whoever they end up with, it’s gonna be a new model, which means perfectly usable tech from the last 7-8 years is excluded, and it also means it’s gonna be expensive. so good for them, I guess, but this news doesn’t concern me in the slightest.
batteries and hardware (motherboards, cameras, etc) on most phones and laptops are achievably replaceable. not “I’m boarding a plane better change it in my lap” but like half an hour of work, which isn’t that big of a drag every year or so. watch any youtube video tutorial to get a better sense. I’m not saying grams can pull it off, but if you’re even tangentially tech literate, it’s doable.
the first time I installed arch on my T420s, I was blown away! a minimalistic install, done in no time. no cruft of any kind, latest software versions, and the speed - the thing booted more than twice as fast as Fedora! I was ecstatic, how come everybody’s not using this!?
but then I needed a piece of software that wasn’t available and flatpak wouldn’t work in that scenario. rpm and deb available but nothing for arch. OK, so there’s this AUR thingy - cool, so like a repo, right? one copy/paste and I’m done…
not fucking so. what this does is fetch the source code and then compiles and builds it on your puny dual-core…I can’t imagine what a full system upgrade looks like, compiling tons of stuff for hours. that’s 1998 linux, I thought we were done with this.
not a week later, a normal system update with no errors made the thing unbootable. yeah, said one laconic reply, you really should keep up with breaking changes by way of the mailing list. do what now? the what now? dude, this just became a job.
so that was it for me. thanks to btrfs subvolumes, all my stuff was already there and ready to go for the new OS.
my baseline is a 7 year old model with 8 GB RAM and SDM845 that I can get intermittently for $50. for that kinda money I get a LineageOS fully supported device that’s blazing fast, safe and secure against any reasonable threat; I have zero concerns a lost or stolen device will compromise me. as a bonus, it just so happens it’s one of the best supported devices for Mobian and postmarketOS. so, that’s the baseline.
GrapheneOS value proposition is gonna be spend 10x that (at least!) for a marginally secure-er solution. that’s a shite deal.
now if they partnered with LineageOS and other “let’s revive old shit left behind” that would be a different story. imagine if Linux was available only on latest gen CPUs, would all of us be into it? I know I wouldn’t be.