Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Buy an iPhone and you might get 4-5 years of official software updates. Android phones typically get 1-3 years of updates… if they get any updates at all. But there are ways to breathe new life into some older Android phones. If you can unlock the bootloader, you may be able to install a custom ROM like LineageOS and get unofficial software updates for a few more years.
The folks behind postmarketOS want to go even further: they're developing a Linux-based alternative to Android with the goal of providing up to 10 years of support for old smartphones.
That's the goal anyway. Right now the developers have only taken the first steps.
[...] At this point the developers behind postmarketOS are a long way from creating a fully functional OS that works on a single phone, let alone an operating system that will provide a decade of software updates for dozens of different devices. But it's a laudable goal that could help keep your aging phones useful (and secure) long after your phone maker stops pushing official updates.
(Score: 2) by VortexCortex on Friday August 18 2017, @01:14AM (3 children)
I get happy when I hear about Linux Based this or that, until I use it and find out it doesn't have a proper package-manager system for handling updates and adding alternative secure app store sources.
I mean, that shit exists in the Linux ecosystem. It's not like there aren't several flavors to choose from, but it's not in Google's interest to give you the ability to add secure 3rd party software sources.
I hope this gets rectified someday, but I'm not holding my breath. Even this story about an update focused OS has me cynical AF. It's not just devs fault. People in general don't give a shit about security or reliability. They'll complain about the lack of it but they certainly won't pay for it.
I pay for it. I stopped using that shit. I run Debian on my phone, even though it's not as good of an experience as I could have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @02:19AM
what phone are you using?
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday August 18 2017, @05:09AM
Forget about the bells and whistles, it doesn't even cover the basics. Like drivers that will compile and function.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Informative) by RamiK on Friday August 18 2017, @07:20AM
Try F-Droid [f-droid.org].
compiling...
(Score: 4, Informative) by NotSanguine on Friday August 18 2017, @01:23AM (4 children)
There may well be issues making this happen.
Case in point: I have an HTC OneMax [htc.com] which I purchased in early 2014.
It's a nice phone. With fingerprint and IR Blaster support too!
However, it runs Android 4.4 (KitKat) [android.com] and HTC will not be releasing any upgrades. As such, I'm left without the more granular permissions model and a host of features in later versions of Android.
I want those features and the more granular permissions model. So, I unlocked my phone and installed (what was then called Cyanogenmod) LineageOS [lineageos.org], only to find that fingerprint support was missing and IR Blaster functionality was piss poor.
I investigated and determined that the functionality wasn't built in to the LineageOS (or any other) custom ROM for the OneMax. I even set up a build VM and configured and built my own custom ROM. But no soap.
This is because HTC hasn't released documentation/API access to their fingerprint or IR Blaster hardware for the OneMax. Unless and until they do (fat chance!), fingerprint and IR blaster functionality will be nonexistent or minimally functional on any Android platform that's not the HTC stock.
The moral of the story is that similar issues will likely exist with a great many phones. It's a shame too, as my OneMax works great even after 3.5 years and will likely work just fine for years to come.
I can get basic functionality and even the latest Android version, with a variety of custom ROMs. But if I want support for the fingerprint scanner and IR Blaster, I'm out of luck.
I will almost certainly check out postmarketos and play around with it, assuming there's support for my processor family, but I imagine it won't have the vendor specific hardware support either.
More's the pity.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday August 18 2017, @02:15AM
I don't know why, but I'm hearing the "Linux/OSS support for video cards, wifi, etc" all over again.
How this evolved for desktop version of Linux is sorta known - I fear that the best that can happen would be the same binary blobs approach in smartphone area.
The worst that can happen? Better support will never happen: unlike the desktop/laptop hardware market, the interest of smartphone manufacturers is to (planned) obsolete a hardware as reasonable soon as possible - the lack of hardware/firmware spec is a feature for them, not a bug.
If you really want to continue to use an old smartphone, you'll have to trick yourself into thinking: "Who the hell needs fingerprint scanner anyway? Biometrics sensing potentially leads to biometrics collection, which is a bug, not a feature"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Friday August 18 2017, @04:30AM
That's true but it's not really a moral. The moral of the story is that swinehood hath no remedy. You bought a pig, you have a pig, you can put the pig in a dress and paint it with lipstick but it's still a pig and it's still going to wallow in the first mud puddle it finds.
The smartphones are pigs. They're defective by design, they aren't supported or supportable. They were not made for you, they were made for the phone company and the 'security' agencies, and nothing you can do will ever change that fact.
Trying to support this junk in any way whatsoever is a counterproductive waste of time.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday August 18 2017, @09:17AM (1 child)
Lucky you could unlock the bootloader at all. The next problem is as you discovered hardware support because API documentation is not a thing for these manufacturers.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday August 18 2017, @09:21AM
And the remedy is likely boycott and definitely some aggressive reverse engineering.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday August 18 2017, @01:30AM
There was CyanogenMod. Arguably the single best Android version in the world.
It was SO good, the rest of the industry had to devise a way to get them to an official company status so that they could manipulated and shut down. [androidauthority.com]
But it too suffered the same problem postmarketOS will suffer. Namely that the new features and software require newer hardware, and 10 years of phone hardware progress is a long time. CyanogenMod could not make your old phone do new tricks, and neither will postmarketOS. Your 10 year old linux hardware running the latest kernels is still running on 10 year old gear and its not getting any faster.
(Note: I'm not arguing that all the improvement in smartphone hardware is warranted, or that all the software we use on smart phones is needed. The Luddites among us just have to realize that ship has sailed.)
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday August 18 2017, @01:39AM (1 child)
There is a rule in Open Source, you don't need a complete product when you make a wide announcement but you need "plausibility." That is a vague sense in most potential developers that the project has demonstrated the concept is sound, there is a working implementation of some basic level of functionality, etc. This project only works tethered to a PC because it lacks a keyboard or any hardware support other than display and storage. Everything else is, maybe it partially works but it isn't usable yet. In other words you are expected to load it in the knowledge that you won't have a phone as such and by the time it progresses that hardware will be abandoned.
I say the hardware you dedicate to the project will end up abandoned because it is simply too ambitious. Picking a half dozen well understood and widely deployed (among developers i.e. older Nexus and such) devices and making them usable devices, then adding additional hardware as developers step up to do the work would have been much more "plausible." Launching a new "Open Source smart phone OS" in $current_year is plenty ambitious enough, announcing one that will also crack the nut of thousands of virtually undocumented handsets at the same time is folly.
(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Friday August 18 2017, @02:19AM
By the time it reaches enough maturity, the project will transit from PostMarketOS to MenoPauseOS, no matter the age of the developers initially involved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Ayn Anonymous on Friday August 18 2017, @03:01AM (6 children)
This approach make you still depend on a transport provider.
And no chance to get around this problem with old hardware.
Do you not get this ?
You want as much free and un-censor-able HF/VHF/UHF/... communication as possible.
Everything that can be done P2P, like TXTs over spontaneous instant Mesh LoRa networks.
Proper authenticated and encrypted of course.
Software-Defined-Radio (SDR) devises such as the LTE base station able https://myriadrf.org/projects/limesdr/ [myriadrf.org] LimeSDR
need be the starting point of your COMMUNICATOR devise.
No hardware update ever needed.
Just add software features all the time.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @05:15AM (5 children)
On my planet*, all radio frequencies are free for everyone to use. We all communicate over the planetary mesh network. There is no jamming or censorship.
* fictional
(Score: 2) by Ayn Anonymous on Friday August 18 2017, @06:57AM (4 children)
> On my planet*
Have space suit, willing to travel.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday August 18 2017, @09:24AM
Knows some company CEO in the states that have some hobby project called "Falcon" and "inter..transporter" ;-)
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Friday August 18 2017, @01:21PM (2 children)
There, FTFY
---
** That's so terribly wrong on so many levels, I can't even tell you how wrong it is. Clearly, you are a hitchhiker illiterate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday August 18 2017, @03:19PM (1 child)
Clearly, you're Heinlein illiterate. [wikipedia.org]
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday August 19 2017, @12:17AM
Clearly so. Thanks for pointing out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday August 18 2017, @08:02AM (3 children)
Heavy silicon isn't a service industry. SoC manufacturers want to keep selling new chips and are deliberately avoiding long-term support for consumer products by stopping blob releases after a couple of years. That means that even if you could maintain and secure a kernel and user-land for a decade, you'd still see security issues with the blobs themselves as the hardware EOLs.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday August 18 2017, @09:34AM (2 children)
Obviously a need for AI powered reverse engineering.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday August 18 2017, @06:51PM (1 child)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQh8dktQReI [youtube.com]
compiling...
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday August 19 2017, @08:40AM
Thanks, interesting! The presenter also seems good.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kaszz on Friday August 18 2017, @10:16AM
The problems any project that intend to put a free OS and applications on a computerphone ("smart"-phone) are:
(0) The microcontroller chip is usually some ARM Cortex-Ax that have their bootloader locked with a cryptographic key.
(1) Hardware lacks any documentation for things like 3D-acceleration so usually there will be no video or animation = dull.
(2) It takes too long time to develop any working software before the hardware becomes seriously outdated.
Another problem with time is that when your hardware breaks. The hardware that works with your software is no longer available and you may need to find a another computerphone of a different model which uses a different chip. Which means another development cycle. Which becomes hard if you have other obligations. One way around this would be a community to pool resources and target a specific model available internationally and cooperate on software.
Two solutions:
(0) Really clever reverse engineering tools for binary code. A paradigm shift is needed in efficiency.
(1) Computer phones at a low price that are designed to actually designed with chips that are publicly documented.
I think AI could be a match for (0) and setting up a phone with a computer that can brute test (not force) coding sequences and get efficiency by injecting code and evaluating results in a automated way.
There has been some attempts at (1) but they are not widespread and are hard to get (McAfee [soylentnews.org] and others [wikipedia.org]). They tend to be pricey too or very dull on features. Compatibility with over the desk accessories like heat cameras etc is also an issue.