Re: [PLUG] Linux friendly tablet?

[Rich Freeman <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net>]

On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 9:15 AM, Sam Gleske <sam.mxracer@gmail.com> wrote:
>  Android isn't Linux friendly either if it comes from a carrier.  Having
> root access voids all warranties and you basically have zero rights with
> modifying your device.  Unless you give up all hope of warranties.

While perhaps the carriers would like you to think that, modifying a
device only voids its warranty if the modification is related to the
failure that occurs.

Of course, the carrier can still refuse to honor the warranty, which
they can do whether you root the device or not.  Then you'd have to
take them to court, which is a lot of hassle for a $600 phone.

I realize that rooting = void warranty is common knowledge in the
modding community, but I've yet to hear that stated in such an
unqualified manner by a lawyer, and certainly there are no court
precedents.

> The
> Android builds shipped by carriers are proprietary and sometimes come with
> apps installed which can't be removed such as the BlockBuster App, CityID,
> and many others.  This is my experience with Android thus far.  So as far as
> I'm concerned whether you're going with iDevice or Android you're still
> locked in to a proprietary Linux unfriendly environment.  And they're both
> Unix based.

True, but if you do root the Android device, you can most likely
install a FOSS version of the OS (minus a few drivers and
applications).  I'm not aware of any nearly-free (as in freedom) iOS
replacements.

As delivered by the vendor Android is almost as proprietary as iOS -
the only exception would be the kernel, which they have to offer you
the source to in the case of Android.

While having to root either platform is unfortunate, at least once you
do this with Android you can get pretty close to an open source phone.

Rich
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