 Hello, and thank you for listening to me today from filmsbychris.com. I'm Chris, that's Chris the K, and today I'm gonna talk about my ideal mobile device phones or tablets. One of the biggest problems in my opinion when it comes to mobile devices is how lockdown the bootloader is basically. A lot of these devices are running Android, which if you have root access on you can load up, you know, a copy of Debian or anything on it and just any likes distribution and use all the packages and software that are available for that distribution as long as they You know support your architecture, which I use Debian which supports pretty much every Architecture that's commonly used out there. So if I have root access on an Android device, I can now load Debian with a few, you know commands and install any program from the repositories obviously getting GUI applications running Take a little bit of work not a whole lot. I mean it can be done But it's gonna need some sort of virtualization or some display management with VNC or whatever How are you end up doing it? But most of the things I run that are more advanced things that wouldn't be on Android already would be done in the shell anyway But again, one of the and if you have an unlocked bootloader Rooting your devices usually pretty easy But so many of them are all locked down some companies like I've owned a few different In the last, you know, so many years I've owned at least two Motorola phones and one of the things I love about them is Motorola Let's you unlock the bootloader and it's very simple to add in your own little, you know recovery Partition and change stuff, but you can still screw that stuff up. So what would I see as a ideal? Device whether it be a tablet phone or even like a media device for your TV and this is what I envision Okay, maybe it comes with a full operating system like Android or something similar like that on it But you would have a button that you could be able to hold down when you reboot whether it's like a little pinhole button and when you do that it brings it into a bootloader that is Hard-coded onto a chip that can't be erased. So there's no way you can screw it up Similar to to like the bios or wherever they call nowadays the the bios on a desktop machine Which you can mess up you can erase and you can update But for the most part a desktop computer you can't you're not gonna wipe out your machine and make it and break it to the point Where you can't boot a new operating system on it unless you're upgrading that firmware which very few people do and if you do You know what you're doing, but something like that So it's like on a chip that's separate from the other Storage media and all this is it's very small It could be probably you know under 32 megabytes with ease because if you think about Linux distributions such as like Slitaz which I'm probably still mispronouncing after all these years that I love it has a full desktop environment and web browser and services such as SSH and stuff already installed and You know xorg running on a about a 30 megabyte Image compressed image So you wouldn't need more than that for this bootloader and what I would envision that bootloader is that bootloader Either will boot when you hold in that that that button on the back of the device Or if for some reason the main partition on your storage doesn't boot it will default to this and What that will do is just be a lightweight version of Linux With just a menu that has options to connect to the network whether it be through Wi-Fi or automatically connect to ethernet and Then it will say install and it will do some sort of The bootstrap, but if you're not familiar with the bootstrap is it's a program that you can run on Linux on Debian based distributions and you can point it to a server that will pull down Basically, it's like doing a net install So basically we have an option to do a default Install where it will go out to whatever servers are set up for that device and pull them down And then so if you wipe actually wipe out your system or corrupt it You can get into this bootloader connected to your network Say install and we'll pull down those files and it could be the newest version of those files But beyond that because let's say years from now that company doesn't support that device anymore and the servers go down Just have a text field where you can type in your own server and it will pull down the things from there For example, you use the Debian servers and we'll pull down, you know Debian install And that's it It's just having that functionality would be amazing because it would be pretty much impossible to screw up your device no matter how bad you do you press a little pin button on the back and Hit enter, you know typing your Wi-Fi password and hit enter a couple times and we'll download the the Install that's designed for that device and it can be your media center or whatever that device or a phone OS whatever designed for that device, but if you didn't like that you could Point it to another server that's set up somewhere that you set up locally on your network Or if someone designs someone else designs one you point and you can pull it down You know if you don't like that press in that little pin button reboot and go through the process again with a different server and To me that is the biggest drawback To mobile devices and these little media devices is how hard they and they do it on purpose They do it on purpose so that after two years or however many years they they discontinue updates So now you don't get updates anymore So you have to you know go through the unlocking of the bootloader and and hoping that the community has created updates for it Where this it's like the day you get it if you want to try a different OS you can go through that and And it pulls it down and runs it and maybe some of these servers will actually go through the process of dual booting or quad booting Your system or try booting, you know to where it pulls down the file system And then runs an install script that might install different boot options for you But at any point you can since that chip is there's really no need to upgrade it I mean theoretically there can be a security flaw, but it's highly unlikely In my opinion But that chip and I guess you could set to where you could flash the firmware if you wanted on that chip But just how great would that be that the fear of accidentally breaking your device beyond repair would be completely gone And obviously this would be bad for companies that make the devices because they're not forcing you to upgrade them But you know what desktop developers depth at desktop companies have had it like this basically for years I mean not that convenient to where it doesn't net install for you, but you could put in a bootable device does that But to have that little chip, you know 32 megabytes of storage for that little loader that boots up a minimal version of Linux Network drivers and then you can point it as a server to install your OS Would just be awesome And maybe it would even have an option to where the default, you know, the the official release for that device Maybe has different versions and maybe instead of just pointing to one Maybe they'll have a list menu where you can choose one from the list Think like like let's say compared to like a devil Let's say you're doing this on on a tablet and you want to install It has Ubuntu and then you can have and I'm the promoting you went to I'm just using as an example You can have you know an option for XFCE Nome KDE, you know in the menu and it'll pull down whichever one you want. How awesome would that be? I think desktop should be like this too, but sadly we're going the opposite direction with devices again. They're all locked down You know some things like Chromebooks, which are basically laptops they have locked But it's very easy to unlock the boot loader and boot your own You know OS from from a USB or SD card so so, you know Chrome devices seem to be a lot more open and More like a real device than an Android device But again if you get an Android device that you can unlock the boot loader It's easy to get root and now you can run whatever it likes distribution you want in at least in the shell through Android You know obviously getting a device to just boot You know Debbie and out of the box and have everything work is highly unlikely And I think it's a lot of that's due to proprietary drivers But also from I hear the arm architecture which a lot of these devices are running is is Very sporadic because not one company makes arm Processors but they license it out to other companies. So there's a lot of different standards. I guess you would say but again To just have and again they'll they'll advertise this as security Which I see some aspects of that you look at like a desktop computer I can walk up to most desktop computers Plug in a flash drive or drop in a CD if they still have a CD rom drive boot Linux and that full access to the Windows hard drive on that machine, which is a security issue, especially with mobile devices You're carrying them around a lot more simple solution to that Encryption encrypt your hard drive and a lot of these devices by default if you unlock the boot loader it automatically wipes your your device which You can Once you unlock the boot loader, that's not a problem anymore So it's up to you I can understand the device coming with a locked boot loader But make it easy for you to unlock it with a press of a button And if you want to have it by default wipe the partition you obviously don't want to die all the time because with a desktop computer Let's say you screw up your your system You want to be able to boot another operating system to get into it to maybe fix your system without having to do a full install Maybe recover your files. So booting a different operating system is vital with computer usage And they've kind of removed that from Linux or Android devices on a lot of cases at least by default Once you have the boot loader unlocked It's easy to you know, flash over other images backup images, which is to me More important than than the security of someone getting my device if I really really am concerned about that I'll encrypt my partition with a security key Some people might disagree with me down that like when it comes to desktop computers and they did the whole thing With secure boot with Windows and now they're doing something with Apple. I haven't really read up on it's kind of same thing Either case whether it's cure boot or wherever Apple's calling their trusted ID or wherever they call it You can go in the bios and disable that You know a lot of articles are going around now saying oh new Apple computers. You can't boot Linux Yes, you can from what I've read you just disable their their crapware that they put on there But it's all about making things more difficult for the end user But promoting it as security and a lot people might disagree me people a lot people might be like oh secure boots so important It's it makes things more secure. Yeah, sure if you say so the fact that you can go into the bios and disable it with a few clicks Makes me think otherwise And I get it's supposed to prevent software from making those changes But your operating system should do that your operating system shouldn't let rogue software be modifying your boot loader And you shouldn't be letting crazy random software running on your machine So it all comes back to you know my feelings on like antivirus software I think it's complete crap and an illusion just don't install viruses on your machine get your software from trusted places that's created by trusted people and That's not an issue. There's so many operating systems out there where people go and randomly download files from random websites That's kind of the standard on Windows I believe on Apple as well and I see sadly a lot of people do it on Linux to stick with your default repositories unless You really really know and trust these other Locations but for most users just use your default repositories everything you need should be in there. Anyway, that's a whole nother note Anyway, let me know what you think What do you think about my idea of having a boot loader? That's a mini Linux distribution on a chip on a device that boots loads up your network drivers and then can pull down Your operating system from whatever server you give it. That's a lot better than you know a lot of Android devices have a separate partition which you know Holds your install basically if you refresh your your your system. Well a lot of times your system Partition is read-only and if that gets screwed up you're kind of messed up Unless you have a backup of it But then when you pull down updates actually puts all that in an image and images it over wouldn't be great If it could just do it the bootstrap. It's an awesome way to that's how I do all my installs for all my desktops It'd be awesome if devices could do that with a few clicks. Anyway, thanks for listening and I hope that you have a great day