Hi James, > I used to use Gajim as a desktop client but I had so many issues with it > (poor image support; partial last-message-correction; incomplete scrollback > in main chat; etc.)
You should really give another go to Gajim. Although it is still far from Conversations, it has improved a lot in terms of reliability in the last couple of years. As of version 1.2.1, with the latest Url image preview and OMEMO plugins, those issues that you mention are no longer there. Since your goal is to use GNU/Linux in the long run, I guess it would be best to invest your time into apps that can run natively. > What happened to Replicant 9? Development just migrated from Replicant 9 to Replicant 10 (based on LineageOS 17). No work was lost. What had already been accomplished for Replicant 9 works on Replicant 10, and many things improved. > It's been at least a couple of years that the Replicant project has been > focusing on Replicant 9 at the exclusion of everything else Well, actually work has been going on many fronts at the same time, not just Replicant 9/10. For instance, Replicant 6.0 0004 RC2 was released just a few days ago[1]. > Sorry for being disheartened about Replicant itself Ahaha no problem at all. Actually, many Replicant contributors themselves would rather use GNU/Linux on their phones. We agree with you on the fact that Android is built with things like time-to-market and obsolescence in mind. Actually, one of the ways through which Replicant is trying to extend the lifetime of smartphones, is to re-use as many components from GNU/Linux on Android as possible[2]. The reason we feel that Replicant is still important has mostly to do with the lack of proper mobile apps for GNU/Linux. Mobile apps must take into account several things that most desktop apps disregard, like: - high density screens and big fingers; - metered, laggy and intermitent internet connections; - limited power supply (battery), with the accompanying aggressive schedulers. There is a really big portfolio of free software apps on F-Droid which take all of these into account (because they're built with the Android SDK). Unfortunately this is unmatched by anything we have so far on GNU/Linux. But things are definitely improving and we do hope that someday Replicant will become useless. Now, onto the main thing here, the Anbox freedom review. > It seems that the reason that it's in contrib rather than main is the > dependency on some core Android components: “ >> This package needs Android kernel modules and rootfs image, see >> /usr/share/doc/anbox/README.Debian for information. > ” – https://packages.Debian.org/stretch-backports/anbox > Could these components be replaced with Replicant's freedom-reviewed versions? The required kernel modules (binder and ashmem) are both available by default on Debian and should be pretty safe freedom-wise. The only missing component is the Android image. A new target could indeed be added into Replicant in order to output an image compatible with Anbox. However this would be a really hard work and a cumbersome approach. It would imply merging, applying and sometimes re-doing all Anbox work on top of Replicant, while making sure it does not break the devices supported by Replicant. This approach becomes even less desirable in light of the following: Anbox is just a "minimal customized" version of AOSP[3]. They use most AOSP components from upstream, and just add small modifications into some of them. As far as I know, the Replicant project did not found any freedom issues in AOSP itself so far. The only exception being WebView which, due to being built out of Chromium, *may* have some freedom issues[4]. Most freedom issues that Replicant found come from vendor code that is added to the devices later[5][6]. As such, the Anbox Android image bypasses all these freedom issues. The only thing left to do is to check the Anbox's modifications on top of AOSP and verify they are indeed free. As GNUtoo pointed out, the list of Anbox modified AOSP repos can be looked-up through their manifest[7]. The repos with modifications are: https://github.com/anbox/platform_art https://github.com/anbox/platform_bionic https://github.com/anbox/platform_frameworks_av https://github.com/anbox/platform_frameworks_base https://github.com/anbox/platform_frameworks_native https://github.com/anbox/platform_frameworks_opt_net_wifi https://github.com/anbox/platform_hardware_libhardware https://github.com/anbox/platform_hardware_libhardware_legacy https://github.com/anbox/platform_system_core https://github.com/anbox/platform_system_netd https://github.com/anbox/platform_system_vold https://github.com/anbox/device_anbox I took a quick look at these and found no red flags. Regards, dllud References: ----------- [1] https://lists.osuosl.org/pipermail/replicant/2020-July/002932.html [2] https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Presentations#Extending-the-lifetime-of-smartphones-with-Replicant [3] https://github.com/anbox/anbox/blob/master/docs/build-android.md [4] https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Presentations#The-Chromium-mess-meets-Android [5] https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/GalaxySIIGTI9100#Freedom-and-privacysecurity-issues [6] https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/GalaxyS3I9300PrivacySecurityEvaluation [7] https://github.com/anbox/platform_manifests/blob/anbox/default.xml
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