It’s not just a tech issue. Funding tech dev is great, but there is a political problem.
We need to vote for politicians who get the need for competition and will fight vendor lockin. Who will ensure things that are needed to do stuff isn’t done only for the duopoly.
We need to support groups fighting bad politicians and getting into media to inform normal people. Who make legal fights. EFF, OpenRghtGroup, etc.
ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 2 months ago
For anyone reading thus, please consider donating to PostmarketOS or Mobian if you have the means, as it will help us escape the Android ecosystem which is getting more and more anti-user due to google controlling it.
mesamunefire@piefed.social 2 months ago
I would pay for a company to come out with one of these pre-loaded onto a Fairphone. Seriously.
Lumisal@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The problem with PostmarketOS is that it only is stable on extremely old phones that sometimes aren’t even midrange.
ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 2 months ago
It is certainly not usable for the average person in it’s current state, hence why I suggest donating to it to help with developing it.
With proper funding and full-time devs, it would be able to focus on adding proper support to more phones, or potentially partner with a manufacturer like GrapheneOS just did with Motorola to get first-class support on a smaller handful of devices.
Postmarket is our only long-term mobile option that will remain FLOSS and in the users best interest, we just have to support it and help build it up into something we can all use :)
Lumisal@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I have donated and even used it. On said old phones, it works decently well.
The issue is the hardware support, since most people won’t want a near decade old phone who’s battery you probably need to replace but can’t do so easily.
Feels like they need to rally behind a more modern phone and polish that to get people to actually try it rather than fractured development. The Fairphone 4, which they already have a stable release on, would be a good candidate.
Ah well, I’ll still keep up my donations anyway. Just feels like they could have more focused leadership, similar to the Linux Kernel.
I also recommend (if you’re in Europe) petitioning government bodies to help fund them as well.
linule@lemmy.world 2 months ago
What’s the pitch here? Initial impression is that it makes the ecosystem fragmented, as now (along with Ubuntu Touch), people have at least 3 different projects to fund. There needs to be a core standard that unifies the efforts and funding.
ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 2 months ago
The issue with Ubuntu Touch is that unfortunately it’s not a genuine alternative to Android, as it actually relies on Android quite a lot to function as well as it does.
It often uses an outdated Android kernel (which is also usually not receiving security updates) and a Halium abstraction layer to access the closed source binary blob Android drivers for the phone’s hardware. It also requires that it be installed on top of an existing Android install, so in all it’s more of a Linux abstraction layer on top of Android, which means it’s not truly escaping the control of the Android ecosystem.
PostmarketOS and Mobian are genuinely Mobile focused Linux distros that run on the mainline up-to-date Linux kernel the bare metal, meaning they are not subject to any influence from Google.
Both projects often collaborate and benefit from each other, they just use a different base distro (Alpine for PostmarketOS, Debian for Mobian), but that doesn’t result in any wasted effort, as ultimately any new developments, drivers, or new phone support are mainlined into the kernel itself, so both projects benefit.
They’re not as usable as Ubuntu Touch is right now, but they are ultimately the better solutions long-term to ensure that all the code is under community control so we aren’t reliant on outdated unsecure Android components.
linule@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Very interesting and informative, thanks for explaining. My understanding was that UT just conveniently copied/reused some hardware interfacing components from Android, since Android uses also a Linux kernel too and why reinvent the wheel, especially with the plethora of phone manufacturers available, which you really don’t really want to do again. But I didn’t know about it using Android kernel, or needing an existing Android install, which sound indeed like deal breakers. There might be a good reason, relating the reuse of components, but clearly out of my depth here.
I still think that it is important to standarize a canonical Linux core, or something like that, that can unify more development efforts, or if not needed, at least a marketing presence to raise funds. E.g politicians usually don’t understand a word of tech, and you’d need something like “The open source interoperable alternative to Android and iOS” to be appealing instead of coming with Alpine, Debian, etc. which will sound just like geeky and fringe and subsequently not get substantial funding.