To all those people saying this will never happen because people wouldn’t accept or tolerate it ree living in a different reality, sorry to burst your bubble and faith in your fellow himans but…most people will just whinge whine cuss and then go do something else, people today have no guts in them to fight back and to lazy too, they expect others to do all the work for them, but wont lift a finger except to moan and whine about shit.
Long story short we are fucked, absolutely fucked, we…those that would/will do something are few and far between now, people aka the masses are used to being beaten down and being told to put up and shut up, just get on with it, so we few just have to look after ourselves, our families and friends, get through life best way we can, we be a small pocket of resistance but thats all sadly 🥺
Not the consumers so much as a ton of businesses that would have their whole IT broken.
Microsoft has really really wanted this to happen, but their attempts have failed to get traction, because it breaks just so many applications. The only reason people use windows is compatibility with all their apps, a move that breaks all the apps just doesn’t work.
Different with Android and iPhone where they managed to define the default position as app store and didn’t have to contend with “legacy”.
It’s almost already like this. In my country every single bank reinvented the wheel by creating a single purpose app which does what aegis does (otp generation from a seed) but with some bits changed (one for example “encrypted” the seed with ROT13) and with draconian measures like bootloader must be locked, adb must be disabled, and are using literal exploits to see if you have “forbidden” directories on /sdcard like/sdcard/magisk even if no file access is granted
Which country?
it’s not almost worldwide? By reading all the forum posts with us nerds damning the bank app developers for the antiroot checks, it seems a widespread problem
Nah, Half of the credit unions in the US use online banking software that uses TOTP for 2FA.
My bank in EU does not, so I have to have a physical hardware token to generate OTPs, due to broken regulations
Please expand
in order to login on the bank webapp, a token must be generated on a dedicated smartphone with all the google spyware installed, and the app that generates the token refuses to run if the bootloader is unlocked, or if the device is not “certified” by google
I would say if/when PCs move over to ARM than we very well may see the same issues mobile devices have. There is a severe lack of Linux compatibility due to proprietary drivers, sometimes no drivers at all, no software support, and no device trees.
there is another… but, it may be RISCy
I have the ubuntu 25 concept installed on my snapdragon HP Omnibook 14
Other than a few software hiccups you would expect of a “concept build” it works almost perfectly and is now my daily driver. Actually getting the OS on the machine was pretty easy too, it has something akin to a bios. the process isn’t all that different.
The more difficult bit was getting the drivers working after installing the OS. no all of them have been released under license yet so some of them you have to poach from the windows partition. also audio required some tweaking.
Also ARM is way less standard. While UEFI does exist on ARM, most just use some custom bootloader. And let’s not forget how ARM is protecting its Mali Linux drivers.
I’m honestly kinda sick of this. Sure, Google’s decision to try to lock down their devices to prevent installing unsigned apps is concerning for FOSS. But can we all just calm down a bit?
Linux isn’t going anywhere, and neither is hardware that supports it. Yes, is possible that Microsoft or even Intel (now that Trump has bought into it) might try to do some sketchy shit. But the open hardware market is starting to look promising. Look at MNT, System76, Pine, Framework etc…
I agree times are scary and everything is looking kinda bleak, but your best option right now is to completely boycot (as much as possible) Google, Apple, Meta, Microsoft etc. Just stop using their shit.
Buy up old PC’s, turn them into home servers and self host as many services as you can.
I’m confident GrapheneOS will continue and we will still have f-droid after 2027. But I’m an optimist.
Graphene? Meaning the OS where you have to have a specific range of devices that aren’t even very good for the sort of people who’d want an OS like that? I’d most likely be on Graphene already if it wasn’t for that annoying as hell limitation.
For phones Google gets to decide, as an os maker. For PCs, there are multiple OSses so hardware manufacturers get to decide.
I personally don’t see AMD or Intel doing that anytime soon, and if they do, at least Arm and Risc-V are making some good progress in the desktop space
Microsoft tried to get things going that way with “s”, but it didn’t take
17 and a half weeks
nah. 28 likely. I mean later.
I kind of expect this to happen with Apple’s rumored $600 macbook. Since they just updated ipadOS to run like a locked down version of macOS. I bet they will offer this cheap mac with the same locked down OS since it will have a “phone” processor in it.
They will say this was a compromise needed, but the majority of people will not care. After a few years, the macs that are open will get more and more expensive.
I’m guessing Windows will slowly start to move in thie direction, but I think they will try to push their remote computers thing to accomplish this.
I’m not sure about bootloaders being locked, I am guessing there will always be something that is unlocked and able to run linux though. It is needed for servers and stuff like that. In the worst case, someone will likely sell arm or risc-v powered boards that can be used to run linux.
Microsoft is already starting to lay the groundwork with their CPU and TPM 2.0 requirements.
Apple has been doing this for a long time, though there are ways to get around it on MacOS, for now.
On PC, the answer is Linux. For mobile devices, things are looking more bleak.
Next phone I get I’ll get fairphone and check the market for an alternative OS at that time. This might be the push that the Linux phone community needs to make it proper and good.
We currently need a KDE phone that they sell where I can buy a KDE phone and support them that way.
The pieces are coming together for Linux notably:
- SPA support instead of apps.
- Waydroid
- Core components such as calling, sim card actions, recording, speakers can be provided by fairphone via drivers.
I’m getting pretty sick of Google and other corpos locking down Android so fuck them, third best phone OS will have to do and I’ll do banking in the mobile browser page.
I just bought the cheapest fairphone I could get to replace my old pixel. Now it’s time to try proper linux on mobile for the first time. I’m excited!
Almost 15 years on Android finally coming to an end! My first Android phone came with Android 2.1 and now 14 shall be the last version I’ll ever use.
Linux won’t be an option if the boot loader is locked. I think Linux is just about popular enough that options should remain but they might become reduced unless it becomes more popular than it currently is.
I’d imagine not every mobo manufacturer will play ball with whoever mandates a locked bootloader.
Right now, we have google and apple with a duopoly on mobile devices.
The grand majority of all laptops and desktop devices are using motherboards manufactured specifically for those devices (or device series). It’s not much of a stretch to imagine them adding restrictions to their already mature supply chain.
Sure, but there’s Tuxedo Computers, Framework, the PopOS guys selling PCs and many more. Those won’t go away.
Linux is heavily used on servers. Losing server sector means a huge chunk of revenue.
Linux is servers.
Hell, VMware migrated to a Linux base a while back, and with their new exorbitant pricing, large environments are switching to things like Proxmox.
The next ten years, VMware will be second string virtualization, even in data centers.
I’m not sure what’s going to happen, but there was a “BIOS War” in the 80’s,when IBM wouldn’t release their BIOS code, so other devs reverse engineered it. No reason why that couldn’t happen again.
The situation is actually quite awful. I remember when TPM was palladium and there were apocalyptic talks in tech conferences about it being the end of general purpose computers. The idea that your computer could veto what it was used for.
The backlash only set them back a few decades apparently. Everyone forgot and now it’s a literal requirement for the latest Windows and in two months they’ll stop supporting the old Windows…
I see Apple doing it, not because they are Apple but because they control the whole manufacturing process, so they wouldn’t need to negotiate with third parties. That’s what has happened in the mobile industry. In the PC side of things you would need to sit in a table: the CPU, OS, and probably GPU and MOBO manufacturers to negotiate, and knowing how greedy they all are, I don’t see it happening anytime soon. But hey, anything is possible in this dystopian society we live in.
And just like that I’m all about Ubuntu phones now
Which devices are you planning to get at right now?
Either buy pine or try out userland for current but I haven’t completed the research yet
I imagine this will actually create competition. Android is open source. It can be forked.
Also there will always be things like raspberry pi and arduino.
The question is, who wants to fork and maintain android? That’s a massive undertaking, one that wouldn’t seem worth it until it started getting meaningful percentages of market share.
Android is barely open source, and AOSP can no longer directly run on any hardware, not even the pixel. It’s not really forkable and maintainable in any ongoing sense.
You need to be an OEM to get access to the latest android source code now.
Didn’t MS already try this with Windows S editions?
Linux is quite well established now on home pc’s and servers to the dismay of Microsoft and Apple. I hated Secureboot , built into UEFI, during startup by verifying the digital signatures of firmware, drivers, and the OS bootloader. Reading into Deep State Mass surveillance helps:
https://www.printernational.co.uk/timmann/history.htm#surveillance
Nothing says that Linux could eventually evolve into the same thing or fail to ever really function for the masses.
You’re describing Secure Boot. It happened years ago.
And, btw, the Android thing also doesn’t affect anyone without gapps. Chill out.
And, btw, the Android thing also doesn’t affect anyone without gapps. Chill out.
so only 99% are affected, that really calms me down.
Manny services that are connected to finance/payment require gapps, car sharing, banking etc.
you are right about secure boot, but this was rolled out with proper alternative routes from the beginning. i did not see anything like this for Android at this time
Don’t install gapps. And ffs don’t use banking on insecure devices anyway
Define insecure devices.
If I don’t install gapps my banking apps don’t work.
Does the bank app do anything that the mobile bank website can’t? I’ve never felt the need to install an actual bank app. You can use micro g or sandbox gapps.
Some banks the website works only if you install some kernel modules. Worst than use the cellphone app.
I would literally switch banks over this
If it is possible yes, but sometimes it is not or the other options are even worst.
You’re describing Secure Boot.
Secure Boot is literally configurable. You can create your own key and sign whatever you want with it. See sbctl.
There is no requirement for it, and can be disabled
Exactly.
When I was tasked with buying laptops for a company, I made sure to test Linux compatibility on every machine. If the model didn’t support Linux, we didn’t buy it.
Most of the devs were windows users, but there were enough devs and sysadmins that preferred Linux that it just made more sense to only buy hardware that supports both windows and Linux. I’m sure a lot of tech companies have a similar policy (it’s one reason think pads are so ubiquitous)
Corporate pressure would never allow such lockdown in the market
Wasn’t amd pluton or something going to do that?
I just bought a new and CPU and Chinese motherboard and I could still install Ubuntu without problems
