We won't know for sure until they actually drop the code, but I'm more optimistic now that they've clarified that adb will still work to sideload. That means there's still some code path in the package installer that doesn't do this bullshit, so it should be pretty easy to remove it for the people used to working on custom ROMs.

linux phone

I know that given this community, a lot of people are going to be on a Linux phone already.

But there are some very real drawbacks to Linux phones in 2025. It won't be a practical replacement for most people.

• The hardware is not remotely-competitive with high-end hardware that Android can run on.

• Everything I've seen has suggested that power usage isn't as good, probably because Android has had shit-tons of engineers working on cutting power usage for many years.

• Some of the reason that I'd want to use a phone in the first place is for access to the Android app ecosystem. Like, that one app that your employer or bank insists you use or you want to use to update firmware on some Bluetooth device because the vendor doesn't support fwupd. Maybe it's possible to use Waydroid and a Linux machine for some of that; I don't know about all.

• GNU/Linux has a large software library, but a lot of it is not designed around a touch UI.

• One major benefit of Android is that it does a lot to help eliminate a couple things that the general population has had trouble with. The harm from installing malware is mitigated by more-or-less isolating apps. A lot of users just don't understand the concept of managing memory usage; Android just suspends apps transparently. A lot of users apparently don't have a great understanding of a filesystem, and the Android app ecosystem tends to hide the filesystem.

And you may not care for your own use, but without scale, it's hard to get support from hardware vendors and such.

That being said, I remember 25 years back or so when Linux was "never going to be a real server OS", when it was never going to have games, when it was never going to make it big in the embedded world, and so forth. It often took time, but it inexorably showed up. And the kernel, at least, made it big on smartphones. GNU/Linux can be pretty hard to stop in new markets. But...it can also take a while to get there.

I believe they confirmed uncertified devices will not have these requirements, so technically degoogled Android should still be fine.

You don't get Google services, but then again that's also true of every other alternative.

It's all jumping the gun for now. We'll see where this goes.

I love your stance!

Go SailfishOS! Ironically enough, you can sideload apks there even though it's not Android.