Man, all of these little steps Google is taking to take the control away from the users, not to take over the world or anything else, but to force on you more accurate advertisements. What are we even doing?
Well Google is becoming worse every year, but AOSP is way ahead of Linux on Mobile, for many reasons.
The thing is, AOSP is open source. Just like Linux is not controlled by one of the TooBigTechs, I could imagine a fork of AOSP becoming a viable alternative without depending on Google anymore.
And supporting alternative Android OSes (like GrapheneOS and LineageOS) is one way to support that vision.
Linux on Mobile is nice, but unfortunately I think it's an uphill battle because of all the proprietary firmwares?
One obstacle to making AOSP independent is the included apps. Last I knew they were overly basic and somewhat derelict because Google has long been favoring their own closed source counterparts, and third party manufacturers all ship their own (often kinda garbage) alternatives.
Not insurmountable at all, building decent apps isn’t rocket science, but a substantial investment of time and energy nonetheless.
> but unfortunately I think it's an uphill battle because of all the proprietary firmwares?
In my GNU/Linux phone, all drivers are FLOSS and all pieces of firmware are backed into the replaceable peripherals (modem M.2 card and WiFi M.2 card).
I feel like supporting Android alternatives is also fighting for my rights. Isn't it?
And again, I'm really impressed by all the work done by the Linux on Mobile projects. I'm just saying it's an uphill battle, and it's nowhere close to any AOSP-based system.
