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Google is using the boiling frog method to exclude power users and custom ROMS from android.
A new feature in Android 8.0 Oreo, called "Rollback Protection" and included in the "Verified Boot" changes, will prevent a device from booting should it be rolled back to an earlier firmware. The detailed information is here.
As it rejects an image if its "rollback index" is inferior than the one in "tamper evident storage", any attempts to install a previous version of the official, signed ROM will make the device unbootable. Much like iOS (without the rollback grace period) or the extinct Lumias. It is explained in the recommended boot workflow and notes below, together with some other "smart" ideas.
Now, this might seem like a good idea at first, but let's just just imagine this on a PC. It would mean no easy roll back from windows 10 to 7 after a forced installation, and doing that or installing linux would mean a unreasonably complex bootloader unlocking, with all your data wiped. Add safetynet to the mix, and you would also be blocked from watching netflix or accessing your banking sites if you dared to install linux or rollback windows.
To add insult to injury, unlocked devices will stop booting for at least 10 seconds to show some paternalist message on how unlocking is bad for your health - "If the device has a screen and buttons (for example if it's a phone) the warning is to be shown for at least 10 seconds before the boot process continues."
Now, and knowing that most if not all android bootloaders have vulnerabilities/backdoors, how can this be defended, even with the "security/think of the children" approach? This has no advantages other than making it hard for users to install ROMs or to revert to a previous official ROM to restore missing functionality.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday September 06 2017, @09:44PM (1 child)
So?? If this thing is free and open as they say, you could install OpenBSD if you wanted. Assuming, OpenBSD would support the hardware in the first place. I'm more of a BSD guy, and headless 99.9% of the time, but isn't Gnome just a window manager? It can't be replaced with KDE or something else?
This is a PHONE. Desktop window managers and environments are not going to be usable on it.
Granted, KDE was (and might still be) working on a different version of Plasma specifically for phones, but I haven't heard anything about it in a long time and I doubt it's ready for prime-time.
And all the applications you use on a desktop machine won't work on it. None of them have UIs designed for small 5" touchscreens.
I get your gripe, but the real question is the radio is unlocked and can it be used by a different distro?
The only thing that does is enable development. There is simply no software ecosystem in existence currently that would make this a practical device.
If all you needed to do was load up a current desktop Linux distro, you can do that right now with a Raspberry Pi. There's a reason this is a hard problem: the device has a fundamentally different form factor requiring completely a different UI, which means all-new software is needed, not just in the display/window manager stuff (remember too, phones don't have "windows", every app is full-screen) but for all the applications that run on it too. The only thing that such devices can share with desktop machines are the non-UI internals.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday September 06 2017, @09:49PM
No, it is a COMPUTER with a PHONE RADIO. At least they market it that way from what I've seen in their literature so far. Your point about the UIs not being designed is indeed an issue that needs to be addresses. As you stated though, it does enable development. I'm at least hopeful that the community would come up with something.
I'm so ridiculously comfortable on the command line versus a UI, that I would take a headless phone and use it all damn day long. Screw the UI and the walled garden platforms. Just give me free hardware and a command line and I can make do.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.