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postmarketOS Pursues A Linux-Based, LTS OS For Android Phones (liliputing.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Liliputing:
Buy an iPhone and you might get 4-5 years of official software updates. Android phones typically get 1-3 years of updates... if they get any updates at all. But there are ways to breathe new life into some older Android phones. If you can unlock the bootloader, you may be able to install a custom ROM like LineageOS and get unofficial software updates for a few more years. The folks behind postmarketOS want to go even further: they're developing a Linux-based alternative to Android with the goal of providing up to 10 years of support for old smartphones...
Right now postmarketOS is a touch-friendly operating system based on Alpine Linux that runs on a handful of devices including the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Google Nexus 4, 5, and 7 (2012), and several other Samsung, HTC, LG, Motorola, and Sony smartphones. There are also ports for some non-Android phones such as the Nokia N900 and work-in-progress builds for the BlackBerry Bolt Touch 9900 and Jolla Phone. Note that when I say the operating system runs on those devices, I basically mean it boots. Some phones only have network access via a USB cable, for instance. None of the devices can actually be used to make phone calls. But here's the cool thing: the developers are hoping to create a single kernel that works with all supported devices, which means that postmarketOS would work a lot like a desktop operating system, allowing you to install the same OS on any smartphone with the proper hardware.
One postmarketOS developer complains that Android's architecture "is based on forking (one might as well say copy-pasting) the entire code-base for each and every device and Android version. And then working on that independent, basically instantly incompatible version. Especially adding device-specific drivers plays an important role... Here is the solution: Bend an existing Linux distribution to run on smartphones. Apply all necessary changes as small patches and upstream them, where it makes sense."
Right now postmarketOS is a touch-friendly operating system based on Alpine Linux that runs on a handful of devices including the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Google Nexus 4, 5, and 7 (2012), and several other Samsung, HTC, LG, Motorola, and Sony smartphones. There are also ports for some non-Android phones such as the Nokia N900 and work-in-progress builds for the BlackBerry Bolt Touch 9900 and Jolla Phone. Note that when I say the operating system runs on those devices, I basically mean it boots. Some phones only have network access via a USB cable, for instance. None of the devices can actually be used to make phone calls. But here's the cool thing: the developers are hoping to create a single kernel that works with all supported devices, which means that postmarketOS would work a lot like a desktop operating system, allowing you to install the same OS on any smartphone with the proper hardware.
One postmarketOS developer complains that Android's architecture "is based on forking (one might as well say copy-pasting) the entire code-base for each and every device and Android version. And then working on that independent, basically instantly incompatible version. Especially adding device-specific drivers plays an important role... Here is the solution: Bend an existing Linux distribution to run on smartphones. Apply all necessary changes as small patches and upstream them, where it makes sense."
Android and iOS mobile apps have three changes over desktop.
1. Designed for a touch interface.
2. Designed to auto-save and switch to lower power or background off mode as directed by the OS and then transparently resume when returned to the foreground. I don't know how well iOS uses that feature for its apps. Earlier versions of Androids were pretty awful at it, and programs like "Advanced Task Killer" were needed to keep the phone from grinding to a crawl. Android 5.x and newer uses it effectively, you can have a 2GB device and switch between forty apps rapidly without manually closing any of them, and the phone keeps right on going at full speed because the OS pauses and closes things in the background. Similar APIs could be written for Linux and Windows, but nobody has (or they have but they're ignored by 98% of Windows and Linux application developers).
3. Designed so that untrusted apps can be installed with restricted permissions. This kind of thing has always been possible on Windows and especially on Linux (or other Unix flavors) but sandboxes like AppImage, Snappy, and Flatpak didn't have the same focus when iOS and Android launched as they do today.
So you're understating the value iOS and Android bring to mobile and overstating how easy it would be to do similar things on traditional Linux or Windows.
I'm not defending the walled gardens, the locked bootloaders, or the proprietary drivers and firmware required for everything from the GPS to the cell modems to the wifi chips. Those are all anti-freedom, anti-privacy, anti-consumer. But the idea of a popular smartphone operating system running plain Linux or Windows 7 is even more of an impossible dream than Replicant.us, WebOS, Meego, etc...
One thing that a tech people don't realize is that not everyone wants the latest phone every year to begin with.
I'm a tech person and I don't want the latest phone every year. What I want is a phone that meets my needs. I have that now, and will keep using it for however many years that it continues to meet my needs. A lot, hopefully.
Changing phones is disruptive. The less I have to do it, the better.