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 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.
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!
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
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.
If you like it, then use it. There’s no point in jumping every time some new framework comes out. Most of them don’t last. I have used React off and on since it came out, and I personally don’t like how the syntax has changed. My personal website is React and doesn’t have any browser history issues. Idk what’s up with Facebook history management. I guess they just don’t care very much because they’re too busy trying to gobble up data.
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.
And PHP will still be chugging along. lol. It’s weird that React syntax went from being fairly pretty, and structured, to looking like a plate of spaghetti. Usually languages and frameworks go the other direction.
I love how PHP 7 looks, and PHP 8 only continues to improve.
Totally agree. React is going backwards. Vue is so attractive. Heck, I’m even starting to rebuild react apps in Web components because react is getting weird.
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?
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
Exactly this. There’s no nefarious motive to doing this, because Amazon can already do everything nefarious that they want to do with their current Android-based Fire OS.
I’m actually willing to take Amazon’s reasoning at face value for this. They say that Android is too heavyweight and inflexible for embedded IoT devices, and that they want to build something lighter. This makes plenty of sense, and is indeed something that Google themselves have also said as justification for their move to Fuschia for their own embedded devices.
For Linux fans, it’s probably a good thing that Amazon has chosen another Linux-based architecture rather than doing as Google are doing and moving off Linux to a different kernel.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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