Two mobile operating systems currently comprise nearly 100% of the global smartphone market. Building one is hard, and for most phone makers, there are
Migrating from Android to a possible “NothingOS” has the same energy as migrating from Twitter to BlueSky:
You’re escaping from one techbro’s grubby hands just to fall into another’s.
He’s gonna do the same shady shit eventually. It’s the way all these companies operate, if don’t go FOSS you ain’t escaping anythin’
If you think about the tech stack for what an OS is, I don’t think we need to work on the lower parts of the stack […] but we should work on innovating the user experience, because operating systems haven’t really changed for 40 years. […] these devices have so much information on us […] but they don’t leverage any of that information to make the experience any better.
Now this, I wholeheartedly agree.
I feel there’s a looooot of room to try new, innovative, potentially even wacky user UIs and experiences, Sailfish OS and Nintype/Minuum being my favorite examples of a existing concept being done with completely fresh UX, HOWEVER
Not having to work on the lower part of the stack??? What???
If we’re talking about x86, sure I guess, throw a Linux kernel on it and build whatever on top but ARM, specially on phones, looks like a compete hellscape! (to a outsider like me)
Ask any Linux phone Dev how easy it was to get the hardware going. Their heads will likely start spinning.
Could you build a new, modern mobile entirely from components with Mainline Linux support? And did this support come from the manufacturer or was it hundreds of hours of painful reverse engineering from the community?
New phone without having to work on the lower parts of the stack??? Dunno bout that man.
Migrating from Android to a possible “NothingOS” has the same energy as migrating from Twitter to BlueSky:
You’re escaping from one techbro’s grubby hands just to fall into another’s.
He’s gonna do the same shady shit eventually. It’s the way all these companies operate, if don’t go FOSS you ain’t escaping anythin’
Addendum:
Now this, I wholeheartedly agree.
I feel there’s a looooot of room to try new, innovative, potentially even wacky user UIs and experiences, Sailfish OS and Nintype/Minuum being my favorite examples of a existing concept being done with completely fresh UX, HOWEVER
Not having to work on the lower part of the stack??? What???
If we’re talking about x86, sure I guess, throw a Linux kernel on it and build whatever on top but ARM, specially on phones, looks like a compete hellscape! (to a outsider like me)
Ask any Linux phone Dev how easy it was to get the hardware going. Their heads will likely start spinning.
Could you build a new, modern mobile entirely from components with Mainline Linux support? And did this support come from the manufacturer or was it hundreds of hours of painful reverse engineering from the community?
New phone without having to work on the lower parts of the stack??? Dunno bout that man.