Comment by TheRoque

4 hours ago

What's wrong with just Android?

There's a powerlessness to using Android.

It's difficult to just do things. Even windows feels more "free." Phone OSes are built like prisons.

Ideally Android would let you drop into a real shell, without having to deal with android sandboxing.

Regardless, I use termux and tasker to get my automations done.

  • Probably because carriers don't want a bunch of poorly secured devices on their networks.

    • Can't you get USB modems and cram a SIM inside? Are carrier networks really more scary than the internet at large?

    • They don't seem to put much effort in proactively blocking residential VPNs though?

  • What are the main things you can do in a real shell versus termux for instance?

    It's a pretty big sandbox in my experience.

    • If something bothers me with my phone's UI or if I want to change the behavior of some system service, I can do e.g. "apt source phosh", patch it and then "apt build-dep .", "dpkg-buildpackage -b" and "apt install" it right on the phone. I can even send the patch for upstreaming from there.

      How easy it is to do an equivalent thing on Android?

people shouldn't have to buy a mac mini to run openclaw, they already have an always-on computer, they just can't install anything computationally useful with it