RE: https://mastodon.social/@jimmac/115989543616930121
I maintain that while this app ecosystem shines best on GNOME (whether on a laptop, desktop, or phone), there would be a ton of value in getting it in front of Android users; a long-term path towards them actually using Linux on mobile once it’s ready for “normies.”
Getting these apps on Android feels far more urgent to me than getting Android apps on Linux phones today.
@cassidy KDE does this with various apps, but tbh since they're developed for Linux first and Android second, they're not a great experience on Android.
Stuff will have to be on Google Play to actually reach users though, not just F-Droid.
Show existing Android users there’s a better ecosystem out there. Get them to appreciate the consistency, simplicity, and respect for them that these apps have. They’ll start preferring these apps over the ad-filled design sin horrors that plague the Google Play store.
And then eventually when they have the opportunity to use Linux on mobile, all these apps will just be there, too—it would greatly lower the switching cost.
@cassidy I mostly agree, but it would still be an uphill battle. For example, compare the F-Droid app "Breezy Weather" with whatever toxic adware pops up on Google Play Store when you look up "Weather". The former is an extremely well-made app, but just because it's good doesn't mean that a given "gatekeeper" will allow for fair competition.
@cassidy I wonder if it's possible to port the gtk app to Android
@bender GTK itself has an Android backend now, but I'm not sure how hard/easy it actually is to build and package a typical GNOME app for Android.
@cassidy @bender GNOME apps written in C or Vala that build with Meson are reasonably easy to get running on Android already. For Rust I believe it shouldn't be that hard, but AFAIK we don't have direct support from the build system yet. Python and GJS probably need some more work to integrate with the interpreters.
If there's any GNOME app maintainer seriously interested in getting their app working on Android, please give me a ping, I'm very happy to help where I can.
