The Android Runtime On Chrome OS Makes Use Of Wayland

[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 .

[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]

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.)

[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.

[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.

[droidhacker]

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.

This doesn't apply, since the proposal doesn't involve running the google blobs. The idea here is to be able to download and install 3rd party applications in .apk files, and run THOSE.

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.

You *can* actually run a regular linux on an old smartphone. Most of the needed drivers *are* open source. A few drivers that you probably don't need won't be.

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.

And those "stores" are closed source, so they won't be included by your linux distro anyway.

[starshipeleven]

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.

You aren't thinking hard enough, Android ones plain beat them long ago, and it's not getting better.
-WPS office. Like its desktop counterpart it has (much) better compatibility with Office and is otherwise just as powerful as LO.
-As for messengers I've yet to see a Watsapp/telegram/whatever-the-fuck-else client for linux, at most they use your browser. Thanks Obama for that.
-Navigator applications.
-Random proprietary apps to see content or data (Netflix is the usual example but there are more niche ones like for example the app of my mobile carrier, I can just open that, type a payment code I bought from a physical store and reload my credit instead of going the old way of doing this with phone and dialpad or credit card or whatever).
-Ability to use ancient crappy proprietary apps too as Android keeps retrocompatibility, while for example it's like 2 years that fucking dropbox client cannot get its shit together and show an icon in the systray of KDE or GNOME because they dropped the legacy protocol.
So I'm forced to check its status by command line. Thankfully I have a drop-down terminal that appears at Alt+Z (yakuake), but....
-Documentation applications, that is for example an app that lists all the pinouts of all known ports in an easy-to-find system, a buttload of "whatever program or OS" cheatsheets, or contain all data from a bunch of 100-page pathfinder RPG manuals in an easy-to-lookup way. On Android there are zillions, on Linux? Nope. I need to download a PDF and use a search function or look at the index and then go to the page and scroll around to find stuff like in 90's. Or download a whole website and use my browser. Fuck Yeah.
-Automation applications, apps that automate reactions to conditions detected by the device, they basically do what I could theoretically get Linux to do too with a bunch of scripting, but saving me hours of reading obscure CLI stuff and trial-and-error as they have a simple drag-and-drop interface with logic blocks I assemble like with lego.
-Scientific calculators that also do equations or graphs without being full-blown math programs I need to learn to program like back at school. This for example. https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...m.saschaha.one
-Purpose-built calculators like for example the IP calculators needed to convert IPs in binary and do proper IPv4 subnetting (not terribly useful for most people, but that's an example, there are swarms of others for any field).
-Purpose-built tools of other sort, like for example an app to help you tune a guitar, or high-pitch noise generators that piss off animals.

-Applications that connect to a server through SSH and send pre-configured commands by just tapping a button. This is awesome although a subset of the following.

-A whole buttload of very simple applications doing things I would need to write a script for, like automatic rsync to remote server, or whatever. Oh sure there are also applications that read scripts for those that need more complex things and don't want to fire up a terminal to execute them.

-Another whole buttload of very simple applications that use the onboard browser to connect to a specific webpage and then show me a different interface, or filter the crap, or whatever (like TinfoilForFacebook, or webTube)

-another whole buttload of applications that deal with random connectivity stuff, like NFC stuff or QRcodes, or controlling stuff through bluetooth, or controlling a bluetooth serial dongle with bluetooth, or controlling a car debugging interface device with bluetooth (saves many $$$ if you know how to read most mundane errors and fix them yourself, or simply reset the dumb thing when it misfires instead of being forced to go to a mechanic).

-applications that deal with sensors (accelerometer, orientation, whatever) that you plain don't have on a PC. I 've used my phone as a level, and as a (very) crappy metal detector.

-A camera app that generates ascii pictures on the spot, because fuck yeah.

The only thing Android lacks are productivity programs for workstations, and that's because none would use a tablet for workstation use (No, photoshop for Android isn't the same as Photoshop for PC, lol).

2. Android compatibility layer waaay more easier to do than Windows one.

Yes, I was trying to point out what would happen if it just magically worked.

poof, people just install (pirated) windows software on linux, end of native linux applications apart from a few stalwarts.

3. WINE isn't a broken mess of hacks, where did you get it?

Ever tried to use it? You know it fails with more than half of the programs you might want to try? And that even if it works it might still fail later unpredictably?
Really, you know what PlayOnLinux does to make it look less crappy? It downloads and sandboxes each game/app with a specific version of wine or a patched wine or whatever that is known to work well with it.

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

The fact that you can install apps without root, that everything is sandboxed fully or to some extent, that I can let or deny for each specific app the access to specific system services or to network or other apps EASILY with a GUI, that if the system locks up I can reset it easily without pulling a live cd and reinstalling, the fact that it has a fucking touch interface that works, and the fact that it is actually using SELinux instead of just claiming to use it (i.e. it has configs to lock down stuff with it).

It's all stuff that Linux is eventually going to reach within the next 5 years (hopefully), point is that in these 5 years Android will have moved on.

[starshipeleven]

ghetto edit: "You aren't thinking hard enough, Android ones plain beat them long ago, and it's not getting better." should become:
"You aren't thinking hard enough, Android ones plain beat them long ago, and it's not getting better, for linux."

[Passso]

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.

That's a bit rude, several companies provide closed source softwares with professional support for Linux, even if it is not the main target (Oracle, Acronis etc.)
On the open source side there is a lot of Linux-only project (Frozen Bubble for example )

Or maybe you meant: NO COMMERCIAL COMPANY TARGETS DESKTOP LINUX ONLY

[starshipeleven]

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

... Windows is a broken mess of hacks itself, so any application trying to emulate it needs to be the same.

Yes I know, I wasn't giving them the fault of that, I was just stating the current status of the Wine project.