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What makes it so there are only a handful of phone models that can run degoogled systems? Why doesn't it work like on the PC, where you can just put any Linux distro on any machine?
2023-10-21 · 7 months ago · 👍 Minko_Ikana, mimas2AC
It's mostly because:
- The lack of auto-configuring protocols such as ACPI.
- The lack of a BIOS/UEFI-like system.
- The use of proprietary drivers and other kernelspace or userspace blobs.
- No phones use mainline Linux (not even the PinePhone), but outdated patched forks.
- The mandated use of a devicetree, which typically means every device requires its own version of the Linux kernel. Some manufacturers even violate the GPLv2 license by not releasing the kernel source.
@xavi: Hey, thanks! I've never heard about half of those things, but I guess you're saying that phone architectures are made to be less interchangeable than PCs... I hope this changes soon, it's a little frustrating.
@xavi, great knowledge shared. Thank you. This is the same with Linux and printers. Linux always gets the blame but the printer is actually the true culprit.
Phones are treated like glorified embedded devices, but they already became general-purpose computers a long time ago. Unfortunately, this left us with tens of millions of unusable devices without any possible software upgrade or replacement, effectively becoming e-waste.
GrapheneOS has infos about why they stick to Pixel devices (mostly because of hardware security features not available in other devices) and why it is hard to support other devices:
@michaelnordmeyer Thanks--lots of interesting info there.
I chime in to add that most manufacturers close any boot access to the phones and make it really hard to request it. There's even the case of Xiaomi, that you can request the opening of the bootloader, it takes a week to unlock and then proceeds to unlock the bootloader and clear the device with a factory reset, effectively losing anything you had on the phone.
There's simply no interest in that we tinker with our phones, since we could, you know, keep using our phones without the bloat they force on them, and maybe not having to buy a nev phone every new year.
The proprietary/unique hardware on phones and printers is also mirrored, from what I understand, in the computers inside of cars. I don't think there's much of ANY kind of way to "jailbreak" a car (or a tractor). Is there anywhere to crowdfund that sort of thing?
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