Nice article! Are you the author? If so, I’d like to give you a suggestion: the part about the deepin Linux story and technical background is interesting enough to be its own article. That way, it would be more findable on web searchers and probably help a lot of people who look for information on it, which is a bit scarce in english.

Some software developers prefer to host their own repos and have more control over the release process and/or don’t want to fill all the criteria for being included on f-droid, so they create their own repos. Some of these apps can still be found on vanilla fdroid, but often aren’t updated so frequently.

Izzyondroid, on the other hand, is a different project, aimed at hosting different apps that are usually from smaller devs and can’t be included on fdroid yet, for different reasons.

The greatest thing about fdroid is that it allows anyone to create their own repos and you aren’t forced to depend on anyone.

5 years already? Shit, I’m old.

Gnu can be used to describe the gnu project, the gnu license or the gnu coreutils. In this context, they mean that Linux by itself isn’t enough to be the a free desktop, and needs the gnu software to be the system they care about. (There can be controversies on whether gnu is needed or not, since it’s possible to create a distro without the coreutils, but let’s not get you confused right now)

Good idea, worth checking.

I understand your bad experience with GSIs, but I think it’s a step in the right direction. The way custom roms have been made through the years isn’t sustainable for the long run. It’s too much work for the few people involved, that goes obsolete so fast. But with GSis, the projects will one day be able to maintain just a few images, and the porting community will just have to focus on unlocking the devices.

GSIs aren’t working 100% today, but it’s something still new in the perspective of manufacturers, and the tendency is to have better support with time.

Just to put things into perspective, my experience, as someone poor from a third word country, is just the opposite. In the past, only the more expensive phones had custom rom support, and the cheaper ones I got access to, wouldn’t even get results if I searched for the model on xda. Nowadays, even cheap chinese phones or the ones locally manufactured in here allow me to put a GSI and have a customized experience, up to date with security patches.

Bring back the smaller phones!

Even more important is to see the windows downtrend. We need competition, keep it going!

One trick is to have anold android phone. I created a couple of accounts last year without giving any personal data by using a device with android kitkat.

Mine stopped sending emails all of a sudden this week. Are you able to send emails using k9 with a gmail account?

Well… I’m using pidgin right now.

Thank you for explaining this concept. I still don’t see how it can be considered planned obsolescence, though. It looks more like a matter of optimizing the output and doing a tradeoff for more performance.

I see planned obsolescence as artificially limiting the longevity or repairability of a product, without any benefit at all, but with the intention of making it less durable. A good example could be locked smartphones without updates.

But perhaps, the definition of planned obsolescence is broader than i think.

but to actually provide a compromise leading to an overall better product.

Could you elaborate a bit more on that?

Whoa, I didn’t know tiktok was so popular. it’s like 1/8 of the entire world population, and considering that only about 70% of the world has internet access, it’s like 18% of all internet users.

Or are lots of these bot accounts, like other social media, and the real numbers are lower?

I was thinking it was something like what pidgin does on desktop, adapted for mobile, and was highly enthusiastic, but realized it works using matrix bridges and doesn’t process locally…

Well, at least it can be self hosted.

Foldable phone will always be either more expensive, less durable, or both, so it’s a no go for me, as much as I like the idea.

App lounge looks really interesting.

When I first heard about /e/ os, it looked a bit too weird, and I was too skeptical, but they’re growing so nice and creating interesting tools. I think I will give the project a shot.

No, but they accepted to publish political fake news ads for one of the running parties (the fascistoid one, of course) in the last elections here in Brazil.

That party has lost, but it was too close. In the 4 last years, during their mandate, hunger, violence, discrimination rape, and other problems rose to the highest levels in the century.

Google and other big tech companies have been influencing elections in a lot of places, and the consequences are enormous.

People also have that tendency to personify AIs. I don’t really understand why.

Would be even better if we did our own on lemmy.