If you want to go that route, each manufacturer is responsible for their own drivers for windows, linux, and possibly Mac (though if it’s novel enough, they will do it). Then think about the components that make up a PC. Motherboard, CPU, Memory Control, IO, OS, Audio, Video. Each of those needs to release patches. So its orders of magnitude more than any Android OS. It’s just pure laziness on the hardware manufacturers that don’t want to invest in software/support. They want Google to do that.
The big difference with PC hardware is that the OS will get most driver updates for the individual components directly from the OEM. A driver update for, say, a sound card will directly be available to every machine with that sound card installed. The PC vendor doesn't have to be involved in any way.
It's the other way around with Android. Google does a new core release, and each individual manufacturer is responsible for modifying it for their devices. If you don't bother to upstream your drivers to mainline Linux and use a skin which heavily modifies core Android, backporting those fixes can quickly become a nightmare.
Again, no sympathy as that’s the route they chose. Rely on Google for everything OS and make a phone whereas Apple made a phone and supplied an OS.
Apple made a product. Google made a software revenue stream. Entirely different things and now the Android makers are crying foul that they too have to do product engineering support. Nah. This is what you get when you rely on out of house innovation. I hope they all close shop. Not because I like Apple, but because they aren’t in the business of making products, only selling you hardware with bolt on software that it vaguely supports. Like buying a raspberry pi that can make phone calls. Google has them all by the balls.
Yeah, and I also hope that all the PC makers close up shop as well. They rely on Microsoft for everything OS. Listen, you can just enjoy your iPhone in peace. Let other people make things, even if you feel they don't meet your standards.
No, I use Android and the security nightmare on Android is absolutely unacceptable. There is zero reason phones should rely on as many proprietary bullshit blobs as they do, and that's the root cause of this.
Even just looking past the bugs that almost certainly exist in the firmware, it makes these devices extremely difficult to update. Whereas on desktop, I get kernel patches expeditiously. Many Android devices are still running kernel 5, and of the ones running recent kernels, we're still waiting months for system patches.
If everyone just upstreamed their shit, then we would live in a Utopia.
They don’t rely on Microsoft, quite the contrary. The OEM/ISV vendor relationship at Microsoft is the backbone of the company. Linux, servers, phones, infotainment, TV’s, robotics, all run a flavor of Unix (Linux being the primary, but BSD is in there).
For the consumer PC market, Microsoft cornered the market early on with IBM and HP with DOS. They then tried to pull the ladder and raise the gates when they went against OS/2 and Amiga. To win the Windows for Networks wars.
The only reason why majority of consumers use windows is because that’s how they want it. You can easily build a PC, no Microsoft Windows anywhere in a 1 km radius, and install Linux or BSD flavor of choice and be 90% there. Companies don’t want you to do that (i.e. Microsoft and Apple) so they preinstall the OS and it updates over the Internet whenever it wants to. Installing whatever it wants to. User choice be damned.
No, Pc’s don’t need Microsoft anymore than Rap needs p.diddy
Weird how LineageOS supports ~300 devices while still managing to release patches.
I bet this CVE's patched quicker on a samsung device running LineageOS than the stock OS.
The real difference is that Google has a more competent software development process and release process than other android OEMs, regardless of how many different devices they have.
LineageOS doesn't customize the hell out of their OSes per device.
That's core of the issue. Samsung takes Android, customizes per device and then tosses them into the world. So now they don't have 1 OS to update, they have 100s of OSes to update.
That's still one OS. Customization is mostly userspace "system" apps that they swap out and maintain, but reused across all their phones with some small variation. Hardware enablement will differ between models, but that's just the cost of doing business.
Can be a pain to move the whole suite to a new major (porting all their inhouse apps, getting all the hardware enablement from vendors updated to match, ...), but we're not dealing with a major upgrade here.
A security patch is "just" a matter of taking the last release, applying the diff, build, qa, release. No customization.
And 5000+ laptop models per year, yet linux runs on (pretty much) all of them. This is an entirely self-inflicted problem. They don't deserve an ounce of mercy.
