Nice! And they will probably differentiate from the competition by allowing GPL applications and sideloading, and having a total control for your privacy and no tracking, right?
Right?
In the beginning? Sure. Later? Well, you know, security and all, think of the kids!
And the grannies!
Yeah and maybe Bezos will finally allow his workers to have bathroom breaks
Agreed. If it was any company at all except Amazon there would be hope but come on. We've all seen what they did to the fire sticks
If it was any company at all except Amazon there would be hope
You won't be saying that in a couple months when Facebook makes their own announcement.
Yeah fair, not ANY company
They want to harvest the data, without Google's control, and give none to Google.
That can be easily done with AOSP, to my knowledge there's no Google stuff in there. Which is exactly what they're using right now
There still is some google stuff in there, like for example phoning google servers to check internet connectivity among other stuff.
Yes, but those minor traces are easy enough to remove, especially if you don't care about being "ceritified" by Google (i.e. are not planning to run the Google services).
Exactly.
If my device is compatible, does it automatically have access to Google Play and branding?
No. Access isn't automatic. Google Play is a service operated by Google. Achieving compatibility is a prerequisite for obtaining access to the Google Play software and branding. After a device is qualified as an Android-compatible device, the device manufacturer should complete the contact form included in licensing Google Mobile Services to seek access to Google Play. We'll be in contact if we can help you.
Google services are entirely missing from Android open source. The Google Play package is what contains the entirety of Google's services.
Not sure if anyone remembers but back when cyanogenMod was the go-to, early versions had Google services included. Google sent a cease and desist notice and said it was a license violation. You cannot distribute it as part of the OS by default. The next release of cyanogenMod had it removed. Users had to flash the package if they wanted it.
Right but the topic was about google's data harvesting and what I meant was that you can't just grab any AOSP distribution if you want to minimize that, you need to pick one that replaces the parts that send data to google. LineageOS for example still phones google for quite a number of services.
As far as "easy to remove" goes, I think that's kind of debatable if you want to do it in a way that's sustainable long term considering the effort that goes into e.g. GrapheneOS or DivestOS.
Edit: here is a list of the kind of stuff you need to watch out for if you want to minimize the data sent to google
I was answering under the assumption/the context of of "Amazon wants to release an Android-based OS that doesn't contact any of Googles services".
So, when I said "easy enough to remove" that was relative to releasing any commercial OS based on AOSP, as in: this will be one of the smallest tasks involved in this whole venture.
They will need an (at least semi-automated) way to keep up with changes from upstream and still apply their own code-changes on top of that anyway and once that is set up, a small set of 10-ish 3-line patches is not a lot of effort. For an individual getting started and trying to keep that all up to do date individually it's a bit more of an effort, granted.
The list you linked is very interesting, but I suspect that much of that isn't in AOSP, my suspicion is that at most the things up to and excluding the Updater even exist in AOSP.
Yes but people are just sideloading GAPPS and escaping their ecosystem. Might even run custom launchers so you can't experience their ads.
Hahahaha cool, Linux with ads and tracking and all the spyware you could ever want.
So just like android ?
Minus the sandboxing and security improvements, apparently
And no sideloading
I wonder if it's going to be as terrible as their Fire OS.
The author is exited but I'm not.
I am not a big fan of corporations taking the free work of FOSS developers and turning it into a proprietary dystopia.
I think that having a strong public domain is good for everyone. For instance properties like Sherlock Holmes really took off once it was in the public domain and people could write spin-offs and whatnot without worry that a copyright lawyer would come along and sue them.
Linux is the same thing, Amazon using the kernel and stuff to build an OS on doesn't take anything away from anyone else who uses Linux as a desktop or server environment, and in fact can lead to some good pass back, even if it is just that the devices are easier to root. Take a look at the Open-wrt project, where Linksys built their router on top of a Linux kernel and it led to a whole ecosystem of open routers. People went out of their way to buy a WRT-42G just with the intent of rooting it, and Linksys got their money either way.
If it were anyone other than Amazon or Apple.
Speaking of which, isn't MacOS Linux based these days? How much have they contributed back? (Genuine question)
A quick search confirms that MacOS is based from proprietary BSD UNIX code. It is not compatible with Linux
It's pretty annoying you replied to someone's nice, well thought out comment with your own bullshit. Then speculated about something you could have googled in 7 seconds max.
There is already something in the works (that you can technically buy right now if you wanted), and it actively respects your freedom. Granted, as with everything in this ecosystem, its a very slow burn, so it'll be a while before the software is actually good, but it's already made massive strides from where it started.
I would say wait a bit and take a look at this later, but i do have one friend daily driving one now to some success (this wasn't possible a year ago).
That would be great, but you can buy a $20 burner from a gas station that's more powerful than those phones.
The regular version uses the Allwinner A64 chip which retailed for $5 when it was released... Back in 2015.
The Pro version uses the RK3399S, which is a custom lower binned version of the RK3399. Neither chip was made available retail, but the SK3399 was released in 2016 and only otherwise used in low-end Chromebooks and SBCs.
Sure, but calling them out for not being a $20 burner phone doesnt make sense when you're comparing that to a developer/development device. This phone specifically isnt meant for everyday consumers. What it is, however, is a signal that there is now a third competitor in the works, and it's real and tangible.
I just read an article about how they're increasing advertising on their Fire TVs. Rest assured, an Amazon OS is an Advertising OS.
Although, from what I've gathered of public opinion online, there's LOTS of people willing to forgo their privacy in exchange for free shit.
Edit: Oh...
They say they expect Vega to begin shipping on Fire TVs early next year.
Amazon would sell your DNA for 25 cents if they could.
No difference to Google then
Google would sell it for 20 cents
Apple would sell for 10 but would deny until death that it sold, and still convince you to believe that it didn't sell.In addition to giving it a "cool" name like DNA Titanium Protection XDR or something like that,
OOnly if it is Libre Software. We are tired of proprietary rubbish
Android is already free software, and see how far that gets you. The kicker is that you're tied into their services (with all the data harvesting, targeted advertising and monetisation that that involves).
I use GrapheneOS. Not all android is born equal
Yes, because it is permissively open source, not only are these companies free to build what they want - we are entitled to that same right. We therefore created LineageOS and GrapheneOS, and its really great.
There's also a lot of motivated people getting regular Linux distributions running on mobile devices too, so we have that as well
If you're tied to their non-free services, then its not free software.
Windows Phone: Electric Boogaloo
TL;DR Amazon is building a Linux distro that starts a chromium to run react native apps. Apparently, you need hundreds of people for that.
TBH Amazon has a whole zoo of devices. Even if they are putting a small team of 2 or 3 people in charge for porting this to each device, they might end up with a few hundred people
Oh so I won’t be able to sideload streaming APKs onto any new Amazon devices? Guess you can fucking keep your shit hardware then
But that would also mean you can sideload a whole another OS, maybe?
Locked boot loader says otherwise
There are two options here, given that the OS seems to rely heavily on React Native to work: having the streaming APKs converted to React Native apps, or simply use the web browser and PWAs.
oh great, yet another platform that will use free software to restrict what people can do with their computing devices 🤮
how is this supposed to be a good thing? 🙄
I’m not sure how this is in any way different from android? Android is free software they use to restrict the computing they devices they sell to push more ads and junkware. This is just a different one. Amazon sucks, so I don’t see what move they could make that could be seen as positive. Just don’t buy their garbage devices.
With any luck they'll probably introduce some new exploits to free up the device.
I am in dire need of decent linux smartphones that aren't android. Can Valve just get to it please?
how is this supposed to be a good thing?
Well you see, it makes rich people more money.
Apps are going to be written in React Native
So despite the desire for one, Vega won’t be an Android-killer, won’t bring an influx of big name apps to benefit regular Linux distros, nor see Amazon do something crazy cool like create its own Linux tablet UI.
You know how much overhead Electron apps are? Well, here's React Native! Enjoy all the annoyances of mobile development with the ugliest that is React!
(I kid. Or am I?)
It actually works pretty great, it genuinely does compile to native code pretty well. The js code just drives - everything visual or I/O is native, so it's faster than you'd think
Apps are going to be written in React Native
Idk if I'm the only person who thinks this, but I feel like React has gotten worse over the last couple of major versions. Not only does the code look a lot messier when you use their new syntax, but the end result seems unreliable. Facebook is barely even usable now. Their history management is laughable, and it'll drop you out of the site randomly when using the back buttons. I used to think React was really neat, but I'm not a big fan anymore. There's too much re-engineering for problems that were solved decades ago.
Damn....I'm trying to modernize my personal app's UI and I thought react was the shit. What is the recommended framework now?
If you like it, then use it. There's no point in jumping every time some new framework comes out. Most of them don't last. I have used React off and on since it came out, and I personally don't like how the syntax has changed. My personal website is React and doesn't have any browser history issues. Idk what's up with Facebook history management. I guess they just don't care very much because they're too busy trying to gobble up data.
Honestly this. You'll rebuild it in a few years anyways.
If you absolutely want your project to survive after 15 years...
Either web components using vanilla, or hell, just go jquery. Jquery is impossible to kill.
MorbiusJS
React is having the same problems Angular had, and jQuery had. New ECMAscript features make formerly complex things easier, and JS frameworks adapt.
Lots of solutions. But as more edge cases start to show up, they continue to add more and more little things that shape the language into more different variants.
Many of the changes are pretty good. But New devs will go, "Why are there 7 ways to do this React thing?" And that adds to the noise.
Again, that's not a React problem. It's just coding in general. PHP also had a "damn you ugly" phase. But unlike PHP, I don't think React (and most JS frameworks of today) will continue to be as popular as some hot new JS framework in 2027-2030 sweeps the landscape.
And PHP will still be chugging along. lol. It's weird that React syntax went from being fairly pretty, and structured, to looking like a plate of spaghetti. Usually languages and frameworks go the other direction.
Not at all knocking PHP.
I love how PHP 7 looks, and PHP 8 only continues to improve.
Totally agree. React is going backwards. Vue is so attractive. Heck, I'm even starting to rebuild react apps in Web components because react is getting weird.
This is not what I meant when I said we need more Mobile OS competition...
I literally said this to a friend just two days ago... And yes... Also not what I meant.
LMFAO, can't wait to see Adbuntu.
But thats just a derivative of Debiad.
Amazon can't make TVs or ereades without filling them to the brim with ads and spyware like the greedy shits they are, I dont want to think about how screwed up their OS would be. As much as I sneer at Microsoft and windows BS as a snobby Linux user I get the impression amazon would be way worse and make Ol Gatey boy say 'have a little class, would you?'
If it runs Amazon-Linux it won't take long for someone to build a Wamazon Linux distro with all the features and none of the crap.
If anything, it'll be a thing where amazon ends up close sourcing the code/parts that they create after forking whatever OS they decide. That, or they'll just close source the entire codebase 100% before release without any regard or repercussions.
it won't take long for someone to build a Wamazon Linux distro with all the features and none of the crap.
I don't know what "features" Amazon would include that aren't somehow directly tied into their store and ease of shopping...aka "crap." It's not like they would build a better video/audio driver or something. It would all just be more...advertising and analytics, probably on a cheap platform as hardware has never been their largest source of income, to include Kindles (AWS is, last I checked). Strip those two out of their build and we have essentially an untouched kernel lol, at least that's how I see it happening.
Amazon out here thinking “could you imagine how much cheap garbage we could try to sell people if we can harvest literally all of the data directly?”
These tentacular megacorporations are a problem. Amazon is OK as a merchant, MS as an OS developer, Google as a search engine... If they do vertical integration the market is corrupted.
I'm really dumb. Can you expand on vertical integration and how it corrupts? I'm not sure what it is or why it's bad.
Vertical integration is when you control the entire product, in consumer electronics Apple is the gold standard; they make the software, hardware, and processors then integrate them into iPhones and macBooks. Tesla is a good example in the automotive space, their goal with the mega-factories is "raw materials in, cars out" and they work to build as many of the parts themselves as possible.
Alternately Microsoft just makes a good enough OS that runs on good enough hardware from commodity vendors, so you get good enough computers. Most auto makers buy good enough components from 2nd and 3rd tier suppliers and integrate them into good enough cars.
That is a great explanation of what vertical integration is. I am not sure I see why it is inherently bad.
I guess a large vertically integrated option could make it hard for alternatives to compete. That is more of a monopoly problem than a vertical integration issue though.
I do agree with interoperability requirements though. I see nothing wrong with Apple offering a fully vertically integrated product. The issue is when I cannot run my own OS on the hardware, my own apps on their OS, or interact with hardware from other vendors.
But that's exactly the problem. If the company is kind about it, or forced to play nice by effective regulation, there's no issue. But if there's no regulation and the company wants to, it tends towards monopolistic tendencies. And there's nothing that incentivizes a company to play nice forever, in fact they're incentivized to maximize profit. So Vertical Integration is bad without being checked.
Thanks for providing such a great answer!
Honestly I feel like you have microsoft backwards, in my experience their hardware is so so much better than their software
Lmao, they can have fun with that. I can't imagine it being anything decent. A mobile phone equivalent of a DVD Player OS lol
"Equivalent of a DVD player OS" is now my go-to insult for a bad OS.
I'm honoured lol
Good luck getting all the developers to rewrite their apps. The only reason you had any apps was because it was based on Android so it was little to no effort to port. Going plain ol' embedded Linux is basically the death knell of your developer story. Source: been there, had no third party apps, switched to Android
I'm sure they have thought of this, I wonder if they plan to use web apps, or Waydroid, or something else.
Also, there's a chance mobile Linux could benefit from sponsorships, contributions, etc
It's in the article. Web based stuff with REACT.
Edit: It's REACT Native. Just read the fucking article, people.
Oh man PWA as a replace to traditional apps have been promised for a while.
On one hand the promise of write once run anywhere on the other less ability to lock down your app from your users (good for us, but not popular in the mobile space at the moment)
Firefox did it like 10 years ago. I think it's still going around under a different name in very low tier smart phones.
You’re likely thinking KaiOS. They are still contributing what is required under MPL-2.0 but the rest is proprietary. KaiOS 3.x finally got off of a browser from 2016 as the base, but very few have upgraded their apps to be compatible (the tweaks were minor) & others have used it as a reminder that they were still ‘supporting’ a platform like whoever is maintaining or using that WhatsApp thing for chat.
There’s also Capyloon built from B2G, but it’s still early on & is targeting touch phones, instead of feature phones.
It would be nice to see it around IMO since it’d just be another enhancement to progressive web applications & JavaScript is a better target than Java or Swift.
promise of write once run anywhere
PWAs are great if they're written well, especially if they allow offline access.
There's platforms like React Native where the apps are native on each platform (they use native UI widgets). You can't just run the same code, but you can reuse probably 90-95% of code across platforms.
I will have to check that out!
Waydroid makes no sense since they are complaining people just sideload gapps.
I already tried an Amazon Fire tablet, Amazon. No thanks. I returned it. I don't need a locked-down console that spies on me. Windows is well on its way to becoming that already.
I tried to get one since it was 30 bucks, so I'm not too surprised this is how they operated. They are locking down jindles real hard too. Probably going to make a lot of ewaste.
Surely this other monopoly will save us
It's a new management objective.
The only thing I care about in this is if they will contribute anything back to the open source ecosystem, be it code or anything else.
No chance. Amazon has a long history of using a ton of FOSS code on AWS and contributing fuck-all.
Absolutely hell no.
Probably because it is stupid simple to escape their ecosystem just by sideloading apps. They want to lock you down with their own OS.
if it's anything like amazon linux on ec2 i'll pass
What are your issues with it? Just curious - I've always found it to be an agreeable RHEL variant.
What are your issues with it? Just curious - I've always found it to be an agreeable RHEL variant.
note: you accidentally said the same thing twice
Did it post twice? I think there is a bug somewhere between lemmy clients. I see it happen from time to time.
probably, just wanted to inform you :)
I know it won't happen, but it'd be nice if Linux switched to GPLv3. That would at least help somewhat here
Won't ever happen, Linus is very much in favor of companies being able to use drm, when needed.
I kinda sorta agree because without it Linux wouldn't be able to do anything requiring dr.m
This is misleading, since regular desktop DRM would still obviously work, which is what the end user really cares about
I haven't looked into it for a while but iirc, certain DRM would require DRM kernel modules which is something that Linus explicitly wants to allow
The anti-tivoization clause in GPLv3 is what Linus is against specifically.
Why?
It is because of the tivo workaround to GPLv2. This was fixed in GPL v3.
Damn that sucks. I think Linux is too "free as in free beer" but hey there is BSD
How would BSD help in this situation? I'm not sure I follow.
Bsd is even less copyleft. Was meant as an even more "liberal" option
While I don't mind BSDs, that would lead to even worse outcomes though in my view. Companies wouldn't even have to release the source code, and they routinely don't.
What we need is more copyleft to ensure companies contribute back to the communities they leach from, not less.
Agree totally.
Nice try Amazon. I'm not falling for it.
The mixed blessing of GPLv2
blursing.
What are the chances this will not produce wrong doing?
This is the question. Nevertheless, can it be worst than Google?
Has the potential to be as bad as...
All I'm hearing is that we might be able to hack these devices and put full Linux on them.
All I'm hearing is a subscription to remove the adverts on the command line.
See, that's the situation where we just don't use them. I'm talking about wiping the original OS and putting something that's really FOSS in its place.
So they want more control over what people are able to install
I think it's even simpler than that: they want a share of Google's data, and more control about what ads they can show to their customers constantly. Their hardware platforms are okayish and sold for a quite low price, but they monetize it on ads.
Amazon's Fire devices already have this, they don't use Android with Google, they use the fully open source version. They can collect any data they want already
Exactly this. There's no nefarious motive to doing this, because Amazon can already do everything nefarious that they want to do with their current Android-based Fire OS.
I'm actually willing to take Amazon's reasoning at face value for this. They say that Android is too heavyweight and inflexible for embedded IoT devices, and that they want to build something lighter. This makes plenty of sense, and is indeed something that Google themselves have also said as justification for their move to Fuschia for their own embedded devices.
For Linux fans, it's probably a good thing that Amazon has chosen another Linux-based architecture rather than doing as Google are doing and moving off Linux to a different kernel.
hopefully they'll design some package manager incompatible with android at the most basic level - and then double down when it's proven to be a huge mistake. a good tick upwards for dev jobs, but the time for actual competition was over 10 years ago. this will fail miserably.
Most TV operating systems are already non-android linux based. They mostly just run webapps.
So basically
"Windows for freeloaders: "You are the product(tm)" edition."
So... Windows?
I'm confused, why not just continue with AOSP?
It already has most of the Google stuff stripped out and any remaining parts will be easy to replace in comparison to rebuilding and maintaining a much larger software stack while also simultaneously retaining compatibility with all the android apps already on their app store.
Curious if it'll be opensource and mobile linux distro. If Amazon gets into the mobile linux game, the mobile phone market might change radically.
You seem confused. Amazon is in the business of stealing open source project in order to sell them as AWS services, not making them.
Then complaining that the license changes and gaslighting the group they steal from.
You're right.
All I have to ask is why though? They already have access to skinned aosp and from there can(and do)quite a bit of tweaking on their own. Fireos has been a worse version of android for some time now and Im unsure what the benefit of making their own in house OS would be.
If it's a true GNU/Linux OS with compatibility with linux programs, then that would be kind of neat, and if it's open enough to let advanced users install flatpaks(I suspect it's going to be immutable so at least flatpaks would be nice) then that could be neat. Currently it's very easy to sideload on fireos devices and even install the play store in full so it's possible the end product could be more like the steamdeckOS which is very much a user friendly store front end with a power user true linux experience underneath.
That said, for some reason I suspect that they will be locking things down even more and its going to be one of those many user facing linux devices that's technically linux but very limited. Like a smart fridge interface or something. If this is the case then dropping android support would be a bad move. You lose easy/lazy portability to your store from developers who already have a product to sell and you lose many apps that already exist, and for power users you lose access to the many apps that can easily be side loaded like tachiyomi(though I imagine amazon would rather you buy from them than buy their subsidized $80 tablets to read pirated manga/comics and library books on libby)
But who knows if they actually do an OK job this could lead to a new wave of GNU compatible touch forward apps for the rest of us. Linux has gotten a lot better at touch forward design over the last 4 or 5 years on its own, but its still fairly rough.
I'm devastated they didn't choose to pick up webOS for this.
Well, they don't want a mobile Linux. This is going to be a minimalist, locked-down distro that does nothing more than start a webrenderer.
Nobody's gonna see the underlying Linux system.
It's kinda like how my car entertainment system is running Linux. You wouldn't know it if you don't read the license file that comes with it.
WebOS powers TVs now and, from the article, Amazon intends this replacement to cover their Fire tablet line. WebOS ticks all their boxes, especially since apps in Amazon's new flavor are intended to be delivered as React Native web apps.
Ugh I don't know which is worse. Next timeline, portal gun.
lets hope the devices can be rooted and we can have phosh or ubuntumobile or sth. like that flashed
As. Someone who is incredibly poor and use my current fire stick as a way to help me because of accessibility for my disabilities. Does anybody know if there's a alternative to Chromecast, fire stick or Roku that doesn't involve another computer (which I could get a raspberry pi or another computer dedicated to media, but government doesn't believe in giving disabled people enough for those things)
Miracast is a wireless transmission technology, where the wireless signal is transmitted in a way that does not require any cables.
Thanks, captain Obvious. :-D
but government doesn’t believe in giving disabled people enough for those things
Instead of subscribing to whatever streaming services you're using roku for, you could be streaming everything for free here: https://fmoviesz.to/
Use the money you save to buy a raspberry pi and wireless keyboard+mouse combo then you're off to the races.
I don't pay for my streaming services. My mom who is barley surviving too and others pay for it. Had no choice really. Sense I have zero income it's hard to save up. (been battling the government for nearly 6 year's to get SSI or anything to help )
You always have a choice when it comes to entertainment, especially digital.
Tell your mom who is barely surviving that she can stream more things for free than what she's getting with her subscriptions.
Spread the love.
If all the apps are in React Native I feel like they are gonna have a bad time. If you're not careful React Native apps have bad performance, and Fire TVs don't have a lot of performance to spare.
Save us phosh, or something similar..
Well i think it will help us to access more apps
For some reason I thought they had already made a nix OS
Fire OS, but it was just a fork of Android. There are mobile Linux distributions (like postmarketOS), but Fire wasn’t one of them.
They have, but it's more of a container development kind of thing.
Nice! And they will probably differentiate from the competition by allowing GPL applications and sideloading, and having a total control for your privacy and no tracking, right?
Right?
In the beginning? Sure. Later? Well, you know, security and all, think of the kids!
And the grannies!
Yeah and maybe Bezos will finally allow his workers to have bathroom breaks
Check out these great special offers in GPL applications and sideloading!
Probably will just be more like their own flavor of Android where they lock down the OS and insert all kinds of malware.
I know there's sarcasm here, but the article did state an sdk will be available so apps need ported.
Lol
Cool. Another OS to avoid.
This is the best description for everyone
Agreed. If it was any company at all except Amazon there would be hope but come on. We've all seen what they did to the fire sticks
You won't be saying that in a couple months when Facebook makes their own announcement.
Yeah fair, not ANY company
They want to harvest the data, without Google's control, and give none to Google.
That can be easily done with AOSP, to my knowledge there's no Google stuff in there. Which is exactly what they're using right now
There still is some google stuff in there, like for example phoning google servers to check internet connectivity among other stuff.
Yes, but those minor traces are easy enough to remove, especially if you don't care about being "ceritified" by Google (i.e. are not planning to run the Google services).
Exactly.
https://source.android.com/docs/setup/about/faqs
Google services are entirely missing from Android open source. The Google Play package is what contains the entirety of Google's services.
Not sure if anyone remembers but back when cyanogenMod was the go-to, early versions had Google services included. Google sent a cease and desist notice and said it was a license violation. You cannot distribute it as part of the OS by default. The next release of cyanogenMod had it removed. Users had to flash the package if they wanted it.
Right but the topic was about google's data harvesting and what I meant was that you can't just grab any AOSP distribution if you want to minimize that, you need to pick one that replaces the parts that send data to google. LineageOS for example still phones google for quite a number of services.
As far as "easy to remove" goes, I think that's kind of debatable if you want to do it in a way that's sustainable long term considering the effort that goes into e.g. GrapheneOS or DivestOS.
Edit: here is a list of the kind of stuff you need to watch out for if you want to minimize the data sent to google
https://divestos.org/pages/network_connections
I was answering under the assumption/the context of of "Amazon wants to release an Android-based OS that doesn't contact any of Googles services".
So, when I said "easy enough to remove" that was relative to releasing any commercial OS based on AOSP, as in: this will be one of the smallest tasks involved in this whole venture.
They will need an (at least semi-automated) way to keep up with changes from upstream and still apply their own code-changes on top of that anyway and once that is set up, a small set of 10-ish 3-line patches is not a lot of effort. For an individual getting started and trying to keep that all up to do date individually it's a bit more of an effort, granted.
The list you linked is very interesting, but I suspect that much of that isn't in AOSP, my suspicion is that at most the things up to and excluding the Updater even exist in AOSP.
Yes but people are just sideloading GAPPS and escaping their ecosystem. Might even run custom launchers so you can't experience their ads.
Hahahaha cool, Linux with ads and tracking and all the spyware you could ever want.
So just like android ?
Minus the sandboxing and security improvements, apparently
And no sideloading
I wonder if it's going to be as terrible as their Fire OS.
The author is exited but I'm not. I am not a big fan of corporations taking the free work of FOSS developers and turning it into a proprietary dystopia.
I think that having a strong public domain is good for everyone. For instance properties like Sherlock Holmes really took off once it was in the public domain and people could write spin-offs and whatnot without worry that a copyright lawyer would come along and sue them.
Linux is the same thing, Amazon using the kernel and stuff to build an OS on doesn't take anything away from anyone else who uses Linux as a desktop or server environment, and in fact can lead to some good pass back, even if it is just that the devices are easier to root. Take a look at the Open-wrt project, where Linksys built their router on top of a Linux kernel and it led to a whole ecosystem of open routers. People went out of their way to buy a WRT-42G just with the intent of rooting it, and Linksys got their money either way.
If it were anyone other than Amazon or Apple.
Speaking of which, isn't MacOS Linux based these days? How much have they contributed back? (Genuine question)
A quick search confirms that MacOS is based from proprietary BSD UNIX code. It is not compatible with Linux
It's pretty annoying you replied to someone's nice, well thought out comment with your own bullshit. Then speculated about something you could have googled in 7 seconds max.
This is the correct response.
A third competitor for Android and iOS would be amazing. But not if it's Amazon..
https://pine64.com/product-category/pinephone/
https://pine64.com/product-category/smartphones/pinephone-pro/
There is already something in the works (that you can technically buy right now if you wanted), and it actively respects your freedom. Granted, as with everything in this ecosystem, its a very slow burn, so it'll be a while before the software is actually good, but it's already made massive strides from where it started.
I would say wait a bit and take a look at this later, but i do have one friend daily driving one now to some success (this wasn't possible a year ago).
That would be great, but you can buy a $20 burner from a gas station that's more powerful than those phones.
The regular version uses the Allwinner A64 chip which retailed for $5 when it was released... Back in 2015.
The Pro version uses the RK3399S, which is a custom lower binned version of the RK3399. Neither chip was made available retail, but the SK3399 was released in 2016 and only otherwise used in low-end Chromebooks and SBCs.
Sure, but calling them out for not being a $20 burner phone doesnt make sense when you're comparing that to a developer/development device. This phone specifically isnt meant for everyday consumers. What it is, however, is a signal that there is now a third competitor in the works, and it's real and tangible.
I just read an article about how they're increasing advertising on their Fire TVs. Rest assured, an Amazon OS is an Advertising OS.
Although, from what I've gathered of public opinion online, there's LOTS of people willing to forgo their privacy in exchange for free shit.
Edit: Oh...
And that article https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/after-luring-customers-with-low-prices-amazon-stuffs-fire-tvs-with-ads/
Amazon would sell your DNA for 25 cents if they could.
No difference to Google then
Google would sell it for 20 cents
Apple would sell for 10 but would deny until death that it sold, and still convince you to believe that it didn't sell.In addition to giving it a "cool" name like DNA Titanium Protection XDR or something like that,
OOnly if it is Libre Software. We are tired of proprietary rubbish
Android is already free software, and see how far that gets you. The kicker is that you're tied into their services (with all the data harvesting, targeted advertising and monetisation that that involves).
I use GrapheneOS. Not all android is born equal
Yes, because it is permissively open source, not only are these companies free to build what they want - we are entitled to that same right. We therefore created LineageOS and GrapheneOS, and its really great.
There's also a lot of motivated people getting regular Linux distributions running on mobile devices too, so we have that as well
If you're tied to their non-free services, then its not free software.
Windows Phone: Electric Boogaloo
TL;DR Amazon is building a Linux distro that starts a chromium to run react native apps. Apparently, you need hundreds of people for that.
TBH Amazon has a whole zoo of devices. Even if they are putting a small team of 2 or 3 people in charge for porting this to each device, they might end up with a few hundred people
Oh so I won’t be able to sideload streaming APKs onto any new Amazon devices? Guess you can fucking keep your shit hardware then
But that would also mean you can sideload a whole another OS, maybe?
Locked boot loader says otherwise
There are two options here, given that the OS seems to rely heavily on React Native to work: having the streaming APKs converted to React Native apps, or simply use the web browser and PWAs.
oh great, yet another platform that will use free software to restrict what people can do with their computing devices 🤮
how is this supposed to be a good thing? 🙄
I’m not sure how this is in any way different from android? Android is free software they use to restrict the computing they devices they sell to push more ads and junkware. This is just a different one. Amazon sucks, so I don’t see what move they could make that could be seen as positive. Just don’t buy their garbage devices.
With any luck they'll probably introduce some new exploits to free up the device.
I am in dire need of decent linux smartphones that aren't android. Can Valve just get to it please?
Well you see, it makes rich people more money.
Apps are going to be written in React Native
You know how much overhead Electron apps are? Well, here's React Native! Enjoy all the annoyances of mobile development with the ugliest that is React!
(I kid. Or am I?)
It actually works pretty great, it genuinely does compile to native code pretty well. The js code just drives - everything visual or I/O is native, so it's faster than you'd think
Idk if I'm the only person who thinks this, but I feel like React has gotten worse over the last couple of major versions. Not only does the code look a lot messier when you use their new syntax, but the end result seems unreliable. Facebook is barely even usable now. Their history management is laughable, and it'll drop you out of the site randomly when using the back buttons. I used to think React was really neat, but I'm not a big fan anymore. There's too much re-engineering for problems that were solved decades ago.
Damn....I'm trying to modernize my personal app's UI and I thought react was the shit. What is the recommended framework now?
If you like it, then use it. There's no point in jumping every time some new framework comes out. Most of them don't last. I have used React off and on since it came out, and I personally don't like how the syntax has changed. My personal website is React and doesn't have any browser history issues. Idk what's up with Facebook history management. I guess they just don't care very much because they're too busy trying to gobble up data.
Honestly this. You'll rebuild it in a few years anyways.
If you absolutely want your project to survive after 15 years...
Either web components using vanilla, or hell, just go jquery. Jquery is impossible to kill.
MorbiusJS
React is having the same problems Angular had, and jQuery had. New ECMAscript features make formerly complex things easier, and JS frameworks adapt.
Lots of solutions. But as more edge cases start to show up, they continue to add more and more little things that shape the language into more different variants.
Many of the changes are pretty good. But New devs will go, "Why are there 7 ways to do this React thing?" And that adds to the noise.
Again, that's not a React problem. It's just coding in general. PHP also had a "damn you ugly" phase. But unlike PHP, I don't think React (and most JS frameworks of today) will continue to be as popular as some hot new JS framework in 2027-2030 sweeps the landscape.
And PHP will still be chugging along. lol. It's weird that React syntax went from being fairly pretty, and structured, to looking like a plate of spaghetti. Usually languages and frameworks go the other direction.
Not at all knocking PHP.
I love how PHP 7 looks, and PHP 8 only continues to improve.
Totally agree. React is going backwards. Vue is so attractive. Heck, I'm even starting to rebuild react apps in Web components because react is getting weird.
This is not what I meant when I said we need more Mobile OS competition...
I literally said this to a friend just two days ago... And yes... Also not what I meant.
LMFAO, can't wait to see Adbuntu.
But thats just a derivative of Debiad.
Amazon can't make TVs or ereades without filling them to the brim with ads and spyware like the greedy shits they are, I dont want to think about how screwed up their OS would be. As much as I sneer at Microsoft and windows BS as a snobby Linux user I get the impression amazon would be way worse and make Ol Gatey boy say 'have a little class, would you?'
If it runs Amazon-Linux it won't take long for someone to build a Wamazon Linux distro with all the features and none of the crap.
If anything, it'll be a thing where amazon ends up close sourcing the code/parts that they create after forking whatever OS they decide. That, or they'll just close source the entire codebase 100% before release without any regard or repercussions.
I don't know what "features" Amazon would include that aren't somehow directly tied into their store and ease of shopping...aka "crap." It's not like they would build a better video/audio driver or something. It would all just be more...advertising and analytics, probably on a cheap platform as hardware has never been their largest source of income, to include Kindles (AWS is, last I checked). Strip those two out of their build and we have essentially an untouched kernel lol, at least that's how I see it happening.
Amazon out here thinking “could you imagine how much cheap garbage we could try to sell people if we can harvest literally all of the data directly?”
These tentacular megacorporations are a problem. Amazon is OK as a merchant, MS as an OS developer, Google as a search engine... If they do vertical integration the market is corrupted.
I'm really dumb. Can you expand on vertical integration and how it corrupts? I'm not sure what it is or why it's bad.
Vertical integration is when you control the entire product, in consumer electronics Apple is the gold standard; they make the software, hardware, and processors then integrate them into iPhones and macBooks. Tesla is a good example in the automotive space, their goal with the mega-factories is "raw materials in, cars out" and they work to build as many of the parts themselves as possible.
Alternately Microsoft just makes a good enough OS that runs on good enough hardware from commodity vendors, so you get good enough computers. Most auto makers buy good enough components from 2nd and 3rd tier suppliers and integrate them into good enough cars.
That is a great explanation of what vertical integration is. I am not sure I see why it is inherently bad.
I guess a large vertically integrated option could make it hard for alternatives to compete. That is more of a monopoly problem than a vertical integration issue though.
I do agree with interoperability requirements though. I see nothing wrong with Apple offering a fully vertically integrated product. The issue is when I cannot run my own OS on the hardware, my own apps on their OS, or interact with hardware from other vendors.
But that's exactly the problem. If the company is kind about it, or forced to play nice by effective regulation, there's no issue. But if there's no regulation and the company wants to, it tends towards monopolistic tendencies. And there's nothing that incentivizes a company to play nice forever, in fact they're incentivized to maximize profit. So Vertical Integration is bad without being checked.
Thanks for providing such a great answer!
Honestly I feel like you have microsoft backwards, in my experience their hardware is so so much better than their software
Lmao, they can have fun with that. I can't imagine it being anything decent. A mobile phone equivalent of a DVD Player OS lol
"Equivalent of a DVD player OS" is now my go-to insult for a bad OS.
I'm honoured lol
Good luck getting all the developers to rewrite their apps. The only reason you had any apps was because it was based on Android so it was little to no effort to port. Going plain ol' embedded Linux is basically the death knell of your developer story. Source: been there, had no third party apps, switched to Android
I'm sure they have thought of this, I wonder if they plan to use web apps, or Waydroid, or something else.
Also, there's a chance mobile Linux could benefit from sponsorships, contributions, etc
It's in the article. Web based stuff with REACT.
Edit: It's REACT Native. Just read the fucking article, people.
Oh man PWA as a replace to traditional apps have been promised for a while. On one hand the promise of write once run anywhere on the other less ability to lock down your app from your users (good for us, but not popular in the mobile space at the moment)
Firefox did it like 10 years ago. I think it's still going around under a different name in very low tier smart phones.
You’re likely thinking KaiOS. They are still contributing what is required under MPL-2.0 but the rest is proprietary. KaiOS 3.x finally got off of a browser from 2016 as the base, but very few have upgraded their apps to be compatible (the tweaks were minor) & others have used it as a reminder that they were still ‘supporting’ a platform like whoever is maintaining or using that WhatsApp thing for chat.
There’s also Capyloon built from B2G, but it’s still early on & is targeting touch phones, instead of feature phones.
It would be nice to see it around IMO since it’d just be another enhancement to progressive web applications & JavaScript is a better target than Java or Swift.
PWAs are great if they're written well, especially if they allow offline access.
There's platforms like React Native where the apps are native on each platform (they use native UI widgets). You can't just run the same code, but you can reuse probably 90-95% of code across platforms.
I will have to check that out!
Waydroid makes no sense since they are complaining people just sideload gapps.
You sure about that?
I already tried an Amazon Fire tablet, Amazon. No thanks. I returned it. I don't need a locked-down console that spies on me. Windows is well on its way to becoming that already.
I tried to get one since it was 30 bucks, so I'm not too surprised this is how they operated. They are locking down jindles real hard too. Probably going to make a lot of ewaste.
Surely this other monopoly will save us
It's a new management objective.
The only thing I care about in this is if they will contribute anything back to the open source ecosystem, be it code or anything else.
No chance. Amazon has a long history of using a ton of FOSS code on AWS and contributing fuck-all.
Absolutely hell no.
Probably because it is stupid simple to escape their ecosystem just by sideloading apps. They want to lock you down with their own OS.
if it's anything like amazon linux on ec2 i'll pass
What are your issues with it? Just curious - I've always found it to be an agreeable RHEL variant.
What are your issues with it? Just curious - I've always found it to be an agreeable RHEL variant.
note: you accidentally said the same thing twice
Did it post twice? I think there is a bug somewhere between lemmy clients. I see it happen from time to time.
probably, just wanted to inform you :)
I know it won't happen, but it'd be nice if Linux switched to GPLv3. That would at least help somewhat here
Won't ever happen, Linus is very much in favor of companies being able to use drm, when needed.
I kinda sorta agree because without it Linux wouldn't be able to do anything requiring dr.m
This is misleading, since regular desktop DRM would still obviously work, which is what the end user really cares about
I haven't looked into it for a while but iirc, certain DRM would require DRM kernel modules which is something that Linus explicitly wants to allow
The anti-tivoization clause in GPLv3 is what Linus is against specifically.
Why?
It is because of the tivo workaround to GPLv2. This was fixed in GPL v3.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization
Damn that sucks. I think Linux is too "free as in free beer" but hey there is BSD
How would BSD help in this situation? I'm not sure I follow.
Bsd is even less copyleft. Was meant as an even more "liberal" option
While I don't mind BSDs, that would lead to even worse outcomes though in my view. Companies wouldn't even have to release the source code, and they routinely don't.
What we need is more copyleft to ensure companies contribute back to the communities they leach from, not less.
Agree totally.
Nice try Amazon. I'm not falling for it.
The mixed blessing of GPLv2
blursing.
What are the chances this will not produce wrong doing?
This is the question. Nevertheless, can it be worst than Google?
Has the potential to be as bad as...
All I'm hearing is that we might be able to hack these devices and put full Linux on them.
All I'm hearing is a subscription to remove the adverts on the command line.
See, that's the situation where we just don't use them. I'm talking about wiping the original OS and putting something that's really FOSS in its place.
So they want more control over what people are able to install
I think it's even simpler than that: they want a share of Google's data, and more control about what ads they can show to their customers constantly. Their hardware platforms are okayish and sold for a quite low price, but they monetize it on ads.
Amazon's Fire devices already have this, they don't use Android with Google, they use the fully open source version. They can collect any data they want already
Exactly this. There's no nefarious motive to doing this, because Amazon can already do everything nefarious that they want to do with their current Android-based Fire OS.
I'm actually willing to take Amazon's reasoning at face value for this. They say that Android is too heavyweight and inflexible for embedded IoT devices, and that they want to build something lighter. This makes plenty of sense, and is indeed something that Google themselves have also said as justification for their move to Fuschia for their own embedded devices.
For Linux fans, it's probably a good thing that Amazon has chosen another Linux-based architecture rather than doing as Google are doing and moving off Linux to a different kernel.
hopefully they'll design some package manager incompatible with android at the most basic level - and then double down when it's proven to be a huge mistake. a good tick upwards for dev jobs, but the time for actual competition was over 10 years ago. this will fail miserably.
Most TV operating systems are already non-android linux based. They mostly just run webapps.
So basically
"Windows for freeloaders: "You are the product(tm)" edition."
So... Windows?
I'm confused, why not just continue with AOSP?
It already has most of the Google stuff stripped out and any remaining parts will be easy to replace in comparison to rebuilding and maintaining a much larger software stack while also simultaneously retaining compatibility with all the android apps already on their app store.
Curious if it'll be opensource and mobile linux distro. If Amazon gets into the mobile linux game, the mobile phone market might change radically.
You seem confused. Amazon is in the business of stealing open source project in order to sell them as AWS services, not making them.
Then complaining that the license changes and gaslighting the group they steal from.
You're right.
All I have to ask is why though? They already have access to skinned aosp and from there can(and do)quite a bit of tweaking on their own. Fireos has been a worse version of android for some time now and Im unsure what the benefit of making their own in house OS would be.
If it's a true GNU/Linux OS with compatibility with linux programs, then that would be kind of neat, and if it's open enough to let advanced users install flatpaks(I suspect it's going to be immutable so at least flatpaks would be nice) then that could be neat. Currently it's very easy to sideload on fireos devices and even install the play store in full so it's possible the end product could be more like the steamdeckOS which is very much a user friendly store front end with a power user true linux experience underneath.
That said, for some reason I suspect that they will be locking things down even more and its going to be one of those many user facing linux devices that's technically linux but very limited. Like a smart fridge interface or something. If this is the case then dropping android support would be a bad move. You lose easy/lazy portability to your store from developers who already have a product to sell and you lose many apps that already exist, and for power users you lose access to the many apps that can easily be side loaded like tachiyomi(though I imagine amazon would rather you buy from them than buy their subsidized $80 tablets to read pirated manga/comics and library books on libby)
But who knows if they actually do an OK job this could lead to a new wave of GNU compatible touch forward apps for the rest of us. Linux has gotten a lot better at touch forward design over the last 4 or 5 years on its own, but its still fairly rough.
I'm devastated they didn't choose to pick up webOS for this.
Well, they don't want a mobile Linux. This is going to be a minimalist, locked-down distro that does nothing more than start a webrenderer.
Nobody's gonna see the underlying Linux system.
It's kinda like how my car entertainment system is running Linux. You wouldn't know it if you don't read the license file that comes with it.
WebOS powers TVs now and, from the article, Amazon intends this replacement to cover their Fire tablet line. WebOS ticks all their boxes, especially since apps in Amazon's new flavor are intended to be delivered as React Native web apps.
Ugh I don't know which is worse. Next timeline, portal gun.
lets hope the devices can be rooted and we can have phosh or ubuntumobile or sth. like that flashed
As. Someone who is incredibly poor and use my current fire stick as a way to help me because of accessibility for my disabilities. Does anybody know if there's a alternative to Chromecast, fire stick or Roku that doesn't involve another computer (which I could get a raspberry pi or another computer dedicated to media, but government doesn't believe in giving disabled people enough for those things)
technically miracast: https://www.tcl.com/global/en/blog/tips/miracast-android-phone-to-the-living-room-tv#:~:text=Miracast%20is%20a%20wireless%20technology,or%20any%20other%20wireless%20connection.
Thanks, captain Obvious. :-D
Instead of subscribing to whatever streaming services you're using roku for, you could be streaming everything for free here: https://fmoviesz.to/
Use the money you save to buy a raspberry pi and wireless keyboard+mouse combo then you're off to the races.
I don't pay for my streaming services. My mom who is barley surviving too and others pay for it. Had no choice really. Sense I have zero income it's hard to save up. (been battling the government for nearly 6 year's to get SSI or anything to help )
You always have a choice when it comes to entertainment, especially digital.
Tell your mom who is barely surviving that she can stream more things for free than what she's getting with her subscriptions.
Spread the love.
If all the apps are in React Native I feel like they are gonna have a bad time. If you're not careful React Native apps have bad performance, and Fire TVs don't have a lot of performance to spare.
Save us phosh, or something similar..
Well i think it will help us to access more apps
For some reason I thought they had already made a nix OS
Fire OS, but it was just a fork of Android. There are mobile Linux distributions (like postmarketOS), but Fire wasn’t one of them.
They have, but it's more of a container development kind of thing.