On 2025-11-14 at 12:54 +0000, dllud via Replicant wrote: > Our current approach is to try to support the PinePhone (which has 4G) > in Replicant. > https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/PinePhonev1x > But the project is delayed.
Here in Switzerland 3G support is ending soon as well and I ordered a
PinePhone a few days ago.
Will dual boot with Replicant be easily supported? I expect that I will
hate whatever GNU/Linux distribution that thing ships with less than
Android; likely much less, and anyway I will probably start at least
replacing pieces and compiling applications by hand for the parts I care
about, as I do on all my computers. And yet Android compatibility might
come in handy once in a while, or I could sometimes experiment with
Replicant and test.
I mean no offence to the Replicant developers who did a lot, but I ended
up really hating Android. The Galaxy Note II gifted to me by my
now-wife in 2021 is the first and only smartphone I have ever used for
now; I installed Replicant on it and used it daily as my only phone
since then, crashes and all.
After using computers for almost forty years and GNU/Linux for
twenty-five, even ignoring Replicant bugs, I consider Android to be by
far the most limited, clunky, frustratingly inflexible operating system
I have ever seen. Even rooted it resists user customisation: running a
stupid shell script at bootup is difficult; cross-compiling from Java is
a nightmare. There is almost nothing of what makes Unix beautiful. I
do not think it is the lack of documentation: these systems really do
very little and are fundamentally tied to the graphical user interface
-- which means no scriptability, no extensibility, no means of
combination [1]. Did I miss something fundamental? These systems
should “feel” like general-purpose computers given how powerful the
hardware is, but they absolutely do not.
And they tell me ios is even less flexible.
I am baffled by how other people can actually use those systems with any
pleasure. I think that from now on I will stick with some phone running
Unix as far as any acceptably free-software solution exists, maybe
Librem in the future; but unfortunately this horrible Android has
mind share, so having a free-software version of it is important: your
work is important. Thanks for that.
[1] I speak of “combination” in this sense:
https://ageinghacker.net/talks/#ghm-2022-language .
--
Luca Saiu https://ageinghacker.net
GNU Jitter https://www.gnu.org/software/jitter
GNU epsilon https://www.gnu.org/software/epsilon
pEp-mail-tool https://codeberg.org/pEp/pEp-mail-tool
I support everyone's freedom of mocking any opinion or belief, no
matter how deeply held, with open disrespect and the same unrelented
enthusiasm of a toddler who has just learned the word "poo".
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