I know, I got the wording from some online website. Linux phones doesn’t make too much sense to me, I would prefer to just call them GNU phones. The kernel can’t be what defines this group of OSs when the main OS you’re trying to exclude from this group runs the same one. GNU-like is a compromise.
Using the word Linux to describe the operating system makes no sense in general. You never know if someone is talking about the OS or the kernel. GNU was developed by different people with a different philosophy and goals. When people say Linux, they usually mean GNU/Linux (Linux Mint, Arch Linux, etc). But there is also Alpine Linux, which doesn’t use GNU at all, so it’s not exactly the same thing. And why even name the OS after the kernel? Doesn’t the name Alpine Linux sound like it’s just a fork of Linux? It’s super confusing and people mix it up all the time, even this community of GNU/Linux users and under this post.
Android uses a heavily modified fork of Linux, so it doesn’t use the same Linux that we use on desktop and it’s definitely not a GNU/Linux operating system. So I don’t know if we can call it “Linux”.
Then there is Ubuntu Touch and I don’t even know how to call that. GNU/Android maybe?
But the phones that we are talking about here I would say that those are GNU/Linux phones. Because even though many people run postmarketOS on them, they are designed to run GNU/Linux and they are shipped with it. But the phones designed to run Ubuntu Touch are something else. Maybe we should just call them Android phones, because I think that’s what they are mostly designed to run.
I feel like I might’ve exaggerated the chasm between ditching Xorg and adopting Linux phones, Waylands only problems are really VR (just seems to be dead end outside of SteamVR) and Nvidia feature parity though that’s less to do with Wayland and more to do with Nvidia dragging their feet on Linux, theres also the odd edge case like unrecognised inputs.
I totally see what you mean with the GNU-like Linux phones. But what issue could you have with Wayland in the year 2024?
For me steam VR doesn’t work in Wayland
PinePhone and Librem 5 actually run GNU/Linux. Same software that you can run on desktop. Only Ubuntu Touch uses Android kernel I think.
Some people take offense in referring to Alpine/postmarketOS as GNU.
That makes sense, but there are other popular mobile distros too. For example: Manjaro ARM and Mobian (mobile Debian).
I know, I got the wording from some online website. Linux phones doesn’t make too much sense to me, I would prefer to just call them GNU phones. The kernel can’t be what defines this group of OSs when the main OS you’re trying to exclude from this group runs the same one. GNU-like is a compromise.
Using the word Linux to describe the operating system makes no sense in general. You never know if someone is talking about the OS or the kernel. GNU was developed by different people with a different philosophy and goals. When people say Linux, they usually mean GNU/Linux (Linux Mint, Arch Linux, etc). But there is also Alpine Linux, which doesn’t use GNU at all, so it’s not exactly the same thing. And why even name the OS after the kernel? Doesn’t the name Alpine Linux sound like it’s just a fork of Linux? It’s super confusing and people mix it up all the time, even this community of GNU/Linux users and under this post.
Android uses a heavily modified fork of Linux, so it doesn’t use the same Linux that we use on desktop and it’s definitely not a GNU/Linux operating system. So I don’t know if we can call it “Linux”.
Then there is Ubuntu Touch and I don’t even know how to call that. GNU/Android maybe?
But the phones that we are talking about here I would say that those are GNU/Linux phones. Because even though many people run postmarketOS on them, they are designed to run GNU/Linux and they are shipped with it. But the phones designed to run Ubuntu Touch are something else. Maybe we should just call them Android phones, because I think that’s what they are mostly designed to run.
I feel like I might’ve exaggerated the chasm between ditching Xorg and adopting Linux phones, Waylands only problems are really VR (just seems to be dead end outside of SteamVR) and Nvidia feature parity though that’s less to do with Wayland and more to do with Nvidia dragging their feet on Linux, theres also the odd edge case like unrecognised inputs.