Mastodawn

@cassidy #GTK apps are leagues better of an experience than their counterpart Android apps. The only exception is maybe #Moshidon

Would be nice if #Android peeps could discover the glory of our ecosystem.

However, I still maintain that the biggest advantage of #MobileLinux is avoiding Google's OS builtin spyware and data exfiltration. Ditching the OS is paramount. Discovering GTK apps is a great way to help get there.

@cassidy also maybe someone more experienced with #GTK can answer this...would it be possible to use #GTK apps as #webapps via the #broadway rendering backend?

@Lehmanator @cassidy Strongly disagree on the 'experience' comparing GTK to Android apps. It heavily matters on the apps you use, and is completely subjective.

See: my experience. GTK apps seem much simpler or less complex than Qt apps, for example. GNOME Calendar? It can only read from my WebDAV (Radicale v3), while Google Calendar on my phone can R/W, same for Google Contacts. GNOME's Contacts didn't even support importing or syncing WebDAV, telling me to do it through GNOME Software. GNOME(org) apps in particular are quite basic and lacking in general.

What about video editing? Pitivi is great for simple-ish stuff, but Kdenlive is where it's at when it comes to the 'heavy' stuff.

Maps? Organic Maps, Google Maps, any Android map app has more features than GNOME Maps.

DataBackup, App Manager, Google Translate, the Google app itself with Lens, Assistant and Gemini support/integrations, to name a few, are still strongly above any Linux-based apps that do the same thing, way above GTK-based apps as well.

@Lehmanator @cassidy App stores? Flathub is nice, sure, but compare it to Google Play, heck even third-party / alternative app stores such as Aptoide, Galaxy Apps, Huawei AppMarket.

Flathub barely has reviews, and they don't show up on the web, only in the software, and even that is hit or miss. Not to mention the constant memory hogging and leaks - 200+MB of RAM just to load images and run in the background? Is that a joke?

And how many 'true' GTK apps are among the first 5 pages of the Popular ranking of Flathub? Without including GTK integrations for browsers, Electron apps, and without the 'basic' ones? Don't kid yourself, if you want people to adopt Linux on mobile, you need a very, very strong software AND hardware integration, with many great apps to serve as alternatives for Android ones. No proper alternative to, or support for apps like Gboard, Google, Revolt (or any banking app), mobile games, etc.

@Lehmanator @cassidy And all of this is from someone that likes GNOME/GTK. I'd choose GTK over Qt any day in terms of design, because it reminds me of Material You, which imo is superb, and somehow, one of the best things to come out of Google in years, without having been pillaged, stripped or abandoned like all the rest of the stuff.

But if you want to target mobile, you need to have stuff to show off, to compare to native apps your average Joe is used to, and we don't really much to show. GNOME Contacts is miserable, Calendar is lacking in features even compared to Proton or Tuta Calendar, Camera is lacking, no native Linux app to compare to Google Photos besides Immich (web app) and maybe an image viewer like gThumb, as it's half decent for photo editing.

We have a long way to go, that's all. Sorry for the mini-rant, I need sleep now.

@alextecplayz @cassidy hmm I suppose I see your point.

I think all those GNOME apps sync properly with my #Nextcloud account (cant test rn because I need to fix a borked upgrade), which is common to GNOME Online Accounts, do you login to #Radicale w/ GOA or in the apps themselves?

GNOME apps are def barebones. My comparison is mostly to #FOSS #Android apps, as I haven't used Google's apps since ~2019.

@Lehmanator @cassidy Well, if you haven't used Google's apps since 2019, you're in for a surprise.

Google Photos is pretty much excellent when it comes to photo editing, it even has some AI features (they're expectedly half-arsed, 'AI' after all isn't there yet). Google Assistant was thrown to the curb in favour of Gemini which has integrations with most big Google apps like YouTube, Maps, Gmail, Flights.

As for WebDAV, I've added the account through GNOME Software, then installed GNOME Contacts and tried to sync my contacts. Calendar could only read the calendar, but not edit it, massively disappointing.

@alextecplayz @cassidy Is there a single decent video editor on Android?

- For simple edits, I use [Footage](https://flathub.org/apps/io.gitlab.adhami3310.Footage), which is decent enough (mostly for editing Smash clips pulled from my Switch) on #LinuxMobile

- GNOME Maps for sure is worse than #OrganicMaps, but I don't use my #OnePlus6T on #GnomeMobile as a daily driver yet.

- [Dialect](https://dialectapp.org) works about as well as #LibreTranslate (the best FOSS app I've used on Android)

Install Footage on Linux | Flathub

Polish your videos

Flathub - Apps for Linux

@Lehmanator Video editor? Oh yes, I've used KineMaster and PowerDirector in the past (2016+), and they were, and still are, very poweful and Pitivi can't hold a candle to them in terms of both features and user-friendlyness. I can't recount the times I had to struggle to overlay text on Pitivi, where in KM and PD you just select and it works. I could probably install either of the apps on my 55 year-old parents' phones, and in less than 15 minutes they'd be pros. I can't do the same with Pitivi.

Your average Joe doesn't tinker. So the apps MUST "just. work." Straight up.

@alextecplayz @cassidy #GoogleLens is one of the only features I miss since switching to #GrapheneOS. Very useful with no #FOSS alternatives on any platform afaik. I suppose this could be done with an extension for #GnomeShell, OCR, image classification models, & reverse image search.

#GoogleAssistant too, but there's already a decent stack with #FasterWhisper & #Wyoming with #HomeAssistant. I'd like to build a #GTK client to integrate with this on #Linux systems.

@alextecplayz @cassidy
- In my usage #DejaVuBackup & #PikaBackups both work very well. #Celeste too for syncing files with #Nextcloud

- Everything #AppManager does is possible w/ #Flatseal, #GnomeSoftware, & opening #flatpak manifests or specific to #Android activities, which are loosely analogous to #DBus services, which #DSpy works well for.

- Never used #Gemini, but #Alpaca works super well with communicating w/ #LLMs via #Ollama. Would make for an awesome #GNOME #SearchProvider

@alextecplayz @cassidy I appreciate you pointing this out because doing this comparison as an exercise is useful to point out where the #FOSS, #GNOME, & #MobileLinux ecosystems are lacking. It's v conducive to generating ideas that would push the platform forward.

@alextecplayz @cassidy Similarly useful for this would be daily driving #MobileLinux...which I've been meaning to work towards.

Haven't tested my #pmos #OnePlus6T with a SIM card yet, but afaik the camera is the only thing that's broken that I cannot go without. But I'd be okay with lugging around my #GrapheneOS #Pixel as a backup when necessary.

I have a second 6T for testing #MobileNixOS, but I left it at my friend's place on a trip. Once I get it back, I'll daily drive the other one.