GrapheneOSSep 20, 2025
@AlexanderMars @tomjennings @aleksandrayulia @[email protected] Android-based operating systems including GrapheneOS are Linux distributions. These are closed source hardware with closed source firmware, poor security and extremely bad security. The hardware is very low-end and outdated too, but is being sold at a premium based on leading people to believe these are private and open devices when they're not those things. The devices objectively have awful security but that's not the end of what's wrong.
Show threadJawshSep 21, 2025
@GrapheneOS you know what they meant when mentioning the Linux ecosystem and mobile. Desktop Linux, devices being mainlined, etc.
@AlexanderMars @tomjennings @aleksandrayulia
Show threadGrapheneOSSep 21, 2025
@jawsh @AlexanderMars @tomjennings @aleksandrayulia Linux doesn't mean using the desktop software stack that's also available for FreeBSD and other platforms. It means using Linux, which Android does. They should say what they really mean which is bringing systemd, glibc and GNOME to mobile rather than Linux. Linux is already the norm on mobile and if people care so passionately about bringing systemd and GNOME to it, that's fine, but they should say what they're actually doing rather than that.
Show threadGrapheneOS
@jawsh @AlexanderMars @tomjennings @aleksandrayulia Android works fine on top of mainline Linux kernels and drivers. Mainline drivers have their own issues since there's often no proper maintenance. A driver being upstream doesn't mean that it has proper development, maintenance and testing. Drivers regularly break in new Linux kernel releases and there's always ongoing work addressing hardware-specific regressions including basic functionality not working. The same goes for Linux LTS branches.
Sep 21, 2025 at 10:43pmWeb
Show threadDanielSep 22, 2025
@GrapheneOS @[email protected] @AlexanderMars @tomjennings @aleksandrayulia unfortunately a Linux PC is less driver (or equivalent) dependent than a phone with all of the blobs directly implemented in the OS with much less hardware standardisation unfortunately. So if the "driver" is not open source, but just a blob, it make the upstream process dependent of the supplier. What can we do to improve that.