Unfortunately, Sailfish OS uses a proprietary (closed source) android compatibility layer, as well as a closed source UI.

For the parts they have open-sourced, they implemented a CLA that contributors must sign. It’s the HA-CLA-I-ANY license, which specifically allows them a perpetual Copyright and Patent license, and permission to re-license your code contributions to a more restrictive license which enables them sell or package it into a closed-source proprietary app.

Personally I’m be more comfortable supporting the development of PostmarketOS instead, since it is completely open-source with no CLA, meaning no chance of any rug-pulling in the future.

GrapheneOS is great, and it’s what I currently use, but it is ultimately a hardened Android fork. One downside of that is it is completely reliant on manufacturer updates to continue to support a phone. Once a manufacturer drops support, the Graphene team must also drop support, as they are reliant on the closed source GPU/hardware drivers that are tied to specific android kernel versions.

PostmarketOS is not based on Android whatsoever, it’s a Mobile focused Linux distro using the mainline Linux kernel. It uses open-source drivers for the GPU and hardware which can be maintained and supported for decades, and is completely independent of Google’s influence. However, it’s still currently rough enough around the edges that it isn’t ready as a daily driver, which is why it’d be so helpful for us to donate to it so they can hire more developers to polish it up, as they recently did to improve the audio support of Qualcomm devices.

Please consider donating to PostmarketOS to build up a pure mobile Linux alternative that is completely free of Google’s influence. It’s the best long-term option we have.

Then Lemmy, Kbin, Mbin, Mastodon, Friendica, Misskey, Bookwyrm, Pixelfed, Loops, Peertube, all made from disparate developers from around the world, are all one US Federal plot?

Why would they prefer a decentralized, difficult to control social media network over the centralized ones that are already entirely under the control of right-wing billionaires?

I understood the reference, but if we’re going by that logic, the Fediverse itself is a federal ploy.

Ah, another Captain Planet villain added to the roster.

I mean… Same for Fediverse, and Federation?

If you go deep enough, there’s still windows 3.11 dialog boxes in Windows 11 for some core functionality.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240102024352/https://ntdev.blog/2023/01/01/state-of-the-windows-how-many-layers-of-ui-inconsistencies-are-in-windows-11/

It suffers from that less now since Canonical abandoned the project. UBPorts is AFAIK just a community project to keep it alive. I would’ve assumed they would drop the CLA stuff, but I guess they didn’t want to or couldn’t for whatever reason?

PostmarketOS has a similar ability thanks to Waydroid, though I’ve never used it myself.

Long-term, yes. It isn’t ready as a daily driver for the average person (hence why I used the term ‘build up’), but there is realistically no other option that can truly be called community owned like PostmarketOS can. It’s our best shot at a permanent non-enshittified platform, it just needs our support so it can become polished and support more phones :)

The issue with Ubuntu Touch is that unfortunately it uses an outdated Android kernel (which is also usually not receiving security updates) and a Halium abstraction layer to access the closed source binary blob Android drivers for the phone’s hardware. It also requires that it be installed on top of an existing Android install, so in all it’s more of Linuxified layer on top of Android, which means it’s not truly escaping the control of the Android/Google ecosystem.

UBPorts also appears to inherit the use of CLA’s from Canonical:

I’m very much not a fan of CLA’s., which SailfishOS also employs.

The advantage of PostmarketOS (even though it is not ready as a daily driver for the average person), is that it uses the upstream Linux kernel with open-source GPU/hardware drivers, not an Android kernel to access the outdated proprietary GPU/Hardware blobs.

Graphene is currently the best daily driver for the average person, but as they are a hardened Android fork, they are still somewhat reliant on Google playing ball.

PostmarketOS is not ready for the average person, but it is our best long-term option since it is not based on Android at all.

Legend! :D

Please consider donating to PostmarketOS to build up a pure mobile Linux alternative that is completely free of Google’s influence. It’s the best option we have.

Unfortunately, Sailfish OS uses a proprietary (closed source) android compatibility layer, as well as a closed source UI.

For the parts they have open-sourced, they implementrd a CLA that contributers must sign. It’s the HA-CLA-I-ANY license, which specifically allows them a perpetual Copyright and Patent license, and permission to relicense your code contributions to a more restrictive license which enables them sell or package it into a closed-source proprietary app.

Personally I’d be more comfortable supporting the development of PostmarketOS instead, since it is completely open-source with no CLA, meaning no chance of any rug-pulling in the future.

Wow, this is exactly what the British used to do back in the day. Absolutely barbaric.

I personally think there’s a law of diminishing returns with things like graphics and resolution, and as technology advances, what used to be good or even amazing becomes our baseline as expectations shift.

Somewhat related to that, I’d also say there’s merit in sometimes analyzing if our chase for ‘better’ is truly bringing us enough value to warrant the downsides it brings. As an example, the market’s desire for the new and novel, for better graphics, for higher resolutions, feeds into a consumer culture that brings with it a tremendous amount of greenhouse emissions to produce and ship all those new consoles and higher resolution monitors/TVs, environmental destruction to mine the raw materials for them, exploitation of third world workers to gather those materials and assemble them into those products, products which as the OP points out, are increasingly user hostile and enshittified alongside those better graphics.

When looked at objectively, a Wii is a comparatively low resolution, but it is also widely available used (so while it did initially contribute to the downsides I mentioned above when new, as a used object on a second-hand market, it does not), and despite that lack of resolution, still brings with it the capability of giving us great fun, which is ultimately the reason we want to experience them, is it not? And due to its age, it has no enshittification whatsoever, the user completely owns the experience.

But that’s just my 2 cents.

Me, still playing 480p Wii games on my modded Wii with an old ass 1080p TV, having a blast

I had to buy a printer recently to replace a used one from the 90’s that I’d been happily using for the past decade, and decided to go with a fairly new laser brother printer. I plugged it in and, magically, it really did just work, even on Linux.