Re: Phone

[Joe <joe@jretrading.com>]

On Mon, 26 Jul 2021 07:39:01 -0400
Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> wrote:

> Joe wrote: 
> > On Sun, 25 Jul 2021 16:57:04 +0300
> > Gunnar Gervin <dofeelok@gmail.com> wrote:
> >   
> > > Will buy phone zoon, then play with this android for fun & learn.
> > >  
> > 
> > Please comment here on your findings. Perhaps it is just me who
> > thinks they are toys.  
> 
> Of course smartphones are toys.
> 
> They are also reasonably powerful general purpose computers that
> fit into a pocket.
> 
> Hence "I have the Internet in my pants."
> 
> Phones are books. They play music and TV shows and movies, and
> of course, games.
> 
> They are maps that know where you are, can be told where you are
> going, and can tell you turn-by-turn instructions on getting
> there. They can track your movements and learn your face well
> enough to distinguish it from a photograph of your face --
> sometimes. They are the majority of photography and video
> cameras on the planet.
> 
> Because phones are valid terminals for the Internet as a whole,
> they are reference libraries and documentation and how-to
> videos.
> 
> Also, you can use them to communicate,  and even call for help.
> 
> All of them, to a first approximation, run some kind of UNIX.
> Most of them run Linux. There's a big complicated ecosystem
> called Android on top of that, but definitely Linux underneath.
> 
> The requests over the last few days to install Debian on phones
> are entirely blocked by practical issues, not philosophical --
> it is perfectly reasonable to want control and thus privacy and 
> security on such a powerful instrument. 
> 

It is the philosophical which makes the practical so very difficult,
and it is the philosophy behind the mobile devices which makes them
toys.

I've recently installed OpenVPN on two Android phones and an iPad.
Installing it (OpenVPN Connect, the 'official' client) was trivial.
Configuring it has proven impossibly difficult with one phone and the
iPad. The iPad does not have the concept of file storage: a matter of
philosophy. This means that the only two methods of getting a file into
it are using Apple's cloud or using email. The file must be directly
useable from these media as there is no provision for the user to store
files on the iPad. At least this isn't a problem with Android.

The version of OpenVPN on my phone must be older than the recent
installations on the iPad and on my wife's phone, because it allows the
use of separate certificate/ca files and also manual configuration of
the profile. This is obviously a no-no now, enforced by the OS
manufacturers, when the only permitted configuration method is to load
an all-in-one OpenVPN profile. So far, I have not been able to generate
any such file that is accepted by either the Android or iPad, and the
error messages produced are not in the least helpful, nor are the
'examples' on the Net. 

OK, spending another couple of days making near-random changes will
probably solve this, but my point is that I did the job on a buster
netbook in five minutes, on my Android phone in about ten, and the
reason it is taking hours on the other mobile devices is one of
philosophy, which translates into (lack of) practicality.

-- 
Joe