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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."
The phone market today seems akin to the PC Market back in the early 90's where they are just starting to settle down on what people want and what can be made, but are we there yet?
early 1980 PC's were made with a bunch of processors and OS's they were some systems, that were compatible with each other, but they were considered ripoffs and often would fall into legal problems.
Late 1990 Phones. Were made with a bunch of different systems and every new model was like a new phone.
late 1980 PC's Battle lines are being drawn. Apple vs. IBM (What we now call a PC) Amiga holding on.
Early 2000 Phones. Black Berry, Microsoft Mobile, Palm were fighting for the smart phone market, while Nokia, Samsung, LG, Motorola were fighting for the consumer market.
Early 1990 The IBM PC won with its compatibles with Microsoft being the true victor as with all the Hardware in fighting, Microsoft was expanding the winning side, to be entrenched in the next battle.
Late 2000 phones. the iPhone came out, and Android was under serious development. Apple and Google have been playing behind the scenes of the smart phone war realizing the smaller Consumer Models were not going to make it.
Late 1990 The PC were no longer connected to IBM and all the IBM Compatibles were fighting for the better selling PC. Microsoft really holding onto the market share
Early 2010 Phones, Apple is the dominate player and Google putting a good push on Android, However the phone makers are trying to make their phones better selling then each other.
Early 2000 PC's Are more or less getting boring to the market Apple had a resurgence for this decade, due to the Halo effect of its iPod line and Microsoft not doing much with XP and delays on the new OS. But in terms of PC's we got use to using them more as a general tool, then something cool and a status symbol.
Late 2010 Phones. Well this is where we are at now. Are we getting ready for a life of boring mobile devices where we don't really care about them any more, they are just a tool, where LTS makes a lot of sense because we won't be needed to update our phones any longer barring failure or damage.
As I type this on my 6 year old Thinkpad, which still is fast and seems to do things just as good as the newer PC's barring high end video. Where before I was getting a new PC every 3 or 4 years to keep up with the times, now it just a tool, I could get a smaller lighter and faster PC.... But what for? It does what I want and I am not having any problems keeping the software up to date, or finding new software for it.
Is the mobile market getting to this point or are their going to be some twist and turns that will make LTS OS a wast of time, because we will be using out of date and usless phones.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
this is basically what a very small team behind handhelds.org did with the openembedded project. bitbake - the build system behind openembedded - became an extremely powerful tool as a result, empowering that small team and part-time contributors to quite literally manage the build for something mad like over a hundred different hand-held devices... including some smartphones.
i don't exactly know the full history but i *think* that most of the team behind handhelds.org were employees of Compaq, and the employees weren't too happy that all of Compaq's PDAs ran Wince[ouch]. when Compaq lost interest in PDAs (even the ones with phone capability) thanks to the huge success of HTC's very first few phones like the Blueangel and Universal (a brilliant clamshell microlaptop in effect) it wasn't long before handhelds.org went down the tubes as well... which is a real serious pity. a *lot* of critical history - and source code - went down with it. i vaguely recall there being some sort of fight over the domain name... gaah this was all over 12 years ago now so it's all a bit fuzzy.
anyway, various... idiots since.... have lambasted bitbake and the entire openembedded project as quotes being too complex quotes and have come up with quotes simpler quotes systems such as buildroot. not realising that the complexity behind openembedded and bitbake is *there for a good reason*. along similar lines you end up with even more idiotic things like forking an entire distribution on a per-manufacturer basis, just as the OA describes.
the point is: it's a great idea for a small team to offer support for a wide range of devices, but they'll need appropriate infrastructure to do it. bitbake - and its ability to hybrid-combine python and shell-code with regular expression pattern-matching to manage toolchain downloading, toolchain compiling, patches, configuration, cross-compiling, cross-compiling using qemu to run the compilation and configuration "native" (yes, really! bitbake can run a native compiler via a qemu headless configuration in order to handle the proper cross-compiling of an entire OS!), parallel builds, cacheing and a bucket-load more, would be a good starting point for them. anything else - once you get into the details - quickly becomes a total nightmare, and that's what things like buildroot's developers totally fail to understand.
What company? It's one guy with a donate page, which might pay for the cost of hosting.
The rest is community-driven, where contributors are encouraged to port the base system to their device.
Agreed. My work phone is Samsung, still original 4.4.1 never received an update EVER. Still vulnerable to StageFright. Thanks for the update you promised Samsuck. Personal phone is Nexus 5x. Update monthly.
As far as I understand it, LineageOS has individual images for each hardware skew. This PostmarketOS project has the idealistic but possibly impractical goal of having one core universal package and then one unique package per hardware skew.
So in terms of architecture, PostmarketOS would be an improvement. But it's not clear to me that it could ever be done.
One thing that a tech people don't realize is that not everyone wants the latest phone every year to begin with. A large portion of the market will never used ANY of the advanced features that Google tries to add with every generation of phone. I do repair and salvage of these various devices, and one of the greats complains I hear is that NO ONE want's these new features that Google keeps pushing with each version of their hardware. None of them give a damn to integrate ANYTHING with their google accounts and mostly just want something that'll play video. And none of them I speak to EVER buy anything on the Play store.
Hell, right now I'm sitting on a 50 pound box of older phones from the past 5 years. I don't do repair of these things a primary job, but even then I've got such a back log of spares that I'm mostly just chucking a good half of what I get because I've got too many. Even the place in town that does this for a business has the same problem.
Yeah that's one thing I didn't think to mention, but that is a valid point and a real problem for the mobile industry. Constantly having to relearn the ins and outs of an OS is frustrating as HELL and puts off a lot of the consumer market.
To go along with that line of thought; as I said I don't do phone repair as a primary job. Just as a second job since i have a lot of skill in electronics repair. No, my primary job up until very recently was a local route Truck driver. And there is nothing more INFURIATING than relying on a phone for you job only to have it brick itself from a screwed up forced update. Which is why I 100% abandoned the use my ANY smart phone for any job specific task. It is NOT worth the hassle.
Why not just fork and develop Firefox OS? It actually works, is based on Linux, CSS and HTML5 and has actually been deployed by a handful of phone manufacturers, primarily in India. I don't even think it's truly dead, as a couple of small Indian firms appear to still be developing it.
Sure, it was a waste of time for Mozilla but no need to reinvent the wheel.