- cross-posted to:
- videos@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- videos@lemmy.world
Sure, the year of the Linux Desktop might be around the corner, but what about the year of the Linux Phone!
Sure, the year of the Linux Desktop might be around the corner, but what about the year of the Linux Phone!
With the fact that Google is talking about controlling our devices, I am seriously considering going to a Linux phone even if it is a step down in user experience, just to give the middle finger to Google. I already run Lineage OS without Google Play Services, but I’m beginning to become afraid that they’re going to lock down AOSP to where you can’t install applications either.
Like sure, for now, it’s only going to be on devices with Google Play services. But what’s to stop Android 19 from being released and making it to where you can’t even do it on AOSP?
How do you survive without Google services? Did you have to unlear / switch a lot of stuff? Like gmail?
I was pretty tangled in the Google ecosystem and so ended up switching to a lot of proton stuff such as proton mail primarily. I replaced Google Street Maps with OsmAnd and for getting addresses I use gps-coordinates.net to convert addresses like 123 Main Street, Washington, D.C., United States into GPS coordinates so that OSM can understand them better. I would still once in a great while bring up the Google Maps website to get directions for something, but found out recently that they stopped allowing you to get directions if you didn’t have the app, so was just looking at MapQuest. As of now, I haven’t had a Google account since January of 2023, and the only Google service I regularly interact with is YouTube through a third-party front-end called NewPipe. I try to find channels on other services such as PeerTube and have some success, but YouTube is the main anchor that still is a Google service that I interact with at all.
It’s not much choice if only iOS and Android are on offer, so it’s great to see alternatives that work. That being said, I’m considering a dumb phone and a small data-enabled Linux tablet.