Googlebook broke my heart
Apologies for the rant. I'm whining to you from a brand new XPS Googlebook that I really wanted to be excited for. I'm writing for any future me's (android enthusiasts hoping this is a platform that can do \~75% of my computing) that are thinking about picking one up.
I was super hyped when I imagined a laptop that could run all my Android apps plus Debian Linux for any apps where Android fell short on the desktop equivalent. Full desktop Firefox, GIMP, cyber security tools, development! And why wouldn't it be, ChromeOS has Crostini and Android 16 added tons of folders to be shared with Linux a year ago!
Big nope fam.
Android apps still not optimized well, even the ones that ARE listed as optimized. This was not surprising and isn't that big of a deal.
Android widgets also not optimized well. This was surprising because widgets on the desktop was an announcement feature but something as simple as the Google Calendar widget is almost at an unreadable resolution and no amount of resizing fixes this.
Excited to run those non-optimized apps as PWA's straight from the web knowing the website works fine? Well you cant. Google has adopted a TWA model, which means if you want a PWA it has to be distributed through the PlayStore by the domain owner. Which no one will ever do because this is just a completely unethical way of trying to take website earnings and making them subject to the Google PlayStore 30% cut nonsense. So no PWAs at all. Great. This is probably going to be a pretty big problem, because PWAs are the primary method normies have for overcoming non-optimized apps, and Google has created a huge financial barrier to anyone thinking about launching one, nevermind that \it's just a website and the user should be able to save it on their own without making the developer commit to extra steps.*
The new linux terminal? As far as I can tell it has zero access to any of the shared directories added to /mnt/shared in Android 16. That means no Documents, Downloads, Pictures, etc access. If you have a great linux tool to do something you have to open terminal, then copy the files you want to work on into the linux VM space, then take em back out when you're done.
Lets talk about those linux tools. If said tool runs in a gui you can get it to launch in a 1996 looking workspace with window 3.11 looking support. It's unusable for anything not CLI. You also can't pin an app from here to your desktop or drawer. You can't believe how bad gui linux is natively on $1000 android hardware.
Suppose you use Breadstick. Big props btw to the team that maintains this as a way to get real linux apps running on Android/Aluminum. This CAN see the shared folders because it's deployed as a regular app that can request permissions. Meaning out of the box Breadstick is far better than Google's deployment of Debian.
Breadstick can also launch GUI apps, and they look as good as they do natively with no 1996 era containering. And they can be pinned to the desktop or app drawer. You can get real desktop Firefox (a massive improvement over the Android version) and downloads go where they are supposed to. You can get real desktop GIMP and LibreOffice and edit photos and documents that live in DCIM, Pictures and Documents like you expect.
And yet, the problem with this approach is the jank. Android's strict process limits mean you are never going to be able to run ublock origin plus open billion tabs in Firefox unless you hook up the Googlebook to an ADB device and remove those limits, which creates stability and security risks and leaves any normie who just wants to use a good non-Google Chrome browser out of luck.
Apps run this way aren't going to be able to make normal permissions calls, like sharing your location so the movie theater web search is your area or sharing your mic or camera to take that web call when the webapp version of Teams/Zoom/whatever is better than their not-optimized-for-desktop Android app offering. And while maybe you can work around this by suffering through those apps or
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