Comment by haunter
14 hours ago
>Recently, Contributor 0xCAFEBABE introduced a very different kind of generic target that can be run on various types of bare-metal hardware devices.
>While it’s still in experimental state, it has successfully booted on:
>Common x86_64 PCs
>Apple Silicon Macs
>NVIDIA DGX Spark
>Qualcomm Snapdragon X Series Laptops
That actually sounds awesome! Refurbishing old laptops with Android would be a nice choice alongside with Desktop Linux.
Why would someone want android with crappy apps comparing to linux on the old laptop?
Better sandboxing. If one of the programs you apt-get is hacked through supply chain compromise or something, it has full access to all the goodies in your user profile. There are distros that attempt to implement sandboxing but in those distros your browser can't really be jailed properly. Qubes has tighter isolation than android does, but is slower and too much of a hassle for your typical employee or relative.
Android is pretty slick overall and the user experience is simpler and more familiar to people than Windows or Linux (even if they're an iPhone user). You'd be surprised how many people don't really use PCs.
Would be interesting for x86-based tablets/convertibles, like for instance an old Lenovo X1. I tried using these with Linux with various different distributions, including PostmarketOS, and it was not a good experience.
Running apps that require a phone and are not available for Linux, without putting them on your actual smartphone (if any)
I bet soon most of the apps you can only get on a smartphones are gonna require some kind of attestation that is unlikely to be given to your laptop running an "unsanctioned" version of android.
Though it might have some use if you at least can run linux userland inside android, including a whole desktop session, without any performance degradation.
11 replies →
There are ways to run Android on Linux much more easily than running Linux on Android.
Familiarity
App consistency
Upstream app availability and release cycle
Security.
Games is one use case. I play the iOS version of Balatro on my Mac.
Much better security. Sandboxing and app isolation actually works on Android.
I wouldn’t want to run Linux or windows on my phone lol.
That sounds suspiciously like jart...
I'd say quite the opposite. jart has been very focused on specific things. While the contribution mentioned looks more butterflying amongst target.
(@0xcafebabe: ADHD high-five, I've got almost the same target list, except I'm playing with their NPUs)
jart unfortunately seems to have had some kind of a mental breakdown involving a hard rightward religious/political pivot around June according to their latest twitter and github activity. They most recently posted a video of the police breaking down their bedroom door. Very sad to see
Jart had a hard rightward pivot shortly after occupy Wall Street where they were advocating for forming militias and pushing for Eric Schmidt for dictator. Obviously they're tremendously talented but they've always been kooky verging on unwell.
It does sound rather... cosmopolitan.
Looks really promising. Once hardware codecs and camera support arrives it might be useful for old laptops. https://github.com/LineageOS/android_device_mainline_generic...