The Android Runtime On Chrome OS Makes Use Of Wayland

[liam]

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.

I don't care if Google has this data about me. It is in there interest to do EVERYTHING IN THEIR POWER TO KEEP THAT INFO TO THEMSELVES. If people can't trust them to keep their data to themselves, then people stop using their services. Similarly, if that data leaks, they lose one of their best resources.

Android is a TINY part of the software for which they are responsible, and even there they do a pretty good job. As for their services being "proprietary": if you were the master of Google, how would you go about changing that?
I do agree that I wish google would push the component companies into contributing their drivers/firmware to mainline.
Google does contribute to open firmware projects (like that openbios/uefi replacement whose name escapes me), and used the nouveau drm for their pixel c tablet.

BTW, I thought I said MY IDEAL.

Calling them an "enemy of user freedom" seems...a bit too intensely ideological. I'm just going to say that I'm not aware of another service provider that does offers the same combinations of benefits, which I've previously mentioned, as Google.

[unixfan2001]

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

In order to be really considered fully backwards compatible to Windows, it also needs to come with an insanely broken compiler chain and a set of developers who couldn't figure out how to actually build anything on it...

[starshipeleven]

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

I didn't say exclusively targeting, and there is a bunch of applications that offer a linux version too without being made by FSF.
Consider that with the new technologies of Snap and Flatpack the ones making an application for linux can target all distros instead of just 'buntus or RHEL.

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.

Wrong, this will quickly turn the underlying linux system into nothing more than a "lower layer" to use applications made for Android, for most mass-users.

People will not be using "desktop linux", they will be using Android PC.

Really is it so hard to grasp that what makes or breaks an OS isn't the OS itself but the ecosystem of applications?

[starshipeleven]

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.

Same issue as with Microsoft compatibility layer for apk.
Most of the users of this will be kiddies pirating games, as most people won't run around the net to download apks and install them.

Also, you don't let anyone pay for paid apps, which is a big issue for those that want them.

For now it is a beta so they focus on getting it to work at all, but don't think they want to keep paid apps android-only.

[Passso]

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

You just changed my average day into a "cool pic party".

[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.

[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]

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."

[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.

[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.