Honestly, I agree with @StillNoLeftLeft@hexbear.net
Ok fair enough, but I wouldn’t have installed Linux if I had not seen it recommended.
I’m not a computer toucher, but I can follow written advice.
These sorts of posts always scold anyone giving out actual solutions just so being miserable can continue. This cultural thing almost has an end of history type vibe to it. It’s also pretty hostile to divergent and often solution focused neurotypes.
Linux evangelism kinda makes sense, no one is spending billions on marketing and ads for it. I think Linux evangelists should ask about use cases first, instead of just posting a generic “use Linux”.
Weird that he’d mention Windows and iOS as if they were equivalent. AFAIK there’s no phone Linux, at least not one that people would actually want to use (Android doesn’t count). Probably meant to say MacOS.
There is phone Linux, but it’s still considered experimental compared to Android or iOS. Purism makes a phone and it runs their Ubuntu fork. There’s also (used to be?) a Pine phone.
So yeah, nothing people would ever want to use.
It’s also (like windows phone before it) useless without apps. Regular people need their banking app, they need their drs app, they need the carpark app and their ticktok/snapchat etc. Those apps just don’t exist outside of the android iOS duopoly.
It’s also useless when it can’t even do basic phone functions like stable and reliable calls, reasonable battery life, and all components on the phone supported and working. So many people want apps on Linux mobile, but we don’t even have the foundation fully built.
Of course Android counts. It is Linux. So Linux already won the phone OS space (save for Apple) and there’s no real reason to talk about it.
Nah, it’s made by Google who are actively kneecapping it. Technically it counts, but in spirit it doesn’t count to me. It’s like…the PS4 runs on Linux too, but nobody celebrates a 100% locked down box as a triumph for Linux.
it actually runs on a derivative of FreeBSD
Which is important because BSD is not GPL licensed
Unlike the PS4 OS, Android comes in many flavours, many of which are completely de-Googled, free, and open-source.
I hate Windows enough that any OS that is a Unix-like counts as a W no matter how small. MacOS and iOS are ultimately based on BSD and Android is Linux, just not GNU/Linux.
No it doesn’t really count, just because it uses the kernel doesn’t mean it has the same spirit as desktop GNU/Linux does
You really hit the nail on the head by including GNU. The philosophy of free software is embedded in the GNU components, Linux was basically just about making an OS kernel that’s practical and useful, nothing more and nothing less.
It’s really more about the philosophy than about how many GNU components you fit into your system. On android you the predominant assumption is that the vendor is trusted to control the device instead of the user.
It really doesn’t feel like winning.
There’s phone Linux, but it’s exactly the kind of tinkerers only/missing important apps/experts only experience that people insist on thinking desktop Linux is.