 Hey everybody, welcome to the Linuxcast. I'm your host Matthew Weber. This week on the Linuxcast, I'm going to be talking a little bit about Linux on mobile and why I think that there's no real future for it in terms of success. So let's just jump right in, shall we? If you want to get in contact with us, you can do so on Twitter at the Linuxcast. You can follow me on Twitter at mtwb. You can also email us at thelinuxcast at gmail.com or follow us on Facebook at facebook.com slash thelinuxcast. You can find all of our subscription links at thelinuxcast.org or subscribe to us on YouTube and with the link in the description. Over the years, there have been many attempts at a free and open source mobile operating system from those successful Linux mobile OSs from Nokia in the late 90s, early 2000s before Paul and Windows Mobile became a thing. They had these little feature phones that ran a version of some kind of operating system that had a small portion of the Linux kernel on it. All the way up to the more niche products of today from places like Ubiport, Plasma Mobile, Libre 5 Purism? I don't know. There's a whole bunch of them. PinePhone is one of them. You would have think that I would write these things down, but apparently I didn't. It's really weird. History is littered with the hopes and dreams of companies and developers who have hoped to bring a FOS mobile phone or tablet or whatever to market and be successful but they've all failed. The attempts will continue on even though there's these failures. Ubuntu is still around and Ubiport is basically what Ubuntu used to be on mobile but will the attempts be ever be successful? Those that are currently in development and those that will someday will be face a very rocky path towards success. Today I'm going to talk a little bit about what that success might look like, what success means really for a Linux mobile platform, why it won't ever happen the way it looks like it's going right now, and what idea might just prove me wrong should it come to pass. Let's just jump into the next section here. Success for a FOS mobile platform look like. The first thing that needs to be said is that no one would expect this success to look like iOS or Android. That's completely unrealistic, like most rational people don't expect Linux to take over for Windows in terms of market share and they don't expect it to even get up to Mac market share anytime soon. It's going to be like 2% or 3% on the desktop and it's going to be much more prevalent in the server space expecting mobile to do somehow to overtake Android or iOS is just unreasonable and kind of dumb. So what would success really look like? For me success would look like something like what the Linux desktop has done now and that's 2% to 4% of the market share depending on what metrics you look at. And that's a success because it's never going to be more than that. So developers who are interested in developing another thing that it would need would be developers who are interested in developing real applications, not just hobbies. Driver support from proprietary hardware makers like NVIDIA and Qualcomm. Specifically because now NVIDIA is going to be owning ARM and both of those companies are going to be really important to any success that an open source operating system would have because it would have to support those chipsets. Qualcomm and just regular old ARM might be doable and NVIDIA doesn't have the best relationship with open source and by that I mean they don't like open source at all it seems. Especially with driver support. NVIDIA drivers are just NVIDIA knows NVIDIA drivers are bad for Linux. It's just a way of life and they're proprietary. That's something that a FOS mobile operating system would have to have. It would also need a full-fledged app ecosystem that rivals the big boys similar to what we do on Linux. For decades people bitch to complain, oh if I'm going to use Linux there's no apps on Linux. They don't have Adobe or Microsoft Office or AutoCAD or whatever. Today those aren't really big problems because there are free and open source options like GIMP and Inkscape and LibreOffice that are maybe not as good as the proprietary options but they're reasonable alternatives and you can get your work done on them if you can adapt to that kind of workflow and a mobile operating system that would have to have something similar. So you'd have to be able to compete with the big app stores and have reasonable amount of crossover between types of apps. Productivity, gaming is a big one. Gaming is as big as gaming is on the PC. It's nothing compared to what gaming is on mobile and if you don't have anything in terms of game on mobile you'd have a problem. So productivity, gaming customization apps and full spectrum of just things that any platform that wants to be successful is just going to have to have. That's what if an operating system got to that point then that could be deemed successful. The problem is there's so many reasons why this is never going to happen but just to kind of transition from that app idea apps are kind of like the whole chicken and egg thing. It's one of the reasons why Windows mobile phone series, 7 or whatever they call it back in the like 2010ish reason you know it's kind of the reason why that didn't succeed is because it never had the proper developer sport and it was never going to get proper developer sport until it had a higher percentage of the market share. And because you know it's the chicken and egg thing like I said it's one didn't happen because it needed the other to happen and that one didn't happen because it needed the other to happen. It's a big problem and it's going to be the same thing for Linux on mobile because in order to get the big boys developing for it it would need bigger market share in order to get bigger market share it would need the big boys to develop for it. That's one of the reasons why even if it's how the success I call success at 2-4% most of the developers are just going to be those that develop false software now and that's perfectly fine. It's just never going to be more than that. One of the reasons why Linux has become much more popular than it was 20 years ago is because a lot of people dislike the two major OSes out there. If you've used Windows for a year or two or whatever and you all of a sudden have to go back to Windows you're going to hate it and maybe you switch to Linux because you hate Windows. There's a lot of people like that. Some people like it because of the privacy concerns that Windows presents. Some people don't care for the update mechanisms. That's my personal peeve. That's the reason why Linux has gotten to the point where it is now and also because Linux has been so successful in the server space in the corporate world that interest in developing software for corporate use has kind of bled over into the desktop area and that's very unlikely to happen in mobile. Linux on mobile right now is where Linux was in the early 1990s starting at the beginning. Now sure it has a better code base to work from so they're all being based off of existing desktop environments and code bases in a much more robust Linux kernel than was around 20 years ago obviously and much better hardware support but most of Linux quote unquote hardware support is for Intel based systems so they're still working on trying to tweak and finagle it to work on different kinds of risk 5 based architectures and it's not there yet so the OS will actually be more stable so though if an any of these operating systems that come to fruition or whatever and become usable will be stable faster than can use that slash Linux was but it's not the same world today as it was 20 years ago. Linux then was competing with PCs which weren't in the mainstream I mean most people didn't have a PC until the late 90s and the real flaws that Linux and those OSes had real flaws that Linux could exploit and say hey we're better than Mac OS we're better than Windows. The question I have to ask what can mobile Linux right now point to and say it's better at. It's open source so if you're a false advocate that's the reason why you'd want to use it but most people aren't you know open source advocates most people don't even know open sources they just want to go buy a cheap phone that does their thing or maybe they want to buy an expensive phone that they can show off to their friends but it's possible that a Linux mobile operating system offers modularity of hardware like I think Google called it project treble maybe that's what they call it. I mean they tried this where you could swap in different kinds of hardware pieces like a better camera but bigger battery and things like that. There's a Linux there's an open source company that's doing the same thing it just flopped I mean it's not something that people are really interested in outside of the NERDS one other thing that over the years mobile Linux mobile operating system has tried to offer is continuity between devices mobile to desktop meaning you can carry one device hook it up to your monitor and have a full computing experience. That too has been tried over and over and over again in the last decade Samsung has DEX or whatever it's called now my first experience with it was the Motorola Atrix back in the like 2012-ish maybe 2011 something like that it wasn't a good experience that from what I can tell the DEX experience isn't all that great now either and I mean Linux itself has already tried this Ubuntu Unity was built upon the idea of being able to use one UI across multiple devices that's the reason why you have those big icons along the side even today even though they don't use Unity anymore it's so you can touch them they tried to do it it didn't work nobody bought it nobody wanted it it was bad for the most part I mean Unity itself on the desktop was usable and continues to be even usable now I mean there's a reason why Ubuntu went to know them now it just has a better code base it's easier to maintain because it's more broadly used across distributions so I mean like I said Linux has tried the continuity thing the question I just have to ask where is Linux on mobile better why is it better why would it be better why should even FOSS advocates want to use it the real answer is that they don't most FOSS guys and gals have interest in Linux on mobile only because it's cool not because it's useful everyone who has a pine phone or a Libram 5 also has a real phone beside it that they use when they need to do real work they don't want to play a game or whatever maybe there's some hardcore Linux fanboy out there who just has an open source phone but most of them have an Android phone the only place where Linux might have an opportunity is in the extreme low market and I'm talking less than $100 and I'm calling this iffy because there are tons of Android phones out there from $50 on up but most of them are kind of terrible until you get to the $200 mark so between $50 and $200 Linux has an opening if a Linux phone can be below that and be better than the low end Android devices specifically in terms of applications or at least it needs to be as good in terms of applications and it has to have decent camera because everybody cares about camera it doesn't have to be top of the line just has to be good enough and an experience right it has to be an experience we've talked about this before Linux has a fragmentation problem we have 12 different organizations working on 12 different operating systems and that's a problem if you want to have mainstream success is limited developers limited money and resources also competing with Android and all that stuff it's all going to be a huge problem even if they only focused on the low end and if you only focus on the low end there's no profit in it so it's not going to draw in more developers or more hardware partners now I know what you've been thinking this entire time but Matt what about Android isn't that Linux I mean kind of Android uses the Linux and out of date kernel but it uses a Linux kernel but isn't really open source like what we're talking about with a Linux on mobile device Google controls the entire stack of everything that makes Android Android and controls who uses their proprietary Google Play services the what it's based Android is based on is based on the Android open source project AOSP it's a non-Google version of Android that is open source and is mainly contributed to by Google you can it is open source you can take it you can modify it and audit it and fork it or whatever it's great it's a good idea but it's also not what is on the billions of Android devices that are out there nobody uses an Android device outside of Nerddom uses AOSP they use Google's Android Google takes AOSP and puts all their Google germs on it and all which are proprietary and closed source and you're left with something that only has a pass and resemblance to what AOSP started off as also for those who argue that Android is Linux I ask this what makes Android usable it isn't that it's Linux it isn't that it's based on open source piece of software it's the apps back in the 90s Bill Clinton beat the first George Bush by saying keep it simple stupid well to me it's the apps stupid if your platform is going to be successful it has to have applications people I mean it was worse maybe five years ago people were obsessed with oh my god I can't use this platform because it doesn't have this particular app or whatever it's not so bad these days mostly because we take apps for granted because mostly if you want apps it doesn't matter which platform you choose Android or iOS chances are there's either the exact app you're looking for or you know one that's extremely similar because I mean there's billions and billions of apps out there and that's something that Linux mobile could never you know compete with now there are false alternatives to Android that work on AOSP and associated forks like in terms of apps I mean like Eftroyd now I might be wrong about this I think it's an open source app store I mean it's not really a store it's more like an app collection it's like a third party app I mean they call it a third party app store but it's not really a store you know it's an alternative to Google Play and it's where you install a better version of Firefox to get away from the crappy updated Firefox that they just released which is what I did if you use a non-Google version of Android and Eftroyd is your app store chances are you're probably braver than I am I have Eftroyd on my phone like I said I installed Fenrex something like that it's the fork of Firefox that's behind it because the new one's terrible it can make your phone usable if you're using AOSP or something that's non-Google but it doesn't have the breadth of software that Google Play does and that makes it kind of less interesting for regular people alright conclusions why won't Linux on mobile succeed and there's so many reasons there's the fragmentation of so many different developers working on different projects there's the app problem which I consider the biggest problem there's the fact that it's been tried over and over again and something we didn't really talk about is that people are happy with Android and iOS for the most part developers aren't happy with iOS and they don't make a lot of money on Android but that doesn't stop them from developing from because there's the audience for both of those platforms is just so huge you can't compete with with that when it's just billions and billions of devices out there that have these operating systems on it you can't compete with it it seems like I'm completely writing off Android and Linux or Android and Linux Matt you're done Linux on mobile learn how to read and to a degree I guess I am writing it off if developers who are working on Purism and UB ports and Plasma mobile continue on their path as they are Linux mobile is doomed to being a severely initial product that only false advocates use and even they won't use it full time even if it gets really good it won't ever reach the fairly low heights that Linux on desktop has gained it just won't I mean it's disappointing but I believe that that's true the problem with Linux developers and false advocates is that we really want to build things from the ground up it's one of the things we always do the best example of this is fragment is not fragmentation is package management systems every distro has to have their own I mean some distros based on you know WN or ARCH or whatever but those base distros the big four Ubuntu, ARCH, Fedora and OpenSUSA they all have their own package management systems their Solus has built their own package management system there's Gentoo has its own package management way of doing things and they all spent time and effort development wise on developing these things that basically we're already setting I don't know what package management system was first it was probably a precursor to apt-get or something I'm not sure I haven't been wrong that long but you know they're at instead of coming together saying hey this is our package management system that we're going to use all across the Linux distros no we each all had to build up from the ground up our own package management systems and it's you know it's a mess it's a reason why snaps and flat package exist to try to solve that problem what it means for Linux and mobile is that our small community is building up from nothing the big while the big boys continue using their huge budgets to surpass us and making it impossible for us to catch up my solution nobody really cares about my solution is but you know I have a solution and I care about it and that's really all that matters since I'm the one talking my solution is that Linux and mobile should be AOSP somebody should take AOSP like I don't know what's the there's somebody who's actually doing this I'm I've completely started trying to play but anyways it should take AOSP and make that Linux on mobile that should be they should fork it so they can have total control and develop it from there maybe take upstream fixes or whatever from Google and you know whatever just make Google one contributor to it so they're not you know in control it supports the vast majority of devices I think out there so continuously upgraded by Google and security fixes all that it isn't starting from nothing it has broad support across devices and it has application support Linux devs just need to take that fork it build a fossil alternative to Android on top of it make asteroid or whatever the app store don't have like 12 billion app stores or package management systems just this one way to go that's the solution it's AOSP now it have to be a fork of ASP if it was just AOSP Google would still have way too much control over it but if you fork it which I believe is possible it just build off from it from there and then being control of your own fork of it and whether you take you know fixes from Google after that that's up to you I mean in this scenario it might even be possible for somebody to put Google Play on it if that's what they wanted to do so anyways that is those are my thoughts on Linux on mobile my rambling mess of talking to myself once again incoherent ramblings is what I should rename this podcast what do you want from me I'm just a dude sitting in his office at quarter after one in the morning talking about Linux on mobile now if there isn't more of a nerd thing in the world to do I don't know what that is anyways again if you want to get contact with us you can do so email at thelinuxcast.org I think is the email address like I really got to memorize these things no excuse me thelinuxcast.com I forgot I don't have the other one anymore anyways I'm looking for a co-host I do I don't have the other one I'm not talking to myself if you're a Linux noob or intermediate user or an expert or whatever come talk to me I want to talk I need somebody to talk to do some of these topics with anyways coming up next I'll get away from my lonely spiel why Nvidia and ARM is terrible for Linux so Nvidia just bought ARM for like 40 billion dollars so we'll talk about that next time we'll see you then