TLDR: I don’t like the philosophy behind how Android and iOS devices are created and managed by their OEMs nearly enough to give them near total control over what I can do today or in the future with my primary computing platforms.

Its not a specific thing I can’t do that I want to do that stops me from liking it.

Its that it is a specific OS image bound to a specific hardware model that is very limited in what options or upgrades or changes are available to me.

With a Framework laptop (or most other generic models) or a generic ATX desktop tower I can replace whatever internal component if need be and then put whatever base OS on it, just because I want to do that.

With a Pixel, or Galaxy, or iPhone it runs the OS it came with and is blessed by the OEM on the hardware they compiled it to run on. Unless I am willing to accept large inconveniences in functionality and usability.

If I replace my desktop/laptop with a Pixel running Debian for desktop mode, now Google has vastly more control over what my desktop experience is going to be via their control of the hardware and host OS layer than they do today. If they decide they don’t want something being done in that Debian container in the future for some reason, then they can stop me from doing it with little recourse for me as a user.

If networking and GUI gets added then we’re talking

Can i install grapheneos on Xiaomi

Two problems:

1. No automatic call recording.
2. Banking apps don’t work on GrapheneOS thanks to Play Integrity APIs, so you probably need to root to get them to work.

If you need to root anyway, might as well use BCR.

Where/how?

CalyxOS also has it (though they block it where it’s illegal).

Except it’s not automatic

I very much doubt that, since Google removed the call recording APIs. But if someone can tell how it would work on recent Android, I would love being proven wrong.

OneUI 7 actually downgrades the Dex experience by removing the feature to launch it in Windows, so we gain some features and lose some.

And one UI 6.0 and one UI 5.0. My Samsung phones have done this for as long as I can remember

Do you have such a phone? What CSC does it have?

You used be able to run Linux apps too, but they pulled it all back because they are only good at creating bloatware.

And to install a custom ROM you need to unlock your boot loader and root it anyways. Do custom roms even come with a non-root option? I haven’t done it in years.

My guess is that people who would use DEX is also people who are satisfied with ChromeOS. Which is just as closed down.

Hopefully, when Android does this, they will be under same gatekeeper restrictions in the EU as Windows.

Yeah… I dont see this happening. Android has 99% shovelware crap. I dont see how any professional would be able to use Android instead of Windows, MacOS or Linux.

Android is garbage, and I’m saying this as an android user… The moment a serious Linux alternative is here for phones I’m gone (yes I’m aware Android is technically also “Linux”).

Just a few examples: the file system is a mess, good luck trying to easily save on network drives. There is no decent office suite and again using the files system to save documents in Android is a shitshow. There are Adobe products but they’re all watered down shitty versions of the desktop ones, the alternatives are even worse. Around every corner google tries to push it’s shitty cloud subscriptions, the telemetry is insane even compared to windows.

No Android is definitely not the future chromebooks were a mess too. And knowing Google they’ll just give up on anything they don’t seem profitable enough so even if they tried on desktop they’ll just pull the plug after 2 years.

If people complain about Linux being hard… give android a try as desktop OS it’s probably 10x worse. At least Linux comes with a decent office suite and decent networking capabilities.

I suppose you mean the same effect I have noticed with our younger apprentices who know very little about the way computers work anymore since they grew up with phones only, they don’t even know what a file system is any more.

I have a dying laptop and am very much interested in replacing it with my phone + Nexdock (or similar)

The times when you couldn’t get PCs with 100% hardware support on Linux were 15+ years ago. You can still find the occasional one today that doesn’t have it but it is not hard to get 100% support.

Android is very much designed with every application in its own little silo that needs the permission of the OS vendor or something off-device (like a cloud service both apps access) to communicate with each other. This means, among other things, a very limited ability to do software development on the device and run your own applications, a very limited ability to automate applications, no chaining of workflows (e.g. read some sensor in one app, process the data in another, graph it in a third). You also generally don’t have administrator/root access on the device and if you do get around that restriction a lot of the applications for things like banks will refuse to work. You can’t properly control which data your device collects and where it sends it. Your ability to debug the behavior of your own applications and device is severely limited.

It gives you terminal access to a Debian VM, not the Android subsystem.

, so if you have su access, that should give you all the power you need.

Still won’t save you from the complete isolation of the apps from each other, only allowing you to exchange data between them at the OS maker’s generosity.

And it’s only on their premium phones.

Yeah they were a little too early and the hardware of the time couldn’t power it appropriately.