Amazon Building its Own Linux-Based OS to Replace Android

Nice! And they will probably differentiate from the competition by allowing GPL applications and sideloading, and having a total control for your privacy and no tracking, right?

Right?

Best we can do is exclusive Amazon deals related to what you just talked about with your spouse.
In the beginning? Sure. Later? Well, you know, security and all, think of the kids!
- And the grannies!
Yeah and maybe Bezos will finally allow his workers to have bathroom breaks
- Delivery drivers are free to sideload a fully open bucket and take bathroom breaks in the privacy of their vans.
Check out these great special offers in GPL applications and sideloading!
Lol
I know there's sarcasm here, but the article did state an sdk will be available so apps need ported.

Cool. Another OS to avoid.

This is the best description for everyone
Agreed. If it was any company at all except Amazon there would be hope but come on. We've all seen what they did to the fire sticks
- If it was any company at all except Amazon there would be hope
  
  You won't be saying that in a couple months when Facebook makes their own announcement.

They want to harvest the data, without Google's control, and give none to Google.

That can be easily done with AOSP, to my knowledge there's no Google stuff in there. Which is exactly what they're using right now
- There still is some google stuff in there, like for example phoning google servers to check internet connectivity among other stuff.

Hahahaha cool, Linux with ads and tracking and all the spyware you could ever want.

I wonder if it's going to be as terrible as their Fire OS.

The author is exited but I'm not. I am not a big fan of corporations taking the free work of FOSS developers and turning it into a proprietary dystopia.

I think that having a strong public domain is good for everyone. For instance properties like Sherlock Holmes really took off once it was in the public domain and people could write spin-offs and whatnot without worry that a copyright lawyer would come along and sue them.

Linux is the same thing, Amazon using the kernel and stuff to build an OS on doesn't take anything away from anyone else who uses Linux as a desktop or server environment, and in fact can lead to some good pass back, even if it is just that the devices are easier to root. Take a look at the Open-wrt project, where Linksys built their router on top of a Linux kernel and it led to a whole ecosystem of open routers. People went out of their way to buy a WRT-42G just with the intent of rooting it, and Linksys got their money either way.
- Amazon using Linux isn't the concern. What OP was referring to are things like their use of Elasticsearch. It's basically Amazon's version of embrace, extend, extinguish. It got so bad, that the devs of Elasticsearch changed their licensing as a way to fight against Amazon's tactics.
  
  https://www.elastic.co/blog/why-license-change-aws
  
  Open source is great. But when other companies take the open source code as their own to the detriment to the original open source devs, that's not sustainable. That behaviour will kill open source.
- If it were anyone other than Amazon or Apple.
  
  Speaking of which, isn't MacOS Linux based these days? How much have they contributed back? (Genuine question)
This is the correct response.
GPLv3 fixes that

A third competitor for Android and iOS would be amazing. But not if it's Amazon..

https://pine64.com/product-category/pinephone/

https://pine64.com/product-category/smartphones/pinephone-pro/

There is already something in the works (that you can technically buy right now if you wanted), and it actively respects your freedom. Granted, as with everything in this ecosystem, its a very slow burn, so it'll be a while before the software is actually good, but it's already made massive strides from where it started.

I would say wait a bit and take a look at this later, but i do have one friend daily driving one now to some success (this wasn't possible a year ago).
- That would be great, but you can buy a $20 burner from a gas station that's more powerful than those phones.
  
  The regular version uses the Allwinner A64 chip which retailed for $5 when it was released... Back in 2015.
  
  The Pro version uses the RK3399S, which is a custom lower binned version of the RK3399. Neither chip was made available retail, but the SK3399 was released in 2016 and only otherwise used in low-end Chromebooks and SBCs.
I just read an article about how they're increasing advertising on their Fire TVs. Rest assured, an Amazon OS is an Advertising OS.

Although, from what I've gathered of public opinion online, there's LOTS of people willing to forgo their privacy in exchange for free shit.

Edit: Oh...

They say they expect Vega to begin shipping on Fire TVs early next year.

And that article https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/after-luring-customers-with-low-prices-amazon-stuffs-fire-tvs-with-ads/
- Amazon would sell your DNA for 25 cents if they could.
OOnly if it is Libre Software. We are tired of proprietary rubbish
- Android is already free software, and see how far that gets you. The kicker is that you're tied into their services (with all the data harvesting, targeted advertising and monetisation that that involves).

Windows Phone: Electric Boogaloo

TL;DR Amazon is building a Linux distro that starts a chromium to run react native apps. Apparently, you need hundreds of people for that.

TBH Amazon has a whole zoo of devices. Even if they are putting a small team of 2 or 3 people in charge for porting this to each device, they might end up with a few hundred people

Oh so I won’t be able to sideload streaming APKs onto any new Amazon devices? Guess you can fucking keep your shit hardware then

But that would also mean you can sideload a whole another OS, maybe?
- Locked boot loader says otherwise
There are two options here, given that the OS seems to rely heavily on React Native to work: having the streaming APKs converted to React Native apps, or simply use the web browser and PWAs.

oh great, yet another platform that will use free software to restrict what people can do with their computing devices 🤮

how is this supposed to be a good thing? 🙄

I’m not sure how this is in any way different from android? Android is free software they use to restrict the computing they devices they sell to push more ads and junkware. This is just a different one. Amazon sucks, so I don’t see what move they could make that could be seen as positive. Just don’t buy their garbage devices.
- With any luck they'll probably introduce some new exploits to free up the device.
- I am in dire need of decent linux smartphones that aren't android. Can Valve just get to it please?
how is this supposed to be a good thing?

Well you see, it makes rich people more money.

Apps are going to be written in React Native

So despite the desire for one, Vega won’t be an Android-killer, won’t bring an influx of big name apps to benefit regular Linux distros, nor see Amazon do something crazy cool like create its own Linux tablet UI.

You know how much overhead Electron apps are? Well, here's React Native! Enjoy all the annoyances of mobile development with the ugliest that is React!

(I kid. Or am I?)
- It actually works pretty great, it genuinely does compile to native code pretty well. The js code just drives - everything visual or I/O is native, so it's faster than you'd think
Apps are going to be written in React Native

Idk if I'm the only person who thinks this, but I feel like React has gotten worse over the last couple of major versions. Not only does the code look a lot messier when you use their new syntax, but the end result seems unreliable. Facebook is barely even usable now. Their history management is laughable, and it'll drop you out of the site randomly when using the back buttons. I used to think React was really neat, but I'm not a big fan anymore. There's too much re-engineering for problems that were solved decades ago.
- Damn....I'm trying to modernize my personal app's UI and I thought react was the shit. What is the recommended framework now?
- React is having the same problems Angular had, and jQuery had. New ECMAscript features make formerly complex things easier, and JS frameworks adapt.
  
  Lots of solutions. But as more edge cases start to show up, they continue to add more and more little things that shape the language into more different variants.
  
  Many of the changes are pretty good. But New devs will go, "Why are there 7 ways to do this React thing?" And that adds to the noise.
  
  Again, that's not a React problem. It's just coding in general. PHP also had a "damn you ugly" phase. But unlike PHP, I don't think React (and most JS frameworks of today) will continue to be as popular as some hot new JS framework in 2027-2030 sweeps the landscape.

Amazon out here thinking “could you imagine how much cheap garbage we could try to sell people if we can harvest literally all of the data directly?”

Amazon can't make TVs or ereades without filling them to the brim with ads and spyware like the greedy shits they are, I dont want to think about how screwed up their OS would be. As much as I sneer at Microsoft and windows BS as a snobby Linux user I get the impression amazon would be way worse and make Ol Gatey boy say 'have a little class, would you?'

If it runs Amazon-Linux it won't take long for someone to build a Wamazon Linux distro with all the features and none of the crap.
- If anything, it'll be a thing where amazon ends up close sourcing the code/parts that they create after forking whatever OS they decide. That, or they'll just close source the entire codebase 100% before release without any regard or repercussions.
- it won't take long for someone to build a Wamazon Linux distro with all the features and none of the crap.
  
  I don't know what "features" Amazon would include that aren't somehow directly tied into their store and ease of shopping...aka "crap." It's not like they would build a better video/audio driver or something. It would all just be more...advertising and analytics, probably on a cheap platform as hardware has never been their largest source of income, to include Kindles (AWS is, last I checked). Strip those two out of their build and we have essentially an untouched kernel lol, at least that's how I see it happening.

LMFAO, can't wait to see Adbuntu.

But thats just a derivative of Debiad.

These tentacular megacorporations are a problem. Amazon is OK as a merchant, MS as an OS developer, Google as a search engine... If they do vertical integration the market is corrupted.

I'm really dumb. Can you expand on vertical integration and how it corrupts? I'm not sure what it is or why it's bad.
- Vertical integration is when you control the entire product, in consumer electronics Apple is the gold standard; they make the software, hardware, and processors then integrate them into iPhones and macBooks. Tesla is a good example in the automotive space, their goal with the mega-factories is "raw materials in, cars out" and they work to build as many of the parts themselves as possible.
  
  Alternately Microsoft just makes a good enough OS that runs on good enough hardware from commodity vendors, so you get good enough computers. Most auto makers buy good enough components from 2nd and 3rd tier suppliers and integrate them into good enough cars.
Honestly I feel like you have microsoft backwards, in my experience their hardware is so so much better than their software

Lmao, they can have fun with that. I can't imagine it being anything decent. A mobile phone equivalent of a DVD Player OS lol

"Equivalent of a DVD player OS" is now my go-to insult for a bad OS.
- I'm honoured lol

Good luck getting all the developers to rewrite their apps. The only reason you had any apps was because it was based on Android so it was little to no effort to port. Going plain ol' embedded Linux is basically the death knell of your developer story. Source: been there, had no third party apps, switched to Android

I'm sure they have thought of this, I wonder if they plan to use web apps, or Waydroid, or something else.

Also, there's a chance mobile Linux could benefit from sponsorships, contributions, etc
- It's in the article. Web based stuff with REACT.
  
  Edit: It's REACT Native. Just read the fucking article, people.
- Waydroid makes no sense since they are complaining people just sideload gapps.

I already tried an Amazon Fire tablet, Amazon. No thanks. I returned it. I don't need a locked-down console that spies on me. Windows is well on its way to becoming that already.

I tried to get one since it was 30 bucks, so I'm not too surprised this is how they operated. They are locking down jindles real hard too. Probably going to make a lot of ewaste.

Surely this other monopoly will save us

It's a new management objective.

Absolutely hell no.

Probably because it is stupid simple to escape their ecosystem just by sideloading apps. They want to lock you down with their own OS.

The only thing I care about in this is if they will contribute anything back to the open source ecosystem, be it code or anything else.

No chance. Amazon has a long history of using a ton of FOSS code on AWS and contributing fuck-all.

if it's anything like amazon linux on ec2 i'll pass

What are your issues with it? Just curious - I've always found it to be an agreeable RHEL variant.
What are your issues with it? Just curious - I've always found it to be an agreeable RHEL variant.
- note: you accidentally said the same thing twice

Nice try Amazon. I'm not falling for it.

The mixed blessing of GPLv2

blursing.

I know it won't happen, but it'd be nice if Linux switched to GPLv3. That would at least help somewhat here

Won't ever happen, Linus is very much in favor of companies being able to use drm, when needed.

I kinda sorta agree because without it Linux wouldn't be able to do anything requiring dr.m
- This is misleading, since regular desktop DRM would still obviously work, which is what the end user really cares about
- The anti-tivoization clause in GPLv3 is what Linus is against specifically.
Why?
- It is because of the tivo workaround to GPLv2. This was fixed in GPL v3.
  
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization

So they want more control over what people are able to install

The more you control something, the easier it is to take your ~~10%~~ ~~15%~~ 20%
I think it's even simpler than that: they want a share of Google's data, and more control about what ads they can show to their customers constantly. Their hardware platforms are okayish and sold for a quite low price, but they monetize it on ads.
- Amazon's Fire devices already have this, they don't use Android with Google, they use the fully open source version. They can collect any data they want already

All I'm hearing is that we might be able to hack these devices and put full Linux on them.

All I'm hearing is a subscription to remove the adverts on the command line.
- See, that's the situation where we just don't use them. I'm talking about wiping the original OS and putting something that's really FOSS in its place.

What are the chances this will not produce wrong doing?

This is the question. Nevertheless, can it be worst than Google?
- Has the potential to be as bad as...

hopefully they'll design some package manager incompatible with android at the most basic level - and then double down when it's proven to be a huge mistake. a good tick upwards for dev jobs, but the time for actual competition was over 10 years ago. this will fail miserably.

Why? Chromeos is linux and can play android apps. Can't linux run android apps as well? Waydroid, etc.?

Genuine question

Most TV operating systems are already non-android linux based. They mostly just run webapps.

Another not-Linux Linux based operating system. Can't wait to argue same as with Android and ChromeOS that this is not like "real" desktop Linux looks.

We really should stick to calling it GNU or something.

Definitely not GNU, that's even worse than calling it Linux. We should simply call it by it's own name, Vega or whatever it ends up being. Android is Android. ChromeOS is ChromeOS. We can acknowledge they utilize the Linux kernel and some other open source code, and as such give some back. But they are not what we refer to as Linux, as that is a spirit as much as if not more than it is a collection of software.
- I completely agree.
  
  An OS is defined by its ecosystem ( applications, users, and philosophy ). Everybody knows what an actual Linux distribution is and the kinds of desktop environments ( eg. GNOME, KDE, XFCE ) and applications that Linux implies ( eg. Docker, Podman, Emacs, GIMP, OBS, LibreOffice ). It does not matter if the C library is Glibc or MUSL. It does not matter if things were compiled with GCC or Clang. It does not matter who wrote the version of ‘ls’ installed. It is not confusing when somebody tells you they are using “Linux” on the desktop, the server, or the cloud. You know what they mean.
  
  Saying GNU / Linux does not add any clarity in my view and could be confusing or wrong. If you use Alpine in the cloud, you are using Linux ( very clear ) but not GNU / Linux. If you are using Void on your desktop, you are using Linux ( but maybe not Glibc ). Is one version of Void Linux called GNU / Linux and the other one isn’t? It is not a useful label other than politically.
  
  Android and ChromeOS use the Linux kernel but are not Linux distributions by any useful use of that term. If I switch you from Void to Arch, you could use it for hours without noticing the change. You might not notice until you went to update software. If I moved you to Android or ChromeOS, you would certainly notice right away. In some ways, Windows is a more similar environment than Android is.
  
  If I say, “I use Linux”, you do not have to ask me if I mean Android or if I have a Chromebook. People that don’t “know” that these other systems use the Linux kernel would never make that mistake. The “confusion” is artificial.
  
  As a non-Linux example, is there anybody that is confused that the XBox uses the Windows kernel? Even if I say “I game on Windows”, would you honestly wonder if I meant XBox? Or would it be super obvious that I meant on a PC?
  
  If I say, “I game on Linux”, you again know that I do not mean Android or ChromeOS ( unless I am purposely trying to be arrogant or funny about it ). You might ask if I am using a Stream Deck but, guess what, the Deck also boots into KDE. It really is Linux.
  
  My Nest thermometer and my IP camera both run the Linux kernel as well. Do we need a special name for them? No. Nobody is truthfully confused by that either. Would we call them GNU / Linux even if they use Glibc? I hope not. So what does GNU / Linux even refer to outside of the political meaning?

So basically

"Windows for freeloaders: "You are the product(tm)" edition."

So... Windows?

I'm confused, why not just continue with AOSP?

It already has most of the Google stuff stripped out and any remaining parts will be easy to replace in comparison to rebuilding and maintaining a much larger software stack while also simultaneously retaining compatibility with all the android apps already on their app store.

They want to throw this OS on smart home/automative/IoT type things. Android works in these situations, but it's not necessarily ideal. Thing was designed for phones. It's likely the only phone firmware in history that's also been put in cars, espresso makers, washer/dryers, microwaves, and TV's.

I completely get why the first waves of smart devices tended to just use Android -- it's easy to develop on and "lightweight enough" that the tradeoffs involved were generally acceptable. But those qualities only take you so far. Companies moving on to develop their own in-house OS's for all these devices was the obvious next step.

Curious if it'll be opensource and mobile linux distro. If Amazon gets into the mobile linux game, the mobile phone market might change radically.

You seem confused. Amazon is in the business of stealing open source project in order to sell them as AWS services, not making them.
- Then complaining that the license changes and gaslighting the group they steal from.
  
  You're right.

I'm devastated they didn't choose to pick up webOS for this.

Well, they don't want a mobile Linux. This is going to be a minimalist, locked-down distro that does nothing more than start a webrenderer.

Nobody's gonna see the underlying Linux system.

It's kinda like how my car entertainment system is running Linux. You wouldn't know it if you don't read the license file that comes with it.
- WebOS powers TVs now and, from the article, Amazon intends this replacement to cover their Fire tablet line. WebOS ticks all their boxes, especially since apps in Amazon's new flavor are intended to be delivered as React Native web apps.

All I have to ask is why though? They already have access to skinned aosp and from there can(and do)quite a bit of tweaking on their own. Fireos has been a worse version of android for some time now and Im unsure what the benefit of making their own in house OS would be.

If it's a true GNU/Linux OS with compatibility with linux programs, then that would be kind of neat, and if it's open enough to let advanced users install flatpaks(I suspect it's going to be immutable so at least flatpaks would be nice) then that could be neat. Currently it's very easy to sideload on fireos devices and even install the play store in full so it's possible the end product could be more like the steamdeckOS which is very much a user friendly store front end with a power user true linux experience underneath.

That said, for some reason I suspect that they will be locking things down even more and its going to be one of those many user facing linux devices that's technically linux but very limited. Like a smart fridge interface or something. If this is the case then dropping android support would be a bad move. You lose easy/lazy portability to your store from developers who already have a product to sell and you lose many apps that already exist, and for power users you lose access to the many apps that can easily be side loaded like tachiyomi(though I imagine amazon would rather you buy from them than buy their subsidized $80 tablets to read pirated manga/comics and library books on libby)

But who knows if they actually do an OK job this could lead to a new wave of GNU compatible touch forward apps for the rest of us. Linux has gotten a lot better at touch forward design over the last 4 or 5 years on its own, but its still fairly rough.

Ugh I don't know which is worse. Next timeline, portal gun.

lets hope the devices can be rooted and we can have phosh or ubuntumobile or sth. like that flashed

If all the apps are in React Native I feel like they are gonna have a bad time. If you're not careful React Native apps have bad performance, and Fire TVs don't have a lot of performance to spare.

As. Someone who is incredibly poor and use my current fire stick as a way to help me because of accessibility for my disabilities. Does anybody know if there's a alternative to Chromecast, fire stick or Roku that doesn't involve another computer (which I could get a raspberry pi or another computer dedicated to media, but government doesn't believe in giving disabled people enough for those things)

technically miracast: https://www.tcl.com/global/en/blog/tips/miracast-android-phone-to-the-living-room-tv#:~:text=Miracast is a wireless technology,or any other wireless connection.
- Miracast is a wireless transmission technology, where the wireless signal is transmitted in a way that does not require any cables.
  
  Thanks, captain Obvious. :-D
but government doesn’t believe in giving disabled people enough for those things

Instead of subscribing to whatever streaming services you're using roku for, you could be streaming everything for free here: https://fmoviesz.to/

Use the money you save to buy a raspberry pi and wireless keyboard+mouse combo then you're off to the races.
- I don't pay for my streaming services. My mom who is barley surviving too and others pay for it. Had no choice really. Sense I have zero income it's hard to save up. (been battling the government for nearly 6 year's to get SSI or anything to help )

Save us phosh, or something similar..

Well i think it will help us to access more apps

For some reason I thought they had already made a nix OS

Fire OS, but it was just a fork of Android. There are mobile Linux distributions (like postmarketOS), but Fire wasn’t one of them.
They have, but it's more of a container development kind of thing.
Fire OS