Google’s new developer registration requirements could make it impossible for independent Android app stores like F-Droid to survive, the group behind the open-source repository has warned in a new blog post

    • entwine@programming.dev
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      2 days ago

      I don’t think that’s the right answer. Android isn’t a good operating system, it’s a great operating system for mobile. All these mobile Linux distro projects face a monumental challenge to reach parity with Android on almost any metric. Even if any one of them was backed by major investment, I don’t think they’ll ever succeed…and if they do, we’d just end up with multiple competing open source operating systems which just creates pointless fragmentation.

      Android is open source, but it’s held by an evil monopolist. The most effective path to freedom on mobile is legal/regulatory, and supporting efforts to break Google up. They’ve already been declared an illegal monopoly twice in two separate cases. The first one ended with a slap on the wrist, because the judge was a spineless coward. The second one is currently in the remedy phase, and hopefully will have a real impact.

    • FizzyOrange@programming.dev
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      2 days ago

      This is really naive. Mobile Linux is never going to happen for many reasons.

      It would be better to spend effort on lobbying regulators to prevent this move.

      • Sunshine (she/her)@piefed.social
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        2 days ago

        Naysayer whose about to be proven wrong. They said desktop Linux was never going to happen or that putting a man on the moon is impossible…

            • FizzyOrange@programming.dev
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              4 hours ago

              Not reliably though. I installed Kubuntu on a recent desktop just last week and had to revert it from Wayland back to X11 because every time it woke from sleep Plasmashell would crash and VSCode windows would be blank.

              Also it’s 4% (of desktop, 1.5% overall) according to statcounter. Which is admittedly not bad, but I wouldn’t say it’s enough to say it has “happened”.

              • Sunshine (she/her)@piefed.social
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                2 hours ago

                I mean every distro has a different experience.

                There are sources that show it’s higher than Statcounter’s estimate and many in the community consider that website to be inaccurate as there’s a lot of pcs under the unknown category since Linux folks tend to be more privacy focused. It’s big enough that developers are now factoring Linux support for projects.

        • BatmanAoD@programming.dev
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          1 day ago

          Desktop Linux is still an extremely niche userbase, even with SteamOS and Microsoft doing its absolute best to aggravate users.