LineageOS, iodéOS or PostmarketOS for Fairphone 5?

fiqiluvo.epileto:

I was always wondering why it matters for an ordinary person.

In my opinion, it matters because even if this specific locking-down will not affect Graphene (or Lineage or iode either for that matter) since it is through Google Play Services, which I’m explicitly not using anyways, it does demonstrate that Google is tightening its grip on Android and while for now this is speculation on my part, I wouldn’t be surprised if Google completely killed off the ability to install custom ROMs through Tivoization eventually. For now though, I do agree with you that this risk isn’t going to affect me or even app developers who don’t care about GMS support.

fiqiluvo.epileto:

That’s not the case at all. You should actually try developing for Sailfish/postmarket os in a VM.

While I’m not familiar with Sailfish (in-fact I’ve never heard of it until now), I have developed some small utilities for my own personal use for postmarketOS in the past, and it wasn’t particularly difficult. I am not much of a GUI software developer so it wasn’t easy but it’s certainly easier to me than trying to build an Android app with Kotlin or Java. Plus I have more choice in what language I develop my app in, since I can use anything from Python, C, Zig, Go, Rust, or even Perl if I felt like it.

fiqiluvo.epileto:

+1 reason as to why Postmarket is doomed to fail.

I respectfully disagree. For the overwhelming majority of the history of software development, we have gotten along fine without genAI development tools.

fiqiluvo.epileto:

This functionality isn’t an Android feature, but rather a GMS feature.

Upon looking further into it, that is true to some extent. However, with the integration of Gemini directly into Android Studio, there is a concern on my part that these tools are being used, without a way to detect their usage, and I have outlined my concerns about AI in software development in a previous post of mine here. I have softened my stance a bit, in that I don’t think AI in software is inherently something that shouldn’t exist, but rather that there should always be a choice, and that personally I would always prefer fully human-written software when available.