This is about virtualization, not bare-metal OS. I may be too slow for some apps and too complicated for some (many?) users.
I get why @Bum112 wants an AOSP port for the Librem 5, but I don’t see the business case for Purism.
AOSP derivative phones already exist, so what is the point of adding yet another one, when none of them have demonstrated much market success so far. The OnePlus One offered CynogenMod as an alternative OS and dropped it with the OnePlus Two. Rob Braxman sells Pixels and Motos with LineageOS. /e/ Foundation sells the Fairphone 3 with /e/. Bittium offers its own AOSP derivative. Volla Phone will offer its own AOSP derivative.The F(x)tec Pro1 X will offer LineageOS. There are millions of people who already install AOSP derivatives on their phones. Why would Purism want to to enter a crowded market, when it can be in a market where it only has one real competitor and that competitor caters to a different market segment.
Purism only has 10 people working on the Librem 5’s software, which gives you an idea of how little funding the company has. Diverting people from the Linux effort to work on an AOSP derivative would slow down the Linux work, and make it even longer before Purism has a phone ready for the mass market. If Purism diverts resources now to work on an AOSP port, it would have to deal with many angry customers, who signed up for a Linux phone and are mad that their crowdfunding money was going to a different cause. What Purism is doing with its Phosh development is vitally important for the future of mobile Linux and GNOME, whereas porting yet another phone to another AOSP derivative frankly does little for the world. We would go from having 235 phones in the world with official LineageOS ports to 236 phones.
That AOSP derivative would run on Android drivers, which does nothing to help the work on mainline Linux support. I see it as a huge distraction for Purism from its core mission. If the goal is to convince people who are dependent on a few Android apps to buy the Librem 5, then Purism should focus on getting Anbox to work well, as a bridge to bring Android users over to Linux.
Finally, if your goal is to get an AOSP port for the Librem 5, the solution is not to pester Purism, but to go and talk to people at XDA Developers, LineageOS, Replicant, /e/, etc. who have actual experience in porting phones to AOSP and see if there are any volunteers willing to work on it. Then, ask Purism to donate a few Librem 5’s to the project. That is how Purism already collaborates with Mobian, postmarketOS, UBports and KDE, and I’m sure that Purism would be willing to do the same with an AOSP modding community.
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What is the goal of porting AOSP to the L5? That we can run all these crappy Android apps which collect our data and are “phoning home” on our beloved L5? Do you really want this? Then go and by a phone from Google. I do not want that Purism spend time and money on this.
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So us Anbox a compatibility layer or is it a virtual machine (difference being for example, like Wine vs VMWare to run Windows programs)?
There are plenty of free software applications for Android. You don’t have to use the Play store, you can use F-Droid. As far as I know AOSP is as free as PureOS. You can install crappy spy apps on PureOS just like you can on Android.
I think the point of this thread is that currently there is no GNU/Linux OS for mobiles devices that is yet ready to be a “daily driver” for most people and AOSP seems like a good alternative. However, as has already been expressed, it’s not something Purism should be doing, they have their hands full already.
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For most days of the year, I have entirely different needs for my phone when I am at home vs when I am aware from home. From home, I read articles (enjoyment not for work), do banking, order things from Amazon, etc… But when I am away from home, I make and receive phone calls, send and receive text messages, navigate, and look up occasional facts online for work when I am away from conveniently accessing a PC.
So when it comes to being a “daily driver” the Librem 5 should work for me from day one. I can leave my Android phone at home and continue using it there as I do now when I am at home and if my L5 can’t accommodate certain needs. When I leave home, I can take my Librem 5 with me and leave my Android phone at home. As long as I can make and receive phone calls and texts and access the internet and navigation, that’s all I’ll need most of the time away from home. Unless the loss of a specific app on your L5 significantly impairs your lifestyle, why not see the L5 as a good daily driver? To say that the L5 can’t be a good daily driver unless it has (some program you aren’t likely to need away from home but that you use at home), seems to be a little short-sighted, especially when you’re using an OS that was built initially to be a network OS. So rather than missing your favorite apps, I plan to figure out how to how to login remotely from my L5 to my home Linux PC where I can install and run almost anything meant for Linux. Eventually, my L5 might have access to more programs than you could ever install on any phone (terabytes of hard drive space and high memory needs). You don’t have to install them on your phone. You just run them remotely from your L5. If you don’t mind looking at your desktop through a keyhole, you can even run large bloated Windows 10 programs via Windows 10 VM from your Librem 5 (not that you should really want to do that). But for this reason, I don’t see the limited resources on the L5 as a limiting factor. Perhaps eventually, the average Librem 5 owner might say “I just can’t find any Android phone that meets my needs for a daily driver”.
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Putting AOSP on the L5 is like the French Resistance stealing a Nazi tank. Time consuming and probably a bad idea, but man, if you could pull it off… I can’t think of a bigger middle finger to give to google.
Yes, then someone like Samsung comes along and offers Purism a royalty to produce and sell Librem 5 hardware themselves. Shortly thereafter, Samsung severs any contracts they have with Google and tells them that their services are no longer needed.
Pretty soon shortly thereafter, the other big phone makers do the same. That would leave Google saying “…hay, wait a minute. You guys need us because, um, um, um … well, you just do, you’ll be sorry for leaving us. The people need a walled garden and someone to spy on them”. Like the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz… ‘help, I’me melting, I am melting…’.
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