Google’s Android, the world’s most widely used mobile operating system, started life as open-source software. In its quest for ever-greater profits, the tech giant has been gradually eroding Android’s open-source nature over the last decade.

Originally published on The Lever, but that one asks you to sign up.

  • Canuck@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    Mobile GNU/Linux is getting better, but I think it is 5-10 years out from what’s needed. I suppose people need to adopt Desktop first. The nice thing is you can install Android apps including Google Play on it natively, and they appear in your app drawer like a regular app

    • seralth@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      Unless they get NFC payments working on it and banking apps. It literally will never matter.

      The single most common thing phones are used for at this point outside of entertainment is payments and banking.

            • Westlyroots@pawb.social
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              10 hours ago

              Waydroid, it’s the wayland continuation of anbox. From what I’ve seen and used, it’s very good. It’s good enough for most mobile apps including gaming. Some linux phone manufacturers even make it a point to integrate waydroid by default to allow you to use android apps just fine

    • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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      24 hours ago

      It’s a bit of a catch honestly.

      OSS/community Linux graphical environments have kind of always been ~5 years out from what’s needed. 15 years ago they were behind ~5 years, 5 years ago they where behind ~5 years.

      The only difference is today. I think they’re only behind by ~3-4 years thanks to the backwards movement of things like Windows and OSx staleness.

      Mobile operating systems are in a worse place.

    • TeddE@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      I just saw KDE Bigscreen got reboot. While it’s not exactly the same (its for TVs, like Android TV and Steam Big Picture mode), it’s nice to see major desktop environments(DE) adopt new UI features for small and large devices. This compliments work done by groups like PinePhone, who laid the groundwork for Linux phones.