Google's new 'Aluminium OS' project brings Android to PC
androidauthority.comNo one tech-savvy wants this. We are already sick of Google's Android lockdowns on mobile phones, and now coming after laptops and desktops?
What's that going to be like? Will developers have to beg to have control over devices they own? Will we be locked down on the store and have to manually install "unverified" software? Will I be able to take screenshots at will on MY computer, or get a black screen because Google decides so?
The list can go on and on ad nauseam. Given what Google has done on the mobile space I have zero interest in having the same autocratic experience to be replicated on the last type of devices (PCs and laptops) where we can really have true open choices and alternatives. Screw them.
> Will I be able to take screenshots at will on MY computer, or get a black screen because Google decides so?
It's not Google, it's the application vendor that decides so. And as annoying as I find it when I want to screenshot something from my bank app, the reasons behind that feature being available are pretty good.
> Given what Google has done on the mobile space
You seem to be missing the nuance that as annoying as some of those Google provided Android hoops are, they are necessary for the wider security posture of the average user (and there are more average users than techies that need to install random .apks) and, very very importantly, Google allow you to skip most of them if you know what you're doing. Considering the competition in the mobile space, it really isn't even close in terms of openness.
"it's application vendors who hanged the users, google just gave them the rope" isn't the good excuse you think it is
Are we really comparing bank applications forbidding screenshots and controls of their apps to lower the risk of certain types of exploits/attacks with hanging people?
No, we are using this thing called a metaphor. What's being compared is the relationship between the hangman and the ropemaker, and the relationship between the app developer and the OS vendor. There is no comparison between taking screenshots and hanging people.
> they are necessary for the wider security posture of the average user
who's security will be raped as soon as another app is installed (hello Meta).
I guess this is more meant as an replacement for Chrome OS? That one is already pretty locked down, so switching to Android does not change much.
ChromeOS is much more close to regular Linux systems than Android. The vendors had support Linux properly to get into ChromeOS. This allowed google go support ChromeOS laptops for very long period. Also, a a side-effect Chrome OS contractors got to contribute a lot into mainline Linux.
Android Otoh let's vendors get away with shipping binaries that work once on one Android version, making upgrades pain. And thus Android devices are generally stuck with the build they released with.
The Google decision to drop ChromeOS in favour of Android is going is going to be a huge disaster for Linux ecosystem.
I always assumed Chrome OS was some kind of Android build anyway, but apparently not
ChromeOS has been converging on Android for a while but never quite gets there. They are asymptotic ;-)
It rather looks like Aluminium OS is the intended solution.
I don't see any problem with it being "locked down", in the sense that it doesn't sound any worse than Chrome OS or Android.
The open question is whether any open source release will happen worth a damn.
> I don't see any problem with it being "locked down", in the sense that it doesn't sound any worse than Chrome OS or Android.
I think the problem is that it further normalizes computers where users don't have the final say. The more normarized systems like that are, the more likely app developers (and even websites, if something like web environment integrity were to be normalized) are to lock out users on systems that aren't so restricted.
I wish I didn't have to care what kind of computers most people use, but in reality, it matters what's popular.
GNu/Linux will never gain adoption on desktop because its fundamentally flawed: no stable abi, too many window manager/distro/libc/various dependency version targets, and also insufficient security model for random apps.
If you want a mainstream open source desktop OS, it will be Android.
The question is who is more evil. Microsoft or Google and my pick is Microsoft.
PC is one of the last remaining platforms where you don't have to choose one evil or the other. There are multiple other fair options which all are honestly better at this point, despite the incessant complaints by those who are never satisfied by them. The only thing needed to lose that refuge as well is for the consumers to simply ignore all those options and concede the market to a new overlord. Soon, we will have another locked down platform under a duopoly.
This is the utterly predictable path it's going to go down, if the consumers continue to behave like this. Yet, some people are very uncomfortable when this is mentioned. I wonder who's so excited about yet another walled platform.
The era of "tech-savvy" adults is going to have been limited to later Gen X and millenials. My zoomer brother and sister in law are no more tech-savvy than my boomer parents. It's all locked down, for their own good.
> It's all locked down, for their own good.
Even while neglecting how silly it is to judge two entire generations as incompetent, I assure you that 'they' here aren't your zoomer brother and SIL or your boomer parents. If you think that someone is benevolently locking all these devices and platforms down to protect your kin from themselves, you are painfully behind in your understanding of capitalism. Please find a new dead horse to beat instead of this thoroughly refuted justification. I don't understand why people fail to recognize these patterns of exploitation and do something about it, despite the repeated abuse they endure. Is it Stockholm syndrome?
We're now in a mixed computing era that is shaping the future of computing: Ignoring niche OSes (eg consumer electronics such as TVs/dishwashers/etc)
- PC (Windows, Linux, macOS) - Mobile (to simplify, this includes phones, watches and ongoing AR / AI progress based around Android and iOS with some Meta)
Mobile already "broke" the rules, and we have locked down devices with simplified "app stores" and more complex off-the-market OSes since each device is a unique SoC combination many times with closed-sourced blobs.
Web did a major change for desktop (which I guess part of the assumption for ChromeOS). but there are still some scenarios where native APIs are needed.
On the other hand, current Desktop OS market is a mess, Windows is focusing on intrusive features and enforcing user account, Apple is all about "notarizing" and making desktop similar to mobile, and Linux is diverged with multiple variants.
I really hope for opinionated Linux distribution promoted by a big player (I've always hoped Adobe or someone in the right size will understand the need and their ability to get enough common products to it).
Having said that, Linux did great advancement over the years. Many companies including closed source already have some support and also gaming made great advancement.
Anyway, Making a "locked os" won't do much. So unless Google plans to shoot their own leg, they'll need to make it open enough.
Steam OS might get a boost soon with their new hardware.
If you, like me, were wondering why Google thinks it needs another operating system (ChromeOS, Android, Fuchsia - which is presumably dead (edit/turns out it's not/edit)) or where it fits in with the "stack":
> ChromeOS and Aluminium Operating System (ALOS) Commercial devices across all form factors (e.g. laptops, detachables, tablets, and boxes) and tiers (e.g., Chromebook, Chromebook Plus, AL Entry, AL Mass Premium, and AL Premium) that meets the needs of users and the business.
Sounds like ChromeOS is Android for entry/thin and similar PC's and Aluminum is more upmarket/premium.
Also, to be honest, this doesn't seem like "a new OS" to me, but rather a shift in Android's roadmap and an associated rebrand to try to push ChromeOS/Android upmarket to try and expand their "Devices with Gemini/Google AI as a first-class service/product" footprint beyond cell phones.
Given the push for arm in the consumer PC space, I can kinda see why google is renewing efforts here even if you set the AI stuff aside.
Let's be honest, nobody is asking for android based desktops, google just wants to normalize rent seeking 30% of all software sales.
For all the complaints against Windows, legit or not, I can't envision a world in which I want the world's largest advertiser to run my desktop OS.
Pixels and Chromebooks have never had any ads. Windows 11 is plastered with them.
They already gateway everything through Google servers, especially Chromebooks.
Pixels literally have unremovable Google ad right on the home screen. The search bar. Just because it has additional functionality, doesn't mean it's not an ad.
You can trivially install another launcher without that search bar and disable nearly all bundled apps on Pixels. Show me how easy it is to remove all the ads and bloatware from Windows.
Note how you said "disable" :) . That's because it is impossible to remove bloatware from Android, praise be Google. I also have Chrome disabled on my phone for many years, but it is there still.
And regarding Windows, first I want to tell that I'm not a fan of recent MS trends too. Second - I personally never had a single ad on my Win10 and current Win11, so I wouldn't know how to remove those :) . And third - to remove bloatware just uninstall it from the Programs and Features, like OneDrive or Office. LLM can be disabled in Settings. Some bloatware will remain due to deep integration, but that's the same issue as with Google or Apple. For instance I may not want to see Stocks app on iOS, but that's not my choice to make apparently :) .
What benefit would there be to uninstalling those bundled apps entirely vs disabling them? It's a nice goal to aspire to, sure, but does it really matter?
That's hilarious. I never see ads on my Windows 11 PC.
Are you unaware that others do have issues with advertising in Windows 11?
https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/how-... https://windowsforum.com/threads/how-to-disable-annoying-ads... https://www.howtogeek.com/windows-11-wont-show-any-ads-if-yo...
The start menu cluster, incessant pushing of Edge and OneDrive are the reasons I installed Linux after about a decade of not using desktop Linux outside of work. I am genuinely shocked and impressed how clean and snappy the experience is (Arch + KDE Plasma). Thanks to Valve, Windows games run just fine, too. Not going back...
I’m on Linux too, but I still have a Windows 11 box…the reasons I still have it are just about gone but I’ve been too lazy to change it.
I never see nags about Edge. Basically you can avoid those by never opening Edge.
OneDrive can be fully uninstalled (this wasn’t always the case). It legit doesn’t even show up when I search for it anymore.
The start menu cluster, I mean, it’s not the best interface on the planet, but the annoying recommendations can be easily removed…or you can just replace it entirely.
I know this is a user choice and therefore way less egregious than being forced to endure it on the Microsoft side, but perhaps it’s even worth pointing out that running Steam on Linux as a respite from commercialization and ads of Windows is…not really accomplishing that goal. And you don’t really avoid the browser wars by switching to Linux either, as many of the top distributions have Firefox+Google Search as their default configuration.
How!? Mine is full of ads, and that's after buying a "Pro" copy of Windows, registry hacks, declining every ToS I can find, rejecting all the "free" trials, etc.
Do you have an enterprise install managed on a Windows domain where your admin has disabled all this stuff by any chance?
Where? I don't see any other than the nagging to update settings after larger updates (couple times a year).
The installer has 3 free trials in it (photos sync, xbox, office 365), and then re-runs that part of the installer periodically.
The start menu shows sponsored articles in it IIRC, although this was something I turned off as soon as I could. It also pushes apps like Candy Crush.
The lock screen has ads literally "dotted" around, again pushing cloud services etc.
I keep being prompted to turn on Copilot, and essentially the only options are "Yes" or "Not yet". Opt-outs aren't respected.
I don't use Edge but the OS keeps advertising Edge, keeps telling me in various places and at various times that Edge is better and that Chrome is dangerous.
These are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head, but it's truly pervasive throughout the whole product. Even just looking through Settings it's not hard to find upsells.
I made my usb install media with Rufus and I it had some option to remove a bunch of frustrating behavior (this option was on by default). For instance it allowed me to create a local account. That seems to have completely removed advertising you mentioned. I had a lot of it in windows 10. Maybe the person you are replying to used Rufus (which is recommended if you want to make the install media from Linux or Mac) and didn’t realize it made changes.
Hasn't MS removed the option to create a local-only account in Win11 and is forcing everyone to sign up for a Microsoft account?
They completely removed it from the installer GUI, yes.
But local-only Windows 11 still works with minimal interference. The most common ways are creating the install medium with Rufus (which has an option to create a local-only installation medium), or by manually dropping into the Windows Command Prompt during setup and running a single command ("ms-cxh:localonly")
> The installer has 3 free trials in it (photos sync, xbox, office 365), and then re-runs that part of the installer periodically.
This is all I see and everything I disabled/uninstalled was done from the Windows settings UI (Windows 11 Pro).
> Even just looking through Settings it's not hard to find upsells.
I guess I see this too? Just a little box saying to get Microsoft 365 or install OneDrive on the home page of the settings UI. There's basically nothing of value there though so it's easily missed.
and despite the fact you can install AND uninstall numerous web browsers, for some reason Edge is (supposedly) built into the OS and core functionality and it can't be removed - and is the default app for countless file types.
It actually is built in as WebView2. It's like that so apps can use web views without shipping their own browser (Electron) and then it is kept up to date with the system.
Internet Explorer (MSHTML) also still lives on in Windows 11 because older software depends on it to embed browsers in their UI. It'll probably stay there for a long time to preserve backwards compatibility.
You don’t get a choice on that unless you’re running Linux/BSD or a Mac.
I'm asking for Android-based desktop.
Windows is so bad, that I've lost any hope for it to recover.
MacOS is not that bad, but it's tied to Apple hardware and I don't like it. Also it's not getting better either, new releases bring more bloat and features I didn't ask for.
Linux is what I use, but I also lost hope for it to ever become polished experience. Just recent months they introduced another bug to GNOME which probably will not be resolved in years. No big company wants to invest in desktop Linux and without investments it's just not good. I can navigate Linux bugs and workarounds, but I'd prefer not to.
Expecting some new unknown operating system to appear and be ready is foolish, it won't happen.
So Android is the only operating system that could realistically be ready in the foreseeable future. Linux have good support for desktop hardware. Android have good polished stack for applications. Developers know how to write apps for android. Security story for Android is miles ahead that of desktop Linux. So I totally see that Android Desktop could actually be a good thing, with Google sponsoring its development. And if Google will put too much bloat in it, its open source nature would allow for volunteers to build better distributions of it.
It's pretty openly known that GNOME is hostile to its own userbase and their preferences,, why continue to use it instead of KDE or any of the other 10 DE environments?
> It's pretty openly known that GNOME is hostile to its own userbase
It's pretty openly in bad faith to assign malice to open-source developers.
GNOME does in fact have a long track record on this point. Decades old.
And in my option is finally good enough for me to switch from macOS and to recommend Gnome to others. Not everyone likes that Gnome 2 (wasn’t bad, I must admit, but I don’t like it) and especially Gnome 3 was. I quite enjoy modern Gnome, and whilst there are some minor inconveniences I’d prefer being different, I can live with that for the sake of overall simplicity.
Dunno, Gnome hasn't been hostile to me.
I'm sorry, but there are MANY users of GNOME who are happy with the direction. I'd personally choose GNOME over any desktop environment on any OS.
I don't want extensible software. KDE is terrible in that regards. They have miriads of options, that's too much for me. I want opinionated software. I don't like GNOME, but it's the lesser evil and I learned to deal with its issues.
Also I don't like that KDE does not have its native launcher. I need to install some SDDE stuff which works under Xorg or something like that and looks ugly. Pretty weird stuff all that. GNOME just have GDM which just works.
My ideal environment would be Windows 95-like WM with zero configuration options which just works out of the box the way I want. It doesn't exist, unfortunately. May be I should try to write is, as I complain about it so much. Just have no idea about scale of such a project.
There are no other 10 DE environments. GNOME and KDE are the only two mature ones. Rest are either obsolete, especially with Wayland conquering Linux desktop, or for weird use-cases, like tiling WMs. I'm used to traditional windows managers, I don't want tiling WMs.
This is an honest question, not trying to get into an argument...
> I don't want extensible software. KDE is terrible in that regards. They have miriads of options, that's too much for me.
Why not use the default provided then and take the defaults as opinionated? That's what I do actually. I might change very few options, but I generally use the defaults. It's not that you have to configure kde before it becomes usable, the defaults are pretty ok.
Extensibility ~= extra complexity will necessarily increase the chance of bugs.
In something as complex as a display stack this is an important tradeoff.
This is only true if complexity under the hood actually affects your default experience. I don't think it's the case for KDE. "The chance" is indeed higher, except in GNOME it seems the bugs are actually real.
Lots of opinions that are less than idea in gnome. But the only one that really breaks me is lack of typeahead in Nautilus.
I just want to type D, enter and open Documents/, how hard can it be. It's been almost a decade since they removed it, and I still can't use vanilla Nautilus.
I always end up with Nemo or a patched Nautilus.
rant aside, the rest of gnome seems fine. Don't love it, but also don't hate it. I can add my own shortcuts with rofi/dmenu.
Works for me. I'm typing D, it instantly filters the list of files and selects first item. That's "desktop" for me, so I need to type O or press Down to select "documents" and type <Enter>.
The filtering of files is not instant. If you type do<enter> it won't be fast enough. Maybe there have been slight improvements.
But afaik it still defaults to search.
> My ideal environment would be Windows 95-like WM with zero configuration options which just works out of the box the way I want. It doesn't exist, unfortunately. May be I should try to write is, as I complain about it so much. Just have no idea about scale of such a project.
Have you ever tried Icewm?
Cinnamon DE (linux mint) is stable, mature and miles ahead of gnome
Cinnamon is probably the best to use right now followed by XFCE because it uses XWayland by default. It provides nearly full use in both directions while still allowing both the new plugins and old widgets systems. It's also surprisingly stable. The only bug I've ever encountered in my now ten years of using it is on an N100 powered laptop, where if I let the computer go to sleep instead of turning it off eventually Cinnamon's process keeps requesting CPU time until it uses an entire core to itself.
Cinnamon getting good recently kind of blew my mind. I'm an ancient Gnome 2.x elitist, and typically hated cinnamon every-time I've tried it.
Every now and then I distro hop and ended up on LMDE (linux mint debian edition, the real linux mint) which only has a cinnamon offering out of the box. Much to my surprise its actually good. It still has random bugs triggered by stuff I've tried adding to the panel, but that's par for the course with gnome, XFCE, and MATE lately anyway. Over all it's a solid DE now even if the stock start/menu is underwhelming everything is fixable.
> My ideal environment would be Windows 95-like WM with zero configuration options which just works out of the box the way I want.
Why would we have any reason to believe that there would ever be a super-opinionated desktop environment that would be good? The examples we have -- which notably DO NOT include Windows 95, which had a zillion tiny knobs, many in the UI, but others requiring dropping to the registry (which is no different from screwing with confirmation files)... and, frankly, doesn't even include macOS, the system with some of the best customization of key bindings and the most universal automation -- are mostly bad. Put in the day or two of effort to make something that isn't opinionated work the way you want, and then reap the rewards for the following few decades of your productive career.
But you don't need to configure kde to use it, you can just use the defaults for everything, nobody is forcing you to configure stuff. It is not some exotic tiling wm where you have to set up everything.
XFCE is plenty mature and very stable
Add Chicago95, and you've got some comfortable nostalgia.
This is just beautiful, thank you!
Help me understand your two posts. From your earlier post you don't like GNOME because it's make different choices about what to support, and here you're saying you don't like KDE because it isn't opinionated enough.
Is the problem that you don't want choices as long as the maintainers always makes the same choice you would have when taking options away?
Cosmic.
My pessimism is that with their coming clamp-down on external sources for -installing- "sideloading" apps https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45736479 this os may be somewhere between macos and ipados in terms of freedom in the coming years. I have hope that Valve's operating systems and unified platforms will provide a way not only for macos/windows users to move on while retaining compatibility, but for the company to make the transition to arm (as they are with deckard) and retain total binary freedom.
Home computers are inherently more open to sideloading. So I don't see a scenario where they would close it. But may be I'm spoiled by x86, wouldn't be surprised to find out that ARM computers would not be open to boot unlock and all that stuff.
Just think about how few Android devices have an open bootloader right now, there's no reason to think it'd be any different on larger hardware.
On the flip side, every Chromebook and Chromebox has a unlockable and open-spurce coreboot bootloader.
I love their mechanism where one opens the device and removes a screw to unlock it. Very novel and honestly kind of fun.
If you're not accustomed to it, arm computers have no BIOS/UEFI boot selection and usually require a custom bootloader to load a new OS. I remember many fun hobby projects of old with x86 where I could take an old x86 appliance and put in a clean linux disk to use the hardware however I wanted, nowadays your OS needs to be signed, and because the root is owned, the software can be limited to that what the OEM or OS company desires, much like what MS is trying to do with TPM2 and Win11. Of all the ARM phones I've seen, perhaps 10% support bootloader unlock, and that's only with a certain carrier, the problem is that it's not a unified platform, support has to be implemented per-device, so even if the bootloader is open, the OS may not be up to date (as many have noted with dodgy third party arm boards)
We used to call installing software on our own device, installing.
MacOS requires dropping to the terminal to install unsigned applications. There is literally no need for this, except to ensure apple profits.
When do you see this? For me, I just go to System Settings → Privacy & Security. Scroll down to Security and look for the message about the blocked app, click Allow Anyway, and then reopen the app.
If I install Xournall++[1], just opening the application will fail and MacOS will ask me to move it into trash. I am required to execute `xattr -c /Applications/Xournal++.app` to "remove quarantine".
I just reinstalled and can confirm that I don't see anything in the System Settings as you say.
[1] https://github.com/xournalpp/xournalpp/releases/tag/v1.2.8
Depends what you mean by security, if by security you mean sanboxing of apps sure, if by security you mean that you trust what's in your OS and you can control it, it's worse than desktop Linux.
Security isn't just about technical features but also about trust, while I trust my Linux desktop, I don't trust my Android phone with the Play Store running as high privilege, advertising id in the OS and unknown manufacturer additions.
But that's more like talking about a particular distro, like I wouldn't trust North Korea's Linux distro either, compared to Debian.
Meanwhile something close to GrapheneOS running on desktop sounds fantastic.
Perhaps you may like Qubes OS.
Suggesting Qubes OS as the GNU/Linux equivalent of Android is admitting defeat. Android sandboxes multiple apps running on the same system/kernel. Qubes OS sandboxes multiple apps running on multiple different systems (VMs). Qubes, laudable as it may be, is not a parallel to Android.
Qubes is a much more secure alternative to Android without its main downside, which is that Google owns it and steers its development toward enshittification and control [0]. The latter even affects security directly [1].
Android's sandboxes are weaker and AFAIK rely on closed, non-auditable hardware (which is owned by Google in, e.g., GrapheneOS). Qubes protects you more reliably and doesn't require to abandon root privileges or a possibility to take screenshots.
Also, you don't have to run every app in a dedicated VM on Qubes: Instead you group them into security domains, which allowed me to organize my digital life like never before [3].
In addition, Qubes can protect you from supply-chain attacks by isolating VMs from the network and using different OSes side by side. I dream of using Qubes on mobile.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45017028
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45017028
[2] https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/latest/user/how-to-guides/how-to...
Windows is bad because it has opinions about advertisements and AI.
MacOS is bad because it has opinions about what hardware you should use.
Linux is bad because it doesn't have opinions.
My opinion is that I should be able to choose my window manager and have a proper tiling window manager if I wish, and Linux is the only one allowing me to do that.
It's a feature, not a bug.
No opinions? Have you ever read a code of conduct? :)
Isn’t Valve having a go at making Linux more consumer friendly?
> So Android is the only operating system that could realistically be ready in the foreseeable future.
Ready for what ? Working with files on Android is ... interesting. Real app support on Android (shells, compilers, CAD/CAE) is ... interesting and the UX is... total crap.
> Just recent months they introduced another bug to GNOME which probably will not be resolved in years. No big company wants to invest in desktop Linux and without investments it's just not good.
Classic straw man: a single GNOME bug doesn’t mean all of desktop Linux isn’t worth investing in.
Developers have been writing Linux desktop apps successfully for decades. Moreover, who cares about polished desktop apps when most apps are just web apps that look the same on all platforms?
For the record, I despise web apps.
What's the GNOME bug?
I'm using shortcuts <Super>+1 ... <Super>+4 to switch between virtual desktops. Let's say there's Xwayland application launched on desktop 1 and I'm on desktop 4. Vscode for example. Now I press <Super>+1 to switch to desktop 1. At this point, vscode starts printing "11111111" until I press Esc.
This bug manifests both for vscode and Idea. I configured these apps to run under native wayland, but they're not ready and other bugs manifest (e.g. no border around vscode window), which are less annoying, but annoying nonetheless.
Interesting. I sometimes get similar behaviour on KDE / wayland, usually it is "2" or "3", and it seems to only affect electron apps. Always thought it has something to do with a dodgy ps/2 to usb converter I use to attach my old mechanical keyboards. I think it does not happen if electron apps are started with "--ozone-platform=wayland" but not completely sure, and I have no reliable way to reproduce or somehow trigger that behaviour.
try cosmic desktop since it was made to be similar to gnome - it's maintained by system76 and is shaping up to be one of the most polished desktops out there, gnome has been feeling like it's going downwards for a while. I can't comment too much tho since I am too used to KDE at the moment and tiling support is just not there yet compared to KWin.
Oh wow that explains a ton of problems I was having before I switched to KDE.
Are you pretending android doesn't have bugs?
> google just wants to normalize rent seeking 30% of all software sales
Most Android applications are free. Furthermore, Google allow you to install a separate store where you can buy from, allowing you to not have to pay those 30%, or to pay them to someone else other than Google.
And if anyone is trying to normalise 30% rent seeking on desktops, it's the incumbents already directing you towards their store (Microsoft, Apple).
> Google allow you to install a separate store where you can buy from
Oh, Fuchsia isn't dead [0]. Apparently it's what the Nest Hub launched with and the latest update is pretty recent: from Oct 2025. Interesting.
(Replying to my own comment instead of editing it as this is tangential to the topic at hand)
Not only is it not dead it’s under HEAVY active development and has been for quite some time now.
They seem particularly focused on the Linux compatibility layer (starnix) as far as I can tell.
I’d say they are most likely going to end up becoming the thing that Android sits on top of. There is already public indications of some variant of it called “microfuchsia” coming to Android. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that this is all part of the same launch that they are working towards here.
> Linux compatibility layer
I can't wait to play Windows PC games on a Linux compatibility layer (Proton) on a Fuschia compatibility layer (Starnix) and still have them inexplicably run smoother than on the system they were originally developed for.
> Oh, Fuchsia isn't dead
It is resting ...
I don't trust Google anymore or what their business model has become over the years.
I won't be using Aluminum OS.
Curious to hear what other technical products you use that are from companies that are pure as the driven snow.
Don't do this. Don't put words in others mouths. I don't see anywhere where the parent comment said they only use software from perfect companies. They only asserted one company fell below their threshold of trust.
Don't think it is targeted at you. A lot of people like you say so - but will be shoved Win11 or Apple Intelligence. Enjoy.
How? What leverage does Google have in the Desktop space? They have no captive market that they can leverage a forced installation of Aluminum OS.
Rugpulling the education market that got suckered into buying all those Chromebooks and grooming the kids into Google products from kindergarten onwards.
Aluminum and fuchsia are largely implementation details. The reasons these projects have value isn't necessary user facing, however they will have outcomes that enable products to be more useful with time. Maybe ai features are easier to ship, or it's less costly to maintain device support, or maybe they just save Google some money allowing for cheaper prices. Ultimately, they are closer to what's in the sausage than the sausage itself though and so most folks will not care. And that's okay.
> The reasons these projects have value isn't necessary user facing
The value is what then? Promotion for the tech lead that convinced a bunch of other googlers that they should contribute to this OS project?
I went on to describe positive side effects that are user visible. Users will see benefits but it's not in the form of UI necessarily. There are a lot of projects that companies take on that never reach end customers, but they help make the organization more efficient and capable which is why they are funded. I've never met someone who created a project purely to fund their own promotion. People genuinely care about trying to make a positive impact.
Google wants an OS with Play Market on any and all devices possible. That's the end goal.
Android accessibility is so not ready for PC. Navigate with keyboard and TalkBack and you'll hear "selected" everywhere which is redundant, since if TalkBack is speaking a UI element, it is selecting it for action. Apps aren't ready for keyboard either. They really, really aren't ready for a launch next year. But I'm sure they will. And few blind people will care because (almost) every blind person uses windows or an iPhone as their main computer and so Google will think they're doing just fine.
I don't really get your point. The accessibility story can surely be improved, but it's absolutely 100% better on Android, than what we have on GNU/Linux today, so at the end of the day it's just one more choice for end-users.
And keyboard and the like will also get a chance to get fixed if more people are interested in the platform.
I dunno that it will be improved. ChromeOS is pretty bad on that front (or at least was a couple years ago when I set up a chrome book for my elderly dad).
Accessibility is not the additional feature that can be improved later. If it's not there when you sell the product, you can be fined.
Accessibility is often neglected anyway. It's just the sad truth
The entire basis of this article/rumor is a single job posting on Google's careers website... Unifying Android across all devices is Google's holy grail and they've been hiring for that for most than a decade. I don't think we have to read into this much.
Unifying the two has never been an internal goal until 2024. I'm not sure why you think otherwise. Everything before that has just been rumors and maybe one off projects by very small amounts of people. Rebasing ChromeOS on the lower half of Android is real and has been publicly announced. It is not necessarily the layers you will notice through. It's about unifying things like the kernel, display stack, power management, Bluetooth stack, etc. There are effectively divergent universes between ChromeOS and android (and the desktop Linux ecosystem) despite these things not necessarily requiring unique solutions.
Might be that the source of the rumour is an inside disclosure which pointed to the job listing as a published fact.
That's an extrapolation on my part, of course, but it's not inconsistent with how other leaks or disclosures have occurred. Can't speak to Android Authority's practices here.
I struggle to imagine existing Android apps being useful in a desktop form factor.
It's not just about touch vs mouse/keyboard, it's the whole interaction design philosophy.
And it's not as if you can say that getting the Android developer experience on desktop is going to entice developers. Compose is decent, but the actual Android system APIs make Win32 look brilliant. At least Win32 is stable.
For this to be viable, there has to be a bigger strategy than just "Android apps and APIs on a desktop" -- because neither of those are appealing.
Users and developers will just stick with the web.
ChromeOS already had an android adapter layer and apps would run windowed, with an option to respect the original size or allow arbitrary resize.
I assume we're in the same situation with Samsung's Dex ?
It worked decently well, the main issues were unrelated to the handling in itself (the Bluetooth stack was dead for android apps, trying the smart appliance stuff was just a fool's errand)
Right -- it technically "works", but I don't think you'd want to actually be productive in these existing Android apps on the desktop.
Imagine the experience of trying to write a paper in Android Google Docs, vs firing up the web version.
Games perhaps being a big exception.
I don't use Docs to write novels, but for basic official documents and a few reports I'm looking at, there's very few things missing.
When in phone view a lot of the options are hard to find, but in tablet/desktop mode (yes, that's a thing already) it's really close to what you get on the web. The main different is the menu layout, where most advanced functionalities go to an extended menu instead of the standard File/Edit/View/Insert... menus at the top of the page.
Otherwise there seem to be most of what's needed, including extensions apparently. Perhaps media management could be tougher, it's supported by on don't how much of a PITA it could be, I haven't pushed that far on the android version.
> I struggle to imagine existing Android apps being useful in a desktop form factor.
Rather than full desktops, I suspect that Desktop Android will be popular for 2-in-1 style devices like the Surface Pro.
I've always thought that the Surface Pro was a good idea, just with the wrong operating system. Newer iPad Pros kind of accomplish the same, but are still too locked down by Apple to be a true computer replacement.
Android has the potential to be the perfect middle ground: touch-centric UI paradigm, can work well with keyboard/mice, and open/flexible enough to be an actual computer replacement.
Google has been working on adding extensions to Chrome on Android, already has apk sideloading, and has work-in-progress Linux VM support. That's likely "good enough" to replace computers for the vast majority of people.
An operating system ran by an advertiser is the worse thing you could ever run.
Chromebooks were awesome because they were impossible to screw up. Then the advertising department rammed itself in there.
To be fair, we're like an inch from verification cans on Windows 11 already.
Hate to admit it but I sorta miss the evil M$SFT days. At least Windows was the product then.
Weird that ChromeOS Flex is not mentioned, I wonder if we are just changing names with some added features. I don't think this is a OS, not based on Linux, like Fuchsia.
I wonder what this means for the mobile ecosystem (talking about essential apps whose usage requires a smartphone : digital only banks, whatsapp, etc). The sitation is such that if you need to use any of the above (except whatsapp which has backward compatibility going all the way back to android 6), you pretty much are required to buy a new phone every 2-5 years which is wild. Making Android Os available somewhere could potentially be another avenue to access Android apps.
Yes, I know about waydroid and similar, but it is very slow and requires you to have relatively powerful machine.
Of course, ideally, a Proton like layer would be best
With their latest developer policy changes, what should make me think that this will be an open OS? And if they allow downloaded apps to be run, they'll be monitoring them in depth, not caring about privacy, since they have never cared about privacy. Every App has internet access and I cannot block or control it.
AluminIum you say?
The name makes sense because Aluminium has an -ium suffix like Chromium. There's also no reason for the project name to agree with the US pronunciation of the element.
Well, it makes sense and it doesn't because it makes it sound like this is a 'lightweight' version of the Chromium-based products while the opposite seems to be true. Call it Osmium instead, that's got '-ium' and some weight to it just like this thing.
I appreciate your understanding of the Table Of Elements and their properties, but I don't think most people will care about the weight.
Maybe Osmium is/will-be an OS for their cloud clustering in future. IE something more heavyweight...
Team started in Australia, they use British spellings.
Technically they use Australian spellings, it's just that they overlap.
My dad always pronounced it a-luna-min, so my whole life I thought that there were 3 pronunciations, and the fact that there are only two correct ones feels strange to me. Not sure where he got that from, maybe he had special metal from the moon.
One of those things that makes so much sense it’s a wonder it didn’t happen sooner.
No thanks! It makes sense for them, not for us. Their rent seeking behavior, locking down of the OS and hardware and their hostility towards the FOSS mod community and users have all worsened lately. The only reason why they ever revisit such 'features' is a massive backlash from the community. Then again, history has shown that they try to smuggle them back in some other form.
Desktop and laptop are the last standing bastions of user modifiability and general purpose computing. The situation on smartphones is so desparate that I type this message on a half-crippled Android installation, hopelessly wishing that it was Linux in here instead. I don't mind sacrifing some convenience and functionality for a while while the devs figure out how to iron out the shortfalls of Linux on smartphones. I absolutely don't want to concede that same ground on desktops and laptops. We deserve at least some devices that we can experiment and modify to our liking.
I know that if the trillion dollar corporation is out for it, they will force it down the throats of naive people or those who don't know any better. Soon afterwards, the rest of us will have two options - a dwindling supply of heavily modified and refurbished used configurable systems, or locked down, dumbed down machines with arbitrary restrictions like everyone else. At least until then, I believe that it's well worth resisting the invasion of freedoms for as long as we can.
I share your fears, but I think the premise itself is valid. The project should be done, but fully Open Source.
I'd love to have Android (well, GrapheneOS) style sand-boxing for every app, I'd love to have it's granular permissions for every service. I'd love to have the battery management, the unified settings UI, the effortless disk encryption UX, ect. Who's using power, who's using data, who accessed the microphone 10 minutes ago?
Could this all be re-implemented in a Linux distribution? Sure, SE Linux is there. But it would take a long time to get to the same level of UX, and almost certainly fracture across different desktop environments.
Thanks, I completely agree with you! It seems that most people here will happily trade their freedom for some convenience by just handing their digital lives to Google though, which to me is crazy, but apparently how the majority thinks.
Yes. The big red flag here is that these are people who should know better. Not like the ordinary folks who may be ignorant about it to some extend.
I wish I could upvote this comment more than once. I'm appalled it's got a negative score. Are we not on Hacker News?
What the fuck happened to this community?
To be very honest, I'm not surprised. This has been a growing tendency recently. I have also noticed a few brand new accounts whose entire comments are praises for certain controversial actions by some corporations.
Google you're a NA company, we say "aluminum".
Also an OS built around an "AI core" sounds like a privacy nightmare.
Is there any Android app that is worth using on a PC? Not being snarky, I cant see anything on Android being good enough for a desktop app that is used regularly. Most of the Android apps I use are the 'best of the worse' and I have to use them because there is no other options.
Tons. Top of my head: native OpenStreetMaps (with offline maps, support for GPS and compass, turn-by-turn navigation), every single transit app, banking apps, and - of course - the camera app.
The point about online banking is a bit dubious, but all my banks have decided that the Android app may conduct online banking alone, and it may verify a desktop session; but not the other way around.
I used to main Pixelbook (1st gen) for about a year. ChromeOS really is enough for the majority of day to day stuff. For development it allows you to run linux environment inside ChromeOS
I can only assume the Aluminium OS would aim to do the same
Google's services tend to be better on android than on the web. Gmail for instance has multi-account support with a unified inbox. You could get a third party client to do it, but I don't know any really good ones TBH, so getting the android app on desktop/tablets is kinda nice. Photos is also significantly better on android.
Social apps, messaging apps, parking/dedicated payment apps also tend to have miserable web support.
Based on my experience using DeX, no. Most never considered "desktop" as a use case, so their UI is terrible on a 27 inch screen, and keyboard navigation is either non-existent or very awkward.
Oh, maybe the browser, so we are back to ChromeOS.
To nuance a bit, sure most application aren't designed to be blown up to 27", but then they don't need to. Tiling two or three applications side by side already gives a decent sizing, and it will probably come down to the window manager to make it an good proposition. After all, we also don't use every app fullscreen on desktops, it doesn't need to be mandatory.
Chrome OS was already supporting windowed android apps, I'm typing this on the experimental desktop mode for Pixel phones, and it's not ready for prime time but it's usable enough. I could totally see a refined version of it.
What Google will do with the linux subsystem that was available on ChromeOS is the more interesting part IMHO. Do they just ignore that part or do we get something equivalent.
> most application aren't designed to be blown up to 27", but then they don't need to.
The point is that almost any windows/linux/Mac desktop application handles it much better than Android apps, which is what the question was asking.
For myself there are not any android apps that I need on my desktop. However it's important to look at things from a global perspective, not just personal.
There is a robust mobile gaming market worth hundreds of billions in USA alone.
And it's been possible to run android on x86 for years. It's just that nobody wants to, except for app developers ... because you wouldn't/couldn't/shouldn't develop on a phone ;)
Some apps only (usably) exist on mobile, like Tinder or Tiktok. Not sure that niche is worth a full new OS though, but Googlers need their promotion so here we are.
This is a great podcast about that: https://radiolab.org/podcast/wubi-effect
About what? Wubi is an input method, not a dictionary.
Yea! Finally an answer to the big brother Windows 11!
But isn't Google just as bad at spying on us? It's just trading one big brother for an another.
Oh yeah... didn't think of that.
Hey haven't you ever just ever considered using Linux?If it supported Steam and my game library, I would sprint to this option.
Not jmp?
Like anyone wants an OS that not only gatekeeps the software you run but surveils everything you do.
I hope it’s too late and nobody wants this. Any modern Linux distro is plentiful for an average Joe. Especially when we know the games are mostly hassle-free now.
if this will work on a VM just fine, better than androidx86 I'm all for it.
There are many apps that don't need to be apps but are. I want to run them in a controlled/isolated VM. For a long time (still?) Signal wouldn't run unless you have an android/iphone app installed first for example.
Android laptops are already a thing. A lot of the hate Windows 11 is getting is because it is trying to compete with Android. And they're both placating to consumers' desires.
I really dream of the day they bring Android to trash bin and instead of kicking the dead horse come up with something new and good, after learning from mistakes.
With the move to close down Android further and evil remote attestation, the PC is the last computing platform that leaves the user in somewhat control over the system. This is an indirect attack on our freedom, and I really don't want a future where two American companies somehow got a duopoly with full control over the hardware and software stack of all general purpose computing devices, and on top of that also act as the gatekeepers and distributors of all third-party software. Fuck. That. Shit.
I want full control, and by that I don't mean the ability to customize the color of my UI, but the ability to run whatever software I choose on the device that I supposedly own.
Sure, I may be able to technically be able to run Linux on a PC and retain my free choice for a while, but that is only until Google and Apple has finished selling their remote attestation security snake oil to governments, banks and service providers so that people like me will just be excluded from the digital society altogether.
You won't be excluded, just being forced to buy and operate a shitty second device with their OS just to do online banking, etc.
I have hope in open OS such as Linux and the BSDs that they also survive the upcoming hardware lockdowns. Just look how they reverse engineered the MacBook chips. Took a long time but worked out. It remains a constant fight against big tech.
It will win where Longhorn and Midori failed, due to politics.
Sounds like someone at Google wants a promotion…
So after Qualcomm successfully brought Windows to ARM, now the will bring Android to PCs. This is hilarious!
Linux is better in every conceivable way
Both Chrome and Aluminium are Linux, so which are you trying to say is better?
Or are you saying more conventional Linux is superior? Gnu/Linux is a good term for that.
When someone says "Linux" in isolation, they mean a conventional Linux distribution. Only extreme pedants and Richard Stallman call it "GNU/Linux".
They didn't say Linux in isolation, they said it on a comment on a story that mentions two Linux non-conventional distributions and has no mention of conventional Linux. Therefore the presumption is that they're referring to the Linuxes in the article.
I prefer to call it systems/Linux these days. The amount of gnu bits in a desktop Linux distro is ever shrinking.
> The amount of gnu bits in a desktop Linux distro is ever shrinking.
What GNU software is actually being removed from any distro?
Ubuntu replaced their core userland utils with uutils, so the bulk of it. I’m guessing most other distros will follow suit.
Huh. I didn't know Ubuntu had replaced GNU coreutils. I'm not sure that alone counts as "the bulk of it", but it's definitely very significant.
pipewire, systemd, Wayland, etc. none of that is produced or maintained by GNU.
ALSA, sysvinit, and Xorg weren't GNU projects, either.
It’s not a great term, there is a small and shrinking proportion of GNU in most distros. Things like systemd or Wayland are far more important.
Systemd is Gnu licensed.
That is not how anyone uses that term. For starters, Linux is also GPL licensed, so if it was like that then we wouldn't bother calling it GNU/Linux, we could just call it GNU. More to the point though, being GPL-licensed doesn't make something part of the GNU project.
GNU/GNU
I've actually used GNU/GNU to refer to HURD:)
"GNU" in "GNU/Linux" isn't about the license but about the GNU OS, https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#why
I can conceive a couple of ways.
GrapheneOS-style sand-boxing for every app is long overdue in Linux. I'd love to have it's granular permissions for every single service. I'd love to have the battery management, the unified settings UI, the effortless disk encryption UX and key management.
Could you build it with SE Linux and a lot of glue? Yes, but nobody has. And doing it well, everywhere, would take a lot of hours.
> the unified settings UI
You will never have a UI capable of encompassing all the settings available in Linux. You will only have a UI capable of configuring your desktop experience, which is just a small subset of the full Linux experience.
Is it unreasonable to ask "why not"? I like the state of Android's (as packaged by GrapheneOS) settings UI much better than any other settings system, period.
It's all in one place - I can't think of a single thing I would want to configure that isn't found in that one dialog. It doesn't always make sense, but it's searchable, and the search works.
Just imagine configuring nginx or apache with UI.
Come on, we're talking about system settings on future ChromeBooks. Of course I don't want a GUI for writing nginx config files.
Android is very good at exposing things like
* "which service may know the device location?"
* "which app accessed the microphone 2 minutes ago?"
* "which apps burn the most battery?"
All of those make sense on ChormeBooks, and all of those are difficult with Linux.
The point is that many of Linux's system settings are almost as complex as that. You want some examples?
The good old days of
make menuconfig
Take a look at QubesOS.
For Linux on x86, it's by far best in class.
Unfortunately, not even close to being as comfortable to use as GrapheneOS, and still significantly less secure than it - even if we completely disregard the sad situation of hardware security on x86 (but can't blame QubesOS for that one).
just run bazzite already
This is the year of Linux on the desktop!
It sure is: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine
Nah, that is the Year of Windows Gaming, running on Proton.
Semantics.
Those semantics hide that game studios keep using Windows workstations, developing Windows games, creating kernel drivers, targeting Windows users as customers, and it is up to Valve to make those games run on SteamOS.
Seems like you moved the goalposts pretty far... Consumers using Linux has shot up pretty dramatically this year, at least in my social circles. I count at least a dozen, non technical friends who decided to drop windows. That number has been zero a year for decades.
Game devs working in Linux is always a lagging indicator. Once there's a market share, they'll go there. Once it's the preferred os for people, you'll be able to develop on it. Games is already an incredibly risky market sector.
Instead, I encourage you to look at blender. It's gone through a "cute hobbyist/prosumer tool" phase and is now in the mega million dollar movies and games use it as their primary tool. Desktop Linux is on a similar curve thanks to Valve. If enough people start using it at home, industry will flip over.
Nope, they are still on the same spot, Proton isn't Linux gaming, is making Windows ecosystem available on Linux, because Valve has failed to provide enough value for game studios to target SteamOS natively.
Blender was a commercial product that became FOSS, with an existing customer base.
People using Linux as their desktop OS are using desktop Linux. What binaries they run on that OS doesn't change what OS they are running.
You've developed a "No true Scotsman" definition for desktop Linux that seems far from the common understanding that "if you use Linux as your OS on your desktop, you are a desktop Linux user".
If you feel your definition of purity tested "only Linux binaries or it doesn't count as a Linux desktop" is better, I'm not going to tell you you are wrong, just expect that you have a definition significantly out of the norm and will have a challenging uphill battle in getting others to adopt it.
It is called GNU/Linux for a reason.
By an extremist minority, it is, sure.
A minority that does most of the work, without which you wouldn't be posting that comment from a GNU/Linux system, using a kernel compiled with GCC.
Does most of the work to keep a Linux desktop developed? That's an incredible claim and needs a source. You might be able to convince me that most kernel developer impact comes from that community, but not the OS.
Any decade now.
two more weeks
Except being able to buy GNU/Linux laptops from known brands, the same that sell Android and Chromebooks with 100% supported hardware, at FNAC, Worten, Saturn, MediaMarkt, Publico, Dixon, CoolBlue,....
It would be great, however it died alongside netbooks.
Only the first netbook came with Linux. The Asus EEEPC 701. This was mainly because it was so underpowered it couldn't run windows (and some nonresizable dialogue boxes didn't even fit on screen). But they dropped it with later models.
As owner of an Asus 1215B, that lasted from 2009 until last year, having gotten disk and memory upgrades during its lifetime, going through all Ubuntu LTS upgrades, bought with it pre-installed, that is certainly not true.
Ah ok, here they were all windows in the shops after the first one.
I can imagine also because Asus' distro was pretty terrible, it probably gave some backlash against Linux. I think the only reason they made it was to make it work on that tiny screen.
I spent ages at the time trying to make macOS work. I had it booting but due to the CPU being below 1 Ghz the timing screwed up and timing related actions happened in slow motion (this was a timing divider issue not sure to the slowness itself). I even messed with the kernel code trying to get it to work.
On a later Acer netbook I got it running perfectly though.
The 701 did run XP, even came pre installed with it on some models in later 2007!
That was part of Microsoft's move that eventually killed netbooks, turns out when OEMs don't need to pay for licenses, they go Windows.
It was rather limited though, in the amount of applications running simultaneously, around four if not mistaken, without going into press archeology.
Really? Also something I didn't see where I lived. But XP was really bad on it because the screen didn't fit many fixed-size windows.
Arguably not in security model.
They hated him because he spoke the truth. An up to date ChromeOS is extremly secure compared to the non-existant security model of the linux desktop. Only Secureblue or QubesOS come even close.
You only have to give up control of the computer.
Android is open source; MacOS and Windows aren’t. This gives me more control over my computer, especially since this means LineageOS and GrapheneOS for the desktop soon.
Wonder if this will get them to fix keyboard navigation in Android apps.
Why, though ... so they can limit the software we put on our PCs now???
We don't want Android for PC, we want a Steam Phone
The Windows 11 alternative nobody asked for.
Cant wait till like Android on phones, OEMs are put in charge of delivering updates to laptops, and if your laptop is older than 3 years good luck.
Seems like a big downgrade compared to current ChromeOS where Google is in charge of all updates, or even Windows where Microsoft delivers the same updates to everyone.
Funny anecdote. I had a Mac Mini Core 2 Duo that Apple dropped support for relatively quickly. I installed Windows 7 on it and it was running a supported OS did years after Apple dropped support for it.
Windows 7 supported every piece of hardware on it. If Microsoft can make an operating system that supports third party computers - even those that were never meant to run it - without relying on the manufacturer, why can’t Google?
Installing Windows did not require Boot Camp from Apple.
That's basically Microsoft's present strategy with W11. It seems to be going about as well as we'd hope
Whatever happened to fuchsia!?
I was excited about another alternative to The Big Three os's.
That article was almost impossible to read with how often the content shifted around, presumably due to crappy ad scripting.
Worked fine with NoScript having everything disabled.
A Pc that requires every dev register their blood type with Google? where do i sign up /s
edit: for all the iOS/MacOS whataboutists, i don't own any Apple devices for the same reasons, so not sure what point you are trying to make.
The last I heard, Windows for ARM also had enormous restrictions compared to x86.
Isnt that how it work on iOS as well?
But you don't run iOS on desktop computers. If MacOS went locked down like iOS people would throw fits.
Hasn't it been heading in that direction for a while?
Not really.
Actually, yes:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24838816
And this one got cancelled after a huge public outcry: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28309202. Also, Apple never said that it's fully cancelled.
That is what iPadOS Pro is for.
The sales prove there is enough happy people, even with the complaints regarding some of its limitations.
i don't know ,haven't seen an iOS pc and i don't own any of their other iOS devices or a MacOS device
edit: or an iPadOS Pro, for those who feel the need to highlight they spent the most.
It is called iPadOS Pro.
Are you referring to the iPad Pro or is there an actual iPadOS Pro I've never heard about?
Of course I am referring to what millions of people buy today, many of whom that is their only computing device.
Good for them, but what's the relevance, are you saying because people buy it's moral?
You get to see something that apparently you never saw.
So what? That's why we don't buy Apple products and never have.
Whataboutism?
Was anyone asking for this?
And I'm not just talking about the extra I...
Someone downvoted this question?
I'm excited for this as it will allow desktops to get closer to the security of phones.
I don't think a mega corp having full access to my phone while me not having that is very "secure". Sure it's pretty ok against third parties but in my threat model Google and Apple are also adversaries. Microsoft too by the way.
In my model my Linux pc is a lot more secure as there's no adversary having direct access and more control than me.
Privacy != Security
We shouldn't be happy with the state of security on Linux, while simultaneously enjoying its privacy benefits.
For me privacy = security.
If a company has access to my data without my -completely voluntary- consent, that's a security breach.
That makes no sense. Equality is commutative and security is most certainly not privacy. There are certain areas where a decision may help in case of both (e.g. simply not storing unnecessary data will decrease the scope of a real vulnerability), but that's not even remotely the same thing.
By this definition no operating system Google releases will be secure to you. I think it would be a more productive discussion if you could argue about security ignoring that you have to trust the person who wrote your operating system or designed your cpu.
The point of open source is I don't have to trust the person who wrote it
You don't have to. Which is good!
But in practical terms there is a lot of trusting of someone/their-code going on. Unless you are reading/understanding it all.
I trust linux more than windows. But I've never read a line of it...
I think their point is that the source being open keeps the developers more honest. Of course there have been supply chain attacks in open source, but that is more probable to be found out than closed source ones. In short, auditability improves security.
The thing is, there's always someone who does read it or inspect changes. It will surface soon enough if untoward things are happening.
And that is what is being trusted.
Not "the code is readable therefore trustable".
More "the code is readable, therefore I trust multiple someones, somewhere will read it or has read it and if they have a concern they will voice it".
Is it the greatest thing to trust? No, but like a lot of things in life, it's the best of the practical options.
It works well for you.. but for average person. No.
As a 20 year old linux user, I do often use ChromeOS or ChromeOSflex. Just works. Beautiful UI. No more pain with webcam or wifi drivers - Yes, these have improved by still one has the pain of dropped packets (realtek wifi) etc. guaranteed 10 hour battery life.
With ChromeOS I just get 4 or 5 second - update - immutable OS. Fedora Silverblue is coming up but still not there.
Congrats, you are trading freedom for some convenience.
Do you personally go through every line of source code for your Linux distribution?
That's not the relevant part. The relevant part is, if you find it's doing something you don't want it to be doing, can you read and modify the code that does that?
So you're not.
No but many people do. Try getting something by Linus and his kernel team lol. Good luck!
There have been many long live security issues that have been in popular open source software - including Linux
Yes sure but not intentional ones.
Actually sometimes it is intentional.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/06/xz-uti...
That’s just one we know about it.
Do you do that for Android?
So secure it locks the owners out.
Yes, if someone sets a passcode and then forgets it, they will be locked out forever and lose all of their files. There is no way to prove physical ownership of the device, pretty mich the passcode proves who the owner is.
If I forget my LUKS passphrase no power on heaven or earth can recover my data
St. Gabriel, sitting on his cloud, looking at his Nvidia GPU supercomputer (also a cloud) fabbed by God, could totally bruteforce your LUKS key.
That's sort of the point of LUKS, and it's self-inflicted and your own choice because you didn't back up the key.
Security seems like a solved problem on desktop already? Secure Boot + LUKS + SELinux gives anyone a pretty airtight userspace.
Microsoft/Apple have similarly secure set ups for their operating systems. Bitlocker by default (although there is a convenient backdoor for high-paying customers to protect against data loss and for law enforcement forensics) and Apple's Secure Enclave (only broken into by a certain five countries intelligence agencies and for older versions streaming pirates) should protect the average user pretty well.
Is there anything special about Android phones (especially budget ones) that makes them more secure? That's not what I've seen.
As the other comment mentioned, is that Android is way ahead on app sandboxing and not doing things like exposing sudo to apps. Yes, apps can literally ask for your user's password using a fake dialog and then elevate to root and then do whatever. Even without root programs can spy on you by recording your screen, and mic. Programs can cryptolock your files or steal them (browser login information is a juicy target to steal). Android shuts down all of these kinds of malware by design. Apps can't escalate to root. Apps can't read or write to all of your files. Apps can't steal files from other apps. Apps have to ask for permission to record users. Apps can't see you have a root terminal up and start typing commands into it. Also in regards to writing APIs that are permissions Android makes it easy.
Per app isolation vs single user account.
There isn't that much demand for that on Linux because the apps aren't adversarial. If you install Facebook on your phone, you want it locked in a jail where it can't suck up everything on your device and send it to Meta. If you install the Signal desktop app on Linux, it's open source and doesn't do that. And to the extent that you use the likes of Facebook it's the web version.
Meanwhile per-app isolation is a pain. You download a picture in a browser, crop it in a photo editor and attach it to an email. All three apps need access to the same picture. Your backup app needs access to everything. Your password manager is filling in fields in other apps.
You do want to be able to isolate something questionable, but the usual way to do this for sophisticated users is virtual machines or containers. Maybe that could use a coat of paint to make it easier for unsophisticated users to use it, but maybe unsophisticated users should just stick to the system package manager anyway.
> You download a picture in a browser, crop it in a photo editor and attach it to an email. All three apps need access to the same picture. Your backup app needs access to everything.
On Android, each of those three apps would ask you for file system permissions on first launch. Your choices are "full access to user files", "limited access" (usually one directory and all its sub-directories), "full access, but only this time", and "no access".
Both the "save file as" and the "open file" dialog only show directories the app can access, and have a button at the top that reads something like "change storage scope" or "allow more access".
The system even has options where apps can request access to e.g. all photo/video/media directories - the photo editor would probably request only those to begin with.
Also, apps can pretty much never access each others config/keys/etc files - which they never should. If they need to communicate with each other, they're supposed to use interfaces like the Content Provider, Intents or Bound Services.
I think it's pretty well designed.
> On Android, each of those three apps would ask you for file system permissions on first launch. Your choices are "full access to user files", "limited access" (usually one directory and all its sub-directories), "full access, but only this time", and "no access".
Which isn't completely useless, but in most cases the only thing you really want is "full access" or "I don't actually trust this thing" -- and most users aren't going to comprehend the difference between more fine-grained alternatives anyway -- and then you're basically looking at the distinction between normal trusted apps and something you run in a container.
> Also, apps can pretty much never access each others config/keys/etc files - which they never should.
And that's the problem, because the backup app is supposed to be able to back up everything, a malware scanner can't have potentially malicious apps hiding something from it, etc.
Does anybody think Aluminium as a brand name is a good choice? Especially considering the intended expansion towards the premium market. To me it sounds cheap, second-rate, ersatz. What you use if you cannot afford a better metal. Chrome is shiny, aluminium surfaces soon get dim again after any polishing attempt.
You don't even need to go that far to think its a bad name. The anglosphere can't even agree on the pronunciation and spelling.
Malicious actors will certainly take advantage of this as well.
Looking forward to hearing my British colleagues calling it "Al-yoo-MIN-ee-um" OS, but I'm failing to see how evil hackers are going to exploit that.
Aluminium is also what you built aircraft out of back in the day, and they could very shiny.
I also don't think it's ersatz anything. It's what you use if you build large, stiff objects that aren't supposed to rust. It's certainly less ersatz than steel, with a less martial character.
So I don't agree. I think it can signify something clean, light, unburdened by heavy and unnecessary things. I don't intend to use it though, for reasons everybody else gives, app-stores etc.
It’s just a very old-school luxury metal:
“Aluminium was difficult to refine and thus uncommon in actual use. Soon after its discovery, the price of aluminium exceeded that of gold. It was reduced only after the initiation of the first industrial production by French chemist Henri Étienne Sainte-Claire Deville in 1856.”
It's likely just a codename for now.
I think that the general concensus is as long as a name doesn't start with a V, and is not taken, it's a good brand name. You can substitute W for V though, as in Waginium.
Sounds British