WingNews

miki123211|3 months ago

In practice, none of the free OSes are ready for 21st century, battery-powered, energy-saving devices, especially of the kind Apple makes.

I'm pretty sure battery performance would drop significantly if root was too easy to achieve. The temptation to run "that one more background service" would be far too much for most apps, both free and otherwise.

To get good battery perf out of a device, you need to be extremely good at saying "no", even if that "no" comes at the expense of user freedom and features. Free software is usually extremely bad at this by design, although there are exceptions (Graphene OS comes to mind).

On Apple devices, core system services are written by Apple itself. That puts pressure on the software development side to care about battery perf, as that is what users want (and what increases sales). If software is written by 3rd parties with their own business goals unrelated to device sales, I'm afraid "featuritis" and lower development costs would win out over efficiency, as it usually does in such circumstances.

green7ea|3 months ago

I had the opposite experience going from a OnePlus 8T stock to Lineage OS. Having root means being able to reduce the amount of apps and wake up — no google play service was the key. This was a while ago but I went from 1-2 days of battery life to about 4-5 days. This is with light use, screen on time was equally draining with both setups.

I would assume that an iPhone has similar amounts of unwanted background apps and would also be able to gain battery life instead of losing it if rooted. Obviously if you install spyware, you lose a lot of battery life. Funnily enough, I remember that a few years ago, people were surprised to find that uninstalling facebook increased battery life because it behaved much like spyware.

ChadNauseam|3 months ago

> In practice, none of the free OSes are ready for 21st century, battery-powered, energy-saving devices, especially of the kind Apple makes.

Well, except Android :P

My phone runs a build of AOSP that I compiled myself. I can go change the source code to do whatever I want (and I do). It's pretty cool that that's possible IMO. To be fair, the drivers are closed-source

ragazzina|3 months ago

Reading this comment, one would think Apple devices are very power efficient at the cost of running little in the background. In my experience, iOS has terrible battery life in the default mode, which is background app refresh enabled, and in general apps struggle keeping their state in the background, which is something that many people complain about on the internet. So the worst of the two worlds.

esseph|3 months ago

To get good battery life out of a device, having complete software and hardware integration is key. That's the PC blessing and curse, having to support all kinds of different CPUs, GPUs, chipsets, RAM, etc from many different places.

When you just have to focus on a handful of hardware platforms and when you own the hardware and software, this becomes much, much easier.

StopDisinfo910|3 months ago

Linux has been running on low powered autonomous IoT devices for decades. I will hasard they are actually fully ready.

klipklop|3 months ago

> I'm pretty sure battery performance would drop significantly if root was too easy to achieve.

No offense, but this is one of the most absurd things I have ever read on a hackernews discussion.

I bet if I could get root on iOS I would get even better battery life as I kill off services related to iCloud and other background processes I don’t want running.

> To get good battery perf out of a device, you need to be extremely good at saying "no", even if that "no" comes at the expense of user freedom and features.

There is zero evidence that this is the case. In fact saying “no” to root allows more services and things running on the device than I may want.

maccard|3 months ago

> But really, imagine how much power these things have and if you could actually run a free (as in freedom, in the GNU sense) OS on them and really get access to all that power in a handheld device. Only if.

Skipping the "handheld" bit of this just for a second. You can run an (almost entirely) open stack on your hardware, and do so on an i9/9800X3D with 256GB RAM, 5080, and MultiTB of NVMe storage.

But it doesn't realy matter for 95% of users, because the hardware is already way faster than they need and the bottlenecks are on the server side and on shitty software architecture. I have an i9 with 128GB RAM for work, and Excel still takes 30+ seconds to load, Teams manages to grind the entire thing to a halt on startup, slack uses enough memory to power a spaceship... Running those apps on my desktop is pretty much the same experience as running them on my 10 year old macbook.

chihuahua|3 months ago

Something seems to be funny with your computer's setup. On my feeble i5 laptop with 16GB, Excel starts in about 3 seconds to the point where I can start doing stuff.

If it's a corporate device, it's usually some anti-virus abomination (or other security-related software) that steals 90% of the resources.

dylan604|3 months ago

> slack uses enough memory to power a spaceship...

Which spaceship though? Not sure spaceship is the model you're looking for, as all of the ones I'm familiar have had a very locked down limited amount of memory. Apollo had something like 4Kb of memory. The space shuttle had 1MB.

Nursie|3 months ago

> M1 macbook is a locked down

Sure, iOS is certainly restrictive, fully locked-down, app store only etc etc, and I'd love a full-fat firefox with its plugin system available on my phone. But what are you doing on a non-Mac laptop that you can't do on an M1 mac?

I'm a big fan of linux and have used it as a main machine for many years, but use an M4 macbook as my daily driver at the moment (everyone else I work with does too, it's just easier). I haven't felt limited at all. I can build and install whatever I like, I have brew for my tooling needs...

Yeah I don't see it with Mac. Unless you're actually needing linux and dockerisation won't cut the mustard I guess.

esseph|3 months ago

If you're a Linux sysadmin type, it's nice to stay in the same environment as your vms, kubernetes, docker/podman containers, etc.

You also get nice eBPF tools.

timeon|3 months ago

Not sure if this relevant here but OS not phoning home constantly would be nice.

frfl|3 months ago

Just my opinion here, after ~4 years of using it at work and daily driving Linux for personal use, including development, for a decade:

- The user interface and UX is pretty and all[1], but doesn't quite work as I'd like and I can't really do much beyond a few limited "hacks". Switching workspaces has a horrible and annoying animation I can't turn off. All applications windows are grouped together and for example some actions cause all of them to jump to the top. Top-level shortcuts are limited and I can't do the same things I can on Linux - eg, I bind Super+Enter to open a new terminal window, on MacOS I can kind get a janky version of that, but due to how the window manager works, it not as streamlined as Linux

- The whole notarization stuff and signing - I mean okay, security, great. But it's annoying and you have to pay Apple like $100(?) a year just for the privilege of developing software for their platform. When I did desktop app dev on MacOS, I had to do `xattr com.apple.quarantine` commands to turn off the security nonsense that prevented me from running our own app I or my coworkers wanted to test locally.

- I have a list of utilities/apps I need to install on a new MacOS machine just to get it to partially behave the way I want. Ideally MacOS should let me customize it directly with the necessary options so these extra apps aren't necessary. Nothing I'm asking is all that complicated - Linux environments provide it more or less by default with a few setting tweaks, even Windows behaves closer to what I want and I'm no fan of Windows.

- Recently I noticed MacOS was using bunch of CPU while idling - I traced it down to some background indexing scanning that was running constantly. I had to look up esoteric command line commands to stop it - which didn't work. I ended up disabling Spotlight almost completely to make it stop using my CPU every time I stepped away for a few mins.

Annoying stuff like this really puts me off of MacOS. Like I'm being forced to conform to their way of thinking and using a device. I'm an adult, let me decide for myself.

tldr; I just like Linux, it works, it's slick, I can turn-on/off, add/remove whatever I want. I'm not restricted to what some company thinks my workflow should look like.

[1]: I'm leaving out their "glass UI" blunder... what a horribly silly thing that is. Plenty to be said about that and others already have, so I won't repeat it here.

LeoPanthera|3 months ago

> But really, imagine how much power these things have and if you could actually run a free (as in freedom, in the GNU sense) OS on them and really get access to all that power in a handheld device. Only if.

Could you elaborate? What specifically would you do? Because I'm finding it hard to imagine what I'd do with an "open" iPhone that I can't do now, but it's extremely easy to imagine all the horrific security risks that would emerge in what today is most people's primary computing device, storing data about literally their entire lives.

frfl|3 months ago

My usage of "handheld" was vague. I meant any portable device (laptops, but also including phones/tablets).

If you're finding it hard to imagine what you can do with a device that _does not_ restrict what you can do with it, then you're likely fine in the Apple ecosystem, that's fair and okay. Some people aren't, you'll just have to take my word for it, I don't wanna write an essay here and you're probably not interesting in reading all that.

Security risk is a common one that comes up. Google used that to justify locking down sideloading recently. Let me take the risk. I bought this device, I should be allowed to make adult decisions right? I'm not downloading stuff off Limewire or a shady website. I'm downloading stuff off of Linux distro repos or F-Droid.

There's a lot more to be said about all this. Including the amount of e-waste created because a device is too old to be supported by manufacturers, yet people run decade(s) old laptops/desktops using free OSs because they can.

Just my 1AM rambling thoughts. Hope some of it makes some sense.

fsflover|3 months ago

Connect screen and keyboard and turn it into a full desktop with desktop apps. Run VMs for insecure operations.

akho|3 months ago

Have real ad blocking in the browser.

(which would mitigate a lot of security risks by itself. I also note that people seem to do fine with desktop OSes, despite their outdated security models)

Also, a working foss ecosystem.

WorldPeas|3 months ago

I already use a-shell to run python scripts that fetch media, news summaries, server dashboards etc. It's really a shame I can't actually do what I want like with android where I could make custom permanent free apps for myself and do what I pleased throughout the system, executing binaries that interfaced with the real fs or remuxing video, rsyncing to my server.

RulerOf|3 months ago

> What specifically would you do?

All kinds of shit.

I'd make locking the phone while the flashlight is operating require pressing the lock button again to wake the screen with no exceptions, so the screen no longer shines in my eyes reducing the effectiveness of the flashlight, and stay palm input stops opening the camera.

I'd hook screen time management of my children's devices—which I perform on my own device—into FaceID instead of requiring a stupid passcode.

You don't have to go far to find areas where iOS could use some customization. But if it's Apple's code, the most useful adjustments are off limits.

Jailbroken iOS was a fantastic platform for the first 9 major releases or so because it had that kind of stuff in it. Now it's "throw a suggestion in the box on our website and we'll ignore it in the order it was received."

prmoustache|3 months ago

From what I understand iPhones support external displays out of thebox, so you could use one as your main computer and do any productive stuff like development, video/3d/photos editing, anything really you can do on a computer with the liberty to install open source tools, develop/open drivers for anything connected to usb or bt, etc.

tartoran|3 months ago

I'd remove all the fluff that I'm not interested in.

timeon|3 months ago

One think would be: permanently installing my own apps, without paying for that option.

ahmeneeroe-v2|3 months ago

I recently sold my 1TB M1 Cellular iPad at a loss and picked up a 2019 Intel MacBook Pro for exactly the same reason.

I don't even need GNU-freedom, regular MacOS is fine. I just can't live with a iPadOS anymore.

edit: you can pry locked down iOS from my cold dead hands. Love it exactly because it's a walled garden.

c-hendricks|3 months ago

Having trouble understanding your edit.

Start with a laptop, you believe they should be open.

Remove the keyboard so it's only a screen, you believe they should be opened.

Shrink that screen down, and now they should be locked down?

runjake|3 months ago

> But really, imagine how much power these things have and if you could actually run a free (as in freedom, in the GNU sense) OS on them and really get access to all that power in a handheld device. Only if.

I sort of don't have to imagine, because somewhat viable options like this exist (eg. GrapheneOS). The issue there is that I'd still rather use a more polished handheld device (iOS) than jump ship and get those extra features.

And wondering what GrapheneOS would be like with all its power, plus the polish of iOS is pointless fantasy, because it likely won't ever happen.

My guess, based on experience, is that eventually, iOS's quality will degrade enough that I'll find Android or GrapheneOS more attractive.

volemo|3 months ago

> eventually, iOS's quality will degrade enough that I'll find Android or GrapheneOS more attractive.

Tbh, with the quality of the latest iOS I’m getting pretty close to that point. Looking at Ubuntu Touch right now.

einsteinx2|3 months ago

> I have an M1, which is like N-times faster than the laptop I write this on. Yet it collects dust because I'd rather continue to use this old dinosaur laptop because that M1 macbook is a locked down, very fast, shiny Ferrari, but I just want a Honda Civic I can do whatever I want with.

Your M1 has supported Linux pretty well for years now… Install the Fedora Asahi Remix and give it a try.

Fire-Dragon-DoL|3 months ago

Missed an opportunity there to say that you can use the Ferrari only on a track, while you can go on any road with the Civic!

StopDisinfo910|3 months ago

That’s pretty much Google current bet. They are slowly enabling first party support for Linux app on Android while connected to a screen in a desktop mode.

It makes a lot of sense considering high end SoC are now more powerful than the M1.

vessenes|3 months ago

Curious - what do you do on your Linux (or FreeBSD natch) box that your m1 couldn’t?

Philpax|3 months ago

For me, it's always been the lack of a power-user-friendly windowing/workspace scheme. You can approximate a tiling window manager using yabai or similar solutions, but it's just not the same thing.

I love using the MacBooks, but the OS just doesn't feel like it was designed for me, and that would be OK, but I have limited alternatives if I want all of the hardware to keep working.

Also, yes, gaming, but that's less important to me.

bigyabai|3 months ago

I'm surprised that anyone has to ask, anymore:

- Locked, proprietary bootloader with no guaranteed Linux support

- No official Vulkan drivers, DXVK broken without downstream patches (unlike every other GPU I own)

- Every Docker solution runs worse than WSL (somehow)

- macOS is ad-ridden and genuinely intolerable

- APFS is borderline useless relative to EXT4 and NTFS, doubly so if you collaborate at work

unknown|3 months ago

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