With news of the impending lockdown of Android, you may feel the desire to go to iOS as an alternative for your organization, assuming Apple’s crippleware has superior privacy or security to Android. However, please reconsider: If you are at all familiar with desktop operating systems, you may be familiar with the security and freedom of GNU/Linux. Know that you can obtain true GNU/Linux on mobile platforms today, with high-quality and price competative options.
Yes, Android does indeed utilize a (heavily modified) version of the Linux kernel, and so is technically a version of Linux; because Android refuses to utilize the GNU userland or glibc library, Android/Linux is most certainly not GNU/Linux. But the platform has always been highly isolated from mainline GNU/Linux, and this isolation has contributed to its hobbling idiosyncrasities when contrasted with GNU/Linux. But the freedom of accountless installation of software from whereever you please, superuser access, ad-free mobile computing on a reliable device is indeed available today. Several GNU/Linux phones, including a few which are reasonably or even cheaply priced, are available, including the PinePhone and the FLX1. Jolla’s SailfishOS requires payment (similarly to SUSE Linux Enterprise or RHEL), but is very useable and far freer than either member of the global mobile duopoly. Purism’s Librem 5 and Liberty phones are already in mainstream usage with some United States government employees due to their great security and reliability. Further, software such as Waydroid can enable you and your employees to run Android apps when deemed necessary on Linux phones, while MicroG has all the compatability of Google Play Services with none of the telemetry or restrictions on your devices’ software freedom. You can also install mobile GNU/Linux distributions on other hardware, similarly to the fashion in which GNU/Linux users replace Microsoft Windows with the GNU/Linux distribution of their choice.
Native GNU/Linux apps can also be obtained from various sources, as well as the traditional, text-based package manager of mobile GNU/Linux distributions. A great boon of GNU/Linux phones is the ability to use Flatpaks, Snaps, and AppImages, just like on the GNU/Linux desktop.
When your organization switches to mobile GNU/Linux, certain unexpected benefits will arise. You will not need to pay licensing fees to Apple any longer if you had been giving out company iPhones. You will still be able to use texts, including group texts; however, the very easy switch to Matrix chat can easily increase the privacy and security of your organization’s official correspondance, without all the issues of WhatsApp (and if you really want to keep using WhatsApp, you can still install it with Waydroid.) Software updates will continue to work until the devices naturally break, saving your organization much money.
Perhaps most importantly, your IT staff will be able to service and treat your mobile devices the same as desktop or server devices at the organization, with the same security practises, software, and protocols. This will greatly simplify maintenence and improve performance and reliability.
The amount of valuable, potentially compromising, data which Android/Linux can leak to adverseries and competitors ought to alarm any businessman fearful of leaks. Similarly, the inability to properly back-up data or move backup around on any of the two major global proprietary mobile operating systems is a cause for concern. These issues do not exist with GNU/Linux phones or any mobile GNU/Linux distribution, and give the businessman or administrator much needed peace of mind by comparison.
Mobile GNU/Linux is very accessible to the “Average Joe,” just as shifting from Apple to Android (or visa versa) is trivial. Employees seem to take corporate operating systems home and employ the same ones for personal use as they do at work or school; as a result, cybersecurity and software quality and freedom would be immeasurably benefitted through the mainstreaming of mobile GNU/Linux.
In conclusion, I urge the reading businessman and the philanthropist alike to consider GNU/Linux for the mobile operating system of their organizations’ fleets of devices. The benefits are truly profound.