Mastodawn

wgrav Jan 21, 2025

My #Lenovo #tablet updated overnight and put it into a race condition with the "Smart Launcher".

Basically, the app that draws the screen with the buttons to launch apps when you open the tablet would start and crash over and over and make the tablet unusable.

The work around was to wait for it to put a dialog box on the screen where it complains that it crashes and go into the app settings from there and then delete all data related to the app. That gets the tablet half un-borked. Not usable, but can navigate around better between crashes. Then you have to go to Settings > Apps and using the ellipsis at the top right delete all app settings.

Of course, once this was done I barely recognized the home screen of my tablet. I had to go through and uninstall/disable all the scammy/spammy privacy invasive garbage that a #Google tablet delivers as part of the default experience.

Searching around the Internet apparently this has been part of the 'Lenovo Experience' campaign that has been rolling for several weeks. Well known issue that having your device customized at all will lead to this scenario.

I don't mind Lenovo's version of #Android. It's pretty close to vanilla Android compared to something that is a total horror show like the #Samsung delivered version of Android.

WE DESPERATELY NEED MAINSTREAM(-ish) #LINUX / #BSD #FOSS PHONES AND TABLETS!

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lemgandi Jan 21, 2025

@chris Will Lineage ( https://lineageos.org/ ) help in the meantime? I've used it on my phones with some success.

If I could buy a fairphone ( https://www.fairphone.com/nl ) I would, but they're available only in Europe.

LineageOS – LineageOS Android Distribution

LineageOS Android Distribution

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Root Moose Jan 21, 2025

@lemgandi I've dabbled with Lineage, Graphene, and Murena/e over the years. Never really stuck because of the ability for these versions of Android to keep current with hardware. And new stuff is getting more and more locked down and binary blob dependent so options for workable hardware is decreasing it seems.

That said, hardware is pretty much stagnant mostly. Everything has decent enough battery, screen, and camera now and you can ignore "AI".

I may revisit Graphene but I'd need to buy a new (to me) device to do it.

None of these devices really support much in the way of tablets - and that is where I personally would get the most benefit. Trying to find a ~500g, ~10" tablet with reasonable battery life that can be re-imaged with something decent is hard. I have high hopes for new Intel/AMD stuff in the pipeline but we'll see.

Of course, I have the privilege of somewhat knowing how this stuff works and how to work around but non-technical users... today asking them to go to a custom rom isn't realistic IMO.

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lemgandi Jan 21, 2025

@chris Well put, alas. I really like the Amazon 7" Tablet running Fire Nexus I'm typing this on, but the exploit to install it was a giant PITA and it's really showing its age now. DMCA 1201 is why we can't have nice things.