alt Hacker News> So, where are the super-polished Linux systems for the Fairphone?
It still has tiny market reach. Very few people are going to invest the time needed to build a quality user experience for like 1000 users.
Just imagine what would happen if Linux could be installed on the iPhone. There would be SteamOS distributions within an hour of the announcement.
> It’s funny that you mention Waydroid. It throws most of Android’s strong security model out of the window.
Haha yea, it's more an example of capabilities that could be rolled into highly polished user experiences. Again, if Linux could be installed on the iPhone - I'm certain Waydroid maintainers would shut the project down from PRs.
~~* competition *~~
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It still has tiny market reach.
You are moving the goalposts, you said:
The lack of polish is a function of the inability to use the hardware. The hardware is tightly gatekept so competition _cannot_ exist. [...] Once we can actually target the hardware, open source alternatives will be much better than first party options.
So, it's not the hardware gatekeeping that is the issue, it's that nobody is polishing the experience for hardware that already exists and qualifies. The hardware can also be purchased very easily in some regions (e.g. Europe). I can literally hop on a bike right now and pick up a Fairphone in ten minutes. I know that it's different in e.g. the US, but Murena has been selling them in the US for years now.
> It still has tiny market reach. Very few people are going to invest the time needed to build a quality user experience for like 1000 users.
That doesn't make sense. Whenever someone wants to build something, they start with 0 users. They don't say "huh, I have 0 users, I'm not going to build a good product".
People who build things recognize that they won't get more users if they don't make their product better. If you have 1,000 users and you want 1,000,000 users, you work more, not less.