Linux-on-mobile folks: I hope you’re paying attention to the new Linux VM stuff in Android 15.
I genuinely think one of the most important approaches to building the Linux mobile ecosystem is to enable people to get (and fall in love with!) our app ecosystem on the phone *and OS* they already use.
It’s critical to build the whole experience (like we see with GNOME and PostmarketOS), but we need to meet people where they are, first.
#Linux #Android #LinuxMobile #OpenSource #GNOME #postmarketOS
@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.
@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.
Cassidy James 
Sam Lehman 
AlexTECPlayz