Comment on Android’s next big feature turns your phone into a desktop

taladar@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• someacnt@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  And I thought the year of linux desktop was coming…

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• wolf@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Unless you invested a lot of money and time, you are certainly already running an OS with a lot of BLOBs at the most important parts (WIFI driver, etc).

  Given AOSP and a decent smartphone, I am basically at exactly the same level I am with running Linux on my desktop. Actually, the smartphone could be better, if it is a Pixel, because at least I’ll have 100% hardware support. … and again, AFAIK one will be able to run Debian in a virtual environment.

  Long story short: I would never buy hardware with vendor lock in, but middle to high class Android smartphones are actually standardized hardware which run excellent with Linux. Total win for me.

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  • taladar@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The times when you couldn’t get PCs with 100% hardware support on Linux were 15+ years ago. You can still find the occasional one today that doesn’t have it but it is not hard to get 100% support.

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    • wolf@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      … I do not want to argue with you and Linux hardware support certainly is much better than decades ago (I was there, I know :-P) … but even my hardware, which was bought with Linux support in mind, I have several problems… one of my laptops WIFI card has problems with Linux sleep mode, one of my Lenovo machines has audio trouble with the microphone after being used for longer online calls and the list goes on. I hope that I am just very unlucky with my hardware picks, but when you have known hardware components in a mass produced device like Google Pixel, I hope we get Apple level support of hardware.

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      • taladar@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Well, obviously there are still bugs in hardware drivers on Linux, the point was more that those bugs are not any more common than on any other OS and that Linux probably supports more hardware than some of the Windows operating system versions now.

        Apple level of hardware support is hard for Linux because Apple provides that by limiting supported hardware to a tiny, tiny subset of available hardware they produce themselves.

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• Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  What freedoms are you referring to?

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• QuarterSwede@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  100% they will and want this. I’m a power user and even I see this as the future.

  Have you worked in a non-tech field with people? Modern OSs and office apps are not intuitive to them. Hell, a lot have problems with just their phones as is.

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  • Trihilis@ani.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yeah… I dont see this happening. Android has 99% shovelware crap. I dont see how any professional would be able to use Android instead of Windows, MacOS or Linux.

    Android is garbage, and I’m saying this as an android user… The moment a serious Linux alternative is here for phones I’m gone (yes I’m aware Android is technically also “Linux”).

    Just a few examples: the file system is a mess, good luck trying to easily save on network drives. There is no decent office suite and again using the files system to save documents in Android is a shitshow. There are Adobe products but they’re all watered down shitty versions of the desktop ones, the alternatives are even worse. Around every corner google tries to push it’s shitty cloud subscriptions, the telemetry is insane even compared to windows.

    No Android is definitely not the future chromebooks were a mess too. And knowing Google they’ll just give up on anything they don’t seem profitable enough so even if they tried on desktop they’ll just pull the plug after 2 years.

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    • Zeoic@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You underestimate how much professional work is done via the web browser and RDP these days. I am a Cloud Engineer (basically do virtualization work) and could easily get by using a phone as my main work system. Most of the time I am using MS office apps that are basically just wrappers for their web versions anyways, and on a VPN connected to some server. All doable from samsung dex already, I just dont use it because multi monitor is important to my work flow

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  • taladar@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I suppose you mean the same effect I have noticed with our younger apprentices who know very little about the way computers work anymore since they grew up with phones only, they don’t even know what a file system is any more.

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    • QuarterSwede@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Some older, some younger, yeah.

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• SufferingSteve@feddit.nu ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  If you sit in a room and you can see the bars, you know you are trapped, if you sit in a room, but you cant see the bars, you are going to think you are free

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• Hoimo@ani.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I recently saw terminal access as a feature of Android 16 too, so if you have su access, that should give you all the power you need. Now let’s hope root will become standard, instead of needing to flash Magisk.

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  • Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It gives you terminal access to a Debian VM, not the Android subsystem.

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  • taladar@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    , so if you have su access, that should give you all the power you need.

    Still won’t save you from the complete isolation of the apps from each other, only allowing you to exchange data between them at the OS maker’s generosity.

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    • Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I don’t want them to talk to each other.

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    • Hoimo@ani.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’m not sure if I understand what you’re talking about exactly. With root I can access all files on my device (including /data/data, where app internal files are kept) and I can give permission to apps to access all files too, it they ask for it. Not that I’d want that, because it’s way safer to keep user data in /storage/emulated/0 and give read permissions on file or folder level (like /Pictures for a gallery app, or just the picture I want to share for a social media app).

      If you want to share data between apps, the easiest way would be to give them access to the same folder in user space. That isn’t OS maker’s generosity, that’s basic security controls.

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      • Sage1918@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I think they’re talking about Android “Intends” which is the thing used by apps to communicate with each other.

        I have no clue how the OS handles the underlying things tho…

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• neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’m not an android user, but doesn’t it let you do whatever you want? What things can’t a person do using Android as a desktop that a windows or mac user can do?

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  • taladar@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Android is very much designed with every application in its own little silo that needs the permission of the OS vendor or something off-device (like a cloud service both apps access) to communicate with each other. This means, among other things, a very limited ability to do software development on the device and run your own applications, a very limited ability to automate applications, no chaining of workflows (e.g. read some sensor in one app, process the data in another, graph it in a third). You also generally don’t have administrator/root access on the device and if you do get around that restriction a lot of the applications for things like banks will refuse to work. You can’t properly control which data your device collects and where it sends it. Your ability to debug the behavior of your own applications and device is severely limited.

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    • neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Thanks for the heads up. This is good to know.

      I typically use my work computer for just zoom meetings. I could see my possibly being able to replace my work computer with this.

      Of course I’d still keep Linux on my personal laptop.

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• TerHu@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  i‘m hyped for a graphene desktop mode. that wouldn’t be a replacement for my laptop/ desktop computers but still very much sick. and if i can run a terminal with neovim and tmux or ssh into other machines it would be a dope backup/ micro setup. probably not very useful, but fun i think

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  • Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I have a dying laptop and am very much interested in replacing it with my phone + Nexdock (or similar)

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• Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Narrator: They did.

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  • themurphy@lemmy.ml ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    My guess is that people who would use DEX is also people who are satisfied with ChromeOS. Which is just as closed down.

    Hopefully, when Android does this, they will be under same gatekeeper restrictions in the EU as Windows.

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    • admin@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Dude I tired DEX once, I saw I couldn’t rotate the monitor or even find some type of settings and I never tried it again.

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    • barusu@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I use DEX (not directly to the monitor, but the desktop app) to have easier access to my personal Firefox and messenger apps when I’m at work. I don’t want to run any of my personal stuff on the work laptop (not even in a VM) and I hate typing on the phone’s tiny touch keyboard, so DEX is a great alternative.

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      • stephen01king@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        It’s great that we’re losing this feature in OneUI 7. Makes me never want to buy another Samsung phone ever again.

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