Linux @lemmy.ml Dessalines @lemmy.ml 4d ago

Huawei's New Laptops May Run Linux, not HarmonyOS Next - OMG! Ubuntu

www.omgubuntu.co.uk Huawei's New Laptops May Run Linux, not HarmonyOS Next - OMG! Ubuntu

Is Huawei planning to ship Linux on its upcoming MateBook laptops instead of HarmonyOS NEXT? A fresh leak out of China this week suggests so. Huawei is no

Linux @programming.dev cm0002 @lemmy.world 4d ago

www.omgubuntu.co.uk /2025/03/huawei-matebook-laptops-linux-leak

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I’d love to try out some of their products, but my government has banned them. So much for the land of the free.
- even if you got them; you're going to encounter some stupid rules:
  
  i bought at xiaomi phone and i can't use it on most cell phone carriers in the united states because they're banned based on their imea to please uncle sam; so it doesn't matter that it's capable of working, it's just not allowed.
  
  same is true for hearing aids: when i connect them using ordinary bluetooth, they work fine on both my xiaomi and samsung phones; but when i use the recommended software, they only work on the samsung and their tech support told me that they don't work on "banned" hardware like xiaomi or huawei.
  
  i bet, in the near future, huawei's hardware will be banned from connecting to wifi networks based on thier mac address and american smart phones will refuse to share data w then via hotspot for the same reason.
  
  I've been running various distros off my Huawei Matebook 14 in the US for years with zero issues. They make really good laptops, TBH.
  
  banned from connecting to wifi networks based on thier mac address
  
  MAC addresses are easy to spoof in a Linux PC though. So you should be able to workaround that limitation if it's ever a problem.
  
  In fact, in theory you can also spoof the IMEI in a phone via software, it's just that the software in phones is generally not as open and it would require rooting and some tweaking that not everyone is comfortable doing.
  
  I do not belive it feasible to police personal consumer WAPs or force mac address filtering on them. Perhaps they will block the mac addresses on govt APs.
This leak is really scetchy, tbh. If it's real then it's probably happening because of the HarmonyOS NEXT that came out late last year. With that they basically dropped the previously used custom android/linux kernel for their own totally own proprietary HarmonyOS kernel. However with that they also lost support for android and linux code sideloading in the process and replaced it with some linux translation layer.

I always thought that HarmonyOS was meant to be more of a Android replacement that also had it's place in stuff like TVs, cars, IoT and smart devices, but they still tried PCs with it, but it was more like chromebook-like toy computer for web browsing and text editing than a full pc. It seemed like a competent product android and android smart device replacement, but I never saw it as a serious competitor for Windows, MacOS or Linux desktop. If them plan is just be self sufficient and ditch US code, then you can do more in the linux ecosystem and get more app support right out of the gate and not have to ask everybody to rewrite their code for your custom OS. With linux-laptops they will have global markets for their computers, when as Harmony OS and it's still are best in China's own 'software lagoon' where third parties care more about developing for Huawei app store.
- Yeah, it seems counterproductive to ditch FOSS in the name of self-sufficiency. If it were about that, assembling an army of software people to learn and contribute to important FOSS codebases would be much more productive in my opinion. It feels like Harmony Next is about something else. Perhaps some wholesale insurance. Or someone's plans grandeur.
what's harmony OS?
- Huawei's android skin/variant, akin to OneUI for samsung, OxygenOS for Oneplus, HyperOS for Xiaomi.
  
  It was a skin, now its a completely different OS. The initial version, HarmonyOS, was based on Android/Linux, the new HarmonyOS Next, is a proprietary version (or successor) of HarmonyOS based on an open source project/OS, OpenHarmony. It uses a new microkernel instead of the linux kernel.
  
  OpenHarmony is essentially an open source base for making an operating system on top. Its not like the Linux kernel, in the sense that its not just a kernel (in fact you can use the linux kernel with it), but rather a bunch of components people can build upon. And since it uses a permissive license, you can build a proprietary OS on top of it (like the HarmonyOS Next).
  
  Huawei actually launched OpenHarmony many years back but it was not ready for phone usage yet. It was only with the launch of the 5th version that Huawei was confident enough in it to start using it on their own phones.
  
  Huawei’s android skin/variant
  
  No, it's not anymore, never really was. They dropped even the last android parts from it with HarmonyOS NEXT last year.
  
  I think it is more of a hard fork after the embargo
- A Huawei version of Android.
  
  Important clarification: it's much more than this. HarmonyOS is not any more a skin or a version of Android. It's its own OS.
  
  HarmonyOS is IMO going to do to Android what BYD has done to Tesla and VW. This is another chapter in China declaring independence from the West.
  
  So their laptops were running Android?
  
  Reading the article it was a closed source OS, with their own closed-source Linux-based kernel.
They should offer fydeOS too

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