The Android Runtime On Chrome OS Makes Use Of Wayland

[droidhacker]

If the people installs Android apps in Linux Desktop and mostly use them as there are FAR more quality apps than linux programs (apart from the workstation stuff and PC games anyway), you end up hurting Linux as developers will likely target Android "because it also runs on Linux".

Huh?
NOBODY TARGETS DESKTOP LINUX.
NOBODY AT ALL.
EVER.

So this won't make any difference. If anything, it will draw people TO desktop Linux, because now they can run their Android applications that they otherwise would need Android to run.

[starshipeleven]

1. They collect data about users for targeted advertising. The more details they can collect, the better their ad revenue so they work very hard to collect as much as they can. I'm not comfortable with any company having this much data about most citizens - especially when intelligence agencies in the US repeatedly violate the law, exceed their jurisdiction, and access information without cause.

Please note, they don't genuinely give a fuck about who you are (name and stuff) and who are your friends and where you live (more precisely than city name). They track you by asking the device its google ID or something, which is either in a cookie or in a special facility (for Android), and if you change that by tapping around in settings or if you delete cookies and/or block google tracking in your browser (kinda easy) you enjoy 100% stealth from them.
They gather data to profile you to send ads, which means knowing where you have been and what you bought, but not knowing who you are.
Even if NSA called Google they would have a hard time telling them any useful info to track you down (unless you posted such stuff yourself).

Google also does not push their device partners to release device drivers.

They cannot, and considering the reaction of OEMs (forking) it would not be good for anyone.

Instead, it's in the recycle bin because you can't do anything other than run an older version of Android with unpatched security vulnerabilities.

That's an issue with most embedded devices anyway, but 99.999% of the userbase does not really give a fuck.

They are ultimately as much an enemy of user freedom and privacy as Microsoft and Apple.

No, go try to disable tracking in Windows(PC or Mobile), or in OSX/iOS.
That's what makes the difference.
Yes they track stuff, but they don't take any special provision to make it hard for users to stop that.
Why? Because 99.99999999% of the usebase are dumb cows that cannot even understand the concept, so why piss off a handfew of power users anyway.

[ssokolow]

It's like if you magically turned Wine into what it is supposed to be instead of a broken mess of hacks. Poof, you can use all windows programs on Linux too.

It's not that Wine is a broken mess of hacks, it's that:

1. The Windows API is a MASSIVE surface to cover.

2. "API doesn't behave the way the docs say it should" happens more often than you'd expect

3. Windows includes a fairly large database of "If application X, simulate old bug Y" rules that Wine has to puzzle out if they want to support those apps and libraries.

4. Wine doesn't have a Microsoft-sized development team, so the developers tend to prioritize implementing things with the highest return-on-investment, leaving Wine full of "FIXME: This function isn't implemented yet because applications will run even if it's a no-op." and rendering glitches that are less important than trying to catch up to DirectX 11.

5. The Windows API isn't like the HTML DOM, where it's supposed to have more than one implementation, and it's also an example of monolithic design. That combination has historically encouraged Windows application developers to be a bit sloppy and so Wine has to figure out all of the weird, undocumented assumptions in the Win32 API implementation that applications have come to assume to be part of the spec.

(Just read The Old New Thing (a blog by Raymond Chen at Microsoft) if you want to see examples of the weird assumptions developers have made when they call up Microsoft's paid support. I recommend the history and tips/support post categories.)

[ssokolow]

As I understand it, the problem with running Android stuff on regular Linux without just running Android-x86 inside VirtualBox as I sometimes do for testing is that things like Binder open up massive security holes unless run with a very specific kernel and userland configuration to .

Ugh. Not sure how I let that get posted incomplete.

It should read "...to ensure that the holes can't actually be reached".

[ssokolow]

As I understand it, the problem with running Android stuff on regular Linux without just running Android-x86 inside VirtualBox as I sometimes do for testing is that things like Binder open up massive security holes unless run with a very specific kernel and userland configuration to .

[Hi-Angel]

What you wrote makes little sense, if at all: specifically for linux there's very little closed source projects that they're contributing to. I can name just a couple of extensions to Chromium, transforming it into Chrome.

Hello? Android apps are NOT open on average, are distributed through non-free channels, and they also have DRM and whatever.
All opensource foundations aren't going to do that with their own money.

Let's read together what I wrote.
"Perhaps you meant something Android specific, then the point of the discussion is that its ecosystem is divergent of GNU/Linux one, and I was wondering why to not bring it here."
divergent of GNU/Linux
divergent

You fail to understand what this means. Android has a well-established and vast ecosystem that can and probably will squash Linux's if given chance. It's like if you magically turned Wine into what it is supposed to be instead of a broken mess of hacks. Poof, you can use all windows programs on Linux too.

You're exaggerating.
1. Android ecosystem consist mostly of games. Everything else I can think of, are readers, drawing apps, messengers, and have its analogs on GNU/Linux.
2. Android compatibility layer waaay more easier to do than Windows one. Such a layer won't turn into very long and constantly evolving project like WINE is. See, Jolla even already fully functional one, though closed source.
3. WINE isn't a broken mess of hacks, where did you get it? Almost everything in WinAPI nicely match onto Linux one, with the exception of DirectX, which is indeed fundamentally different. And neither the code is bad, at least from a couple of times I was a need to look at it, to find out some warning/errors I got, everything was clean and well commented.

Any such distro would likely become "the lower layer" under what would basically be an Android system.

This is probably why you fail to understand.

I'm VERY interested in running Android on a PC, because it is an opensource system written from scratch keeping in mind most learned lessons from older OSes, and has an ecosystem that is vast as Windows's.

Hi, I'm one of them. My world domination plan is getting a Windows tablet or convertible and replace the OS with Android x86.
There are so many good reasons that it hurts.

May I ask you: what lessons Android learned, that GNU/Linux didn't?

If the people installs Android apps in Linux Desktop and mostly use them as there are FAR more quality apps than linux programs (apart from the workstation stuff and PC games anyway), you end up hurting Linux as developers will likely target Android "because it also runs on Linux".

What quality apps you're talking about? Everything I use everyday didn't have a better analog in Android. As I think, people mostly like Android because of games, which are not that better than GNU/Linux ones, rather just presented in a much bigger amount.

[GizmoChicken]

Sailfish OS is flashed over the top of Cyanogen Mod. For a while there they (the community porters porting the various Android devices to Sailfish) went back and forth on what solution to come up with to run Android apps - Arc, Gentroid, Shaslik, and I think there was the one from Maemo but it only ran certain types of apps were all considered.

Do you recall if they gave any consideration to OpenMobile's ACL? (See http://www.openmobileww.com.) And if they did, what were the reasons for not working with them?

I'll just add the, at one time, OpenMobile was working closely with Samsung to run Android apps on Samsung's Tizen OS phones. But I don't know if that was/is an exclusive relationship, or if OpenMobile is available to work with others.

[Michael_S]

As an aside, I'm a big fan of Google because their modus operandi results in a near ideal combination of free (they also have a ton a libre projects), quality services. They are also (nearly?) unique in offering a way out of their ecosystem while keeping a lot of your data (Checkouts---it's not offered for every service, but, again, I've not seen any other major service provider offer the like).

If you value your freedom and privacy, Google's business model has some fundamental problems:

1. They collect data about users for targeted advertising. The more details they can collect, the better their ad revenue so they work very hard to collect as much as they can. I'm not comfortable with any company having this much data about most citizens - especially when intelligence agencies in the US repeatedly violate the law, exceed their jurisdiction, and access information without cause.

2. Google releases useful software as open source, but they keep their core services as proprietary to maintain their market advantage and facilitate data collection. Google also does not push their device partners to release device drivers. Hundreds of millions of older Android phones are too slow to match the latest Samsung Galaxy whatever but faster than a Raspberry Pi. If the full source code was available, you could install Android 5, Debian, or whatever you want on it and repurpose it as part of a baby monitoring system or a toy web server or whatever you want. Instead, it's in the recycle bin because you can't do anything other than run an older version of Android with unpatched security vulnerabilities.

3. The Android App Store and Chrome Web Store facilitate the sale and distribution of proprietary applications. So in addition to Google's own data collection and privacy violations and DRM, you have those things from thousands of other pieces of software too.

Now to be clear, I understand that Google exists to make profits and I understand why 97% of the population considers these violations of their freedoms acceptable in return for access to the services Google provides. But you can't call Google a company with "an ideal combination of free". They are ultimately as much an enemy of user freedom and privacy as Microsoft and Apple.

[aironeous]

Here is exton's website if you are interested in trying any of his work out. http://www.exton.se/

[aironeous]

Sailfish OS is flashed over the top of Cyanogen Mod. For a while there they (the community porters porting the various Android devices to Sailfish) went back and forth on what solution to come up with to run Android apps - Arc, Gentroid, Shaslik, and I think there was the one from Maemo but it only ran certain types of apps were all considered. After running into various barriers they decided to just get the underlying CM running in a window. They got that running on a few devices. I used to read their IRC logs until I think about 4 months ago maybe a little longer. At the time I think they had 3 devices running it. They were calling it Android in a window.

If you want to run Android apps on your laptop you can go the superbook way. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...nto-a-laptop-f

or you can try this http://news.softpedia.com/news/andex...c-507935.shtml