Android

I saw it on f-droid news and I'm surprised I haven't heard anything about it. Probably because it's new.

Most other browsers are Firefox forks, but if I understand this one only uses the engine. As such most other ones feel like just slightly different Firefox versions. But this one is very different, and I'm liking a lot! Many things on the UI are easier to use and many options I don't see in Firefox. I specially like the options it give before you first use (search engine, ublock, block or not AI).

It's also a lot faster, because I blocked many samsung services on my phone like face recognition and Firefox becomes super slow without it (Fennec keeps crashing).

The only thing I don't like so far is that I don't see how to hide the URL bar for fullscreen, and typing a URL is very weird in the middle of a bunch of options (very welcome options, but URL typing should be prioritized).

I highly recommend giving it a go. Specially the chromium browser people. I never experienced the complaints I see from them before blocking services on my phone, but those who had issues with Firefox clones might find that it's better.

One question I have is how trustworthy is the developer. But he seems to not be based in the US, which is a big plus to begin with.

Are there other communities I should post this on? I think this project would benefit from more exposure.

I don't see any donation option. And it's annoying that the only communication is through microsoft's github..

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/36316138

Comments

• Hackernews;
• Lobsters.

How is this going to be enforced if you are just downloading apks? It states they will enforce verification across sources outside of the play store. This doesn't sound possible unless they just make stock android unable to side load

This annoys me, because the APK is out, everything is enabled server side, so why not just roll it out and let people use it?

Yesterday I spent a decent amount of time looking for a cheap way to run a server (nothing more than $100), I just have this script that I want to keep running 24/7, so naturally 1st thing came to my mind is the Raspberry Pi 5, but I didn't go with it right away because I always make sure that I am getting the most bang for buck, so I looked at the alternatives which was a mentally overwhelming task, so many Pi clones, some better some worse, then I looked at the used/refurbished pre-built PC and mini PCs on Newegg, eBay, and Amazon, then thought about whether building a pc myself would be a better value, in the end I decided on a used/refurbished pre-built PC… fast-forward a couple of hours later I remembered “wait I still have my old phone lying around, and its HW is more than enough to run this script without breaking a sweat, maybe I can use it!” of course I already realized that this is an unreliable solution as this phone is about to be 7 years old, so the battery will die someday and the idea of using this as a server will kill the battery in a short time, so I decided on using it as a temporary solution until the PC arrives, so I installed Termux and started setting things up… Before I started setting up Termux I remembered there are some Linux distros for smartphones and even one dev managed to port one of them (postmarketOS) although I also remembered that it was full of bugs and far from being usable, so I already knew that my chances are virtually zero but nonetheless I looked up online for a way to get Linux on this phone… I even thought okay why I do not do it myself? (port a Linux distro)…

Now here comes the explanation to why I started to hate android and the current smartphone landscape and why I think this will properly never change, the matter of the fact is, I could have used this computer (the phone) as a server if only android wasn't so damn limiting and so constraining and so unreliable as an OS or if it was easy to install any Linux distro on the phone, either way I could have bypassed the battery and the aggressive app-killing power management (or remove it if it was removable), I have a fucking computer lying around that I can't use any longer because well these companies do not want to, fuck them all, from the bottom of my heart fuck them all.

I am even considering the Fairphone 5 as my next phone as it has near perfect support for Ubuntu touch, although I will be keeping an android phone for banking apps, etc…

Note: I considered flashing a custom android ROM but that too wouldn't be reliable, if I can't rely on it as a permanent server then what's the point, I will just go buy something I can rely on.

cross-posted from the Linux phones community as nobody there knew

Has anyone actually successfully installed PostmarketOS on an old device recently? I've had a long struggle through trying to prepare a Nexus 7 (2012) and the result seems to be a dead device before I even got to actually installing PostmarketOS.

The rough steps I followed are listed here:

• Create backups
• Get SBK
• Build and prepare U-Boot
  • Actually flashing U-Boot seems to be where things went wrong
    • Running ./run_bootloader.sh -s T30 -t ./bct/grouper.bct -b ../re-crypt/repart-block.bin or ./run_bootloader.sh -s T30 -t ./bct/grouper.bct -b ../generated-wheelie-blobs/AndroidRoot/blob.bin from fusee-tools hung on waiting for bootloader to initialize
    • Running ./run_bootloader.sh -s T30 -t ./bct/grouper.bct -b ../u-boot/u-boot-dtb-tegra.bin failed like this
    • skipping that step and running ./utils/nvflash_v1.13.87205 --resume --rawdevicewrite 0 1024 ../re-crypt/repart-block.bin hung on [resume mode]
    • Consulting a different version of the docs and running ./wheelie --blob ./generated-wheelie-blobs/AndroidRoot/blob.bin seemed to work so I ran ./nvflash --resume --rawdevicewrite 0 1024 ./re-crypt/repart-block.bin which also seemed to work
    • I then powered off as instructed and the device has been completely unresponsive since

I've tried connecting to a charger, disconnecting and reconnecting the battery, and every combination of holding down buttons but it appears to be completely dead. Any suggestions as to what I did wrong or anything I might be able to do now? Obviously it's not the end of the world to have lost a 13 year old tablet that was just gathering dust, but at the moment I'm not feeling positive about ever trying this again on another device!