I picked up a Black Friday Lenovo ChromeBook (Flex 3) for US $160 and use it essentially the same way you describe. You can load up a Debian-based Linux environment within ChromeOS. It’s basically my web-capable thin client.
Absolutely, and I think that’s why snap has a future at all. Immutability is the future, as well as self-contained apps. We saw the explosive growth of Docker as indication that this was the way. If they can make their tooling as easy as a Dockerfile they will win just by reducing the work needed to support it.
I appreciate that they try, and as much as I dislike some of snap’s design choices I think it has a place. Flatpak appears to be the winner in this race however, and I feel like this is Unity all over. Just as the project gets good they abandon it for the prevailing winds. I’ve been told the snap server isn’t open source, which is a big concern?
That’s true, but there would be additional challenges. Outside of the US, Android dominates the markets to the tune of +80%. In order for such an effort to have teeth, there has to be incentive for them to comply. They could pull iOS out of the EU market and remove iMessage from macOS if it came down to it. They are already such a small percentage they might just eat the loss as the cost of protecting their walled garden. Unlikely, but a possibility nonetheless.
When people make a big stink about Apple not implementing RCS I always bring this up. RCS has an open core sure - but it’s lacking plenty of features that people refer to when talking about RCS. Furthermore, the gateways used for Google’s RCS implementation are made by a company Google acquired. Would we be happy with Apple charging cell providers money to install iMessage gateways at whatever cost they wanted, because they hold the patents? No, so why would we give Google a pass?
If we want to fix this issue, force Google to relinquish their control of RCS and open the standard unencumbered with patents. Require telecoms to implement the standard in full and without deviation or be fined. Give phone manufacturers a few more years to comply and then it’s done.
When people make a big stink about Apple not implementing RCS I always bring this up. RCS has an open core sure - but it’s lacking plenty of features that people refer to when talking about RCS. Furthermore, the gateways used for Google’s RCS implementation are made by a company Google acquired. Would we be happy with Apple charging cell providers money to install iMessage gateways at whatever cost they wanted, because they hold the patents? No, so why would we give Google a pass?
If we want to fix this issue, force Google to relinquish their control of RCS and open the standard unencumbered with patents. Require telecoms to implement the standard in full and without deviation or be fined. Give phone manufacturers a few more years to comply and then it’s done.
IIRC Microsoft’s woes in the ARM space is two-fold. First is the crushing legacy compatibility and inability to muster developers around anything newer than win32, and second was signing a deal to make Qualcomm the exclusive ARM processors for Windows for who knows how long.
GNOME’s mantra is pretty much remove functionality if the maintenance burden is anything beyond lifting a finger. This might end up biting them however as it’s caused them to fall behind in supporting the features enterprises and consumers want out of a Linux desktop. Combine this with their weird obsession of making a pseudo-touch interface and it’s just not working.