All I'm hearing is that we might be able to hack these devices and put full Linux on them.
this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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hopefully they'll design some package manager incompatible with android at the most basic level - and then double down when it's proven to be a huge mistake. a good tick upwards for dev jobs, but the time for actual competition was over 10 years ago. this will fail miserably.
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Most TV operating systems are already non-android linux based. They mostly just run webapps.
Another not-Linux Linux based operating system. Can't wait to argue same as with Android and ChromeOS that this is not like "real" desktop Linux looks.
We really should stick to calling it GNU or something.
Definitely not GNU, that's even worse than calling it Linux. We should simply call it by it's own name, Vega or whatever it ends up being. Android is Android. ChromeOS is ChromeOS. We can acknowledge they utilize the Linux kernel and some other open source code, and as such give some back. But they are not what we refer to as Linux, as that is a spirit as much as if not more than it is a collection of software.
I completely agree.
An OS is defined by its ecosystem ( applications, users, and philosophy ). Everybody knows what an actual Linux distribution is and the kinds of desktop environments ( eg. GNOME, KDE, XFCE ) and applications that Linux implies ( eg. Docker, Podman, Emacs, GIMP, OBS, LibreOffice ). It does not matter if the C library is Glibc or MUSL. It does not matter if things were compiled with GCC or Clang. It does not matter who wrote the version of ‘ls’ installed. It is not confusing when somebody tells you they are using “Linux” on the desktop, the server, or the cloud. You know what they mean.
Saying GNU / Linux does not add any clarity in my view and could be confusing or wrong. If you use Alpine in the cloud, you are using Linux ( very clear ) but not GNU / Linux. If you are using Void on your desktop, you are using Linux ( but maybe not Glibc ). Is one version of Void Linux called GNU / Linux and the other one isn’t? It is not a useful label other than politically.
Android and ChromeOS use the Linux kernel but are not Linux distributions by any useful use of that term. If I switch you from Void to Arch, you could use it for hours without noticing the change. You might not notice until you went to update software. If I moved you to Android or ChromeOS, you would certainly notice right away. In some ways, Windows is a more similar environment than Android is.
If I say, “I use Linux”, you do not have to ask me if I mean Android or if I have a Chromebook. People that don’t “know” that these other systems use the Linux kernel would never make that mistake. The “confusion” is artificial.
As a non-Linux example, is there anybody that is confused that the XBox uses the Windows kernel? Even if I say “I game on Windows”, would you honestly wonder if I meant XBox? Or would it be super obvious that I meant on a PC?
If I say, “I game on Linux”, you again know that I do not mean Android or ChromeOS ( unless I am purposely trying to be arrogant or funny about it ). You might ask if I am using a Stream Deck but, guess what, the Deck also boots into KDE. It really is Linux.
My Nest thermometer and my IP camera both run the Linux kernel as well. Do we need a special name for them? No. Nobody is truthfully confused by that either. Would we call them GNU / Linux even if they use Glibc? I hope not. So what does GNU / Linux even refer to outside of the political meaning?
So basically
"Windows for freeloaders: "You are the product(tm)" edition."
So... Windows?
I'm confused, why not just continue with AOSP?
It already has most of the Google stuff stripped out and any remaining parts will be easy to replace in comparison to rebuilding and maintaining a much larger software stack while also simultaneously retaining compatibility with all the android apps already on their app store.
They want to throw this OS on smart home/automative/IoT type things. Android works in these situations, but it's not necessarily ideal. Thing was designed for phones. It's likely the only phone firmware in history that's also been put in cars, espresso makers, washer/dryers, microwaves, and TV's.
I completely get why the first waves of smart devices tended to just use Android -- it's easy to develop on and "lightweight enough" that the tradeoffs involved were generally acceptable. But those qualities only take you so far. Companies moving on to develop their own in-house OS's for all these devices was the obvious next step.
Curious if it'll be opensource and mobile linux distro. If Amazon gets into the mobile linux game, the mobile phone market might change radically.
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All I have to ask is why though? They already have access to skinned aosp and from there can(and do)quite a bit of tweaking on their own. Fireos has been a worse version of android for some time now and Im unsure what the benefit of making their own in house OS would be.
If it's a true GNU/Linux OS with compatibility with linux programs, then that would be kind of neat, and if it's open enough to let advanced users install flatpaks(I suspect it's going to be immutable so at least flatpaks would be nice) then that could be neat. Currently it's very easy to sideload on fireos devices and even install the play store in full so it's possible the end product could be more like the steamdeckOS which is very much a user friendly store front end with a power user true linux experience underneath.
That said, for some reason I suspect that they will be locking things down even more and its going to be one of those many user facing linux devices that's technically linux but very limited. Like a smart fridge interface or something. If this is the case then dropping android support would be a bad move. You lose easy/lazy portability to your store from developers who already have a product to sell and you lose many apps that already exist, and for power users you lose access to the many apps that can easily be side loaded like tachiyomi(though I imagine amazon would rather you buy from them than buy their subsidized $80 tablets to read pirated manga/comics and library books on libby)
But who knows if they actually do an OK job this could lead to a new wave of GNU compatible touch forward apps for the rest of us. Linux has gotten a lot better at touch forward design over the last 4 or 5 years on its own, but its still fairly rough.
Ugh I don't know which is worse. Next timeline, portal gun.
lets hope the devices can be rooted and we can have phosh or ubuntumobile or sth. like that flashed