Max-P
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It’s a OnePlus 8T, but I think any OnePlus before I think the OnePlus 11 have excellent custom ROM support.
AFAIK I got lucky and the 8T is the last model from their “being nice to developers” era. OnePlus was born originally to be developer friendly, it was based on CyanogenMod out of the box, they even sent phones to developers.
Mine launched with OxygenOS 11, and then OOS12 was completely rebuilt on Oppo’s ColorOS and they threw everything out the window. Took them forever to drop sources, and it just went downhill from there.
Google bought Widevine in 2010, so in my opinion they were already concerned about big corp’s interests above the users well before. I think SafetyNet is the natural evolution of that.
I think SafetyNet came with Google Pay for contactless payments, most likely at the request of the banks. They had to work with the banks for that, that’s when they got the leverage. If they didn’t they’d just go partner with Samsung instead, who already had Knox, and I did see Samsung Pay on my phone before Google Pay was available at all.
They also had to increasingly deal with shitty root detection libraries that were getting popular and excluding legitimate users because the latest Android changed things enough it looked modded to the apps. They probably saw it as a lesser evil to just take it in their hands.
You don’t need that much leverage to put enough pressure that there’s enough demands for a feature for the feature to get added. Android was dealing with a lot of fragmentation, piracy and quality problems already, Google needed people to see Android as not just the shitty budget option, they wanted to compete with the iPhone proper.
The entheusiast market only gets you so far. You need entheusiast buy-in at first, but then you have to pivot to end user “premium” experience, which is why brands like OnePlus eventually turn their back to the users that propped the company up. Regular users would rather pick the walled garden than the open world if it means their apps work better in the walled garden. The walled garden is a better experience for the average moron.
Google outright lets you unlock your bootloader on Pixels, and relock it with your custom keys, and even tells you how to do all that in the docs. You lose Play Integrity certification which is where things are getting a bit messy.
But for that you have to blame Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Disney, a lot of banks, a lot of games for using what is basically DRM for apps. It’s the developers that want those features, so you can’t mod their APKs and take the ads out, make sure you download the official version from Google Play because dumb users getting scammed and all that stuff.
I run LineageOS on my phone, I’m not doing anything whatsoever to hide it, and pretty much everything works perfectly except Google Pay. Which I guess is fair game, I hate it but there’s a reasonable argument to be made there.
The rest is the same DRM woes I deal with on Linux, I value my rights and freedoms more than running an app.
For the most part, it’s just like how you learned to be good with a controller: experience. The more you use the mouse the better you get. You brain just learns that this amount of movements equals roughly this distance moved on the screen.
For a lot of people, disabling mouse acceleration helps with precision. By default there’s an acceleration curve, so you move the mouse faster and the cursor goes even faster, disabling it makes it so the cursor tracks the mouse precisely. It can make it harder to do a 360 though, as acceleration can help get the speed needed. Dial in your sensitivity settings to where it feels comfortable for aiming, because if you make the sensitivity too much for the 360 it’ll be really hard to aim with any sort of accuracy.
There’s a rhythm game called Osu! if you want to stress test your mouse accuracy.
The Microsoft Surface Duo 2 is the only one I know that does that. Yes Microsoft makes Android devices.
Alternatively, two tablets and a little bit of duct-tape would also achieve a similar result.
I think the main reason is Google wants to provide a predictable environment for the developers where not too many things can be changed so it doesn’t visually break apps. Because for big corps really, really want their branding to be perfect, can’t be caught with a screenshot of their app in Comic Sans.
You used to be able to install some pretty sick theme packs but over time everyone started shipping apps with its own hardcoded themes and theme libraries such that it looks identical between devices, so now we’re stuck with whatever Google says is how it should look.
Back when I was a developer I had to turn off my theme for every demo because the clients would keep focusing on that and not their fucking app, and keep complaining it clashed so hard with their brand colors. Which I’m sure is part of why the stock theme now is so flat and neutral vs the Holo/Honeycomb days.
Anyone that’s used a custom ROM knows just how shitty your 48MP camera looks like without the processing lol. People go out of their way to make GCam work because it’s so bad.
It’s one of those bougie “nostalgia” app isn’t it? Like those shitty scamcorders that VWestlife covered not long ago.
You need an account to upload stuff. The Internet Archive isn’t just archiving websites, you can also upload book scans to them, rips of old floppies and discs for old software, even old TV shows and movies. For example, the entirety of the Computer Chronicles series is available for download there.
I would literally donate money directly to Valve if I could for all the good selfless work they’re doing.
Their work on sponsoring DXVK, and Proton’s development, their contributions to make the AMD drivers even more awesome, gamescope, they’ve been driving all the HDR and VR work on Linux, and now they’re also getting even more hands on with Wayland through frog-protocols.
Meanwhile the others are either doing nothing at all except selling the games, or actively sabotaging Linux gaming and furthering Microsoft’s monopoly like Epic Games is doing with their intrusive anti-cheat.
Being on Steam is being strongly pro-consumer and the first thing a developer not publishing on Steam does to me is make sure I’m very unlikely to buy their games because at least on Steam I know I won’t get ripped off.
Couldn’t care less about whiny developers complaining they make slightly less millions in sales for overpriced AAA games, and still impose their own launcher and shit because they only treat Steam like a store and nothing else. I pick what’s good for the players not the developers. If they’re unhappy there’s dozens of indie developers in line to pick up the slack willing to make games I’m willing to pay for.
EDIT: And a couple hours later, Valve delivers once again: https://lists.archlinux.org/archives/list/[email protected]/thread/RIZSKIBDSLY4S5J2E2STNP5DH4XZGJMR/?sort=date
Android 4.4 long predates the OEM unlock option in developer settings.
You’ll probably want to find a guide specific to that device to get to flashing TWRP, then it would be like most other devices/ROMs via TWRP. If you’re lucky it’ll be the classic couple fastboot commands to the bootloader and good to go.
Once in TWRP it’s just menu driven so it’s pretty easy.
And all that forever too. The developers don’t pay a dime after Steam’s cut to keep the game alive and downloadable and playable. Even Steam keys, you can sell as many as you want outside of Steam, for free.
The devs can just raise the price by 30% if they feel they really need the money. I’ll pay the extra to have it on Steam and just work out of the box in Proton. Unlike Apple, it’s not a monopoly, nothing stopping anyone from just distributing on their own.
Epic is anti-consumer and also anti-Linux, they don’t make any effort to support other platforms, the app is shit.
Meanwhile, Steam is
- Actively working with the FOSS community to help preserve old games
- Kernel improvements for better graphics performance
- Lots of VR and HDR work
- Many contributions to the open-source AMD drivers
- Has been supporting Linux gaming for a decade with no signs of backing down
- They have a portable Linux gaming console experience, and it’s intentionally left wide open for users to mess with
- They’ve taken several community features and built them into the OS
- Their DRM is weak and unintrusive
- Their anticheat is ununtrusive
- The sales are pretty good
- They have tons of features for users:
- Family sharing
- Remote Play Together
- Remote Play
- Streaming
- Community forums for every game
- Mod workshop
- Matchmaking
- Steam Chat / Voice Chat / Streaming
The only appealing thing for EGS is, EGS takes a lower cut from the developers who just pockets it and doesn’t even result in lower prices for users. As a Linux user, praise our Lord GabeN for all the good Valve has done for gamers. Even for the developers, most are quite happy with the services they get back from that 30% cut.
I’d say the dislike is mainly that for the users, EGS doesn’t bring in anything new or interesting or useful that Steam didn’t already do well, and goes directly against a lot of the good Steam has been doing. It’s just a store that makes big developers slightly more happy.
IMO that’s more of a problem with the industry not really caring to support lower specs, or generally not seeing the deck as a real console or platform to target. People still make Switch games and the damn thing was already outdated at launch and they even underclocked it for good measures.
At 800p you’ve got to start thinking, is most of the detail those games compute even actually visible the on screen? How many PCs does that make obsolete? If the deck can’t run it at 800p, even at 1080p you’re gonna need what, an RTX 2060 for the lowest settings on a PC?
Some of the example titles don’t even sound like they’re the kind of titles that are made to showcase what your 4090 can do, which logically you’d want as many people as possible to be able to play it.
What developers seem to forget is how much stuff they get in return from Valve:
- Valve invests heavily into Linux gaming, because they know it’s how you keep all those games working in the long run. (Proton)
- Valve takes care of download bandwidth forever.
- Built-in streaming and remote play together
- The Steam Deck and upcoming SteamOS for the console-like experience
- Forums
- The workshop and mods
- Chat and social networking features
- Steam Input, and my beloved Steam Controller
- Achievements
The Epic store is just, here’s the game files loaded with DRM, try to enjoy. Why even sell through a store and not provide a direct download at this point and get 100% of the sales?
I only buy on Steam because I want Valve to have their 30% cut, because they invest it in the community for everyone’s benefit, including Epic’s games and customers who want to play on Linux or the Steam Deck. Epic would be perfectly happy with the subbar Windows handheld experience because “it’s how PC gaming works”. Proton is amazing, it even eliminates variance that would exist on real Windows machines which results in more games just working right out of the box compared to Windows, esepcially very old ones.
Between Epic and Valve, I’ll pick the one that makes gaming better for everyone.
it’s only open in words, the android phone you purchase from oems contains plenty of proprietary stuff
The core of Android is completely open-source. But yes a typical device has a ton of proprietary drivers layered on top of it, along with a bunch of proprietary Google apps and frameworks.
That’s still way better than nothing: sure the drivers you can’t do much about them, but you can still build a fully functional de-Google ROM if you want. I see it kind of like installing the NVIDIA drivers on Linux: not ideal, but it doesn’t affect my ability to modify the Linux kernel or any other part of the operating system.
It’s not like PCs aren’t loaded with proprietary firmware either. We may have open-source kernel drivers, they still upload proprietary firmware to the device for your WiFi and GPU to work. Very few PCs can be corebooted.
in some cases like play integrity, an open alternative doesn’t exist on top of that
That’s not completely true. The APIs for it are completely open to any app, but apps that check Play Integrity specifically are also doing so specifically to check for Google-approved ROMs. Apps from the Samsung Store can use Knox instead to do a similar thing.
If you want to use the TEE and make sure your app only runs on official GrapheneOS or LineageOS builds, you can. It’s just, nobody does that because why would anyone do that. But if you have an application that wants it, idk you somehow have corporate devices that should run your custom AOSP build and prevent rooting or flashing to run your custom proprietary app, you totally can.
When Android started, I’m not even sure they wanted a centralized store to begin with. Android was going to replace flip phones and their super proprietary and hard to develop for operating systems. Being open-source was part of the appeal for manufacturers (they get to customize it but still be able to run most apps just fine). Being able to sideload apps was important then because the alternative was sending a premium SMS to some number and getting the app on your phone in return. It was a market where the carriers were controlling everything. Also, Android was originally designed to be a camera operating system and later on expanded to target about any portable devices, mainly phones but there were WiFi-only Android devices too.
Open platforms are very appealing to developers. One of the reason I’ll never own an iPhone is, I can’t even try out iOS development without buying a Mac and then buying an annual $200 license to Apple just to have the right to develop for the platform. Young teenage me was like, fuck that, I can just download Eclipse and develop for Android for completely free and even share my app for free!
Android was also very popular with the developers because you could easily build and flash your own builds of Android too, being open-source.
Now it’s too late to backtrack on that without major outrage and scrutiny by legislators. Same reason it’s way too late for Microsoft to attempt to stop sideloading and force everyone to the Microsoft Store.
In today’s world, I think it’s still valuable for Google to let people do all that. The Nexus line and now the Pixel line are the standard when it comes to unlocking your bootloader and flashing a custom ROM. Google encourages developers to do that because they get free beta testing for beta builds, but it also enables security researchers to study the operating system and discover flaws that Google can then fix. They’ve also taken several popular features from custom ROMs and implemented them directly in Android, so people basically design and test new features that Google can just take for free. Things we take for granted like quick settings in the notification tray, that originated in custom ROMs. They also poached a few developers, for example the guy that made Magisk now works at Google in the security department. And as others have pointed out, it shields Google from some legal challenges as they can just say “well if they don’t like the Play Store they can just sideload another one”.
Ultimately too few people even bother sideloading apps for them to really care or affect the Play Store revenue. 99.99% of people won’t ever download anything outside of the Play Store.
I’d stay clear from those “clients”. I had a quick look and holy shit, they have stores with ridiculously predatory prices for skins. That’s 100% exploiting kids and their parents. Fuck that. Nope nope nope.
Use Prism. It’s open source, has existed for a very long time, works well and has been the goto on Linux for a while, and is actually a real launcher.
A bit of an addendum: I think the limiting factor of a mobile keyboard is going to be that you have 1-2 fingers available for use rather than all 10.
A lot of those alternative keyboards seem to rely on some swiping gestures or drawing symbols. That’s good when you’re not looking at it as it’s very tolerant to misalignment, but if you already move fast and precisely, that feels like it would get in the way.
Looking at my fingers while I type, I’m already moving my thumbs as fast as I can without getting too sore: where it goes next doesn’t matter, it’s the same amount of time. Having to press and then move and release, in theory should only slow me down because by the time I finish the drag motion and lift the finger, I would have just moved my finger over the next key and pressed it. So that kind of layering is out of the window.
I can’t think of a way to type faster without involving mnemonics and chorded entry, but with two fingers you don’t gain that much.
Also I feel like the bottleneck there is how fast I can think of what to say next anyway.
I just Googled “typing test” and picked the first result which was typingtest.com. I don’t know if it’s good or accurate but it checks out for the score I expected.
My experience is it’s not worth it unless you’re looking for maybe a one-handed keyboard and want to type blindly (like, send a quick text while talking to someone without looking at your phone much).
Otherwise, I’m pretty happy with the default AOSP keyboard and Gboard. 70 WPM is more than good enough for texting, Slack, emails, and posting on social media.
Trying out new things is always good. Best case you find new software you like, worst case you learned something new.
Sometimes limitations can foster creativity and end up with an even better workflow in the end by forcing you to reevaluate how you do the thing. Sometimes it doesn’t work out and that’s fine too but at least you didn’t pass on a potential opportunity.
Mesa is more than just the fallback, it’s literally the entire userland graphics stack for all the open-source drivers. Intel, AMD, it’s also where the Apple Silicon drivers for Asahi lives and more.
It’s not slow at all, unless you end up with the CPU renderer (llvmpipe/lavapipe) due to an unsupported graphics card. That’s usually NVIDIA users because nouveau isn’t great. But even then, when NVK comes out, it’s also in mesa.
It doesn’t solve Safety Net/Play Integrity, at all. My bank is the kind that just warns you and then lets you in anyway. I just live without Google Pay, I just put the card in the phone case to the same effect. The point I was making there is that most apps don’t care, Google isn’t “pushing” it, but it is made available to developers, so really it’s the app developers’ choice to check or not.
Pixels are just less fiddling because flashing it is supported. It is not endorsed by Google, and you don’t pass Play Integrity at all, but it is supported and doesn’t void your warranty. They just allow you to install whatever you want on your hardware without a fuss, and get the full performance you’d expect and all, and even make use of the security chip. But, they only trust their code and their ROM for the purposes of Play Integrity, which is kinda fair game.
That’s why it is quite ironically the device of choice for GrapheneOS. It’s not a hack, it’s a fully supported use case even though you lose Play Integrity certification, so they can implement all the security features Google has access to. The TEE will happily sign a unique and verifiable integrity attestation… for GrapheneOS’s ROM signature. You can make an app that only works on genuine official GrapheneOS the same other apps do with Play Integrity. You can have a custom ROM and properly enroll it in some enterprise MDM and all that stuff, and only allow your builds of that custom ROM to enroll. But, no Play Integrity because it’s not their official certified build.
It’s like PC, you can turn off secure boot, you can secure boot with your own OS keys and get all the security benefits. But Valorant will still refuse to let you play if you haven’t booted with secure boot into an official unmodified copy of Windows where they can ensure their kernel anti-cheat can trust the kernel about what drivers and processes are loaded. Microsoft isn’t forcing their OS on you, but the developers will only trust you if you do. You’re still perfectly free to put Linux on it, and it won’t affect you otherwise.