stores is needed, otherwise we won't get away from the yearly meme.
What's different in the last decade is that Windows is on an undeniable quality downward spiral, it's simply not important anymore for Microsoft.
E.g. desktop Linux doesn't even need to improve, it just needs to wait for Windows to become worse ;)
They aren't going to buy them from Tuxedo.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/tablet/worldwide
(I guess those 'Windows tablets' are running under convertible laptops or something...)
I have made zero mentions of Windows tablets, that market died with Windows 8, replaced by 2-1 laptops.
The only real issue is sourcing good mobile hardware that isn't locked down. At least for the time being the pixel line satisfies that.
As long as they depend on Proton, they haven't fully solved their problem.
kernel32+user32+gdi32+d3d[11|12]+dxgi is a pretty great API abstraction for game development. And unlike Linux desktop APIs the Win32 APIs are actually stable, so those games will also work in 5 years, and most importantly, performance is the same or better than on Windows. It's unlikely that game devs directly targeting Vulkan would do any better, and when using a high level engine, any layering overhead in Proton is negligible anyway. And don't even get me started about the state of audio APIs on Linux ;)
Also don't underestimate the amount of workarounds and tweaks that (most likely) go into Proton for games that make poor system API use. Without Proton those game-specific hacks would need to go into MESA, Wayland, X11 or various system audio libraries. At least Proton is one central place to accumulate all the game-specific warts in some dusty corner of their code base.
TL;DR: just think of Proton as an extremely low level and slim cross-platform API for games (not all that different than SDL), and suddenly it makes a lot of sense. And I bet that in 5..10 years Windows will have regressed so much that it might actually be better to run games through a Proton-like shim even on Windows (assuming Windows hasn't become 'yet another Linux distro' by then anyway) ;)
But I think even a lot of D3D9 games should still work, and that's 2002 stuff. Also try running a 1997 Linux game binary on a modern Linux distro without recompiling, I doubt that's works all that well...
Already happening, to an extent. Specifically, modern Intel GPUs do not support DirectX 9 in hardware, yet legacy apps run fine. The readme.txt they ship with the drivers contains a paragraph which starts with the following text: “SOFTWARE: dxvk The zlib/libpng License” DXVK is a library which implements Direct3D on top of Vulkan, and an important component of SteamOS.
One thing I would definitely do is to replace MSVC with Clang, MSVC is just too far behind and it almost looks like MS abandondend it.
To be fair to Valve though, back then, there was a lot of movement in direct ports for Linux games. Humble Bundle (before they were bought) was spending real money on it and companies like Feral sprang up to help with titles like Mordor. It looked like there was going to be some real change.
But for various reasons the momentum waned. One of those reasons might be the existence of Proton itself. Some people were very against it because they thought it might lead to less native ports.
Proton helps fix the users part. If a critical mass is accomplished, that can have real long-term impact.
Maybe not, but they fully solved my problem with games, which was that I could not play on Linux. I started playing again just because of the SteamDeck, I think it's a pretty big achievement :-).
The closest situation would be with comparing Wine running via CPU translation under ARM or RISC-V with how RPCS3 recompiles PowerPC games to native x86 code, but even then the comparison wouldn't be accurate as RPCS3 still does full system emulation whereas Proton/Wine integrates with the underlying OS.
Proton/Wine is closer to Java/JVM than MAME (or any other emulator) and that is when running on a different CPU than x86/x86_64 as on the latter it is just a PE loader with a bunch of DLLs reimplementing various APIs.
They ensured that the devs need not worry about another build target that requires extensive QA. Maybe in the distant future we will get ubiquitous native builds, but honestly and again, who cares?
Proton and Wine means there is a single target now, instead of the fragmented mess that is Desktop Linux today.
At least Microsoft haven't fallen so low as to fail basic design principles like having transparent on top of transparent buttons, having disappearing controls depending on window size (scrollbars), or having corners so rounded that the click to drag mostly being outside the actual window.
The Windows 11 UI is annoying, but at least it doesn't look like a kid's toy.
That's just because Microsoft has been there done that already 2 decades ago ;) (IIRC in Windows Vista).
Same with the fine-grained in-your-face permission popups. Introduced by Microsoft in Vista, copied by Apple in Mojave ;)
The Windows ones look very different, dim the rest of the screen, and have more info.
They did that but made it work well all the way back with Windows 7, maybe even Vista.
I feel like at some point normies may end up just using iPadOS or Android as a "convergent" device: a tablet/phone that they can plug into a docking station and use as a computer.
I am sort of hoping that it will work with something like GrapheneOS, so that I will be able to benefit from it on my phone.
Well, you should feel threatened. Where do you think the push towards TPM and secure boot is heading? Microsoft is insanely envious of how Apple and Google locked down their platforms and have total control over app stores, and that’s what Microsoft wants too. It’s a huge revenue stream they’re leaving on the table. Now that there’s precedent on mobile, they’ll have no problem pushing it through on desktop.
And once all the normies have moved to iPads, there won’t be a big enough market for anyone to manufacture PC hardware for hobbyists anymore.
In general, I don't care so much if Windows or macOS become as locked as Android or iOS, as long as I can install Linux on my hardware.
My point is that many people seem to complain because they want to be root on the Google-certified Android. I disagree with that: Google makes an OS where you cannot be root. If you want an OS where you can be root, you should be able to install another OS on the hardware you bought. Because you should own that hardware. But you don't own Google.
Also while you can debate about stuff like Netflix DRM, access to banks and government services is not a privilege, it is a right (for a transaction that isn't otherwise illegal). The counterparty is not subject to freedom of association because in many places it is illegal to have cash transactions over a certain amount, and you can't choose a different government.
Is that what you are saying or did I misunderstand?
Banks, governments, and anything else that's required to participate in society should not depend on proving the loyalty of my device to Google or any other entity that isn't me.
It does. I already tried it on my Pixel 10 Pro. :)
Windows 7 with the Shine 2.0 theme
Gnome Adwaita
QNX Photon 6
BeOS R5
I'm sure there's more good examples. People here will say Windows 2000, but I don't think it has any grace.
As far as OS's that look good, #1 KDE Plasma with breeze, MacOS snow leopard, Windows xp and vista.
1. Those loading spinners being bumpy pulled my eyes around the screen wildly to the point that they were experiencing pain. They need to be removed.
2. There is a status bar along the top, and an application launcher docked at the bottom. That's way too much vertical space being used, especially on laptops (which I'd wager is going to be the most used viewing modality for this OS). It should be merged into a single bar along one side of the screen.
3. The dropdown at the top left of each window seems to be taking up a lot of space. Especially when you're trying to fit four tabs on the screen. Get rid of it so the tabs can actually be read.
4. At 27 seconds in, there are two close icons in the focused window. That being bad could be a presentation all in itself.
5. Random padding in the status bar.
Life with work and a family became too busy to fuss with that stuff, but I'm rapidly approaching the point where abuse from android and Microsoft make using a less polished OS worth the bother.
It's a very long-term bet for sure.
Google actually has the sway that it could drag the industry in that direction.
IMHO both Apple and Google are missing a big opportunity here. Both are doing work to blur the lines between desktop and mobile. Both are targeting laptops, ar, phones, and tablets.
These are multiple modalities. Or they should be. But because the way both are structured, these are isolated islands with some interoperability but the whole experience is very device centric.
What's nicer is when you have multiple devices and a clean handover between them. You basically sign in and all your apps and data are there. All the open apps have the same state. They just adapt to the formfactor.
Apple has been taking babysteps here but it's still hopelessly compartmentalizing the market. So switching between devices is a lot of setup and install friction.
And for Google, they've been banging the drum that everything is cloud based since forever. Yet they can't figure out a cross device UX that makes sense. It should be as simple as sign in and all your stuff is there. That was the vision with ChromeOS at some point but then they lost interest, got distracted by Fuchsia, went off and created Flutter and also forgot that Android was the thing that actually has an enormous amount of users and OEMs shipping it.
The trillion dollar opportunity here: if devices become like shoes, many people probably have more than one. Some people have many pairs of shoes for different occasions. But they have only one phone. Because switching between devices is painful. Adding another OS to the mix just kicks that can down the road. Multi device, multi modal access to your stuff is the key thing that they should be nailing. If e.g. Apple were to nail that, some people might have many different devices in different sizes and form factors. The main decision as to which one to use would be based on which is most appropriate for the context.
If you take something like that as the starting point, the logical conclusion is that Google should evolve Android to run on any type of device and make sure that everything plays nice together. Switching between your Android phone(s), tablet, TVs, car, AR/VR goggles, or laptops should not be hard. Devices running a version of Android exist in all those categories. But there's very little/no integration across these.
They've made it perfectly clear that they want to keep desktop and mobile separate in order to convince their customers to buy all their devices.
Switching from one to the other is a PITA. What if that was seamless. You just pick one up and now everything is there. You might have a phone for work, going out, hiking, etc. You might have phones matching different iphones. Apple could be selling you many phones. Losing a phone would be a lot less dramatic because you'd have multiple spares. Do they all have to have the same screen size? Do all of them even need a screen?
Apple sells lots of phones. They could be selling 2-3x more. That's just phones. The way they positioned their VR device and watch is kind of telling. They are both kind of satellite devices. But apparently that requires special apps and a new OS (for both).
But that's exactly what is the problem with modern Apple - software is shit. It's limited on purpose, so that the users are forced to buy more Apple devices. So no, they don't need to sell more iPhones, they need to make their software better, so it won't be like a cult where you need to keep buying a bunch of different devices. But then they won't get easy money from the followers, so they will never do this.
Microsoft's Surface Pro line barely made any difference -- nobody buys it to use it as a tablet, and generally the touch experience is just bad if you have ever used a real tablet.
Apple pretends to try and market iPad as your next computer, but we all know how it works. (They also have this thing that allows phone apps to run natively on MacOS, but that has got near zero traction.)
Samsung tried as well, half-mindedly, and I can confidently say a Samsung phone doesn't work as well as a PC in DeX mode.
So now it's Google. I don't think they can come up with some magic solution to change this.
Apple's in the best position to offer this because they have both Mobile and Desktop OS's. And their chips are already capable of having two OS's installed side-by-side with a strong security barrier (and also more than fast enough to run a full desktop OS). But alas they haven't attempted it yet.
Isn't that against the rules nowadays?
- Samsung’s Dex has been out for a while - independent devs have been working on Linux “as an app” for some time - Android desktop interface in this article - Apple developing video output on iPhones - Apple working on a Macbook with a mobile chip
- another exciting thing is XR devices and mobile computing
- my concern is convergence computing will reduce the importance of desktop interfaces and the freedom we have to install whatever applications we want
Yep, it absolutely will I expect. All the pieces are being or have been laid to build the new world where only a "trusted" device will be able to use the internet. Us nerds can still have our Linux, but it won't work with much of the internet because we won't be able to pass attestation.
Building to that future is exactly what I would expect from Apple, but Google doing so has surprised me. Google doing so is also the thing that will bring it to pass, so there's a special seed of hatred for them germinating in my heart right now. Hopefully I'm just being alarmist and paranoid, but I really don't think I am.
Some Refs:
Web Environment Integrity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity
Private Access Token: https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=huqjyh7k
Fortunately, there are many computers already in the public's hands (which they can use to perform any computation without government restrictions and without paying/sending data to a company); but more and more people are switching to mobile platforms (and kids start out on these platforms) that I'm worried about the future.
> Google doing so has surprised me Google are absolutely interested in this because more and more people are installing ad blockers and since their main game is advertisement, they can't allow that. The older the retired Google elites become and the less filtered their language becomes, the more you can peer into their minds and decisions leading up to now. Just look at what Eric Schmidt has been doing and saying.
The final nail was drilled into the coffin when a judge ruled Google a monopoly with Android a year or so ago.
You would think this is good but:
Apple was not found to be a monopoly with iOS. Why?
Because iOS doesn't allow any competitors, how can they be anti-competitive?
The judge explained this Google when they raised the issue, and just like that, Android wants to become iOS.
Good fucking job judge. 10,000 IQ ruling.
Google's had this weird situation where Android and ChromeOS overlap more every year. At some point maintaining two operating systems with converging feature sets seems wasteful.
My guess: ChromeOS probably survives for the education market where manageability matters more than capabilities. But for consumers? Android on a big screen with keyboard and mouse might just be good enough.
My educated guess: tablet/laptop hybrids with Android OS. Not that Apple has huge success with the same move
Not that I don't think MV3 is limited, but.. we're comparing this against MV2, right? It was already missing basic functionality like full filtering of http responses, I remember a bug about not seeing POST bodies being open for 10+ years..
I've been using Fedora part-time and I'm quite happy with it. Although I access the Android ecosystem via Waydroid—which, I know, isn't a true 'Android desktop'—the reality is that few Android apps are actually designed for a desktop experience.
Android makes me feel like it wants to convince me that rooting is considered too dangerous even for advanced users—you have to be a developer to handle it, or you will kill yourself.
But it might be good news for the ARM platform. Given how fragmented ARM is, Windows on ARM has turned out to be an even bigger disaster, making a Linux-based approach a much more promising alternative.
> The Google Chrome interface mostly aligns with the current large-screen Android version except for the Extensions button, which is currently only available on the desktop browser.
It's like nobody tests focus + navigation at all.
Where are there going to be setups where they can plug the 3 things into their phone that aren't already a computer that you can just use as-is?
These days, phones are more powerful than the laptops they give to kids to study on.
Samsung DeX has existed for years and works as well as it has for ages. We don't need to wait on Google to make this work. At best, Google will make this type of tech available in software so you can Chromecast/Miracast/whatever it to your display when your cheap phone doesn't do DP-Alt mode.
What I think this is more likely to be about is ChromeOS being killed and Android taking its place. It's not secret that Google is working on that, this just seems to be someone dogfeeding the latest build of the desktop Android build.
If I wanted a weird small portable computer, I would buy a steam deck with a "Decktop" [3]. Or, this awesome modern thing [4].
[1] Mid 2000 Sony model: https://www.ebay.com/itm/388376162735?chn=ps&mkevt=1&mkcid=2...
[2] IBM model with expanding keyboard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvcl4kmOxPo
[3] Desktop steam deck keyboard stand...thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXZuAWYujm4
That's 14 years old. Kind of crazy this concept hasn't developed more in the meantime.
But this can also be cast to a tv, for example. I assume you can use the phone itself as a trackpad. So the only extra hardware you need is a cheap Bluetooth keyboard which you can get for $15.
I remember there were some experiments to create a hardware laptop shell to insert smartphone into.
I mean, is this OS literally just android with a more desktop like UI?
Didn't Samsung have something like this called (just searched) Samsung Dex?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Samsung+DeX&t=ffab&ia=images&iax=i...
What I would prefer is a linux device phone being more widespread than Android PC. Linux in PC is mostly pretty good.
We probably need some good linux phones. One of the biggest issues I find is that they are really price-y so even though I don't want much specs, I find it troubling to justify a 2x price increase in such sense.
> Didn't Samsung have something like this called (just searched) Samsung Dex?
This is as the default 'droid' user, but I also have a root user (but that's only root within the terminal)
Android laptops are nothing new, unless you don’t count the crappy low end ones that have no business running it.
I’m sure Google will make their flagship apps nicely tailored but regular phone centric apps has to be an awkward experience.
Despite all the effort they've put into it, chromeOS is worse at running Android apps than android tablets except for support for having them in resizable windows.
All they need to do is improve the support for a laptop mode on android and make chrome on android in the laptop mode equivalent to chrome on ChromeOS and they can kill ChromeOS entirely.
It makes no sense to have to choose between two operating systems
You should be able to get a fully compatible android like experience in tablet mode and a chromebook like experience in laptop mode all in one os
And the ChromeOS like experience should be available on any android tablet if you use it with a keyboard
But that would mean all of the Android SDKs would need to be abstracted away from Linux, but it seems like they abandoned some of that effort and are mostly just emulating Android on Fuschia for now.
I wonder whether they'll keep pretending that extensions are not supported on Android, perhaps even intentionally breaking support on mobile.. or maybe they'll stop this madness and just support extensions officially..
Google already has this in their Pixel phones (8+). Plug a Pixel into a standard laptop dock (may need to enter dev settings and tick the "force desktop mode" toggle) and you're welcomed by pretty much exactly this UI.
Can somebody, anybody have one single unique idea?