- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show
pimeys ( @pimeys@lemmy.nauk.io ) 175•1 year agoNice! And they will probably differentiate from the competition by allowing GPL applications and sideloading, and having a total control for your privacy and no tracking, right?
Right?
Jagermo ( @Jagermo@feddit.de ) 48•1 year agoIn the beginning? Sure. Later? Well, you know, security and all, think of the kids!
Diplomjodler ( @Diplomjodler@feddit.de ) 12•1 year agoCheck out these great special offers in GPL applications and sideloading!
YⓄ乙 ( @yoz@aussie.zone ) English2•1 year agoLol
makingStuffForFun ( @makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml ) 76•1 year agoThey want to harvest the data, without Google’s control, and give none to Google.
Laser ( @Laser@feddit.de ) 18•1 year agoThat can be easily done with AOSP, to my knowledge there’s no Google stuff in there. Which is exactly what they’re using right now
mathemachristian[he] ( @mathemachristian@lemm.ee ) 16•1 year agoThere still is some google stuff in there, like for example phoning google servers to check internet connectivity among other stuff.
rentar42 ( @rentar42@kbin.social ) 21•1 year agoYes, but those minor traces are easy enough to remove, especially if you don’t care about being “ceritified” by Google (i.e. are not planning to run the Google services).
mathemachristian[he] ( @mathemachristian@lemm.ee ) 2•1 year agoRight but the topic was about google’s data harvesting and what I meant was that you can’t just grab any AOSP distribution if you want to minimize that, you need to pick one that replaces the parts that send data to google. LineageOS for example still phones google for quite a number of services.
As far as “easy to remove” goes, I think that’s kind of debatable if you want to do it in a way that’s sustainable long term considering the effort that goes into e.g. GrapheneOS or DivestOS.
Edit: here is a list of the kind of stuff you need to watch out for if you want to minimize the data sent to google
rentar42 ( @rentar42@kbin.social ) 6•1 year agoI was answering under the assumption/the context of of “Amazon wants to release an Android-based OS that doesn’t contact any of Googles services”.
So, when I said “easy enough to remove” that was relative to releasing any commercial OS based on AOSP, as in: this will be one of the smallest tasks involved in this whole venture.
They will need an (at least semi-automated) way to keep up with changes from upstream and still apply their own code-changes on top of that anyway and once that is set up, a small set of 10-ish 3-line patches is not a lot of effort. For an individual getting started and trying to keep that all up to do date individually it’s a bit more of an effort, granted.
The list you linked is very interesting, but I suspect that much of that isn’t in AOSP, my suspicion is that at most the things up to and excluding the Updater even exist in AOSP.
Auli ( @Auli@lemmy.ca ) English1•1 year agoYes but people are just sideloading GAPPS and escaping their ecosystem. Might even run custom launchers so you can’t experience their ads.
Dettweiler ( @Dettweiler42@lemmyonline.com ) English50•1 year agoI wonder if it’s going to be as terrible as their Fire OS.
TrivialBetaState ( @TrivialBetaState@sopuli.xyz ) 45•1 year agoThe author is exited but I’m not. I am not a big fan of corporations taking the free work of FOSS developers and turning it into a proprietary dystopia.
Blue and Orange ( @DeathWearsANecktie@lemm.ee ) 36•1 year agoA third competitor for Android and iOS would be amazing. But not if it’s Amazon…
oxjox ( @oxjox@lemmy.ml ) English15•1 year agoI just read an article about how they’re increasing advertising on their Fire TVs. Rest assured, an Amazon OS is an Advertising OS.
Although, from what I’ve gathered of public opinion online, there’s LOTS of people willing to forgo their privacy in exchange for free shit.
Edit: Oh…
They say they expect Vega to begin shipping on Fire TVs early next year.
And that article https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/after-luring-customers-with-low-prices-amazon-stuffs-fire-tvs-with-ads/
Tak ( @Tak@lemmy.ml ) 10•1 year agoAmazon would sell your DNA for 25 cents if they could.
DigitalDilemma ( @digdilem@lemmy.ml ) 5•1 year agoNo difference to Google then
Tak ( @Tak@lemmy.ml ) 4•1 year agoGoogle would sell it for 20 cents
Chemical Wonka ( @chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de ) English3•1 year agoApple would sell for 10 but would deny until death that it sold, and still convince you to believe that it didn’t sell.In addition to giving it a “cool” name like DNA Titanium Protection XDR or something like that,
Chemical Wonka ( @chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de ) English1•1 year agoOOnly if it is Libre Software. We are tired of proprietary rubbish
Patch ( @Patch@feddit.uk ) 2•1 year agoAndroid is already free software, and see how far that gets you. The kicker is that you’re tied into their services (with all the data harvesting, targeted advertising and monetisation that that involves).
Chemical Wonka ( @chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de ) English5•1 year agoI use GrapheneOS. Not all android is born equal
baconicsynergy ( @baconicsynergy@beehaw.org ) 3•1 year agoYes, because it is permissively open source, not only are these companies free to build what they want - we are entitled to that same right. We therefore created LineageOS and GrapheneOS, and its really great.
There’s also a lot of motivated people getting regular Linux distributions running on mobile devices too, so we have that as well
SatyrSack ( @SatyrSack@lemmy.one ) 5•1 year agoIf you’re tied to their non-free services, then its not free software.
JokeDeity ( @JokeDeity@lemm.ee ) 36•1 year agoLMFAO, can’t wait to see Adbuntu.
ddh ( @DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org ) English13•1 year agoBut thats just a derivative of Debiad.
Atemu ( @Atemu@lemmy.ml ) 33•1 year agoTL;DR Amazon is building a Linux distro that starts a chromium to run react native apps. Apparently, you need hundreds of people for that.
muelltonne ( @muelltonne@feddit.de ) 9•1 year agoTBH Amazon has a whole zoo of devices. Even if they are putting a small team of 2 or 3 people in charge for porting this to each device, they might end up with a few hundred people
DoucheBagMcSwag ( @DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 32•1 year agoOh so I won’t be able to sideload streaming APKs onto any new Amazon devices? Guess you can fucking keep your shit hardware then
Radioactive Radio ( @radioactiveradio@lemm.ee ) 3•1 year agoBut that would also mean you can sideload a whole another OS, maybe?
Locked boot loader says otherwise
Carlos Solís ( @csolisr@communities.azkware.net ) English1•1 year agoThere are two options here, given that the OS seems to rely heavily on React Native to work: having the streaming APKs converted to React Native apps, or simply use the web browser and PWAs.
OsrsNeedsF2P ( @OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml ) 30•1 year agoApps are going to be written in React Native
So despite the desire for one, Vega won’t be an Android-killer, won’t bring an influx of big name apps to benefit regular Linux distros, nor see Amazon do something crazy cool like create its own Linux tablet UI.
SokathHisEyesOpen ( @Anticorp@lemmy.ml ) English13•1 year agoApps are going to be written in React Native
Idk if I’m the only person who thinks this, but I feel like React has gotten worse over the last couple of major versions. Not only does the code look a lot messier when you use their new syntax, but the end result seems unreliable. Facebook is barely even usable now. Their history management is laughable, and it’ll drop you out of the site randomly when using the back buttons. I used to think React was really neat, but I’m not a big fan anymore. There’s too much re-engineering for problems that were solved decades ago.
Arthur Besse ( @cypherpunks@lemmy.ml ) 21•1 year agooh great, yet another platform that will use free software to restrict what people can do with their computing devices 🤮
how is this supposed to be a good thing? 🙄
KᑌᔕᕼIᗩ ( @Kushia@lemmy.ml ) English13•1 year agoThe only thing I care about in this is if they will contribute anything back to the open source ecosystem, be it code or anything else.
WFH ( @wfh@lemm.ee ) English13•1 year agoNo chance. Amazon has a long history of using a ton of FOSS code on AWS and contributing fuck-all.
NaoPb ( @NaoPb@eviltoast.org ) English13•1 year agoNice try Amazon. I’m not falling for it.
NutWrench ( @NutWrench@lemmy.ml ) 12•1 year agoI already tried an Amazon Fire tablet, Amazon. No thanks. I returned it. I don’t need a locked-down console that spies on me. Windows is well on its way to becoming that already.
Sparking ( @spark947@lemm.ee ) English3•1 year agoI tried to get one since it was 30 bucks, so I’m not too surprised this is how they operated. They are locking down jindles real hard too. Probably going to make a lot of ewaste.
katy ✨ ( @cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 11•1 year agoif it’s anything like amazon linux on ec2 i’ll pass
Sparking ( @spark947@lemm.ee ) English3•1 year agoWhat are your issues with it? Just curious - I’ve always found it to be an agreeable RHEL variant.
note: you accidentally said the same thing twice
Sparking ( @spark947@lemm.ee ) English2•1 year agoDid it post twice? I think there is a bug somewhere between lemmy clients. I see it happen from time to time.
probably, just wanted to inform you :)
Sparking ( @spark947@lemm.ee ) English3•1 year agoWhat are your issues with it? Just curious - I’ve always found it to be an agreeable RHEL variant.
pan_troglodytes ( @pan_troglodytes@programming.dev ) English10•1 year agohopefully they’ll design some package manager incompatible with android at the most basic level - and then double down when it’s proven to be a huge mistake. a good tick upwards for dev jobs, but the time for actual competition was over 10 years ago. this will fail miserably.