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Comment by HybridStatAnim8 | Hacker News Reader

The Android family of operating systems and the forks made from the android open source project are all linux distributions, and linux phones.

Using desktop linux phones and trying to force that as a norm would set privacy and security back substantially.

The inverse of what you suggest, which is Android with desktop linux app compatibility, would be a huge step forward, and is already much closer than you might think.

Modern phones have substantially better VM support in the hardware than in previous models, and it is maturing at a very fast rate. We would be able to run linux VMs on Android, paired with desktop mode, with evidence for USB passthrough for an externel GPU in AOSP

There is also evidence that we will be able to put desktop linux app icons on the Android homescreen and using them in an app-like fashion.

This would use the more secure host to run the VM for the less secure OS.

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Personally I think that Android AOSP relies too much on the support from google, that has demonstrated to happily use anti-competitive practices and not be afraid to close and centralise AOSP as much as possible.

In a possible future where google decides to continue any new update of Android as closed source, will the community have enough people stepping in to support the development of AOSP? Will google allow the Play Store to run on AOSP? If not, do we have enough apps distributed outside of the Play Store to compensate?

My point is that for an OS that shares more code with desktop Linux (same apps, same DE, same terminal programs, ...) we can rely on the existing Linux community to maintain and advance the OS, and then adapt it for mobile, which I think takes considerably less resources

The existing "linux phones" are much worse for general use than AOSP (putting aside that AOSP doesn't run on any device by itself and looking at projects like grapheneos and lineageos instead). If Google decided to fully close off Anddoid (which would presumably violate some licenses somewhere, though I'm not really familiar with the situation), then conceivably the existing AOSP would be a better starting point. In any case, people tend to complain that each new Android update brings fewer and fewer significant changes; maybe only security patches and driver updates would be needed.

The problem is that the usage of Android should not be at the expense of users and developers rights to choose, freedom, or privacy. With that line crossed, Android becomes an unattractive option.

With an increase in mobile Linux (e.g. Mobian and others), they can and will get better. Customers and developers choice and freedom are being nullified, because there are few other options. That has to change.

Android is not at the expense of either freedom or privacy. Desktop Linux OSs come at the cost of both. It would be better to direct effort to AOSP projects as it is a much better base to build from.

How so? Please elaborate.

AOSP is just as open-source as desktop Linux (and desktop Linux subsystems reconfigured for use on a phone) is, and has vastly better security.

People sometimes say, "maybe desktop Linux lacks in security, but its privacy is first-rate," which IMHO is silly because if your OS can be completely and totally pwned by your visiting a web page, your opening image file or your using some IDE to inspect some source-code repo, how much privacy do you really have?

GrapheneOS is just as free from data collection by megacorporations as desktop Linux is and has about 1000 times better security.

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