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Comment by codedokode

What I don't understand is why Purism and other vendors try to invent their own operating system instead of using Android or its parts which is:

- designed by smart engineers from Google

- well-tested and maintained

- well-documented

- has development tools and debuggers with GUI, not text-only GDB

- uses GPU

- has permissions and isolation for apps which Debian doesn't have

- has several app stores including FDroid and lots of apps made by independent developers

Why don't they want to use at least Dalvik and userspace software like Phone or Calendar? Nobody is going to rewrite thousands of applications like Youtube, Telegram, Maps or Happy Farm for Debian. Debian is nowhere near as polished as Android.

For example, I watched a video about Pine64 which uses Ubuntu and UI doesn't look well-designed, the icons are hidden away from desktop, the thing that pulls down from top of screen looks inconvenient to use etc. It would be better if they just ripped iPhone's UI.

Are there some technical or licensing issues or is it just because someone doesn't like Google and everything they do? Is writing in Java less productive than in C/C++/GTK or whatever they use in Ubuntu?

UPD: Also 3 Gb of RAM might be not enough for Debian/Ubuntu based OS.

parent codedokode 7 years ago

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