This is similar to the Can Android phones be considered Linux phones? debate. At some point you’ve walled off and pigeonholed the device or OS enough it becomes something else entirely.
Alright, you got me. I mainly care about the GPL license and the ability to modify your own devices as you like. But that doesn’t make as good of a one liner.
Yes, permissive licensing instead of copyleft is bad. Things like Alpine and Busybox exist mostly to allow corporations to exploit Linux without giving back to the community, build user-hostile Tivoized devices, etc.
My brother tried to use his macbook to put spongebob on the TV and it wouldn’t let him due to drm reasons. Don’t let this shit become the new normal. It’s GNU Linux or nothing for me.
MacOS is actually the only desktop OS that’s officially a Unix OS (meaning it’s officially certified). The others are mostly mainframe OSes. https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/
Linux is “Unix-like”, but it’s not actually Unix. Linux was inspired by Minix, not by Unix.
People sometimes confuse Unix with POSIX. MacOS is also fully POSIX compliant whereas Linux is mostly POSIX compliant (but don’t think it’s quite 100% especially with newer POSIX standards).
I’m on the Linux Kernel and have a terminal that runs Linux apps on my device. That’s pretty Linux-y enough. If you want you can install another distro on a Chromebook.
I feel like what you are saying is on the same level as installing Termux on a rooted Android phone. There might be some quirks of GrapheneOS I am unaware of though.
IMO orphan kernels are not Linux. If it can’t update with mainline, it is a sterile mule. So no, even as an avid user of Graphene, it is not Linux because google has stollen ownership with an orphaned kernel using proprietary and publicly undocumented hardware.
In this vain, no mobile chipset or radio modem has been FOSS or Linux in a very very long time if ever. Like the last radio that was fully documented was the Atheros stuff, and the last processor to come close to fully documented is the stuff Leah Rowe supports in Libreboot and that is only because of her hacking skills.
I don’t think it’s really relevant then. The argument is more about wanting a traditional Linux experience on mobile phones and Android operating systems (including GrapheneOS) being too far removed from that. Breaking away from Google is more of a possible positive byproduct
Other people have mentioned the limitations of the hardware so I won’t bother rehashing it but I do think there is a lot of potential in a Linux distro for phones.
Right now Linux phones are incredibly niche but we have seen some improvements in software around the release of the PinePhone and the Pro model so I have hope that it will, eventually, work. SailfishOS is a paid OS and is a fairly limited but it does feel quite smooth to daily drive on supported devices. Simple frequent tasks (ex. Finding public transit routes to a coffee shop) do seem to take longer to complete on Linux phones but I am hoping that will be sorted in the next couple years.
It’s just hardened Android, but it still uses the Android kernel, Bionic C Library, etc. They have a custom memory allocator which was based on a port from OpenBSD though.
This is similar to the Can Android phones be considered Linux phones? debate. At some point you’ve walled off and pigeonholed the device or OS enough it becomes something else entirely.
Unironically the importance of being GNU/Linux instead of just Linux.
So Alpine with its musl libc is bad? How about embedded distributions with Busybox instead of GNU userland?
Alright, you got me. I mainly care about the GPL license and the ability to modify your own devices as you like. But that doesn’t make as good of a one liner.
GPLv2 does not mandate that, though. That was the main reason why GPLv3 was written.
Yes, permissive licensing instead of copyleft is bad. Things like Alpine and Busybox exist mostly to allow corporations to exploit Linux without giving back to the community, build user-hostile Tivoized devices, etc.
GPLv2 does the same. Linus Torvalds explicitly said he’s fine with that and disapproves the GPLv3 for this very reason.
I guess you use an OS with a GPLv3 kernel then? Hurd?
like when they say os x is just linux with a pretty ui. yeah they share a lot of components with bsd but that’s about it.
My brother tried to use his macbook to put spongebob on the TV and it wouldn’t let him due to drm reasons. Don’t let this shit become the new normal. It’s GNU Linux or nothing for me.
Doesn’t MacOS have more in common with BSD than Linux?
Yes but idiots think that macOS is Linux because they don’t wanna know the distinction to Unix-like.
I would say that both osx and Linux are flavors of Unix, not that macs run Linux.
MacOS is actually the only desktop OS that’s officially a Unix OS (meaning it’s officially certified). The others are mostly mainframe OSes. https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/
Linux is “Unix-like”, but it’s not actually Unix. Linux was inspired by Minix, not by Unix.
People sometimes confuse Unix with POSIX. MacOS is also fully POSIX compliant whereas Linux is mostly POSIX compliant (but don’t think it’s quite 100% especially with newer POSIX standards).
deleted by creator
I’m on the Linux Kernel and have a terminal that runs Linux apps on my device. That’s pretty Linux-y enough. If you want you can install another distro on a Chromebook.
You could also use Windows Subsystem for Linux.
I don’t think the Chromebook aspect of it matters; it’s just another piece of hardware.
Not to mention the kernel for most devices is the only kernel that will run on the hardware and it can’t be mainlined.
*Laughs in Graphene *
Is GrapheneOS that much more like Linux?
I feel like what you are saying is on the same level as installing Termux on a rooted Android phone. There might be some quirks of GrapheneOS I am unaware of though.
IMO orphan kernels are not Linux. If it can’t update with mainline, it is a sterile mule. So no, even as an avid user of Graphene, it is not Linux because google has stollen ownership with an orphaned kernel using proprietary and publicly undocumented hardware.
In this vain, no mobile chipset or radio modem has been FOSS or Linux in a very very long time if ever. Like the last radio that was fully documented was the Atheros stuff, and the last processor to come close to fully documented is the stuff Leah Rowe supports in Libreboot and that is only because of her hacking skills.
It’s more that it’s de-googled.
I wouldn’t describe it as Linux, per se, but it is de-googled
I don’t think it’s really relevant then. The argument is more about wanting a traditional Linux experience on mobile phones and Android operating systems (including GrapheneOS) being too far removed from that. Breaking away from Google is more of a possible positive byproduct
Yeah, I don’t think that’s ever really going to work.
As similar as the hardware is, the reality is they’re different interface. One of the things that made windows 8 awful was trying to do both.
Other people have mentioned the limitations of the hardware so I won’t bother rehashing it but I do think there is a lot of potential in a Linux distro for phones.
Right now Linux phones are incredibly niche but we have seen some improvements in software around the release of the PinePhone and the Pro model so I have hope that it will, eventually, work. SailfishOS is a paid OS and is a fairly limited but it does feel quite smooth to daily drive on supported devices. Simple frequent tasks (ex. Finding public transit routes to a coffee shop) do seem to take longer to complete on Linux phones but I am hoping that will be sorted in the next couple years.
It’s just hardened Android, but it still uses the Android kernel, Bionic C Library, etc. They have a custom memory allocator which was based on a port from OpenBSD though.