Have you ever tried abiword? It's really lightweight.
fulano
joined 1 year ago
Depends on the device. Some allow the bootloader to be unlocked officially. Root is usually needed when you unlock the bootloader unofficially, using some hack.
Also, /e/os supports an official gsi, which can be installed without root.
That said, these phones aren't suited for people that need absolute security and privacy. They're more experimental and aimed at enthusiasts of the project who want to support it.
I can see why eos raises some concerns, but i find it to be an interesting alternative with moderate potential. We definitely need more alternatives to standard android.
Could you elaborate about the privacy part?
Some software developers prefer to host their own repos and have more control over the release process and/or don't want to fill all the criteria for being included on f-droid, so they create their own repos. Some of these apps can still be found on vanilla fdroid, but often aren't updated so frequently.
Izzyondroid, on the other hand, is a different project, aimed at hosting different apps that are usually from smaller devs and can't be included on fdroid yet, for different reasons.
The greatest thing about fdroid is that it allows anyone to create their own repos and you aren't forced to depend on anyone.
I understand your bad experience with GSIs, but I think it's a step in the right direction. The way custom roms have been made through the years isn't sustainable for the long run. It's too much work for the few people involved, that goes obsolete so fast. But with GSis, the projects will one day be able to maintain just a few images, and the porting community will just have to focus on unlocking the devices.
GSIs aren't working 100% today, but it's something still new in the perspective of manufacturers, and the tendency is to have better support with time.
Just to put things into perspective, my experience, as someone poor from a third word country, is just the opposite. In the past, only the more expensive phones had custom rom support, and the cheaper ones I got access to, wouldn't even get results if I searched for the model on xda. Nowadays, even cheap chinese phones or the ones locally manufactured in here allow me to put a GSI and have a customized experience, up to date with security patches.
As someone from a developing country, windows 11 contributes to higher digital inequality because of its unnecessary high hardware requirements. If they don't support windows 10 for a long time, we will suffer a great toll.
And unfortunately, people around here barely use linux and developed quite a repulsion for it, which only makes things worse for ourselves...
It's hard not to hate microsoft when we live on the ugly side of capitalism.