The kernel is open-source AFAIK, but anything built on top of it is part of AOSP which is licensed under Apache 2 and allows for proprietary modifications to be redistributed. To be honest I don’t know how this licensing stuff works exactly.
There are no nearly custom ROMs for phones with mediatek processors AFAIK because the drivers are not open-source. Either that or there is a legal issue with modifying and redistributimg the modified drivers.
There are plenty of custom ROMs for phones where the chipset drivers are open (usually Qualcomm) and the phone has unlockable bootloader. If these 2 conditions are met in many cases the community is able to do better job of keeping the phone up to date with newer Android builds than the manufacturer itself. My phone would be stuck with Android 12 if I did rely on the manufacturer, but thanks to the community I run Android 14 with security patch from this February and Android 15 is also available. The problem is of course that most users aren’t going to flash their phone with a new ROM on their own anyway even if it is possible the ARM ecosystem unfortunately relies on the hardware manufacturer to keep the drivers and everything up to date (to work with the latest OS realease) and not on the OS distributor like most x86 ecosystem does, so you are lrobably right ARM is kind of cursed in this way. I know there are also drivers on x86, but the whole nature of things much more open. Correct me if I am wrong.
Honestly what you are describing here would bother me too. For example on my notebook I rely on configuring grub to use kernel argument amdgpu.abmlevel=0 which fixes the screen colors getting washed out when in battery saving mode, but I doubt I would be able to configure grub on an atomic distro.
I think maintaning a Firefox fork is pretty demanding especially considering you are already maintaining a distro. And there are already a lot of Firefox forks out there.
Do the “right” thing.
Why don’t you explain your arguments or make counter arguments instead of attacking your opponent personally. How do I matter here?
I am not a Zorin OS fanboy or anything, but honestly I don’t see anything scummy about requiring payment from the user to get access to certain features of the product. It’s just shareware. It’s their product FOSS or not. I think they make it clear about what you get for free and what you don’t. If you don’t like that you don’t have to use their product and you can use an alternative instead. It’s not like they were a monopoly in the world of Linux distros and you have no other option. I see nothing scummy about this. It would be scummy if they would do some kind of false advertising (adverties features you actually don’t get or adverties features in a misleading way) or if they started moving features from the free to the pro version that used to be free, because some people may have relyed on these features.
Can you elaborate? Because to me this feels like saying that the local grocery shop is scummy because it wants people to pay instead of relying on donations. If the whole OS was paid like RedHat Linux is than it would be OK or you consider that to be also a case of taking advantage of users who don’t know any better.
Flutter uses its own UI engine. It does not rely on any webview AFAIK.
By contrast, Flutter minimizes those abstractions, bypassing the system UI widget libraries in favor of its own widget set. The Dart code that paints Flutter’s visuals is compiled into native code, which uses Impeller for rendering. Impeller is shipped along with the application, allowing the developer to upgrade their app to stay updated with the latest performance improvements even if the phone hasn’t been updated with a new Android version. The same is true for Flutter on other native platforms, such as Windows or macOS.
https://docs.flutter.dev/resources/architectural-overview#flutters-rendering-model
If you like VSCode you can try VSCodium which supports almost all features of VSCode but should be fully FOSS without Microsoft proprietary blobs.
AFAIK you have to give the app location access for it to be able to scan sourrounding networks and see the SSIDs (At least that’s how it works on the newer Android versions circa around Android 10 or 9). For bluetooth you have to enable at least the nearby devices permission. If you do these things then it makes sense that the app can track your location.
You are kind of right. I should have thought about that before commenting.
I am not educated enough about this, but don’t these kind of games unnecesarrily strain all the servers that host the packages for people that really need them for download and most of these people run these servers for free in good will and faith that they will serve meaningful needs with positive impact? I am sorry for spoiling the fun, but I felt like I had to point this out.
I think the Kiwi browser has it. EDIT: Or had it when it existed. I don’t see it on Google Play anymore.
There’s also the PersonalDNSFilter which does the equivalent while being a tiny open-source app that serves only for that purpose and also somehow still not getting banned from the Google Play store or AdAway which also has this feature or TrackerControl or…
You can’t even change brightness on lockscreen when using a notebook or laptop.
The Simple Mobile Tools collection of Android apps. Forks have been made and are maintained fortunately, but the original autor sold the apps to some company that just adds ads and trackers to the apps to make more money out of it.
I have a good experience with PocketBook.
At least you can still get a functional and minimalist homepage on Firefox by disabling it.
You can do that on Edge too btw.
Chrome or Chromium project?